I'm just about the best...Part 386
In the NME piece we posted yesterday I had a link to the magazine's feature about how they chose the top 50 artists who have had the biggest influence on NME. David came fourth in their table, but seeing as the three artists above him were all bands, that means that he was the most influential solo artist as far as NME was concerned. Here is how they arrived at their conclusion:
"The list takes into account: Appearances on front covers. Volume and significance of features. Dominance of end of year writers polls. The response from our readers in the weekly letters page. The presence of their name and influence in the paper (e.g. the number of acts referred to as the new them, the endless questioning of other artists for their opinions of them, the terrible pun headlines on their name or song titles...). And the speed with which they took over."
Click on either of the images in this piece to take you to the NME site for the full top ten, meanwhile, here is another of the covers this time dating from May 15th 1976, with David's hilarious accompanying text.
"Red Square. Buying Sputnik brand cigarettes in GUMs, the huge empty aircraft hanger like departmental store in Moscow. Earlier in the 70's I had had an amazingly torrid affair with a French student teacher. She couldn't speak a word of English and my French stopped at buying Gauloises. I thrill at the memory of smuggling her into the Intourist Hotel, past the unsmiling Arthur Mullard female guard on the 7th floor. Oh, it still makes my toes curl. What a joy. In this pic, taken four years later, I'm obviously telling the photographer to keep his eyes peeled for her."