Writing about pop as though it really mattered: music journalism and women

Gatekeepers. All women know about them, whatever their job or chosen leisure activity. And the music business has always been one of the top villains. 

Within that crowded field, Jann Wenner, co-founder of Rolling Stone magazine, recently emerged as an arch villain. In case you missed it, he put out a book of archive interviews which was full of old white blokes. When challenged about the lack of women said: “none of them were as articulate enough on this intellectual level”. And made a similar point about Black musicians. Prat.

The ensuing controversy even lost him his gig with the ever-irrelevant Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, which isn’t exactly squeaky clean when it comes to ignoring minorities. 

So why am I writing about this now?

Three reasons. First, writer Marisa Kabas has just published a Substack post titled Women staffers of Jann Wenner’s Rolling Stone get their turn to speak. The women in question talk of a toxic working environment where bullying was the norm. The overall impression is that women were treated as second-class citizens. Nobody seemed to notice that sexism isn’t actually hip.

The second reason is a recent Facebook encounter that really annoyed me. Liverpool band Deaf School shared an anonymous review from a fan site with the words “But who is the author? Come forward young man!” Obviously, I replied “Or young woman?” So then some bloke who doesn’t even know me decided to jump in with “safe to assume it's a man writing” (and a weird little rant about being woke). The obvious reply to that is “Why?” Which I obviously said. I also explained very politely why I’d said it. Did I get an apology? Did I fuck.

The third reason – and this is a positive one – is that I’ve been reading Paul Gorman’s excellent history of the music press, Totally Wired. 

It’s an interesting read in its own right, full of fascinating stories. But what I particularly liked was that Gorman has chosen to challenge the sexism and racism within the industry and to give space to those “whose contributions have often been unfairly overlooked”.

Along with the “legendary” boy writers with their tiresome rock’n’roll behaviour, there’s space for the women writers too.

Sadly, I’m not in it (I was a freelance for Melody Maker during the post-punk era), but lots of other women are. I was aware of the new generation of women writers from the punk era (Caroline Coon, Julie Burchill, Jane Suck/Solanas and others), but the book shows that we go back much further.

The story of women music journalists starts in the late 1950s and early ’60s. Pioneering 16 magazine editor Gloria Stavers in the US is said to have invented today’s rock music journalism. Then there was Australian Lillian Roxon, who wrote the first rock music encyclopedia. And in the UK, writers Val Wilmer (a jazz specialist at Melody Maker) and Penny Valentine (Disc & Music Echo). The latter was  “the first woman to write about pop music as though it really mattered” according to my old MM boss Richard Williams. 

Then we get to the Rolling Stone era, in which rock music becomes something so intensely serious and important that it can’t possibly be understood by women. 

This quote from Village Voice writer Richard Goldstein sums it up: “I always thought of rock criticism as a masculine venture, with all of its hierarchical implications of being male-centric: the competitiveness, the pissing contests, and all the rest.” This is followed up with “It’s not that I don’t like male rock critics; it’s that they shouldn’t be claiming the whole territory.”

It’s not even male rock critics, of course: it’s male fans as well. 

And they are still claiming the territory. Gorman adds, accurately: “Aspects of this male-dominated milieu were tiresome enough at the time but are downright objectionable from a 21st century perspective.” 

But there’s lots more to come, because we are only on chapter 4. And the next chapter, about the new women writers of the counterculture, is titled “They didn’t know it was a men’s club.”

Music journalism still felt like a men’s club, ten or twenty years later, when I was working in that world. The culture was very male (a lot of drinking was involved), and it felt that you needed to act like one of the boys to be taken seriously.

As I wasn’t in London, and only visited the office occasionally, I didn’t get involved. There were times when I felt sidelined editorially, but that may have been because I was in the sticks or because, being autistic (or being female?), I didn’t know how to “play the game” and promote myself. 

But there were also times, particularly when I was starting out, when I felt supported and encouraged (shout out to Richard Williams, Ian Birch and Allan Jones). So I’m not complaining.

I did get bullied, several times, in other jobs and I think being female had something to do with it. So in a way, working for the music press was actually better.

There were always annoying things, though. Like the time that the Melody Maker gossip columnists thought it would be amusing to prefix every woman’s name with the words “luscious, pouting”, as if we were all Patsy Kensit or someone. So, when quoting me in an article I’d contributed to (you know, like a professional writer), my name became “luscious, pouting Penny Kiley”. Ha bloody ha.

Like the time I went to the stage door of a London theatre to interview the Cramps and someone used the word “groupie”. Or the time I got groped at a gig (it seems to happen more often now, so there’s the opposite of progress in some respects).

And then there were all the times I got asked “Are you with your boyfriend?” when I was watching a band on my own. 

That hasn’t improved either, according to Caryn Rose’s recent Substack rant, Men explain (music) things to me (subtitled “NO GIRLS ALLOWED”). Caryn’s a US-based music writer of my generation, still writing professionally, and is well worth reading. 

Her Substack post was in response to yet another idiotic thing that a man said to her at a gig. “That statement was about a man letting me know that this is his place that he is letting me, a woman, into; that I do not actually belong there; that I do not have any right of my own to be there; that my presence in this location and at this event is questionable.”

The “are you with your boyfriend” question happened so many times, because some men couldn’t cope with the notion of an unaccompanied woman at a gig. Answer: “No, I’m WORKING.”

Because, yes, women music journalists exist, and have done for decades. We have a job to do. And we have a right to that space too.