Obituary: Ian MacDonald (original) (raw)

Probably no other critic - not even the late William Mann of the Times, with his famous mention of pandiatonic clusters - contributed more to an enlightened enjoyment of the work of the Beatles than Ian MacDonald, who has died aged 54. In his book Revolution In The Head, first published in 1994, MacDonald carefully anatomised every record the Beatles made, drawing attention to broad themes, particular examples of inspiration and moments of human frailty alike.

What could have been a dry task instead produced a volume so engagingly readable, so fresh in its perceptions and so enjoyable to argue with that, in an already overcrowded field, it became an immediate hit. Without a hint of sycophancy, MacDonald had managed to describe the magic created by John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr in such a way as to reacquaint those who were around at the time with their own original enthusiasm, while alerting listeners of later generations to the precise qualities that had made the Beatles so exceptional. Its introduction alone provides something close to a definitive evocation of the factors that turned the 1960s into "the sixties".

It came out of the blue, in the sense that MacDonald had been virtually silent on the subject of popular music for several years before its publication. But its clarity and conviction were wholly characteristic of his critical approach, which had been formed in the mid-1970s while he was a member of the collection of talented writers and editors whose weekly outpourings made the New Musical Express the most compelling music paper of its era.

Four years before the appearance of Revolution In The Head he had attracted similar levels of acclaim from a very different quarter when he published The New Shostakovich, a biographical re-evaluation in which he attacked the KGB's attempts to discredit the composer's own memoirs. MacDonald's scrupulous analysis was illuminated as much by his own deep study of the Soviet system as by his ability to immerse himself totally in whatever music he was thinking about at the time.

Born in London, with the surname MacCormick, he attended Dulwich College, where, at the beginning of the 1960s, he fell under the spell of the kinds of music - the blues, folk music and jazz - that became the dominant influence on those musicians of his own generation who were to create the decade's soundtrack.

At King's College, Cambridge, where he switched from English literature to archaeology and anthropology, he fell among kindred spirits. There may never be a better concise description of that evidently charmed time and place than MacDonald's wry paragraph, with its gathering rhythm and subtle alliteration: "During the academic year of 1968-69, Cambridge University felt an alien influence from beyond its sober curtain walls. Solemn flagstones frowned up at kaftans, wooden beads and waist-length hair. Staid courtyards winced to the sounds of Beggars Banquet, The White Album, Big Pink and Dr John The Night Tripper drifting through leaded windows. The stately air was fragrant with marijuana and no one seemed to be doing a stroke of work."

Despite the obvious attractions of such a world, he dropped out at the end of his first year and for a time involved himself in producing lyrics for Quiet Sun, an experimental rock band which included his brother, Bill MacCormick, and the future guitarist of Roxy Music, Phil Manzanera. In 1972 he joined the staff of the NME, where he remained for several years as an assistant editor. While not as widely celebrated as Nick Kent, Charles Shaar Murray, Mick Farren, Tony Parsons or Julie Burchill, MacDonald was nevertheless one of the most significant figures in the NME's revival under the editorship of Nick Logan.

His own editing skills were a vital element of the formula. This was a time when an NME headline could enter the lexicon, and "Sten Guns in Knightsbridge", attached to a famous early piece on the Clash, was his. So, in a different register, was the decision to hire the brilliant stylist Brian Case to write about jazz.

MacDonald's own byline was a guarantee of a thoughtful, usually provocative piece; his interests ranged from Laura Nyro and Neil Young through Miles Davis and Steely Dan to Terry Riley and John Tavener. By the time he left the paper, its circulation had more than doubled, overtaking its chief rival, the Melody Maker, on the way to selling 220,000 copies a week.

As he lamented in his later writings, in those days music and the values it represented mattered to audience and commentators alike in a way that might seem preposterous to a generation raised amid a marketing-led culture. He and I once met for lunch in a Holland Park bistro for the sole purpose of continuing an argument, begun in print, over the authenticity of Barry White's music.

By 1975 the success of Roxy Music had enabled Phil Manzanera to undertake solo projects, including an occasional band known as the 801. He and MacDonald resumed their collaboration, the latter contributing Orwellian lyrics to a fine album titled Listen. Twenty-five years later, Brian Eno, another member of the original Roxy Music, would help MacDonald produce a solo album of his own songs, Sub Rosa, released on Manzanera's label.

Revolution In The Head was the product of a lengthy period spent living away from London, and its success encouraged him to write for a new generation of music magazines. His exacting, trenchant and sometimes very funny essays appeared first in Mojo and then in Uncut; a collection of them was published earlier this year under the title The People's Music.

The climax of the anthol ogy is a lengthy meditation on the life and work of Nick Drake, the precociously gifted singer-songwriter whom MacDonald had encountered at Cambridge and who committed suicide in 1974, when still in his mid-twenties. Written with an intensity that at times overwhelms its ostensible subject, it can now be seen to have provided clues to MacDonald's own lengthy struggle with profound depression. "Can it be," he asks, apropos of Drake's preoccupation with spiritual transcendence, "that the materialist worldview, in which there is no intrinsic meaning, is slowly murdering our souls?" The decision to commit suicide, at his home in Wotton-under-Edge, Gloucestershire, indicates that he had drawn his own conclusion.

· Ian MacDonald (MacCormick), author and critic, born October 3 1948; died August 20 2003