Two! Four! Six! Eight!
an even older and more grizzled magazine editor than I once told me that sometimes the job is less to be the manager of the team than a cheerleader. Rather than raging from the dugout at the poor positioning of the players, better to stand decorously on the sidelines in an overcomplicated outfit, shouting encouragement and kicking your feet in the air, if you still can, and let the heroes on the pitch get on with the business of being brilliant without interference.
The cover story of this issue is one of those happy occasions where I can take no personal credit at all.
The writer Simon Garfield came to me with the idea of following Elvis Costello through all 10 nights of his recent residency at the Gramercy Theatre, in Manhattan, with the ambition of building an unusual profile of one of the all-time greats of pop music — a man whose energy and ambition seem undimmed, more than four decades into his astonishing career.
Simon had already arranged the whole thing with Costello and his people. All I had to do was say yes. I said yes. And then find a photographer who might like to go along for the ride. I called another Simon, Simon Emmett, who also said yes, and then I introduced them, and left them to it. That call was pretty much the extent of my contribution.
Off they went to New York, under their own steam, with, as I say, no help from me. Here I stayed in London, sending them the occasional cheerleading email and getting on with other stuff of vital importance. (Funny how one forgets so quickly, but I don’t doubt that, whatever I was up to, it was integral to Esquire’s future success.)
The resulting story, which also owes an unpayable debt to Costello himself, provides, I think, a rare encounter with a remarkable man: funny, sharp, uncompromising and, in his own way, as cool and commanding as anyone who ever stood on a stage.
In our era of blandly scripted Zoom interviews and dismal promotional junkets, it is a pleasure to be able to bring you a substantial conversation with a giant of pop culture, plus a set of photos that capture the self-possession — and the gleeful mischief-making — of a master showman and songwriter, independent of the PR spin cycle and untethered from the productflogging content-factory farm.
But don’t thank me. Just sit back and enjoy the show. I know the Simons did.
Other stuff that had nothing to do with me: Miranda Collinge’s terrific piece about Ken, “boyfriend” of Barbie. Miranda’s idea, prompted by the fact that this summer we are to be treated (time will tell if that’s the word) to a big-screen Barbie movie, starring Margot Robbie as the leggy doll and Ryan Gosling as her gelded beau, was to get beneath the plastic of an uncomfortably freighted icon of anti-masculinity. What makes Ken tick? (If, indeed, Ken ticks.) Find out on page 166.
The inspired idea for the photos to
accompany Miranda’s story — to treat a Ken doll as we would a brooding cover star — was hers, too (as was the doll), brilliantly realised by photographer David Lineton and art director Lauren Jones.
More cheerleading: Charlie Teasdale and Lauren came up with the wheeze behind this year’s summer fashion shoot, to shoot the best of the season’s shirts as jolly holiday snaps. And those two were also the driving forces behind the annual Esquire Watch rReport.
Tom Nicholson’s history of Wembley, 100 years old this year, was entirely his suggestion, and Miranda did the edit. Liz Pearn did the picture research. Zoya Kaleeva designed the handsome layout.
I commissioned precisely one out of the six stories in this issue’s Journal section. That was Andrew O’Hagan’s piece on Madonna’s latest face. (He’s not keen.) Other than that, Miranda all the way: new writing from John Banville, Joe Dunthorne, AL Kennedy and Esquire regular Will Hersey.
The advantage to all this dereliction of duty is I get to read Esquire, at least the best bits of it, in the same way you do, as a punter rather than a participant. And, having just this minute finished doing so, I must say I think they’ve all done a lovely job.
Occasionally this cheerleader shimmies out of his sparkly hotpants and reverts to his playercoach role. For this issue I interviewed the fiercely talented Ruth Wilson about her borderline insane new theatrical adventure. I poked about in the racks at Drake’s, the chic gent’s outfitter, for a piece about a heartening British menswear success story. And I worked — I use the term loosely — with two veteran Esquire contributors to excerpt their new books: Greg Williams, Hollywood lensman extraordinaire, on a sneak preview of his star-studded Photo Breakdowns; and Teo van den Broeke, whose excellent memoir, The Closet, will be published in September.
Elsewhere: Gareth Southgate on stage; the return of The Bear; bespoke jeans (bespoke jeans); a celebration of oenophile favourites the Noble Rotters; original fiction by the returning Caleb Azumah Nelson (Miranda’s commission, again); and much more. If you’re in the market for still more razor-sharp style and culture journalism, check out esquire.com/uk, updated daily by Nick Pope and the team. It’s all I can do to keep up.
Before all that, a final, and bittersweet, leading of the cheer: this issue is the last that will feature Charlie Teasdale as style director. Charlie has been at Esquire for close to nine years and his contribution has been immense. I’m pleased to say he’s not leaving us to go and do something similar somewhere similar. That would be too irritating. Instead, he’s following his heart (and, I fear, his head) for a career break overseas. This will, I hope, be a brief sojourn, and Charlie assures me he’ll be back in these pages before too long.
We wish him well. We wave our pom-poms. We might even do the splits.
OK, no, not the splits. That sounds like hard work. Get someone else to do it. Applaud wildly. Take the rest of the day off.
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