Jonh Ingham

This article is about the music journalist John Ingham. For other people with the same name, see John Ingham.

File:2013 Woodstock 015 Jonh Ingham.jpg

Jonh Ingham in 2013 at Przystanek Woodstock.

Jonh Ingham is the nom de typewriter for John Ingham, a music journalist best known for writing the first interview with the Sex Pistols for the UK music paper Sounds in April 1976.

Ingham was born in Australia to English parents and grew up in Australia, Canada, and the USA. As a student at CalArts in Los Angeles he took a course from Village Voice music critic Robert Christgau, who taught him to be a music critic and helped him get his first bylines. While still at college his work appeared in Rolling Stone, Creem, and other contemporary magazines. With Greg Shaw he was instrumental in launching the influential music fanzine Who Put The Bomp.

Moving to London, UK, in 1972 to attend film school, he was a freelance writer for the NME and other British music magazines before joining Sounds.

As a staff writer from 1975 to 1977 he wrote high-profile interviews with major rock artists such as the Rolling Stones, Jimmy Page, Roxy Music and Queen, and was one of the first journalists to champion the punk music movement. As well as doing the first interview with the Sex Pistols he wrote the first reviews of the Damned and the Clash.

In 1977, he left journalism to become co-manager of the punk band Generation X. In December of that year he moved to Los Angeles to work in the film industry, returning to music in 1980 as seminal manager of the Go-Go's. Under his tutelage the group became a leading LA attraction before signing to IRS Records.

Ingham started the Fake Club in 1982, the first of LA’s many “temporary” nightclubs that dominated the ‘80s, before moving to Tokyo in 1985 to work in advertising. In London in 1996 he joined CompuServe as Head of Content, starting his current career in online content. In 2000, as Head of Content at music startup Worldpop, he created Europe’s first content service for mobile phones. He is now a founder of online talent show 1Click2Fame.

References

Ingham has multiple citations in the following works:
Savage, Jon (2009). The England's Dreaming Tapes (Faber and Faber) ISBN 978-0-571-20931-6
Heylin, Clinton (2007). Babylon's Burning- From Punk To Grunge (Viking) ISBN 978-0-670-91606-1
Blake, Mark (Ed.)(2006). PUNK - The Whole Story (Dorling Kindersley) ISBN 978-0756623593

External links

• Rock's Back Pages - Jonh Ingham
• My Back Pages
• MOG - Jonh Ingham