E218: James Brown on Sounds + NME + Loaded + the KLF

Update: 2025-12-15

Description

For this episode we're joined in our Hammersmith HQ by James ("The Hardest Working Man In Show Business") Brown.

The former NME star and founder of "lads' mag" progenitor loaded takes us back to his Yorkshire boyhood in Headingley. He recalls his parents' record collection, the first gigs he attended as the class "smart-arse" at Lawnswood School... and his acclaimed '80s fanzine Attack On Bzag!

Our guest's account of how he came to contribute to Sounds leads to clips from the late Andy Gill's 1991 audio interview with the KLF, the maverick duo of Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty whom James championed in the paper's pages in 1987.

After waxing nostalgic about his days at the NME, James gives us the origin story of the hugely successful loaded ("for men who should know better") and talks us through the publishing phenomenon it triggered. A discussion follows of '90s sexism and its connection to the misogyny of today's "Manosphere".

Many thanks to special guest James Brown. Animal House: Music, Magazines, Mayhem is published by Quercus and available now from all good bookshops. Zine Age Kicks is available through James' Instagram, @jamesjamesbrown.

Pieces discussed: The Beastie Boys: Keep Taking The Tabloids, Mark E Smith, Nick Cave & Shane MacGowan: The Three Horsemen Of The Apocalypse, The KLF audio ⁠ and The decline of lads' mags: Unloaded, and now the party is over.