Mojo (magazine)

• 1. Introduction

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  Mojo magazine launched on the 15th of October 1993 with Bob Dylan and John Lennon sharing its very first cover. That choice was a statement of intent. Here was a publication targeting an audience aged thirty to forty-five and beyond, the baby boomer generation hungry for serious writing about the music of their lives. The question at the heart of this story is how a single magazine shaped the way a whole culture listened to, argued about, and ranked the music of the past half-century.

• 2. The Classic Rock Mission

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  Publisher Emap had already found success with the magazine Q, and saw a gap in the market for something deeper and more rooted in classic rock. The new title was built to serve readers who wanted long reads, not quick hits. The first launch editor was Paul Du Noyer. His successors included Mat Snow, Paul Trynka, Pat Gilbert, Phil Alexander, and the current editor John Mulvey.

  The writers Mojo attracted reflected its ambitions. Charles Shaar Murray, Greil Marcus, Nick Kent, David Fricke, Jon Savage, and Mick Wall all contributed over the years. These were critics with decades of reporting behind them.

  The magazine's core beat covered acts like the Beatles, David Bowie, the Rolling Stones, the Who, and Paul Weller. Yet it never locked itself into pure nostalgia. Mojo was the first mainstream magazine in the UK to train its spotlight on the White Stripes. In more recent years, Lana Del Rey and Arctic Monkeys have appeared on its covers. That range earned the title enough credibility to inspire two younger publications: Blender and Uncut.

• 3. The Great Lists

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  To mark its one hundred and fiftieth issue, Mojo published a "Top 100 Albums of Mojo's Lifetime," covering records from 1993 to 2006. Jeff Buckley's Grace took the top spot, followed by Johnny Cash's American Recordings and Radiohead's OK Computer. Bob Dylan's Time Out of Mind came fourth, and Oasis's Definitely Maybe completed the top five.

  A later project cast an even wider net. In 2007, the magazine assembled an eclectic voting panel that included Bjork, Tori Amos, Tom Waits, Brian Wilson, Pete Wentz, and Steve Earle. Their collective task was to name "The Top 100 Records That Changed the World." Little Richard's 1955 recording "Tutti Frutti" came in at number one, beating the Beatles' "I Want to Hold Your Hand" into second place and Elvis Presley's "Heartbreak Hotel" into third. The magazine's editors described the list as comprising the most influential and inspirational recordings ever made, and called "Tutti Frutti" the sound of the birth of rock and roll.

  The top ten also included The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, Kraftwerk's Autobahn, Robert Johnson's King of the Delta Blues Singers, The Velvet Underground and Nico by the Velvet Underground and Nico, the Anthology of American Folk Music, Ray Charles's "What'd I Say," and the Sex Pistols' "God Save the Queen."

  Mojo also published lists ranking the top fifty songs by individual artists. David Bowie, Pink Floyd, the Beach Boys, the Who, Bruce Springsteen, and Neil Young all received that treatment. The lists on drug songs, rock epics, protest songs, and even the most miserable songs of all time each ran in numbered issues: drug songs in Mojo #109, rock epics in #125, protest songs in #126, and the most miserable songs in #127.

• 4. Special Editions and Books

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  An all-Beatles issue published in 1995 to mark the release of The Beatles Anthology proved so popular that it opened a new strand of publishing at Mojo. Stand-alone special editions began to appear, each devoting an entire magazine to one artist or genre.

  The most ambitious run was a three-part series telling the story of the Beatles one thousand days at a time. Produced under then special editions editor Chris Hunt, the trio drew contributions from Hunter Davies, Mark Lewisohn, Richard Williams, Ian MacDonald, Peter Doggett, and Alan Clayson. Published between 2002 and 2003, the three issues were later gathered by editor-in-chief Paul Trynka and released as the book The Beatles: Ten Years That Shook The World by Dorling Kindersley in 2004.

  Other special editions covered Pink Floyd, psychedelia, punk, and the 1960s. The magazine also produced four editions of "The MOJO Collection: The Greatest Albums Of All Time" through Canongate Books, originally edited by founding features editor Jim Irvin. A separate series of short biographies appeared under the imprint Mojo Heroes. The inaugural volume in 2002 was Neil Young: Reflections In Broken Glass, written by Sylvie Simmons, a longtime Mojo contributing editor.

• 5. Ownership and Controversy

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  Mojo was founded under Emap, but in January 2008 ownership passed to Bauer. That change in corporate structure eventually surfaced a major dispute. In early 2010, Bauer moved to impose a new contract on all contributors to its music magazines. The new terms stripped photographers and writers of their copyright and shifted responsibility for libel or copyright infringement from the publisher onto the contributors themselves.

  The backlash was swift. Around two hundred photographers and writers working across Mojo, Kerrang!, and Q were reported as refusing to sign. The dispute drew attention to the changing economics of magazine publishing and the pressure publishers were placing on freelance contributors.

  Bauer also expanded the Mojo brand into radio. A digital station called Mojo Radio broadcast on Freeview channel 721 and Sky Digital channel 0182, though it was not available on Virgin Media. On the 5th of November 2008, Bauer announced that the station would cease broadcasting on the 30th of November 2008, citing the financial cost of keeping it on air. Separately, former editor-in-chief Phil Alexander hosted a regular programme called Mojo Rocks on the UK digital station Planet Rock, building playlists in the spirit of the magazine.

• 6. Awards and Covermount CDs

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  In 2004, Mojo introduced the Mojo Honours List, an annual awards ceremony blending readers' votes with critics' choices. The format gave the magazine a live cultural presence beyond its pages.

  Each issue also regularly carried a covermount CD tied directly to the magazine's current feature or theme. That physical pairing of disc and text reinforced the publication's identity as a place where listening and reading belonged together, a habit that shaped how a generation of readers approached both formats. The Honours List continues to mark which artists and records Mojo believes deserve wider recognition.