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Peter Jones obituary

02 August, 2015 - 0 Comments

Music journalist and author who wrote the earliest biographies of the Beatles and the Rolling Stones.

During the late 1950s and early 60s the weekly music press was the main source of news and information about the latest developments in British and American pop music. Of the several papers in the marketplace, Record Mirror was most often the first to spot new trends, including the Motown sound and rhythm & blues. Its chief writer and editor for much of this era was Peter Jones, who has died aged 85. As well as his articles, Jones wrote the earliest book-length biographies of both the Beatles and the Rolling Stones.

Always immaculately dressed, Jones evolved a working routine at Record Mirror centred on a lengthy lunchtime spent at the bar of the De Hems pub off Shaftesbury Avenue in London. There, according to his friend and colleague Norman Jopling, when music business contacts came to meet him “he was genial, good company, and, importantly, an easy touch for those precious column inches”. Frequently interviews with artists would take place at De Hems, with Peter taking notes in shorthand. He would compose articles and pithy record reviews on a typewriter that had two sizes of capital letters but no lower-case keys.

By: Dave Laing

Source: The Guardian

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