Don't Knock the Frock
Back Catalogue #1: The Guardian, 1997
A slightly different version of this article first appeared in The Guardian Media, 1997.
Despite the surge in female-led rock music that erupted at the beginning of the nineties, the emergence of Britpop soon reinstated the supremacy of white boy rock. All those girls with guitars, such as Courtney Love, Babes in Toyland and Bikini Kill, who’d been so celebrated for articulating their sexuality through ear-shattering yowls and lipstick bruises, found themselves eclipsed by blokes with pudding bowl haircuts, terrifying lager habits and football chant-style songs.
The lad was back, supposedly bigger and badder than ever, and - thanks to the music press - boy, were you going to know about it.
Scour any music paper and you’ll quickly realise that most of the writers are male. Women rock reporters are still in the minority. While this is true of many areas of journalism, within rock it has a particular resonance because of the traditionally male-dominated nature of the industry. Hence the hysteria surrounding the new lad.
Having grown distinctly uncomfortable with the whole girl rock thing, male journalists renounced their patronising efforts at supporting the female cause and reverted to glorifying the more traditional aspects of male rock culture, welcoming the chance to gloat over coke-fuelled hotel wreckings, carnal grapplings and small-time thuggery. The gender debate was finished. Let the good times roll again.
The lad has not remained a male preserve. Women have responded to the phenomenon either by laughing it off or getting their hands dirty with the best of them. Plenty of female journalists can interact with rock bands, no matter how leery. They’re not always easily intimidated, or necessarily smitten and, if needs be, they’re perfectly capable of staying up all night guzzling vodka and asking incisive questions the next day.
I know because I’ve done it. So has Daniela Soave. She once spent a week on the road in Japan with the Gallaghers and their brood, and shattered their preconceptions of her by drinking them all under the table night after night. “You’re fookin’ mad,” Noel declared to the diminutive single mother at the end of her assignment for that sensible bloke’s magazine, GQ.
Hitting the road in a tour bus full of blokes can call for a certain endurance of sticky moments. I’ve had band members knocking in my hotel room door at 4am, I’ve been woken by phone calls from tour managers wondering if I’ve “walked off with my cigarette lighter”, and I’ve even had musicians tell me that they know I fancy them, and that they know it scares me, because I have a boyfriend.
I’ve also had shaving foam fights, fake tattoo sessions, all-night parties with bands and crew in my hotel room, and countless mini-bar marathons, all without a shred of awkwardness or ulterior motive.
So, if women can play even the lads at their own game, why the continual monopoly of male writers in rock journalism? Well, to start with there is a persistent old boys’ network in force. The supposedly more liberal, cutting-edge music papers are largely run by ex-Oxbridge types, failed musicians, and frustrated wannabes who tend to disregard women when it comes to heavyweight reportage.
As freelance journalist Miranda Sawyer has pointed out, when you’re a girl, you tend to get wheeled out to profile female artists, or you find yourself cast as flavour-of-the-month until the novelty’s worn off. Women are permitted to graduate from plugging away at reviews to penning lead features, but in the big publications, the majority of cover stories carry by-lines. Despite the conviction of one high-powered managing male editor overseeing several rock titles, I do not accept that this is because women are unable to write about music properly.
Quite simply, female rock reporters, just like female musicians, represent a threat. It may sound absurd in 1997, but it’s true. A music critic’s job entails wielding a certain amount of authority, and apparently a lot of men still have a problem with women in this type of role. I was once recruited as the rock specialist at one of the UK’s top inkie music papers. The features editor had very little knowledge and a certain amount of prejudice regarding rock, while I had been working for Kerrang! for several years. When I was commissioned to interview one of the biggest bands on the planet, this editor gave me an an embarrassingly ridiculous brief. “Ask them about the drugs,” he said. “Nobody wants to know about anything else.”
Oh dear.
I did what I was told, and asked the band about a whole lot of other more relevant, more topical subjects too, but inwardly, I was seething about being treated with so little respect by my colleague. After putting up with his patronising, rude attitude for six months, I grew angry enough to complain to the editor of the paper, but instead of supporting me, this man (who had brought me on board) advised me to be humble, so I walked out of the office and never looked back.
Another female journalist I know of was actually knocked to the ground by her male editor, at a popular men’s lifestyle magazine. Perhaps I had got off lightly.
Arguably the worst thing is to be tarnished with the groupie label. To have bands panting around you is one thing, but to have your workmates asssume that you’re actively participating with, or worse, encouraging them is quite another. In 1990, when I was a staff writer for an indie rock magazine, I had an American boyfriend who worked for Soundgarden and Pearl Jam. Before I knew it, rumours were flying around about my engagement to Chris Cornell, by whom some people thought I was pregnant. To my amazement, my own editor castigated me for utter nonsense, none of which would have been his business anyway.
Another paper I contributed to refused to send a female writer abroad to interview The Lemonheads’ Evan Dando, in case she asked him to marry her. Worse, one journalist found herself receiving graphic, abusive phone calls from a colleague after she’d had a relationship with a musician.
It would be grossly unfair to suggest that all male journalists harbour unhealthy attitudes towards their female counterparts, but the number who do is alarming, and the fact that women still face such petty-mindedness and bull-headedness is astounding, especially when you consider that rock holds itself to be such a rebel culture. Granted, 30 years ago most female journalists were consigned to scribbling gossip columns, so things have moved on in some ways.
But until women writers become as integrated as men, and until attitudes alter radically, the music press will continue to deliver a relatively one-dimensional perspective. And in 1997, that’s hardly what you call rebellious.