“Then the NME dropped a bomb”
The last ever print edition of New Musical Express (NME) was published on Friday (March 9 2018), after 66 years as the UK’s most popular music weekly.
The magazine was always generous with column inches to Bowie though rival Melody Maker (MM) beat them to the first Bowie cover in January 1972.
NME retaliated with 34 Bowie covers (more than any other featured artist), published from July 15 1972 (BOWIE ZOWIE) through to January 15 2016 (So long, Spaceboy), both issues pictured here.
But it was a symbiotic relationship, as MM journalist Chris Welch explained to Paul Gorman for Gorman’s book, In Their Own Write: Adventures in the Music Press.
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Chris Welch: The NME really became a threat when Bowie came on the scene. I think they covered Bowie really well. I remember suggesting that we cover his return from Japan on the Trans-Siberian Express by going to Paris to interview him, but when we arrived, Charles Shaar Murray was already there. Mercifully, Bowie went and sat in the same carriage as our chaps, so we got a good interview.
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Charles Shaar Murray became Bowie’s biggest champion at the NME with many great exclusives under his belt, and, for that reason, we’re not even going to mention that Low review.
We’ll hopefully do a gallery of all 34 NME Bowie covers at some point.
Finally, Bowie’s old friend Moby got to have the last word on the last editorial page of Friday’s final print edition, in the regular feature: Soundtrack Of My Life.
In it, he chooses "Heroes" as the song he wishes he had written. If you can’t read what he had to say about the song and David Bowie in our montage, checkout the online version, where NME will no doubt continue to be published until all the electricity has run out.
So long NME, you were a great friend.
#BowieNME