Wednesday, November 23, 2005
The NME Years - The Advertising Boys; Part one
Brian Brownell
"My father knew Brian B". That was the saying on one of the badges that we had made, and various staff members used to wear them around the office (it wasn't cool enough to wear it outside of work...).
Brian Brownell, or Brian B as he was known to one and all, used to sell advertising on the NME Live! ads pages for about five or six years, in the late seventies and early eighties. A tall bearded man, with a crook nose, and long wavy brown hair, he wasn't that dashing or suave, but he always wore a suit to work. I don't know why? Maybe more casual clothes wouldn't have suited him any better...
Brian became an semi-icon at the NME. He had his own advertising pages - the live ads pages - and whenever there was a space to fill that we hadn't been able to put a paid-for advert in, we would put a filler ad bearing Brian B's name and contact details in there. In the late seventies, we carried quite a lot of filler adverts! Brian therefore became a victim of his own un-success, and me and my colleagues Frank and Mike took full advantage, building his persona up to megastar status. The pic here shows another badge we had made, alluding to the fact that Brian may have had a fan club! Frank was a bit of an aspiring artist, and he drew a comic strip that featured Brian, which we printed at the top of the Live! Ads pages, bringing the anti-hero to life even more. The trouble was, Brian believed all the hype that we fed him, and became paranoid if we were (or were not) talking about him! I never really knew the real Brian, if there was one - I don't think anyone did in truth...
Brian was an East End boy, who lived with his mum and dad in Canning Town. He used to go to the Bridgehouse, a local pub that had bands on most nights, to see his mates and the local groups that would play; occasionally, they had someone who was slightly more well known outside of the East End and he would be in his element, what with working for NME and powerful enough to give away free advertising!
Brian had his favourites - The Warm Jets were one band, Spider another, and Iron Maiden another of the groups he'd go to see at every opportunity, well before they became famous and heavy metal au fait.
Brian also liked speedway, and would go along to Walthamstow, Wimbledon, and other London tracks to see live action whenever he could - it was his incognito time I think.
Brian liked a beer or two, or ten actually! He would drink most days; at lunchtime he would be down the pub for a couple, and after work he would also drink either locally to work or back at one of his local drinking dens if he wasn't out seeing a band somewhere.
He told a story once about how he was in a hotel somewhere - on holiday in Cornwall I think - having drunk quite a lot (which meant over ten pints to Brian...), when he woke up needing to go to the loo.
He described in intimate detail how he walked to the bathroom, did what he needed to and went back to bed. In the morning, he got up, washed, went to put on the ubiquitous suit from the wardrobe, and found it to be soaking wet. He had proceeded to urinate over it during the night. He argued that it must have been ghosts or something similar, but deep down he knew that we knew what had happened!
And that was Brian's problem really - he always knew that we knew the real deal with him, whatever way he tried to package things up, we always saw through his wrapping.
He used to hate people standing behind him, claiming that they were breathing on his wavy hair. Of course, being the mickey taking guys we were, we did that on purpose, because we knew it wound him up. We wore the badges; we mimicked his sayings - he had a special way of saying the names of bands he liked; Iyon Maaayden for instance - and actions - he waved his hands about quite a lot in strange circular motions.
Brian was well hung but impotent, though he claimed that he knew how to satisfy women in other ways...the only woman that I knew he got close to was someone equally hairy called Mary. I don't know what he tried with her but from the fact that the relationship lasted precisely one night and she treated him disdainfully forevermore afterwards meant that she probably wasn't fully satisfied that evening!
Brian eventually left NME in the early eighties, and went seeking his fortune elsewhere. The last time we met was when Mike Procter returned to London from Bristol for a football match (Arsenal versus Villa - 2-0) at Highbury, and we (Mike, Me, Frank, and Brian) all met up in a North London pub for a few beers beforehand. Brian had changed; he was even more paranoid, and for some completely unknown reason (believe me, if I knew I would say now...) he took offence at my presence and threw his pint of beer in my face without warning. I really didn't know why he did it. We had not been taking the mickey at all; he just lost the plot a bit I think.
I never saw Brian again after that event.
He died a couple of years later from complete organ failure, the result of drinking whole bottles of vodka and the like each night once he'd got home from the pub, alone.
Brian was an icon that some of us helped to create, and probably helped destroy. As newspapers do these days, you can build and build people up, and once they believe they are at the top, it is easy to bring them crashing down once more, way below where they ever were before.
"My father knew Brian B". That was the saying on one of the badges that we had made, and various staff members used to wear them around the office (it wasn't cool enough to wear it outside of work...).
Brian Brownell, or Brian B as he was known to one and all, used to sell advertising on the NME Live! ads pages for about five or six years, in the late seventies and early eighties. A tall bearded man, with a crook nose, and long wavy brown hair, he wasn't that dashing or suave, but he always wore a suit to work. I don't know why? Maybe more casual clothes wouldn't have suited him any better...
Brian became an semi-icon at the NME. He had his own advertising pages - the live ads pages - and whenever there was a space to fill that we hadn't been able to put a paid-for advert in, we would put a filler ad bearing Brian B's name and contact details in there. In the late seventies, we carried quite a lot of filler adverts! Brian therefore became a victim of his own un-success, and me and my colleagues Frank and Mike took full advantage, building his persona up to megastar status. The pic here shows another badge we had made, alluding to the fact that Brian may have had a fan club! Frank was a bit of an aspiring artist, and he drew a comic strip that featured Brian, which we printed at the top of the Live! Ads pages, bringing the anti-hero to life even more. The trouble was, Brian believed all the hype that we fed him, and became paranoid if we were (or were not) talking about him! I never really knew the real Brian, if there was one - I don't think anyone did in truth...Brian was an East End boy, who lived with his mum and dad in Canning Town. He used to go to the Bridgehouse, a local pub that had bands on most nights, to see his mates and the local groups that would play; occasionally, they had someone who was slightly more well known outside of the East End and he would be in his element, what with working for NME and powerful enough to give away free advertising!
Brian had his favourites - The Warm Jets were one band, Spider another, and Iron Maiden another of the groups he'd go to see at every opportunity, well before they became famous and heavy metal au fait.
Brian also liked speedway, and would go along to Walthamstow, Wimbledon, and other London tracks to see live action whenever he could - it was his incognito time I think.
Brian liked a beer or two, or ten actually! He would drink most days; at lunchtime he would be down the pub for a couple, and after work he would also drink either locally to work or back at one of his local drinking dens if he wasn't out seeing a band somewhere.
He told a story once about how he was in a hotel somewhere - on holiday in Cornwall I think - having drunk quite a lot (which meant over ten pints to Brian...), when he woke up needing to go to the loo.
He described in intimate detail how he walked to the bathroom, did what he needed to and went back to bed. In the morning, he got up, washed, went to put on the ubiquitous suit from the wardrobe, and found it to be soaking wet. He had proceeded to urinate over it during the night. He argued that it must have been ghosts or something similar, but deep down he knew that we knew what had happened!And that was Brian's problem really - he always knew that we knew the real deal with him, whatever way he tried to package things up, we always saw through his wrapping.
He used to hate people standing behind him, claiming that they were breathing on his wavy hair. Of course, being the mickey taking guys we were, we did that on purpose, because we knew it wound him up. We wore the badges; we mimicked his sayings - he had a special way of saying the names of bands he liked; Iyon Maaayden for instance - and actions - he waved his hands about quite a lot in strange circular motions.
Brian was well hung but impotent, though he claimed that he knew how to satisfy women in other ways...the only woman that I knew he got close to was someone equally hairy called Mary. I don't know what he tried with her but from the fact that the relationship lasted precisely one night and she treated him disdainfully forevermore afterwards meant that she probably wasn't fully satisfied that evening!
Brian eventually left NME in the early eighties, and went seeking his fortune elsewhere. The last time we met was when Mike Procter returned to London from Bristol for a football match (Arsenal versus Villa - 2-0) at Highbury, and we (Mike, Me, Frank, and Brian) all met up in a North London pub for a few beers beforehand. Brian had changed; he was even more paranoid, and for some completely unknown reason (believe me, if I knew I would say now...) he took offence at my presence and threw his pint of beer in my face without warning. I really didn't know why he did it. We had not been taking the mickey at all; he just lost the plot a bit I think.
I never saw Brian again after that event.
He died a couple of years later from complete organ failure, the result of drinking whole bottles of vodka and the like each night once he'd got home from the pub, alone.
Brian was an icon that some of us helped to create, and probably helped destroy. As newspapers do these days, you can build and build people up, and once they believe they are at the top, it is easy to bring them crashing down once more, way below where they ever were before.
