Rock Steady! Magazine 1980…

Rock Steady! Magazine 1980

Here’s an interesting piece of rock ephemera: Rock Steady! was a small format rock magazine first published in England in November 1979 by Shooting Star Promotions. Its editors were Alan Dawes and Andy Woodroff  and was clearly a fan-based labour of love.

The issue opposite is the second, published in March 1980 and priced 40p, it was dedicated to Led Zeppelin and the cover featured the rather risqué album cover artwork to Houses of the Holy, the band’s fifth album released in 1973.

It was a cheaply produced magazine, the cover was held together by one staple with a loose booklet inside along with a single page advertising their stickers merchandise at 55p each. The late seventies/early eighties saw an influx of cheaply made fanzines. It’s worth remembering how little information was available to fans about their favourite bands and Led Zeppelin were especially difficult to obtain news  on.

Rock Steady! Magazine March 1980

So the fans took it upon themselves to produce newsletters which were usually light on news and heavy on requests for news, bootleg record information, word games and general fan based irrelevance. Most had very short print runs and a lack of advertising revenue soon put paid to ambitions of becoming the next NME or Sounds magazine.

Rock Steady! had more substance than most, however. They featured many bands, especially those who came under the moniker of New Wave of British Heavy Metal (NWOBHM)  along with classic rock bands such as Rush, UFO, Gillan, Whitesnake and  Heart.  In this issue there are reviews of the Permanent Waves album by Rush and Child in Time by the Ian Gillan Band. 

There are also concert reviews of UFO , Girl and Def Leppard  but it’s the information on Led Zeppelin which stands out. The photographs are not the best quality but it is a wonderful reminder of the era and the dawn of the new and exciting rock bands of the eighties.

If anyone has any more information on this publication I would love to hear about it,