Interview with Everett True circa 1997 with added commentary

The following is reprinted from Princess Mod's Reinspired blog. I'd like to say it's great but she gives me an embarrassing amount of credit within it. It's certainly a very fine read.

Anyway, the article comes in three parts (it was originally part of a larger article she wrote around the music industry)... and I've reprinted the preamble she gives at the start, and in the section that features my interview. It seems of interest.

Pop Psychology
Everett – or Jerry, as I knew him – was in an agitated state when I saw him at Melody Maker HQ that day. I think it’s actually the day he found out he hadn’t been given the editor’s job – a critical mistake, if you’ll pardon the pun, since the 70 year-old magazine didn’t survive long after that.

Part 3
In addition to my note about Jerry being upset that day, I should add a further comment: I mention him a fair bit in this blog, but that’s because I owe him a great deal. We’ve never agreed much on music, but he taught me well: don’t lie. Don’t ever lie. Even if it gets you sacked (which it did); even if you get death threats (which it did); even if you lose friends, or have to resign rather than face saying yet again how much it sucks. There’s a bias, sure: after eight bad albums, you’ll pan the ninth because you’re so worn down. If the tenth is great, you’ll gush because of the contrast – but don’t say it’s good if it’s not, or your opinion is nothing. His opinion is worthy because he’s honest, even when he’s wrong. More people could learn from him …

THE JOURNALIST – EVERETT TRUE
Everett True is the Acting Editor of Melody Maker. His career began as a fanzine writer in 1982. He ran the fanzine with Alan McGee, but acrimoniously split with McGee when the Creation boss wanted him to edit an issue featuring True’s most hated – The Smiths (1). True started his own fanzine, and then talked the NME into hiring him as a journalist. He worked there until the end of the 1980s, when he was sacked by former fanzine colleague James Brown for what Everett describes as his own journalistic incompetence. He got better, and went on to become a staff writer at Melody Maker. Pretty soon, he was the most famous music journalist in Britain, and entered what he describes as the highlight of his life (2).

ET: I always used to write in my fanzine that I felt that music journalists don’t give a s*** about music. It was the most disappointing day of my life when I got to the NME and found out it was true. Sure, they cared, but not as much as I did (3). Mind you, I was pretty fanatical at the time.

Then I got to Melody Maker, and I can’t ever imagine having a better job: going to America, hanging out with really famous and really cool people, going to see any show I wanted – f***ing brilliant shows – and I had a beautiful teenage girlfriend (4). I can’t imagine how life could have been any better. I suppose I could have had money, but who cares about money when you’re having a good time?

The biggest thrill for Everett is when he finds out that people like the bands he’s championed (5). It more than compensates for his own lack of musical success in his band – The Legend! – whose name comes from his former nickname, a sly joke at the expense of a shy, unassuming music fanatic. Everett was promoted to Assistant Editor shortly after the death of his friend, Kurt Cobain. He lost his passport when he passed out in an American hotel (6), but has occupied himself finding hot new bands to champion. So, why do some bands chart and others fail? Is ambition more important than luck?

ET: Luck is very important, as is marketing, contacts, and how well people do their job. Some people are more pushy than others. The word “ambition” implies that if you fail, you’ll try again. If you don’t have that, you’re very, very reliant on luck to help you succeed first time, so ambition is probably more vital.

Everett True is a pseudonym – his real name is Jerry Thackray.

ET: I really like being Everett True, because it divorces one side of my life from another, which is very useful if you’re in a very public role, which I’m not so much in now. I’m Jerry when people call me Jerry and Everett when people call me Everett, but only a small handful of people call me Jerry. It can make you very schizophrenic (7).

This duality has taken its toll on Everett’s personal life.

ET: It’s affected me more than probably any other rock journalist in Britain. I have had a lot of close friends who have fallen out with me over something I have written about them. By the very nature of what I do, it’s hard not to have friends in the music industry, but I’ve never been able to compromise what I write just because I know someone. I know a lot of people who have, but I have fallen out with pretty much all my close friends, like Alan McGee and Emma from Lush, and I do regret it, I guess (8).

Now that I’m older, I suppose, I would have made more compromises and we’d still be friends, but I was pretty extreme back then. People are nice to me because of who I am (9), but then, I’ve made me who I am. I made the decision to become Everett True, and I’ve worked towards that. If you’re going to be suspicious of everyone who’s nice to you, what the f*** are you going to do (10)? Not talk to anyone? I can’t do anything about people sucking up to me, but I suppose the acid test would be if I suddenly stopped having any sort of power and seeing who would speak to me after that (11). If people regret being nice to me when they don’t want to, then they should just treat me like an a*sehole if I am one.

Would you recommend being famous?

ET: It depends on what you want. I push my personality forward because music affects me personally, so I write about it from a personal standpoint, and if that involves talking about everything I do around that band, then so be it. Journalism’s weird because people can know you without knowing what you look like. You get that ego gratification, whilst preserving some sort of anonymity. Not everyone prints 20 pictures of themselves in every issue. I’ve got to get out of that habit.

Any regrets?

ET: I would have got into the Breeders’ van the day of Kurt’s funeral (12).

He suddenly looks upset.

ET: I should have done, but I didn’t because I was f***ed up like everyone else. That would have changed my life considerably. I don’t know how, but it would have done. I wouldn’t have given The Primitives their first big break (13). I wouldn’t have printed that Lush review that caused Emma to fall out with me. No, I wouldn’t change anything. But you never can say, can you?

2010 comments from ET
(1) The Smiths were never my Most Hated. I've often talked up this story, and there are elements of truth in it - I was supposed to edit a third issue of Communication Blur, and Alan secured a promise of a Smiths flexi and I was quite anti- the idea - but the reason the third issue never appeared, which led me to start my own fanzine and eventual work at the NME, was because me and McGee were starting to have quite severe differences of opinion. He wanted to make something of his life. I didn't. I guess we both achieved our aims.

(2) Loved the MM but in many respects I feel that my brief six-month sojourn at The Stranger was more of a highlight, and later creating two awesome music magazines was even more of a highlight. I'm hoping it's not all downhill from here.

(3) Yeah, this kind of "I care more than you do about music" is what still causes me to win friends and influence people, particularly when I move to other countries.

(4) Wow! Shallow? Me? Perish the thought.

(5) Still holds true. Why do you think I so religiously update this blog, and continue to write about music new to me when no one out there in the mainstream seems to give a fuck about my opinion?

(6) You can hear me talk about the whole sordid experience here. Shamefully, when I arrived back in the UK, I deliberately made out with the intern at MM I'd recounted the day's events to - simply because everyone was going on about how sexy she was.

(7) As can constant excessive use of alcohol (this interview was conducted at one of the heights of my drinking).

(8) Me and Emma finally made up a few years ago, just in case you were wondering. Last communication I had with McGee was him Twittering me to announce that "the main difference between you and me is thirty million pounds".

(9) Not any more! Man, I sure lost a lot of friends the day I got passed over for the editorship of Melody Maker!

(10) I'm also referring to my (brief) unaccountable attraction to potential suitors here.

(11) Oh, wait...

(12) Damn straight. Honestly, I regret very little but I do regret that. Personal reasons, etc.

 (13) (laughs meanly)