Two Sevens

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Two Sevens^[1] was an English small press magazine of the 1990s which focused on popular culture, in particular punk and alternative music, street literature and politics. It was founded^[2][3] and co-edited by Football Factory author John King^[4] and the journalist Peter Mason.^[5]

Based in London and published over a period of four years in the early 1990s, it championed the work of a number of emerging authors, including Irvine Welsh and Stewart Home, publishing one of the first ever interviews with Welsh,^[6][7] shortly after his debut novel Trainspotting was released, and featuring an in-depth focus piece on Home.^[8] As well as printing short stories, it covered the small press poetry scene and published work by the likes of Kevin Williamson and David Crystal.

Two Sevens also ran interviews with politically-conscious punk bands of the day, among them Schwartzeneggar,^[9] Back To The Planet,^[10] Leatherface^[11] and Chumbawamba,^[12][13] as well as artists from other musical genres, including the dub-reggae pioneer Dennis Bovell^[14] and the calypsonian Mighty Sparrow. An eclectic reviews section considered a wide range of music, books and other small press publications. "We interviewed authors and musicians, reviewed bands, books and fanzines; anything we fancied really," said King in 2014.^[15]

Drawing on King and Mason’s teenage years following The Clash and a desire to capture punk’s free-thinking spirit of 1977, the publication took its title from the album Two Sevens Clash by the reggae band Culture. King had been writing for the Chelsea Independent fanzine^[16] for a number of years and along with Mason shared an interest in a small press/fanzine tradition they had first discovered through Sniffin' Glue and Chainsaw punk zine.

Although mostly written by King and Mason, Two Sevens drew on contributions from writers such as Susan Hickey and Ian Campbell, illustrators Glenn Ashcroft and Phil Taylor, and the photographer Nigel Dickinson.^[17] Its polemical articles covered a range of subjects – animal rights, the state of British politics, football’s terrace culture and green issues, which it focused on through eyewitness accounts of direct action taken by the radical environmental advocacy group Earth First! at Oxleas Wood and Twyford Down.^[18]

Two Sevens was closely associated with the literary magazine Rebel Inc., which was edited by Williamson and featured early writing by Welsh and Alan Warner, based in Scotland. The two publications were roughly contemporaneous and there was a degree of cross-fertilisation – for instance, King’s short story Millwall Away appeared in Rebel Inc.^[19] In an interview with Steve Redhead^[20] in the book Repetitive Beat Generation, King said: 'We were looking for small press material to review, and we just came across Rebel Inc. I'd never met a writer, and getting to know Kevin Williamson, because we were both doing something ... was very encouraging. I [also] got friendly with Stewart Home though Two Sevens.'^[21]

Two Sevens ran to a total of eight issues. Distributed by AK Press,^[22] it was also sold at music gigs and festivals, as well as directly into record shops^[23] and the independent bookshops Compendium Books and Housmans.^[24]

The last issue of Two Sevens, No 8, was published in 1995, by which time King’s first novel, The Football Factory, had been accepted by Jonathan Cape, and Mason had moved on to other areas of writing, including his book on the Brown Dog affair, which was released by Two Sevens Publishing.