These pages tell some of the history of Friends/Frendz magazine, 1969-1972, through interviews with people who were part of it making it happen. Also included in our digital archives are some selected articles and Friends features, reproduced here with photos that Phil Franks shot to accompany them. Jonathon Green collected these first hand stories and memories for his book on the alternative scene, Days in the Life: Voices from the English Underground, 1961-1971. It has been out of print for a while but is now available online in association with Amazon.co.uk. Friends magazine was a rebel offshoot from the UK edition of Rolling Stone back when Rolling Stone could still be considered almost an underground mag. Published by Alan Marcuson until it became Frendz, Friends was more immediately connected with the UK underground media such as OZ, IT and Time Out and in some cases folks like Philm worked for or with more than one of these publications. Political motivations varied but most of the "alternative" press then tried to be much more than just the entertainment oriented music/culture magazines and papers of today. See the Friends Table of Contents
or browse some selected Friends/Frendz features:
We owe a very special and heartfelt thanks to Jonathon for making his interview manuscripts available to us, and for his permission to use those excerpts here as we see fit. You will see as this corner of the site develops that Jonathon's archive is to oral history what Philm's is to images!
"Look for the pending Philm Freax OZ SPECIAL
Update March 23 2000: Will Birch's book, "No Sleep Till Canvey Island", is an in depth history of the British Pub Rock scene of the '70s and contains a wealth of information on Brinsley Schwarz, Famepushers, Barney Bubbles, Stiff Records, Friends magazine, and other stuff mentioned on these pages. Now available in association with Amazon.co.uk. |
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contact: Phil Franks (freax AT philmfreax.com)
Friends website produced by Malcolm Humes