No sleep 'til publication

still remember the production of the first issue of hotpress as if it was yesterday. It isn’t just that it was a life-changing experience (which it was). It’s because it was a bloody nightmare.

We didn’t really have any idea what we were getting into. If we had, we might never have taken the plunge, but innocence is a wonderful asset and so we ploughed ahead as if there was no tomorrow. As it transpired, in a way there wasn’t. That first production turned into one long continuous today, as time imploded and came undone in the most extraordinary way. We couldn’t afford to sleep. We couldn’t afford not to sleep. We chose the former option and lived to tell the tale. Barely.

It wasn’t just that we’d had to conduct our business from a telephone kiosk for virtually the entire six weeks since we had embarked on the great adventure of getting a new magazine off the ground. This was the era in Ireland, when you applied for a telephone and were routinely told that there would be a six-month wait. Which was a lie. Inevitably it would turn out to be a nine-month wait. Or more.

We moved into offices in Upper Mount St. a couple of weeks before kick-off. No phones. We were given the six-month plan by the Department of Post and Telegraphs. There were no lines available, we were told. We’d just have to wait. So how the fuck were we going to sell advertising? How were we going to talk to the people in the record company press offices in London and elsewhere? How were we going to keep in touch with our printers in Cavan? We continued our tenancy of the nearest available public telephone box. But it was no position from which to inveigle an advertising agency to shell out big bucks on the booze ads that we coveted, and desperately needed. The noise of trucks roaring by in the street outside made sustaining a sales pitch somewhat difficult. Besides, other people wanted to use the phones! We were screwed.

As it happened, the country was on the run-in to an election at the time – the Jack Lynch-led 1977 Fianna Fail landslide that almost bankrupt the country. By coincidence, both Fianna Fail and Fine Gael had their party headquarters in Upper Mount Street. And a little puff piece about their election preparations, in a national newspaper, contained the rather interesting titbit that each of the parties was getting 20 additional telephone lines installed, to help them in the campaign.

Now we had been told that there were no lines available – yet the politicians, it seemed, could turn them on at will. The lines they were snaffling had to be coming from the same exchange that had none for us. We wrote to a number of TDs, Jack Lynch and Garret Fitzgerald among them, pointing out the injustice. It was manna from heaven: politicians in election mode were vulnerable, especially where media matters (a magazine for young people!) were concerned. We were told that we would have the phones within a week.

Our luck didn’t hold. The phones came on stream – but at the same time the principal layout artist, who had been assiduously cultivated dried up. Or fucked off, to be more precise. It has to be said in our defence that we were very politically correct indeed during the headhunting and interviewing process. Not once did we ask our prospective Barney Bubbles whether or not he had any religious affiliations. It was a mistake. On the Friday morning, six days before we were due to hit the streets with the first edition, I arrived back at the office from a meeting. I ventured into the advertising department, to check out had they sold an ad yet. Any ad. I needed some good news. I needed to hear that someone out there believed that we would actually get the thing onto the news stands – and was willing to spend some money with us by way of endorsement.

When I went into the room, I didn’t need to be Sherlock Holmes to figure out that there was something afoot – and that it was not good, at all. Our advertising manager was at his desk, alright, but his head was in his hands in the posture of someone who had entirely given up the ghost. I could see why. The rest of the room was occupied by a posse of smiley freaks, who were poring admiringly over a huge piece of artwork that was spread out across the floor, making it impossible for anyone else to navigate their way into the space. At the centre was our Layout Artist, who seemed to be gratefully accepting the abundant compliments that were flowing, for the beauty of the vision that was laid out before us.

And was it a fine front cover that would be destined to race off the stands the following week? Was it a brilliant poster that would grab the imagination of the music-loving public that we were hoping to reach?

Christ, no, no, no, no, no! It was a painting of the Guru Maharaji, a piece of typically sickly religious iconography for which our Layout Artist bore sole and awful responsibility! As it happened, the rotund, smirking little idol from India was due in Dublin that weekend for some kind of spiritual love-in – a fact of which I had been entirely ignorant. “How are the advertising sales going?” I roared at the shrinking adman, in the hope that I might make the assembled gathering aware that we actually had a magazine to produce. The devotees’ conversation only got louder. “FAR OUT MAN”. “I’M BLISSING OUT JUST LOOKING AT HIS PICTURE. IT’S BEAUTIFUL, MAN, BEAUTIFUL.”

I didn’t have a bazooka handy – which was lucky, because if I’d had one, there might have been trouble. As it was, the sight of smoke coming from my ears clearly disturbed the inner peace of the assembled Guru heads.

Awakened from his reverie our Layout Artist decided to go to lunch. The painting was lovingly rolled up, and packed into a monstrous cardboard tube with a ritual delicacy. Fine, I thought. When he comes back, we’ll have to really get stuck into the layout to make up for lost time.

But he didn’t come back. Ever. We lost him permanently to the Guru on our first production weekend!

After the penny had dropped, we spent what was left of the afternoon frantically phoning anyone and everyone we could think of who might come to the rescue. We got a few waifs and strays that we were more than grateful for to come in, and with everyone who remained of the team working hell for leather, all night, for three nights on the trot, we finally got the pages finished. I drove to Cavan – where our printers the Anglo Celt were based – wasted, wounded and badly in need of a bit of kip, but proud as punch too that we had the job done. The first one is always the hardest. I genuinely believed that at the time.

We were too late to take advantage of the option of putting spot colour on the front page – a fiercely modern invention at the time that required the lads on the machines to do somersaults that just weren’t possible in the available time. The first issue of hotpress was black and white throughout. Nothing has been quite so black and white since…

So many things have changed in the journey from there to here. For us, it has been a life and death experience at times, and we’ve suffered the ultimate loss of some brilliant people – Peter Owens, who ran the ship in London for us for a long time first, and later the wonderful Bill Graham, who made such a brilliant contribution not just to hotpress, but to music and to journalism in Ireland. We’ve had some astonishing talent working with us along the way, who have moved on to do other things and to make a huge impact on journalism, literature, film, comedy, television and the arts. And we’ve had astonishing talent that has remained with us too, giving the magazine a sense of continuity and consistency through times of furious change and development. The Whole Hog was in the first issue of hotpress; recently a 16 year-old wrote to say that it was his favourite part of the magazine. Joe Jackson was there at the start too. Eamonn McCann arrived in the ’80s, Bootboy a little bit later. They’re still among our stars.

The team now is a brilliant one, as good as we’ve ever had. Design-wise, we are at our strongest ever – the art department took it upon themselves to give the magazine a new look for the occasion of our birthday issue, and the results, as you can see, are mighty impressive. Which is why I think we can all feel just as proud holding this 25th Anniversary issue of hotpress in our hands as we did when that first baby hit the streets back in 1977.

I want to say a heartfelt thanks here to everyone who ever put their hands to the pump working for us along the way – and especially to all of those who have travelled the long road. To the staff that made this current issue happen, working their socks off and doing a great job (a special word here for the ad guys who may not have had the guru to contend with, but were up against it all the same – well done! – and for everyone in production). To our readers, without whom none of it would have been possible. To our advertisers. To our printers. To all of those people in the music business, and in marketing departments and advertising agencies, who have appreciated and supported our endeavours. And to unsung people like Jim Fitzpatrick, Jackie Hayden – who has been part of the team since the ’80s – and P.J.Curtis, all of whom came up with a bit of money way back, when we needed it.

I want to say that hotpress wouldn’t exist without the early support of Rory Gallagher and his brother, manager and mentor, Donal. They were magnificent – which is why we felt the loss of Rory more acutely even than his legions of fans all over the world. He wasn’t just the greatest guitar player of his era, he was a good and decent and generous soul who never lost touch with his roots, or with the values, musical and personal, that inspired him in the first place. Here’s to him and to you, Donal.

It would be impossible to acknowledge everyone who deserves to be acknowledged at a time (or in a space!) like this. So, I hope I will be forgiven a final personal tribute. Mairin Sheehy, my partner, has been right at the heart of things from the start and her contribution to hotpress has been every bit as significant as my own, often moreso – I salute her. Liam Mackey and Dermot Stokes were also part of the team for the first issue and we have remained really close since, through thick and thin – I salute them too. And finally, my first son, Duan, not yet two when hotpress hit the streets, and now in charge of hotpress.com and Rowan, who is twelve and has great plans for world domination.

Now, let’s celebrate good times. Come on!