Time Out

Jonathon Green:
"Next morning Jeremy Beadle and Tony Elliot materialised, they were having discussions about something called "Time Out in the North West". A non-starter."

John Leaver:
"Beadle's original suggestion was to do Time Out in Brighton, but that didn't happen. Then we tried Time Out in the North West. That was a dire concept. As I recall it was originally going to be Time Out in Liverpool, then somebody said 'Bloody hell, Manchester's only twelve miles from Liverpool or however far it is, so why don't we do it for both'. Time Out in Manchester & Liverpool was too cumbersome for a title so we chose Time Out in the North-West. It lasted nine issues: basically because people don't actually see themselves as north-westerners.

Pearce Marchbank:
"I never regarded "Time Out" as an underground magazine, but it did use the same people. The Angry Brigade had their headquarters there. They were heavily involved with "Time Out". People to do with them were in and out of the magazine and when the trial came up I was advised to resign my directorship of "Time Out". They weren't staff members, but they used the phones, they were in and out of the office. I was vaguely aware of all this, but I didn't pay much attention.

The thing about "Time Out" was that having observed how printers work I then brought what was traditionally regarded as about half of their work into the office. This was through litho. If you do one dot on white paper with a black pen it will print; if you do lots of dots they'll print too. So why can't I make a screened photograph and stick it on a piece of paper in my office and cut it out as I want and draw on it as I want...? So I got a small plate-making process camera and started making screen bromides, which had never been done inside a magazine before. So I could keep the pages of the magazine in the building right up to the very last moment. right up to the print deadline, then they were zoomed over to the printers. I never had to go to the printers ever. Apart from looking after the look of the thing and laying out the artwork, my role was to organise the logistics of the whole thing. Giving people different deadlines to make sure that the pages went off in the right order, that sort of thing. That had nothing to do with how pretty it looks, but when it comes out you're only judged on how pretty it looks. But I was more the editor of "Time Out" than many of those who were listed as such. Information about all the stuff that had come out of the late 60s - the fringe theatre, the rock clubs, the independent films - needed organisation and I was able to encompass the content of the underground and put it into a form that had nothing to do with the underground."