Opinion

He wrote books on Beethoven and Berlioz while editing not one but two audio magazines. Former Hi-Fi News editor John Crabbe is fondly remembered by Steve Harris

For this anniversary issue, here’s my own bit of personal reminiscence. I joined Hi-Fi News & Record Review as editor in June 1986, just after the 30th anniversary issue had been put to bed by John Atkinson, who’d left to take over Stereophile magazine in the US.

By the time HFN reached its half-century in 2006, I’d departed the editor’s chair, but I’d co-edited the book Sound Bites: 50 Years Of Hi-Fi News with Ken Kessler. Then, in late 2007, John Atkinson asked me to interview his predecessor, John Crabbe, for Stereophile.

On the move

John was editor of HFN for 18 years from 1964 to 1982. However, he used to say that it was really 20 years, as he’d actually been doing the job since he was hired as ‘technical editor’ in 1962. Founder Miles Henslow was then still nominally the editor although his only contribution was the editorial column.

Preceding John Crabbe at HFN was John Borwick, who would later become technical director of Gramophone. He’d joined in February 1959 and soon learned that he’d also have to produce Henslow’s new magazine, The Tape Recorder, launched in response to the Tape Recording title from another publisher. He got some assistance with the arrival of Alan Lovell, who – ironically – had come to London from Bristol to work on Tape Recording magazine, only to be let go after three months.

When John Borwick left in February 1961, Alan had to do all the work for both titles, and the Hi-Fi Yearbook. Though his name never appeared in HFN, he was the acting editor when John Crabbe submitted his eight-part series on horn loudspeaker design, which ran from November ’61 to June ’62. By this time Alan had had enough of London. ‘I was about to get married’, he told me, ‘and wanted to move to Hampshire where Miles Henslow had just formed a printing company. I suggested to Miles that he find a new editor for both the magazines and that I go and run his print works in Hampshire’.

He was able to do this when Henslow hired John Crabbe, who’d made such a good impression as a contributor. Then, in 1964, Henslow sold both magazines to Link House, also the publisher of the long-running classified magazine Exchange & Mart.

Putting pen to paper

John, now editing both HFN and The Tape Recorder, still found the time in 1968 to write Hi-Fi In The Home for Blandford Press. This went on to sell 30,000 copies and is, despite its relative antiquity, still one of the few essential hi-fi books.

It was also during this period that he began contemplating a book to be called Thoughts And Beliefs Of The Great Composers. As 1969 would be the centenary of Berlioz’s death, and 1970 the bicentenary of Beethoven’s birth, John decided to complete chapters on those two composers to tie in. But both ‘chapters’ expanded to the point where it made more sense to turn them into individual books.

Publisher Kahn & Averill eventually took Hector Berlioz: Rational Romantic – it came out in 1980 – but wanted to see how it went before accepting the Beethoven book. Then at a book fair, John met up with his old colleague Alan Lovell, now running his own printing company. Alan agreed to take on Beethoven’s Empire Of The Mind himself. He would print 2000 copies, but only bind 1000 of them, pending sales. Kahn & Averill then agreed to act as publisher for the remaining copies, if they could be bound. Unfortunately, they’d been destroyed in a warehouse flood. The book was almost forgotten. But now, thanks to the Internet, anyone who wants a copy can find it.

My Stereophile interview should have helped John celebrate his 80th birthday, but he died in December 2008, aged 79. When the piece appeared in 2009, it had become a tribute, and a heartfelt one.