Not Fade Away
ALAN LEWIS
Editor and publisher (1945-2021)
ALAN LEWIS was already a publishing legend when he oversaw the launch of Uncut in 1997. His career in music journalism started when he joined Melody Maker in 1969 as Production Editor. He also wrote authoritatively about soul music and in 1973 launched Black Music, a pioneering monthly dedicated to soul, R&B and reggae. Subsequently, as editor of Sounds, Alan was alert to punk’s first stirrings, famously changing the paper’s direction overnight when he replaced a scheduled Rod Stewart cover story with brash upstarts The Damned, a typical masterstroke. Alan was similarly quick to react to what Sounds dubbed The New Wave Of British Heavy Metal, switching its allegiance from punk to bands like Def Leppard, Saxon and Iron Maiden, inspiring him to mastermind the launch in 1983 of Kerrang!, another publishing triumph.
Alan took a break from journalism in the mid-’80s, to run a pub. But the role of genial landlord proved more demanding than imagined and put him on the wrong side of the bar. He returned to publishing at IPC, as editor. In 1987, he was tasked with reviving the recently floundering and, in the early ’90s, he assumed publishing responsibilities for both and , launched and , and was influential in the development of , Alan being about the only publishing executive who could temper editor James Brown’s wilder editorial fancies. They were a brilliant team and quickly became a publishing phenomenon.
