RIP Steve Strange (1959 - 2015)

(click on the images to see the full issues)

Groove Is In The Heart

If you ever made or received a mixtape, you will love this wonderful short play.

Back in October 1984, Morrissey did a feature with British music magazine Smash Hits where he reviewed some popular singles at the time. It was unearthed today (30 years to the day after the issue’s publication date) by Brian McCloskey, a collector of the magazines who has been uploading his archives digitally on his blog Like Punk Never Happened. It’s all pretty great.

"The kind of stealthy eroticism which makes a life of religion madly attractive"

The one we've all been waiting for: Morrissey reviews the new singles!

In 2009, Smash Hits superfan Brian McCloskey, an 80’s kid who had hung on to his copies of Smash Hits since youth, decided to rescue his collection from his parents’ attic at his childhood home in Derry, Ireland.

I never thought it would happen....

One Thursday afternoon in June of 1979, shortly after my tenth birthday, my Mum and I went to Coleraine with some aunts and cousins. In Gardiner's bookshop - I think it was next to Crazy Prices - I found a magazine which had lyrics to a bunch of songs, including Up The Junction, by Squeeze. Music was on its way to replacing football as my passion in life and from the start I had been intrigued by the words of songs, so this was an invaluable resource....and would prove to be so for the next six years....

In June 2009, on a visit to Derry from California, I boxed up my collection of Smash Hits and mailed it to myself in Santa Monica.

In June 2014, thirty-five years after first reading Smash Hits, I finished the (rather time-consuming) task of scanning every issue in my collection, uploading those scans to Flickr and preparing the blog posts that have allowed me to share my collection in this online archive.

"a modest sort of transvestite"

It has nothing to do with Smash Hits or music from the 1980s, but if you want to know a bit more about the person responsible for this archive, you can read this interview in the latest LA Weekly.

Carnaby Echoes

Smash Hits magazine was run from 52-55 Carnaby Street in the 1980s....

[Video interview with Mark Ellen, chatting about the Smash Hits offices on Carnaby Street]

R.I.P. Linda Duff

As you may know, Linda Duff, who wrote the Get Smart column, died last week. If Smash Hits was the internet before there was an internet, Linda was its most powerful search engine.

Our thoughts and prayers go out to her family.

(This page is from next week's magazine)

R.I.P. Donna Summer: 1948 - 2012

Donna Summer was on the cover of the very first issue of Smash Hits I ever bought, in June 1979:


(click on the image to see the full issue)

R.I.P. Eric Watson: 1955 - 2012

In 1981 he was invited to work for Smash Hits, after the editor, David Hepworth, saw photographs Watson had shot for Madness.

I'm sure Oscar Wilde enjoyed a nice leg of mutton

Tom Hibbert interviews Morrissey, January 1985.

RIP Tom Hibbert

At Smash Hits in the mid-80s, he helped invent a cartoon fantasy world in which everyone interviewed seemed to exhibit the same slapstick characteristics. All his subjects – Paul McCartney, David Bowie, Bucks Fizz, John Lydon – were delightfully over-exaggerated, as mischievous and eccentric as their interrogator.

Like Punk Never Happened!

Dave Rimmer's classic account of New Pop, Like Punk Never Happened, has been republished by Faber.

It is available from Amazon and Amazon UK.

There's a Facebook page, where you can tell Dave how fantastic he is. And you can watch Dave explain the origin of the book's title (and name of your favourite Smash Hits archive blog) here.

“I hoped that people might stumble across the scans and get a kick out of reading them.”

In June 1979, a 10-year-old from Derry, Ireland, Brian McCloskey, visited some family in Northern Ireland. There, he and his mother went to a newsstand, where she bought him his first issue of Smash Hits, a cheeky London pop magazine that, among the features and reviews, printed lyrics to hit songs.

There's something charming about the idea of communally-minded individuals painstakingly scanning entire copies of Smash Hits

Brian McCloskey's Smash Hits archive seems to be keeping its promise to add a new edition of the magazine every fortnight, "on the 30th anniversary of the original publication date".

It was the little touches that got me into Smash Hits

"People keep writing to me via the blog to tell me they've wasted days on a 1981 copy of Smash Hits," McCloskey says. "That's fine by me. I mean, what a great way to waste a day!"