thecommonswings's review
4.0
Richard Ingrams must have sensed that Ian Hislop was a kindred spirit from very early on, because they both have that rare personality type: reactionary conservatives and, at heart, young fogeyish behaviour. The stuff in pseuds corner in this early tour of pop music seems insanely tame compared to stuff like Paul Morley or the contents of the Wire. But in the sixties there was probably a sense all this would blow over to some degree so Private Eye are very much of the view that all this nonsense is all inherently ridiculous and go all out for mockery. It’s a fascinating snapshot of what people of the time thought of the musical underground of the period and I would very much love to see if this continued in the next decade as prog and punk turn up. Heath is beginning to show he’s the cartoonist best able to capture the nascent music scene, but by god does it make you miss what a genius of an artist Willie Rushton was. The fluidity of line and character in his every cartoon here shows a real joy even at their most grotesque. He was such an underrated and undervalued cartoonist and we were lucky to get what we did from him
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