No. 57 - Losing my Mojo- part 1

First off let me say- I love Mojo magazine. I find it a more intelligent and considered in its music coverage than any other part of the music press. I have been reading it since my mid 20’s (I am now looking at 40 coming up quickly in the rear view mirror!)

However there is one major problem. Out of 225 issues, excluding bands and covers featuring several musicians, women artists have only been featured on the cover eight times in the UK edition and seven times on the US edition. I will discuss this in more depth in my next post.

The lack of women as covers stars indicates a serious issue in lack of coverage of women musicians generally. Occasionally there will be an in depth interview with a female artist who has not appeared as cover star of the issue (both Joni Mitchell and Kate Bush have had interviews flagged up on the front cover) but examining the covers has also indicates how rarely there are in-depth articles about the careers of female musicians. The names of female musicians appear on the front cover a fraction of the time that male musicians do, and it is often difficult to tell if the female musician is the subject of an article or just a review.
I am also not saying that it is just Mojo that has a problem. A quick glance at the gallery of covers of most music magazines- (Uncut, Q, Word, Clash) confirms this (again I will discuss this in my next post).

There are numerous reasons why this state of affairs has probably come about.

Firstly is the perceived audience for these magazines. Many of the magazines, particularly Mojo, are aiming at the legendary ‘£50 bloke’ a male baby boomer born c1945-1962 who would spend £50 a time in a record store (of course the digital revolution and recession have somewhat changed the music market). Middle aged men are seen as the largest audience not just for music magazines but music and home entertainment, in no small part due to their disposable income. However as I have written above I have been reading and buying Mojo since my mid 20’s and a one-time female boss was a proud subscriber to Word. There are women of many ages who are interested in music (as I show in the discussion of zines at the end of this post).

It is important to note that music magazines are finding it harder and harder to find an audience. Word Magazine has just folded and Uncut has recently changed focus to include classic interviews to try and boost sales. Inevitably Mojo will put artists on the front cover that it will know will sell copies and the Beatles, Stones and usual suspects get sales.

But to really understand this situation, we need to look at two aspects of rock writing- the masculine values and culture of rock journalism and lack of women writers (alack this is a fairly widespread issue in the media).

There are several distinct and occasionally interlinking unwelcome tendencies within rock music writing. Firstly and significantly there is a tendency towards macho values. Hard living with drinks, drugs, womanising, fighting and ‘bad boy’ behaviour are seen as the marks of an authentic artist. We are not just talking about artists such as Led Zepplin, Oasis and Rolling Stones. This is linked with the coverage of the hard living, sexually transgressive male figure such as David Bowie, Lou Reed and Iggy Pop. Even though these artists may seem to challenge the hetronormative expectations of their audiences, their hard living stories and their sexual confidence actually align them with acts such as the Rolling Stones and Led Zepplin in the male audience’s eyes.

This is linked to the focus on the rock band as the ‘Boy’s gang’ reassuring male rock fans of the primacy of male friendship and the male gang. The conflict between band members is aligned a masculine concern with power The coverage of bands such as the Clash, the Sex Pistols and Ramones, and even the Smiths can be said to be part of this trend.

There is the ‘muso’ tendency which values intellectualism and musical ability (often at the expense of the musician engaging emotionally and socially with their audience). Thus the love of artists such as Pink Floyd and Radiohead.

Finally there is glorification of the mentally ill ‘Outsider’ male figure such as Brain Wilson and Syd Barrett. These figures ironically fit in with the myth of male exceptionalism, with their mental illness being a product of exceptional talent and behaviour (I have my own theory of Brian being a victim of paternalistic values and masculine aggression that were prevalent in his family but he ho).

Of course certain female artists slip through the net. Kate Bush is enormously popular in the rock press (as the number of her Mojo cover stories show) as she is undoubtedly feminine and physically attractive. She fits in with the model of ‘exceptional eccentric’ and is almost a prototype for the ‘Manic pixie dream girl’ trope. I want to make it clear that this is not to denigrate Kate Bush in any way- she is an astonishing artist who has dome things entirely on her own terms with integrity for over 35 years and unapologetically brings feminist themes to her music. It is far more difficult however for a female artist to challenge gender roles in the way that men like David Bowie have. None of the female artist who challenged the stereotypes of women in rock during the punk era – Siouxsie Sioux, Poly Styrene, Ari Up, have featured on the front covers of any of the magazines I discuss.

The second serious issue is the issue of the lack of women both as writers and editors of these magazines. The NME only got its first female editor in recent years.

I have had a look through my own holdings of Mojo and there are few if any articles written by women (Sylvie Simmons is one exception I can bring to mind). This reflects a lack of women in music writing. I can only think of Lucy O’Brien and Charlotte Grieg as two excellent women writers. Significantly they write specifically about women artists.

Charlotte Grieg wrote the magnificent ‘Will you still love me tomorrow’ (published, tellingly, by Virago) which takes a serious look at what are pejoratively termed ‘Girl groups’ and also ‘Girl signers’ such as Dusty Springfield. These groups are rarely taken seriously be the rock press. There is the double issue with many ‘girl groups’ of race as that many of these groups are African American. Grieg shoes in her book how music produced by ‘Girl groups’ illustrate the effect that the social changes of the 1950s-1990’s have had women, particularly African American women have gone through. The changes in economic, employment, relationships and sexual expectations are reflected in the lyrics of ‘Girl group’ songs (i.e. a perfect illustration of the feminist argument of the Personal is political).

This points to another issue with rock journalism. Female artists are often aligned with pop or the more mainstream side of rock music. Many of the successful artists of the last few years (most notably Adele), no matter how credible their music, have not been featured on the cover of Mojo while they have made the front of Q and Word. Would the staff at Mojo be afraid of disgruntled readers complaining that these young ladies should not be on the front of Mojo?

There are few female instrumentalists, particularly guitarists in rock (or at least mainstream rock). Only a few of the groups that have been on the front of Mojo have female members (White Stripes, New Order, Smashing Pumpkins).

There is an undoubted difference in how women approach rock music. It is no accident that women dominate the production of music ‘zines (independently produced and distributed), which allow them to discuss artists that don’t appear in the mainstream music press (many of which are female) and that these zines often have a strong political content and are highly engaged with their readership. The informality and autonomy of zines suit women and their ways of communicating with other women (I know there are far more scholarly discussions of women’s music zines).

This is only a very brief discourse on the issues of sexism in rock journalism as I perceive them. So on with those Mojo covers!