esn 'the lads'

The local record shops were very supportive. They sold the magazine, often without taking a commission. We were able to rely on a number of regular local advertisers and even a mail order company in London called Better Badges. The owner, Joly, gave us good advice on how many copies to publish before we even took the first copy to press. (He's in New York now, but still sells badges via http://www.pinstand.com)

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I managed to avoid full time work throughout the life of the magazine (and quite a few years beyond). Stephen wasn't quite as fortunate. Consequently, I took over most of the running of the magazine, but Stephen remained a major contributor right to the end and hogged the front cover of the final ESN as we hit the perfect finale by featuring his early Smiths photos and an accompanying interview from long time contributor David Martin.

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Over the years, we featured some great bands. Like our inclusion of The Smiths moments before everyone fell for them. But we were always quick off the mark and grabbed bands like U2 and Depeche Mode before they were well known and more importantly unwilling. When these bands did break-through and returned triumphantly to Newcastle, they remembered ESN and without exception, were willing to be interviewed again. Featuring some of these bands once they were popular not only helped sales of the latest magazine, but also opened the door for other interviews. The Undertones manager took one look at scraggy me and turned me down, but after glancing at the current copy of the mag and saw the Thompson Twins on the cover, he changed his mind and called me back. My prize was access to a rather glum Feargal Sharkey. (But what a brilliant live band The Undertones were. Every-time.)

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There were some brilliant photos published in ESN, although for the first few issues we were hampered by a lack of decent equipment. The first issue started well using black 'n' white film in a bog standard point and shoot camera. The negatives were square but a decent size and produced a good quality image. The main drawback was that it used disposable flashcubes that were very expensive. Replacing that with a compact instamatic camera with a built-in battery flash seemed like a huge step forward until we discovered that the small negatives gave us the much poorer images that appeared in ESN 2 and 3. However, Stephen took us to great heights when he bought an SLR camera with a 35mm negative and an external battery flash. Immediately, we saw the improvement with his wonderful Clash photo we put on the cover of ESN 4. In later issues, we cynically included photos (without an interview) of bands that we didn't like but knowing they were popular and they would shift a few copies. We decided it was for the greater good and that people would get value for money when they read about the 'quality' bands we featured.