By Russ Smith & John Strausbaugh

Blender
Q&A with the Editors of Felix Dennis' New Music Magazine

British magazine publisher Felix Dennis clearly has a genius for identifying a gap in the newsstand and throwing a title at it. His U.S. version of Maxim, launched in 1997, has been a spectacular commercial success, quickly racking up circulation figures and reported ad revenues that crush those of every competing men’s magazine. (The reported ad revenues have been hotly disputed by Maxim’s nearest rival, GQ. Another competitor whom Maxim is indisputably trouncing, Esquire editor David Granger, told Alex Kuczynski in this Monday’s Times, "...I try to make it a practice not to criticize lunatics," a remark that may come back to haunt him.) Maxim spinoff Stuff is also doing very well.

In March, Dennis launched Maxim Fashion, a quarterly, and in April introduced a U.S. version of his popular UK title The Week. Bannered "All You Need to Know About Everything That Matters," it compacts world news into Reader’s Digest bites that make USA Today seem prolix by comparison. A direct competitor to the sagging Newsweek, U.S. News & World Report and Time, it may well kill off at least one of those tired weeklies.

Hardly pausing for breath, Dennis premieres a new music magazine, Blender, on Tuesday, May 8. (There was a CD-ROM music magazine called Blender, but the title is the only similarity.) Four issues will appear this year, with the idea that it will go monthly next year.

Blender will almost surely be tagged "the music Maxim"–justifiably so–and, like Stuff, will be marketed to ride Maxim’s flying coattails. The premiere issue covers a wide splay of pop music genres without lingering long on any one: Janet Jackson on the cover, U2 (under the highly dubious rubric "Making Great Rock Again"), Tim McGraw (dubbed "Mr. Faith Hill"), DJ Clue, Destiny’s Child, Weezer. The style is very Maxim–hundreds of small photos with gratingly dumbed-down captions, a handful of longer articles set amid many charts and short-short info-bites, everything conveyed in a light tone, with a breezy and "irreverent" humor, that winks at the reader and warns against taking any of it too seriously.

Clearly the time is right for a new, general-interest music magazine. Rolling Stone is stumbling in its dotage (in that same Times article, Dennis puckishly, and accurately, tags the magazine as "so boring, so corporate...so depressing"). Spin is floundering, and Vibe is adrift. The Source is doing better than those three, but it’s too narrowly focused. Given that competition, there’s every reason to suspect that Blender will be a commercial success. Editorially, however, it doesn’t strike one as a magazine with much of a vision; like other Dennis publications, its only sense of purpose seems to be to sell a lot of copies. That blithe approach is probably a large part of what makes Dennis’ magazines such fabulous sales machines, but questionable editorial vehicles.

We spoke last week to Blender’s two top editors. Editor-in-chief Andy Pemberton, 32, moved here in January from London, where he edited the music magazine Q and before that was with Mixmag. Editor Craig Marks, 39, was an editor at CMJ and then Spin, and was most recently at Inside. He may be best known lately for filing a $24 million lawsuit against Marilyn Manson and others after Manson’s bodyguards allegedly throttled him in a backstage contretemps at Hammerstein Ballroom in 1998.

Craig Marks: Less Al Gore. Much less. It’s an all-music magazine essentially, with a few detours into tv and movie reviewing and some hardware coverage, audio crap. But basically it’s a music magazine. So it differs from Rolling Stone greatly in that respect.

Andy Pemberton: They no longer describe themselves as a music magazine. And we’re proud of it. We do. A mainstream music magazine as well.

AP: It means we’re not doing a particular niche. We cross all the genres–from the person who only buys one CD a year to the person who buys a thousand or more.

CM: Musically I think Rolling Stone is of a similar mind. They have traditions that insist on them covering certain types of music more so [than others]. I think–both because we want it this way and Felix Dennis wants it this way–that our magazine has a bit more of a sense of humor and a sense of play than does Rolling Stone, which is an almost conservative magazine in that sense. It’s a very straightforward magazine in that sense. I think we’re a little wackier, sort of taking a cue from the music, trying to have a sense of humor and a little bit of outrageousness that Rolling Stone perhaps does not have.

AP: Another difference, of course, is we’re reviewing more records. They’re doing slightly more now, what? about 11 to 15 albums. We’re doing over 200 every issue.

AP: Some of them are 110 words long, leads are 300-400 words.

AP: You’ve gotta give the reader a view on a record and what it’s like. It’s hard. But it’s not impossible. It’s much harder to get across your idea in less words than in more.

CM: It’s intrinsic to the magazine that it covers all types of popular music. In the first issue, there’s a big Tim McGraw story. Most people in New York probably don’t know who Tim McGraw is. But when his record comes out today, next week it’ll be the number-two [country] album in the country, if not the number-one record. I think that’s one thing that American music magazines had traditionally shied away from, is branching out and covering music that is terminally unhip, let’s say, or not thought to have–

CM: In this issue we wanted to show that we had the muscle to round up Janet Jackson and Destiny’s Child and Tim McGraw, and show that we had the pull to get the biggest artists in the country to be in our launch issue. So, you know, maybe next time it’ll be Toby Keith or another country artist or a folk artist. But the point is more, if they sell a lot of records, there’s a reason to write about them. There’s something in that music worth getting at. And I think there’s a lot of artists–especially in New York–who don’t get that kind of attention that their sales would indicate they deserve. We want to be fairly democratic and sort of agnostic about it.

CM: About 156, I think.

AP: There are 45 ad pages in this issue.

CM: Four hundred thousand.

CM: What we’re guaranteeing advertisers is 250,000.

AP: I don’t know. You’d have to talk to my publisher.

(In a separate phone conversation later, Blender’s publisher Malcolm Campbell–a former publisher of Spin–tells John Strausbaugh that "if it holds true to the Dennis Publishing model, it’ll probably be more of a newsstand sell.")

CM: Rolling Stone has had some newsstand problems, I think. But then to go over to Dennis, where they’re used to selling a million copies a month of Maxim on the newsstand. It’s just a whole different league–the kind of muscle that they have on the newsstand. Hopefully, there’s a little bit of Maxim mojo that’s carried over here. Hopefully, Blender doesn’t get stuck–not even hopefully, it won’t get stuck in the music rack, [but] next to Maxim and Stuff.

AP: Similar. It can’t be exactly the same because it’s about music.

AP: If they like music, yeah. Definitely.

AP: I think it’s great. Obviously, I come from Britain, it’s a slightly different thing–we’ve had men’s magazines that have sold huge amounts for a long time. Maxim and Stuff are the two best men’s magazines in the world–there’s no question in my mind–right now. They’re just done better. They’re much more professional, they’re much funnier. I particularly like Stuff, which is really funny. It’s almost dementedly funny. Some real skills. In the captioning in particular. It’s probably the best captioning you get anywhere.

CM: I’m pretty new to the Dennis world, and I never read the magazines beforehand. I’ve come to admire their packaging skills. Just the way they construct a magazine is a different way than anyone else is doing it. I mean, I’m not interested in the bikini girls, it’s not my thing. My wife would rather me not, and I would rather not look at the magazine for that reason. I had a conversation yesterday of the quality of actresses and tv stars and those sorts of people who get on the cover–those covers wouldn’t work with Sandra Bullock or Nicole Kidman on the cover, because there has to be a chance that the reader can sort of get with that girl if they play their cards right–they could probably get the Doritos girl. So, that, to me, got to what our magazine tries to do. We’re trying not to pitch this magazine only to the cool kids in the class. Reminds me a little bit of the relationship between, let’s say, a GQ and a Maxim. We really want anyone who likes music to be able to find a place of entry in the magazine and enjoy it, and not beat them over the heads with the fact that they don’t have good enough taste to read this magazine.

CM: No, not at all. There’s lots of negative reviews. But I think by making it a little bit more inclusive, by not having an attitude that you really wish your readership liked the exact same music as you do, and you–

AP: There’s a difference in our approach. It’s not about music being right or wrong. It’s about music being good or bad. We’re not interested in the kind of idealism that comes attached with music. It either sounds good or it doesn’t.

CM: I remember when you could like pop songs and r&b songs and metal songs and not feel quite so divisive about "I only like this" and "I only like that." We’re hoping to get a slightly older audience possibly than say, Spin has or Vibe and The Source has. My guess is that as you get a little older, or into your late 20s, say, you get a little less provincial about what you know. Less "I only listen to bands that sound like the Dead," or whatever your stringent tastes are, and you broaden them a little bit. And you’re like, "It’s okay to like Destiny’s Child, even though my little sister does. I like that song." It’s all just songs. The culture’s become more of a song culture and less of an album culture, partly because of Napster and partly because people have sort of smartened up and realized that that’s the best way to enjoy music.

AP: She’s huge.

CM: Her record came out yesterday. I’m almost positive it’ll be the number-one record this week. It will sell 500,000 in the first week, which is twice as much as any of her records ever sold in the first week. She has credibility as an artist, and she’s earned that over the last 15 years. And she’s still contemporary, and this record will probably be the biggest of her career. And it’s not a cover that Spin would do. It may or may not be a cover Rolling Stone would do. But to me it sets the bar really high, it says this is a superstar artist, a real A-list artist.

AP: And she’s nondenominational as well, played on all sorts of radio stations.

CM: I was pleased that we ended up getting a fairly sexy photograph for the cover, so that if a Maxim reader happens upon the cover, there’s some hopefully vague connection between the two–

AP: They’re both music magazines that review a lot of records. Those are the two main things that are similar.

AP: Everything in it is different. It’s American. The voice in it is very different. Q’s voice is based on P.G. Wodehouse. That’s why it sometimes is accused of being tweedy.

CM: I’d also imagine that we’ll be more r&b and pop and hiphop related than Q. It’s kind of a rock magazine. Right now I think in music there is no real prevailing wind. I don’t think there’s any one thing that is dominating. Teen pop a little bit, but I think the bubblegum economy is slightly on the downturn. hiphop is sort of on a downturn.

CM: There’s a piece in the issue, and it’s as much whimsical as it is for real, about the return of hair metal as an influence. It’s not as if Warrant are going to be making a huge comeback, but as a new nostalgia. I think that’s the closest to being the next big thing. Guns ’N Roses are coming out with a book Neil Strauss cowrote that’s really sordid and depraved. There’s little dribs and drabs of things with new bands who are saluting what was a derided culture.

CM: My guess is probably not. I think more right now it’s so open-ended that there’s lots of little interesting phenomena. Like the O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack being a Top 20 album and having sold a million records is phenomenal. It’s a fucking bluegrass record.

CM: Yeah, but I mean, 100 marketing monkeys could’ve taken 20,000 years and not ever figured out that that record was going to be a million seller. I don’t know if there’s a "scene" fomenting right now

CM: Right. Well, we might not be in that cycle yet.

AP: It might be soon. If there’s an economic downturn, that usually fosters creativity.

CM: And I think the record business is about to take a bath with the teen pop stuff. The dog days of disco are sort of upon the record business. They’ve signed an incredible amount of 14-year-old and 15-year-old female singers and boy groups, and there aren’t enough good songs to go around. And radio doesn’t really want to play these artists anymore. They sorta have their nose up about it. The NSYNC record will be huge, but it probably won’t be as huge as the last one. It’s like right now. Each label probably has 10 teen artists whose records have yet to come out–and they’re gonna eat those.

CM: What happened? What sense do you get?

CM: The problem is that for whatever reasons, they feel locked into being an alternative rock magazine, and partially because they’re owned by the company they’re owned by, they are forbidden essentially to write about hiphop [the same company publishes Vibe], and they haven’t really figured out how to break out of the alt-rock, which is now a ghetto to some extent. And when there was a type of music that came along that was gonna commercially become quite large and had some relationship to their readership–which was rap-rock, and the "mook rock" of Fred Durst, Limp Bizkit and Korn–they decided they didn’t like that music and didn’t really wanna write about it, and only did so because they knew they had no choice. I think the industry knows that their heart isn’t in it. It sells pretty well, but it’s a tough sell, in that they are combing the last 25 years of rock history in order to come up with covers [the May "25 Years of Punk" issue]. So they’re doing punk covers and they’re borrowing from Q and doing the 100 sleaziest rock moments.

CM: Well, the cultural relevancy is waning because the music’s cultural relevancy is essentially not there at all. As long as they’re locked into covering that kind of music, it’s a niche magazine. It could be a really good niche magazine, but it’s still gonna have that problem of not feeling like it’s of the moment.

CM: The boomer Modern Maturity, right?

CM: Yeah, 1.1 or 1.2 million. It’s a little flat, but it’s still the biggest one.

CM: I think they’re both in our field. And so are The Source and Vibe to a lesser extent.

AP: I thought it was great. I don’t know if it came across in the piece, but he is an incredible character. There’s something about him that you identify with. That sounds really baloney, but it happens.

AP: Not in terms of what’s inside the magazine. He has an interest in the covers. The man is worth half a billion. He tells you what he thinks about the cover, you’re gonna listen. He has really valuable advice. He’s often right.

CM: But he said to me, "I’m useless about music." He’s not interested in the music as a thing that he wants to listen to. He [just] believes that there’s a gap in the market and that he can fill the gap.

AP: Yeah. When you do that sort of thing, you generally are trading on your editorial reputation. [We’ll want it to be] original, fresh...

CM: I don’t think that’s exactly true. Look, if there’s overlap then there’s overlap. I mean if you want to put out a successful pop music magazine there’s gonna be some overlap, in that you’ll have some pretty women on the cover, and you’ll try to be funny in a similar way that Maxim or Stuff is funny. But we’re not dealing with the Dorito girl, we’re dealing with long-standing women artists who feel their songs are important, and we basically agree. And we owe it to our readers to not just treat them like furniture.

AP: I think it would be unwise to put a boy band on the cover, because their appeal is so specific–teenage girls–and they’re not really going to be our readers. I wouldn’t rule out anyone else.

AP: Personally I love Neil Young, but I’m not sure he’d shift enough copies. [smiles] Until he’s dead.

CM: People who aren’t gonna sell magazines we’re not gonna put on the cover. We’d put Faith Hill on the cover, probably. We’d put Jay-Z on the cover. We’d put Limp Bizkit on the cover. We’d put Britney Spears on the cover. We’d put Eminem on the cover.

AP: Kid Rock.

CM: Doubtful. Probably not McCartney, or anyone who doesn’t seem like their career is still on the way up.

CM: That might be true. And no one under 14.

AP: What about Madonna? We’d put Madonna on the cover. She’s 40, isn’t she?

CM: There you go. Andrea Bocelli is not gonna be on the cover. We might write about him. Sarah Brightman would get written about. I’d be interested in reading a Sarah Brightman story, because I think she’s a real diva. I don’t think they’d be on the cover, but I think we will cover them more than any other music magazine.

CM: I’d say they’re curious to see the first issue.

CM: I haven’t heard much. I am sure the business department has heard more than the editorial department has. They’re sweating more on that side.

(In his phone conversation later, Malcolm Campbell says, "To tell you the truth, I haven’t heard much rumbling at all" from Rolling Stone. "I don’t think they’re turning a blind eye to it, but there doesn’t seem to be over-concern, either." Asked about Wenner Media’s problems lately with Rolling Stone and US Weekly, he says, "Maybe that’s the reason why I’m not hearing much about us. Maybe they feel they have other issues to deal with before they start worrying about us.")

CM: I think Felix Dennis is a definite heavyweight and can duke it out with Jann, and he has resources that Bob didn’t have.

AP: It’s the first real proper music launch since Vibe.

AP: It’s very small.

CM: Yeah. It’s very very small. At the moment there are actually three editors. The creative director of Dennis is our art director. There’s three other art people, but none of them are full-time at Blender. There’s a managing editor who is not a full-time employee. There’s a copy editor who I believe is a full-time employee. And that’s it.

AP: There’s three in advertising.

AP: We have a floor with Maxim Online.

CM: I edited more pages for the first issue of Blender than I did in like six months to a year of Spin editing.

CM: It was all settled out of court. His career plummeted almost immediately after having his bodyguards choke me.

CM: Exactly. I’m just a blip on Behind the Music. When people Google me they get nothing but Marilyn Manson.