First issue - The Face, May 1980

We all know how rare it is for a first issue to really hit the spot. Time is the usual killer - I arrived to edit one new launch a few years ago to discover the publisher had left 50 editorial pages blank for me to fill with 'great ideas'. We were three weeks from going to press - I should have walked out and left them to it, but thought the magazine was going to be a winner (it wasn't) so stayed put.

Anyway, what this is leading towards is an appreciation of a truely brilliant first issue that I pulled out of my files this morning to give me some inspiration for the new year. Didn't work on this one - wish I had!

It's issue one of The Face, May 1980, and features the enigmatic Jerry Dammers of The Specials on the cover (shot by Chalkie Davies). Dammers was the subject of intense interest at my school as his dad Horace was the dean of the cathedral which hosted our morning assemblies. An odd father-son pairing to say the least...

A couple of things that still leave me open mouthed at their brilliance more than 30 years on from the magazine's launch (apart from the masthead...):

Madness in NYC: Jill Furmanovsky

• the quality of the photography by Jill Furmanovsky (Madness) and John Lydon (Anton Corbijn/Sheila Rock)
• The quality of the writing by Adrian Thrills, Vaughn Toulouse and Julie Burchill




John Lydon: Sheila Rock



Jill described her shoot with Madness for issue one like this: "There was a cultural difference between Madness and America. I remember the baffled faces of the welcoming committee at Warner Brothers Records when the band exploded out of the elevator, fell as one to their knees, and began ’worshiping’ the company logo woven into the carpet."