“I’m never going to work for that magazine again!”
by Dan Goldstein (former E&MM Editor)

That was what I told my parents after I’d spent three days at the offices of Electronics & Music Maker in Westcliff-on-Sea, Essex, in the spring of 1983. I went there as a sub-editing temp, having been a regular reader of the magazine since its launch. I’d left school the previous summer, intending to go to University to read Geography, and had spent a few months as an editorial assistant on a hi-fi magazine at Link House in Croydon.

Compared with Link House, the E&MM offices were a war zone. The building was decrepit. The two guys I was working with, Technical Editor Ken McAlpine and Music Editor Mark Jenkins, had to write everything by hand because there were no typewriters, let alone a computer. The magazine wasn’t delivering the increase in electronic components sales that its owners, Maplin, had envisaged, and while they were trying to sell the title (Link House, ironically, being one of the interested parties), they had cut every last penny out of producing it. The magazine seemed to be going nowhere, and I was heading out the door.

Four months later I returned from an archetypal gap-year summer of Inter-Railing around Europe to the news that somebody called Terry Day had left me a phone message. I phoned him back. He explained that he and his business partner, Dennis Hill, had bought E&MM from Maplin and moved the offices to Cambridge, where their intention was to use the magazine as the foundation for a whole new publishing company. They’d already launched one new title, Home Studio Recording, and were looking at another called Computer Musician.

There was only one problem. They had no staff. Ken and Mark had both quit, while E&MM founder Mike Beecher wasn’t in the office every day. I took a train up to Cambridge from my parents’ house in North London. The offices were bright, modern and spacious. Terry and Dennis were charming, as was their ad sales guy Tony Halliday and the skeleton editorial team of Ian Gilby, Paul Wiffen and Trish McGrath. Terry offered me £100 a week in cash to help get the magazine to the printers.

I never went to University. Why read Geography when you can surround yourself with the latest in music technology, and get paid for writing about it? I wasn’t talented enough to be a rock star, a hit record producer or a professional DJ. But I could do this.

In less than a year I was Editor of E&MM at the age of 21. I’d learnt just enough about magazine editing, design and production to keep the title competitive against Northern & Shell’s Electronic Soundmaker, but the driving force behind our success was the enthusiasm we all had for the subject. We all loved exploring new ways to make music, interviewing the musicians who inspired us (my first was John Foxx, E&MM November ’83) and, in turn, inspiring our readership to innovate and experiment themselves.

We worked long into the night. We agonised over fonts, feature lengths and house styles. We commissioned iconic photographs of our idols (thank you, Matthew Vosburgh!). We welcomed Tim Goodyer and the late, great Simon Trask into our ranks. We changed the name to Music Technology. And we never regretted a thing.

Dan Goldstein
Former Editor, E&MM / Music Technology / Home & Studio Recording