by Sophia Louise Lee, placement student and collection cataloguer
After training as a librarian, Terence Pepper started working at the National Portrait Gallery in London in 1975. Two years later he became head curator of photographs, a position he held until 2015. During his time at the NPG, he was involved with over 150 exhibitions, including two large pop exhibitions (‘Icons of Pop’ in 1999 and ‘Beatles to Bowie’, October 2009-January 2010). In preparation for these exhibitions, and because he had/has an interest in pop and magazines, Terence began collecting an array of magazine titles, to supplement the collection he already had from his youth in the ’60s and ’70s. These titles can now be found as part of the British Pop Archive housed in the John Rylands Research Institute and Library in Manchester.
‘The teenager’ appeared as a financially independent and important member of society in the ’50s and ’60s. This was a time when unemployment was low, and spending was high. Teenagers had the time and money to buy things for themselves, and a lot of these things consisted of LPs, record players, new clothes, and magazines. The early ’60s was a plentiful time to be in the printed magazine business, as new titles were entering the scene almost every month. There was a magazine for every taste and almost every age. In the Terence Pepper Collection, it is possible to delve into these magazines and go back in time through the pages.
Below is a selection of highlights I have come across whilst working with the Terence Pepper Collection. It has been extremely rewarding, going through entire runs of magazines, and seeing how culture changed through the lenses of music journalism, activist writings, fashion, and general cultural and societal observations. This collection is helpful for researchers, students, and for people interested in magazines and popular culture.
Collection Highlights
Activism
Nova was a magazine that ran for 10 years from 1965 until 1975. Branded as a “feminist and intellectual magazine for women”, Nova covered many controversial and societal issues, such as racial prejudice, royal affairs, contraception, and women’s rights. A few of the early issues included a section on “isms” with notable intellectuals such as Jean-Paul Sartre, Julius Huxley and Bertrand Russell writing about philosophy, social movements, etc. The covers of Nova were provocative and artistically stylish. At the same time, there were magazines such as Petticoat (“For the young and fancy free”) and Honey, also aimed at girls/women. Petticoat and Honey both ran a series of articles about what jobs you could aim to get as a woman (“become a secretary!”), and reporting on pop happenings and fashion that was their main driver. The Terence Pepper Collection also houses a few copies of the 1970s feminist magazine SpareRib, which tackled all sorts of societal problems such as poverty, sexism, racism, abortion rights, etc.
Teen- and music magazines
Fabulous 208 was a magazine aimed at teenagers that ran from 1964 to 1980. It was first known as Fabulous, however after merging with Radio Luxembourg the magazine changed its name to Fabulous 208 and later just to Fab 208. This magazine was able to get exclusive backstage interviews with the main stars of the time and reported in a tabloidy way with gossip and news. The journalistic work was mainly conducted by women, with only a few men featured (Keith Altham, best known for his work at NME, started out writing for Fabulous). Notable names are June Southworth, Sylvia MacKay, Christine Osbourne, and Judith Wills. The magazines also included fashion spreads and advertisements on how to “Get the Mod Look” and the like. They also often had music groups “guest edit” different issues, like The Kinks in a 1965 issue and The Small Faces in 1967. On top of this, football star George Best also featured in photographs and articles, and even had his own column for a few years (“George Best Writes To You”). Pop was about more than music: it was a part of culture.
Fabulous was largely known for its full-page colour pin-ups of popstars. One of the main photographers for Fabulous in the late ’60s was Fiona Adams. A quite overlooked female photographer of the time, Fiona Adams took photographs of many famous stars. She is best known for taking the promotional photo for The Beatles’ single Twist and Shout of the Fab Four leaping in the air. Her photo archive is lost, but her photography lives on in the pages of Fabulous. Another thing of note, because Fabulous magazine was tapped into the ‘happening’ scene in London at the time, a few familiar faces crop up in early issues of the magazine, with other names than what they are known for today. Two of such instances are David Bowie and Marc Bolan. In an issue of Fabulous from 2 October 1965, David Bowie (credited as Davie Jones) is modelling clothes in Carnaby Street (these photographs were also taken by Fiona Adams). In another (from 28 August 1965), Marc Bolan (credited as “folk-singer Mark Bölam” with an umlaut) features in a very small picture and text describing his fashion sense. It is small gems like these that make magazine runs like this so very interesting. It helps fill out gaps in history, and even though it is well-known now that David Bowie’s real name was David Jones, seeing him out and about in Carnaby Street a couple of years before his breakthrough with Space Oddity in 1969 is a fun and novel way of experiencing history.
Fabulous joined the likes of Jackie in being a magazine specifically targeted towards teenagers (teenage girls) with big full-page pin-up posters and pop star reports. Jackie (“for go-ahead teens”) was the UK’s best-selling teenage magazine for 10 years in the ’60s-’70s and ran from 1964 to 1993. Jackie’s content was a mix of fashion, gossip, comic strips (often featuring pop stars like The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Walker Brothers, etc.), different stars’ “Loves and Hates”, and a problem page (Cathy and Claire) that was immensely popular.
Rave magazine opened in 1964 and was a more expensive magazine with quality paper, journalism, and photographers (Terry O’Neill, Robert Whitaker, Marc Sharratt etc.). Other music magazines like the NME, Record Mirror, and Disc and Music Echo are all also featured in this collection. Personally, one of my favourite highlights is in the 11 October 1969 issue of Disc and Music Echo which features an interview with George Harrison where he goes through the Abbey Road track list and discusses the songs. I would especially like to highlight the sweet comments he makes about Ringo Starr and ‘Octopus’ Garden’ (“It’s really a great song. On the surface it’s a daft kids’ song, but I find the lyrics very meaningful.”), which nicely back up the footage in Peter Jackson’s Get Back documentary film with George helping Ringo compose the song in the Let it Be studio sessions after they moved from Twickenham to Savile Row.
Counterculture and Underground
Then came the time for counterculture and underground magazines such as Rolling Stone, Oz, Fusion, International Times, and the short-lived British Rolling Stone-equivalent Strange Days (which only survived long enough to publish four issues between August and November 1970). The counterculture magazines are not only interesting from a design point of view (often the covers were illustrated quite beautifully), but the contents are very representative of the time. International Times was first published in 1966 and compared with the reporting of a magazine like Fabulous that existed at the same time, it was a difference of day and night. Their foundations for existence were fundamentally different, but it is interesting to note where they overlap in terms of highlighting the same type of events (such as the Isle of Wight Festival 1970) or musicians.
Physical objects and later material
A magazine such as Andy Warhol’s Interview (later known as simply Interview) is also represented in this collection. Artist Andy Warhol founded the magazine in 1969 with British journalist John Wilcock. The covers featured celebrities from the respective time, sometimes posed in elaborate and fun sets, as seen below with the December 1977 issue featuring Mick Jagger dressed as Father Christmas, posing with models Iman and Paul von Ravenstein. Later, the magazine became known for the covers that artist Richard Bernstein painted from 1972-1989. These covers also featured celebrities and stars, who had been photographed and thereafter painted in a signature style. Interview still exists, and their main selling point is getting celebrities to interview other celebrities, though they are now reaching their audience online mostly.
The collection does not stop at the ’60s and ’70s. The latest issue in the collection of Interview dates from December/January 2016 (featuring Kylie Jenner on the cover). There also is an extensive collection of Q Magazine, Smash Hits, and Mojo from the ’80s, ’90s and 2000s. Pop in print is constantly changing and always in the making. Magazines are still sold physically to this day, even though they are fewer and far between. Online versions of Interview and Rolling Stone have more or less taken over from the physical copies.
This collection does not just include printed magazines/newspapers. There are also a few physical objects of note, such as a Twiggy board game from 1967, Kylie Minogue calendars, and a complete set of Spice Girls Dolls from 1999. There is also a section of the collection dedicated to the Profumo affair/scandal. This selection of items consists of newspapers and magazines from the time, reporting on the scandal, press photographs of those involved, and books. Highlights include Lord Denning’s Report, Mandy Rice-Davies’ tell-all book, and around 50 press photographs that tell almost the whole story.
Pop continues to thrive in our culture (see for example, Taylor Swift being named Time Magazine’s Person of the Year 2023) and the origins of this relevance can be traced back to magazines like Fab 208, Petticoat, or Rave. For the past couple of months, it has been my job to go through and list this entire collection. It has been an absolute pleasure to do so, and the collection is full of fascinating themes for further research. Science has not (yet) found a way to travel in time, but the British Pop Archive’s Terence Pepper Collection is as close to a time machine as you can get.
The Terence Pepper Collection is available for viewing by booking an appointment with the Special Collections Reading Room at the John Rylands Research Institute and Library https://forms.library.manchester.ac.uk/public/form/5ca60337f85e57c3bbc9e522.
For more information and/or a full list and overview of the individual items (there are over 2000 of them), contact the curator for the British Pop Archive through uml.special-collections@manchester.ac.uk.