See ya James

My friend James passed away last night. James was magnificent. I’ve been trying to find one word all day, and that’s the word: magnificent. James “Jam” McMahon, The Magnificent. I think he’d have liked that.

James and I used to always say thank fuck we can write, because otherwise we wouldn’t be able to cope with the world. He wrote the shit out of his life. And right now, all I can do is try to do the same for his memory.

James, how do I even describe to you who James was. Was? For fuck’s sake. This wasn’t supposed to be it. Was?! What a nonsense. “Was” is for, like, Liam and Noel Gallagher’s lesser solo efforts. “Was” is for the NME print edition. “Was” is for the time when we could still listen to Michael Jackson in public. I never thought my mate James would be a “was”. Because James was so present everywhere. He truly did more than anyone I have ever known. After he finished his editorship at Kerrang! he went on to a busy freelance career in print and as a talking news head, especially cherishing his bylines at the Observer. He was an illustrator, and always made his own zines, and sent illustrations to everyone he loved. He amassed an adoring social media following, and launched one of the best podcasts I’ve ever listened to: The James McMahon Music Podcast. When the war broke out in the Ukraine, James started interviewing Ukranians on the ground and published their stories, including in the Telegraph. He had a great Substack. He interviewed everyone you’ve ever heard of. He was so proud of his career, and one of his highlight moments from his younger years writing for his favorite ever music magazine: He put Beth Ditto on the cover of the NME in the buff.

Sixteen years ago I met James, five years my senior but instantly like an older brother, in the corridors of Endeavor House on Shaftesbury Avenue in London’s Soho. He was editing the metal magazine Kerrang! and I was making cups of tea over at Q Magazine. I used to wear a leopard print shift dress, and I cut a waifish figure with an elfin hair cut, that I contrasted with massive oxblood colored Doc Martens. He used to say that I dressed like Nicky Wire from the Manic Street Preachers. He made sense of me in a way I didn’t yet have the vocabulary for. He was a really kind man in a sea of not-so-kind men, and the opposite of threatening. Meeting James was like finding Yoda in Darth Vader’s castle. He had a unique way of complimenting people in a manner that felt genuinely wonderful as opposed to seeking or false. He was the real mccoy.

When nobody would let me write anything, James sent me to Download Festival in Leicestershire (stricly metal and heavy rock music) to interview Slipknot. I was 22. I went alone, lived in a tent in the mud by myself for three days, and had the time of my life. Once I moved to LA, he commissioned me one of the most important jobs of my life. I was the first journalist to sit down with Jesse Hughes and Josh Homme of Eagles Of Death Metal after the Islamist terror attack at the Bataclan venue in Paris, France in 2015. I thought about that today - how James could have flown in any writer in the world to do that, but he chose me. He knew I could get the story. He believed in me with one of the most serious pieces we would ever work on together. Outside of actual work, James and I would go to gigs together. We saw Stone Roses reunite at Finsbury Park in 2013. I remember getting soaked in piss, and belting out “I Wanna Be Adored” next to him at the top of our lungs, louder than Ian Brown, who could no longer sing.

As my star rose, James only encouraged me, more than anyone has ever championed my work. He would tell me I was a phenomenal writer. “The Beyonce of music journalism,” he’d say. But nah. James was the writer. James was an outrageously talented writer. On any subject. He was what every writer must be and can never fake: naked and open and totally honest. Awkwardly honest. His heroes wrote at the pages he took charge of as Features Editor of the NME in the 2000s under Conor McNicholas, who broke the news of his death today on X. Something I think James would have liked - the Conor part. Maybe less so the Twitter announcement. I’m not sure. I think he’d want everyone to know, and to be playing ABBA and The Ramones, dancing with a pint in hand and some crisps nearby. There would be some Boney M on that playlist too. He told me during one of our last long conversations that he’d been getting massively into the Village People and the Phantom Of The Opera soundtrack during his time in hospital this summer. And Christian rock. I was surprised about the latter. We were talking about the band Morphine, who we both loved, and I was hiking, and he was worried I was going to be eaten by a mountain lion if I kept letting him distract me but he had to confess to me that he had begun listening to Christian rock. He linked me to this song, and I agreed. Big tune.

Anyway back to the whole public news element. James cut an enormous figure in the British music writing world, and the news has sent a shockwave through a time and a community gone by. Even writing this, I’m double-checking myself wondering if James would fucking hate this. He’d hate to be dead, I can tell you that much. But he’d come to terms with it. Since he was diagnosed with his soft tissue sarcoma, I spent the days during this unthinkable summer (I rate this summer -2/10, as in a minus two out of ten, it was so incredibly shit) telling James he was going to live. “You’re going to survive this, Jam.” And he’d say “I’m dying. I’m gonna die.” And we’d go back and forth. Well James, you were right. You dick.

But no, James was no dick. James was the kindest, most misunderstood, loveable, hilarious, curious and understanding person I’ve ever met. He stayed the course through every chapter of my hurricane of a decade after leaving the UK. He was there for my cancellation. He was the only person in my industry who stook his neck out and repeatedly publicly stood up for me. He was there during my best friend’s public trial, saying all the right things, making me laugh, holding the space for me that I needed so I could be strong. He was there during October 7 and the entire aftermath. He was there, always. And now he’s not. And now I have a thousand questions I didn’t think of asking him while he was just always there, at 3am when he couldn’t sleep due to his chronic OCD, he was always there, pinging me some thoughts about aliens, or a movie franchise, or the Ramones who he adored more than any other band, or an OCD loop he was stuck in and needed me to break, or some prick we both used to work or socialize with that he needed my confirmation was a prick.

I was looking at Twitter today, dreading to see who would be tweeting about his passing. And the weirdest part is that James and I would talk about that stuff. We talked about dying, and the afterlife, and what people would say. He’s the only person I want to reach to today and say: “Did you see this cunt?” Recently he wasn’t sure whether to protect me from an old colleague who was tweeting that I was basically worse than Hitler, a 50-something-plus man who has never got another job or moved anywhere. He wanted me to fight back. And I declined. I’ve learned in my time here that the best friends are the friends who would go to war against all the same people with and for you, and that was my friend James. There will never be another like him.

On November 3, James texted me, and I knew things were escalating to the Bad Place. He said: “Actually almost died an hour ago! Actual almost died!” I said: What the fuck?! James’ oxygen went. He told me he thought he was in the afterlife for a moment. And he told me it felt like Red Redemption 2 – “confirming my fear that consciousness is just a series of simulations.” I was reading Christopher Hitchens “The Portable Atheist” this summer and discussing it with James, and upon reflection today I’m glad we had those discussions too. Because during our back and forth he told me that he wasn’t an atheist and felt atheism was “intellectually dishonest”. He told me he did believe in some sort of thing. A cosmic ordering, he said. That gave me comfort today.

I’m pissed that James isn’t gonna be around for the comeuppance of woke. He deserves a front row seat for that. We had what the people we couldn’t stand would call a “safe space” and we were completely unfiltered with one another. It was more than refreshing; it was a lifeline in a world that now resembles a Pot Noodle gone wrong in the microwave. To have a pal who just knows your pain and stresses and sees it all exactly the same way. If you loved James, you loved a real thinker and a real writer. He always told me that no amount of depression wasn’t something a good playlist of classic house music couldn’t fix, and he wasn’t wrong.

I’m angry James’s book about surviving the music industry and a life of OCD isn’t out in the world, and I hope it will make its way into your hands some day. I’m fucked off that James won’t be at Oasis with me next summer in London, because some of my only happy memories this summer were of being tangibly high off the news of the reunion with him via our Whatsapp chat. It was the best mood I’d heard him in all year. He sent me a message: “Reality check. Cancer. October 7th. OCD. Johnny Depp. Who gives a fuck? We forge new paths. And next summer we roar along to Oasis.” I said, quoting “Champagne Supernova”: “How many special people change, Jam?” He replied: “We see things they’ll never see.” (“Live Forever”).

What else can I tell you about James? He loved his gerbils. His favorite band were The Ramones, but I already told you that. He was a Doncaster Rovers fan. He had a warm Yorkshire accent. He was cancelled and publicly mauled by a lot of the same people I was, without justification. We saw the world almost the same way. “I can’t believe we’re both right wing now,” he said to me, in jest, recently. I told him we were centrists. He said: “No we’re still left. They went further left. We stayed.” He named our WhatsApp chat: This Is How We Jew It. And found a picture of Chewbacca dressed like a Chasidic Rabbi for the icon. He was an amazing ally and stuck his whole neck out for the Jewish people and Israel. He told me all the time: “I love Jews.” He told me he thought October 7 was “a litmus test for morons.” (Among other virtue signals I won’t mention here because I run the risk of James being cancelled again posthumously. Can you be cancelled posthumously? I agreed with him on all of it.) I always felt I disappointed James when I was cancelled because he was thoroughly depressed I’d never write about music again. He always kept pushing me to try. Before he died, he wanted me to know why he became a music journalist:

I just loved music so much I couldn’t stand not being able to share an opinion. I found it excruciating.

James suffered from the same ailment as me. He cared too much.

James McMahon 3rd July 1980 - 14th November 2024. My condolences to his wife Kat, who was the love of his life, and his family and friends, some of whom I now get to have in my life. Thank you to former NME Editor, Conor McNicholas for his words. Conor, James loved you. And he understood you.

Kat has asked that we please consider giving in James’ memory to people with OCD here: https://www.justgiving.com/crowdfunding/jamesjammcmahon

OCD plagued James’ life, and in the last few years he began to make real progress cracking the back of it and finding ways to cope through his worst moments. James changed the lives of so many people with OCD by actively documenting his struggles and his wins, often through his social media accounts. OCD was no longer a taboo talking point because James shined the brightest of lights on it, and he reached an enormous audience to tell his story. This made James one of my personal heroes. Unafraid to go where nobody was going. Fearless about challenging other people’s perspectives. And endlessly passionate about music. He was the rarest of gems. A mensch. A cannonball. A giant. “I wanted longer but don’t we all. There was more I could do but couldn’t we all,” he tweeted a few months ago.

Jam, I’m gonna go to Oasis next summer and you’ll get to avoid being covered in piss. I hope this is OK what I wrote about you, about our friendship. For the first time, I don’t feel like I can find the adequate words. Just be glad I didn’t paraphrase Joan fucking Didion, or any of that bollocks. Be our spirit in the sky, would ya? We could use it.

I was running earlier and I swear I saw James’ big bearded face in a cloud, and I told him he was loved, and that he did a good job, and we’d see each other later on. In the meantime mate, I’ll miss you every day. Only the good die young, they say. Well I say, live forever xo