Ian macdonald whyte

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Skip to main content. Companies House does not verify the accuracy of the information filed link opens a new window. Filter appointments Filter appointments Current appointments. Its introduction alone provides something close to a definitive evocation of the factors that turned the s 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 mids 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 s, 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 , Cambridge University felt an alien influence from beyond its sober curtain walls. Solemn flagstones frowned up at kaftans, wooden beads and waist-length hair. 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 he joined the staff of the NME, where he remained for several years as an assistant editor. 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. 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 , copies a week.