RETRO – Disco 45 magazine

A work colleague had tweeted that they had recently unearthed some old magazines from their home and had plonked them in their recycling bin to be later disposed of. I instantly tweeted that they needed saving and that I would sift through them and do something more useful with them.

I feel it’s such a shame when something old and collectable is thrown away when there may be some collector out there who has a few holes in their collection and these editions could be just what they are after!

Most of the magazines are from the 1980 – 1981 era and encompass Smash Hits, No1, NME and Melody Maker – of which most people are familiar with. The one that I wasn’t familiar with is a magazine called Disco 45.

Even though most people remember Smash Hits it was infact Disco 45 magazine that came first when it was launched in 1970 – publishing song lyrics and articles way before anyone else.
There isn’t much other information online about the magazine but people are selling them where the average price per issue seems to be around £7.50 to £9.99.

So first up is issue 118 from 1980 and featuring Jermaine Jackson on the funky cover – complete with loads of different and colourful fonts detailing what’s inside the 16 page magazine.


Each issue would contain song lyrics from the current top 40 chart – this edition featured Abba, Grace Jones, Diana Ross and ELO – not particularly ‘disco’ but it must’ve been quite a risk at the time to name the magazine ‘disco’ back in 1970 when it wasn’t that mainstream or popular.


Back in the 1970’s and 80’s comics and magazines rarely featured full colour on ALL pages where it was quite commonplace for only the front and back pages to be in full colour. All the other pages would be in black and white but with maybe a few other pages inbetween these also in black and white but with the addition of one other colour to make it more interesting. I suppose it was all down to the technology of the time and money restrictions too.
It’s interesting to see that the above two pages are in fact full colour but all the photos are still in black and white – I can’t really offer any reason for that!

And so here we come to the main purpose of the magazine – the song lyrics – or as they call it The Songbook! Normally spread over (only) two pages a few more song lyrics would also pop up usually on the back cover and maybe another page inside that needed filling.

Well you can’t really have a teenage magazine without some good ol’ horoscopes – you can certainly see how thing haven’t really moved on in 30 years! Here are some classic lines from them:-

• SCORPIO – You would be wise to abide your time when making decisions over the next few weeks as to rush into things could cause you problems later.

• CAPRICORN – If you would only stop trying to keep up with the ‘Trendies’ you would find yourself feeling a lot happier and people will like you for just being YOU.

• TAURUS – This could be a boom time for you financially, if you would only curb your spending for a little while you would be surprised at how quickly your money woudl grow.

So essentially we are being told NOT to rush into making a decision to spend money on becoming a Trendy! (as if!!)

The Disco Shop Pop Shop – I wonder if that’s where the Multi-Coloured Swap Shop got some inspiration from? This was a two-page spread featuring all matter of goodies for sale including ‘The Status Quo Music Book’ (how could they drag out those two chords in a book?), ‘The Eagles For Easy Guitar’, ‘The Authorized Biography of The Bee Gees’ and ‘The Compleat Elvis’ – yep it’s spelt like that on the book cover aswell!

And lastly the crossword aptly named ‘Popwords’ with a prize of the top ten singles! I’ve managed to fill in 14 across now but still stuck on 10 across – any ideas?