MAGAZINE’S EXISTENTIAL SOUNDTRACKS HAD FRONTMAN HOWARD DEVOTO ACCLAIMED AS ‘THE MOST IMPORTANT MAN ALIVE’, YET THEY’RE OFTEN REDACTED FROM POST-PUNK’S OFFICIAL HISTORY. AS A NEW BOOK ABOUT THE GROUP’S TRAGIC -GENIUS GUITARIST JOHN McGEOCH EMERGES, DEVOTO AND THE GROUP’S SLEEPER AGENTS LINE UP FOR A DE-BRIEF. “THERE’S MORE TO IT THAN MEETS THE EYE,” THEY TELL IAN HARRISON.

Out of the darkness: Magazine in 1978 (from left) John McGeoch, Martin Jackson, Howard Devoto, Barry Adamson, Dave Formula.

PHOTOGRAPHY BY ADRIAN BOOT.

FEBRUARY 16, 1978’s TOP OF THE POPS WAS A STAR-PACKED affair, full of songs that would long outlive their moment: Kate Bush’s Wuthering Heights, the Bee Gees’ Stayin’ Alive and, at Number 1, ABBA’s Take A Chance On Me.

Lurking outside the Top 40 but afforded a slot that week were Magazine, whose cold, brilliant debut single, Shot By Both Sides, stood at Number 43. The song had been sparked when vocalist Howard Devoto’s girlfriend told him his refusal to choose a political master would see him liquidated by both left and right when the revolution came. Its paranoid aura was exemplified by a doomy, jagged riff played by guitarist John McGeoch.

Generation X, The Jam and The Adverts had been on in recent weeks, but this was a different kind of punk. Exuding aloof intelligence, the stock-still Devoto’s corpse-white face, eyeliner and widow’s peak made him resemble Roxy-era Eno’s evil twin, as he transmitted a negative charisma contemptuous of the whole humiliating farrago. Singles usually went up the charts after a TOTP showcase: not this one, which dropped three places and then inexplicably rose again to peak at the cr uellest number – 41. Why didn’t Devoto aim to please that night?

“There’s more to it than meets the eye,” Magazine bassist Barry Adamson tells MOJO. “I almost think there’s a beautifully executed kind of self-sabotage there, which was Howard’s calling card in some ways. To do that on the big stage is the thing that would keep your narcissism alive. It was, ‘I can give you this, and I can take it away from you at the same time. And that’s where my power is.’”

Adrian Boot/urbanimage.tv

Magazine attempt some “fast or slow music”, Pennine Studios, Oldham, Bob Dickinson, Devoto, Adamson, McGeoch, September 7, 1977.

Kevin Cummins/Getty, Adrian Boot/Urbanimage.tv

Devoto’s preoccupation with the workings of power, the singer reflects today, was a leitmotif of early Magazine: “It was, ‘Yes, I’ve got a bit of power now, and life is transformed and definitely for the better, but depressingly it still doesn’t feel that great.’”

Rolling Stone’s Greil Marcus called Shot By Both Sides “the best rock and roll record of 1978, punk or other wise – and Devoto’s Magazine may be the band to fill the vacuum the Sex Pistols have left.” But TOTP would be it for Magazine and the wider teatime-viewing world, and 44 years on they seem erased from the post-punk record, like some disgraced minister surgically disappeared from a portrait in Stalin’s USSR.

“To me, the whole thing is summed up with that Top Of The Pops performance,” says Simon Draper, co-founder and A&R of the group’s record label, Virgin. “It was a compromise, and maybe he shouldn’t have exposed himself to this ghastly scrutiny. That’s the one decision that he got wrong, big time. Because if that record had been a big hit, which it should have been – ever ything could have been different.”