Peter Jones (journalist)

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Peter Langley Jones (6 January 1930 – 10 July 2015) was a British journalist, author, editor, promoter and presenter who wrote mainly on show business matters, especially pop music, for magazines including Record Mirror and Billboard . He was involved in the early careers of both The Rolling Stones and The Beatles, pseudonymously writing the first book-length biographies of both bands.

Show business vernacular term for all aspects of entertainment

Show business, sometimes shortened to show biz or showbiz, is a vernacular term for all aspects of the entertainment industry. From the business side, the term applies to the creative element and was in common usage throughout the 20th century, although the first known use in print dates from 1850. At that time and for several decades, it typically included an initial the. By the latter part of the century, it had acquired a slightly arcane quality associated with the era of variety, but the term is still in active use. In modern entertainment industry, it is also associated with the fashion industry and acquiring intellectual property rights from the invested research in the entertainment business.

Pop music is a genre of popular music that originated in its modern form in the United States and United Kingdom during the mid-1950s. The terms "popular music" and "pop music" are often used interchangeably, although the former describes all music that is popular and includes many diverse styles. "Pop" and "rock" were roughly synonymous terms until the late 1960s, when they became increasingly differentiated from each other.

Record Mirror was a British weekly music newspaper between 1954 and 1991 for pop fans and record collectors. Launched two years after the NME, it never attained the circulation of its rival. The first UK album chart was published in Record Mirror in 1956, and during the 1980s it was the only consumer music paper to carry the official UK singles and UK albums charts used by the BBC for Radio 1 and Top of the Pops, as well as the US Billboard charts.

Contents

Biography

He was born in Carshalton, Surrey. After his father died, he moved with his mother and her second husband to Portsmouth, where he started his career as a reporter for the Portsmouth Evening News . He began to specialise in show business interviews, before leaving the newspaper to work as a trainee screenwriter and talent booker for Associated London Scripts, where he worked with such stars as Frankie Howerd, Spike Milligan and Eric Sykes. He left to begin writing a regular column for the Weekend magazine, which in the mid-1950s had a reported circulation of 1.5 million. [1] [2] [3]

Carshalton suburb of London in the London Borough of Sutton, England

Carshalton is a town in the London Borough of Sutton, England. Historically part of Surrey, it is located 9.5 miles (15.1 km) south-southwest of Charing Cross, situated in the valley of the River Wandle, one of the sources of which is Carshalton Ponds in the middle of the village.

Surrey County of England

Surrey is a subdivision of the English region of South East England in the United Kingdom. A historic and ceremonial county, Surrey is also one of the home counties. The county borders Kent to the east, East Sussex and West Sussex to the south, Hampshire to the west, Berkshire to the northwest, and Greater London to the northeast.

Portsmouth City & unitary authority area in England

Portsmouth is a port city in Hampshire, England, with a total population of 205,400 residents. The city of Portsmouth is nicknamed Pompey and is mainly built on Portsea Island, a flat, low-lying island measuring 24 square kilometres in area, just off the south-east coast of Hampshire. Uniquely, Portsmouth is the only island city in the United Kingdom, and is the only city whose population density exceeds that of London.

As well as writing in a freelance capacity for Weekend, Record Mirror and other magazines, he appeared regularly on Southern TV's sports programmes during the early 1960s. In 1963, after seeing the Rolling Stones perform at the Crawdaddy Club in Richmond, he recommended them to Andrew Loog Oldham, who became their manager as a result. [2] He actively championed Motown music before it became popular in the UK; John Schroeder, who brokered the first distribution deal for Motown in Britain, said of Jones that he was his only ally in promoting the release of early Motown material. [1]

Crawdaddy Club nightclub

The Crawdaddy Club was a music venue in Richmond, Surrey, England, which started in 1963. The Rolling Stones were its house band in 1963; they were followed by The Yardbirds. Several other seminal British blues and rhythm and blues acts also played there.

Richmond, London town in London, England

Richmond is a suburban town in south-west London, 8.2 miles (13.2 km) west-southwest of Charing Cross. It is on a meander of the River Thames, with a large number of parks and open spaces, including Richmond Park, and many protected conservation areas, which include much of Richmond Hill. A specific Act of Parliament protects the scenic view of the River Thames from Richmond.

Andrew Loog Oldham British record producer

Andrew Loog Oldham is an English record producer, talent manager, impresario and author. He was manager and producer of The Rolling Stones from 1963 to 1967, and was noted for his flamboyant style.

In 1964, Jones was appointed as editor of Record Mirror, at the time one of the three main national music weeklies in the UK, and during the 1960s and early 1970s wrote hundreds of articles on pop music for the journal. He also wrote extensively in The Beatles Book monthly magazine, under the pseudonym Billy Shepherd, and in the Rolling Stones' magazine, as Peter Goodman. He wrote the first book-length biographies of both bands: The True Story of the Beatles (as Shepherd, 1964), and the Stones' Our Own Story (as Goodman, 1965). He supported and encouraged the early careers of such stars as Dusty Springfield, The Who, and, later, Jimi Hendrix. [3] He also wrote biographies of Elvis Presley and Tom Jones, and was the ghostwriter of newspaper columns for many British pop stars in the 1960s, including Sandie Shaw and Dave Dee, and for footballers including George Best and Denis Law. [1] [2]

<i>The Beatles Book</i> monthly magazine, about The Beatles

The Beatles Book was founded in 1963. It was first published in August 1963 and continued for 77 editions until it stopped publication after the December 1969 edition. It was revived in 1976, and ceased publication in 2003.

Dusty Springfield 20th-century English singer and record producer

Mary Isobel Catherine Bernadette O'Brien, professionally known as Dusty Springfield, was an English pop singer and record producer whose career extended from the late 1950s to the 1990s. With her distinctive sensual mezzo-soprano sound, she was an important singer of blue-eyed soul and at her peak was one of the most successful British female performers, with six top 20 singles on the US Billboard Hot 100 and sixteen on the UK Singles Chart from 1963 to 1989. She is a member of the Rock and Roll and UK Music Halls of Fame. International polls have named Springfield among the best female rock artists of all time. Her image, supported by a peroxide blonde bouffant hairstyle, evening gowns, and heavy make-up, as well as her flamboyant performances made her an icon of the Swinging Sixties.

The Who English rock band

The Who are an English rock band formed in London in 1964. Their classic line-up consisted of lead singer Roger Daltrey, guitarist and singer Pete Townshend, bass guitarist John Entwistle and drummer Keith Moon. They are considered one of the most influential rock bands of the 20th century, selling over 100 million records worldwide.

After Billboard purchased Record Mirror in 1969, Jones continued to write for both publications, and for Music Week . He launched another magazine, Easy Listening, in 1972. For Billboard, he was successively news editor for British, European and international coverage and, finally, special issues editor, based in its London office. [1] He also contributed to the publication, The Story of Rock, and regularly broadcast on music news for Südwestrundfunk in Baden-Baden, Germany, while continuing to work for Billboard until 1997. [2]

Music Week is a trade paper for the UK record industry. It is published by Future.

Südwestrundfunk is a regional public broadcasting corporation serving the southwest of Germany, specifically the federal states of Baden-Württemberg and Rhineland-Palatinate. The corporation has main offices in three cities: Stuttgart, Baden-Baden and Mainz, with the director's office being in Stuttgart. It is a part of the ARD consortium. It broadcasts on two television channels and six radio channels, with its main television and radio office in Baden-Baden and regional offices in Stuttgart and Mainz. It is the second largest broadcasting organization in Germany. SWR, with a coverage of 55,600 km2, and an audience reach estimated to be 14.7 million. SWR employs 3,700 people in its various offices and facilities.

Baden-Baden Place in Baden-Württemberg, Germany

Baden-Baden is a spa town in the state of Baden-Württemberg, south-western Germany, at the north-western border of the Black Forest mountain range on the small river Oos, ten kilometres east of the Rhine, the border with France, and forty kilometres north-east of Strasbourg, France.

He died of heart failure in 2015, aged 85. [2]

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References

  1. 1 2 3 4 Paul Sexton, "Peter Jones, Writer of Books on Beatles and Stones and Former Billboard and Record Mirror Editor, Dies at 85", Billboard, 23 July 2015. Retrieved 15 November 2015
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 Obituary, Record Collector, No.446, November 2015, p.145
  3. 1 2 Dave Laing, "Peter Jones obituary", The Guardian, 2 August 2015. Retrieved 15 November 2015
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