Magazine Interview Example

This is an image from the actual magazine feature of the interview. I like this image as she is leaning forward toward the reader like she is opening up to them, it makes it more personal. Also she is looking up to show her ambition. It is also quite natural and fresh, showing her fresh start and look on life. This is what I will attempt to recreate on my double page spread.

This is an example from Mixmag of the actual text of an Annie Mac interview. I looked at this to determine how exactly I should go about writing my interview. This is set out in kind of a story format, the interviewer is with Annie just after she has finished a gig at a club which provides the audience with what they want - an insight into the real deal. There are a lot of quotes from Annie used to show direct feedback given from her and relate the story to her fully.

Annie Mac on DJing around the world, interviewing dogs, and ‘dull as fuck’ popstars.
It’s just before 4am, and in a rammed nightclub basement Annie Mac has finished her set to a rather hectic crowd.
Scrambling down from the DJ booth through a floor of jam-packed ravers, some sweat-ridden, neon-sunglass-wearing girls grab her for a photo. She obliges, her crossover appeal as respected DJ to television presenter is obvious at tonight’s sell-out in Bournemouth.
We meet outside the seaside venue and bundle into in her driver’s small black car as the masses pour out the club. Annie leans around the front passenger seat, brushing her curly hair back as she focuses on something out of the rear window. “Oh nice, there’s someone throwing up,” she announces, clearly unfased.
Playing everything from garage to drum and bass, Annie Mac is known for her bold mixes. Her sets, which combine a range of genres, have gained her a dedicated young following searching for both new and innovative tracks to remixed classics. A style directly linked to her high-profile radio show.
“I love the Mashup on Radio 1 because I get the chance to play older stuff as well as newer music. Like my favourite track at the moment is from a band called Rochelle and it’s an Andy George remix of their song ‘Chin Up’, and I love it, but at the same time I play classics like Sia, ‘Little Man’.”
Tonight was the warm-up to the Annie Mac’s Presents Tour which will see her playing sets across the U.K, from Birmingham to in her home country Northern Ireland. But here, in the seaside of Bournemouth, Annie’s got good memories.
“I’ve come down here a few times, and had some really random weekends. I had a really good one when I brought some friends, stayed over, and we swam in the sea at 4 in the morning,” she reveals, her Irish accent becoming stronger in the longer replies.
This time Annie brought Fake Blood, also known as Theo Keating, one half of electro DJ duo Black Ghosts, and who she describes as her ‘most inspiring DJ’ at the moment.
“He does so much more than just play records,” Annie says as she lights a cigarette and appears to blow smoke in admiration. “He loops stuff, he scratches stuff, and he’s just so creative with the way he DJs. I hate playing after him because it’s just like you can’t follow that shit.”
Aside from touring, Annie presents BBC’s Switch show, which, in her own words, has featured some of the most bizarre moments of her career. From games involving having her face in bowls of spaghetti hoops to live sumo wrestling.
The Irish DJ also has her own quirky line of questioning on the show when interviewing musicians. Including: “Would you every go roller skating to pull a girl?” and “How often do you wash?”
“I don’t like asking boring questions,” Annie states defiantly. “Asking ‘when ‘s your record out’ is so dull, you’ve got to try and change it up a bit.”
But changing it up is one thing, some of her interviews have taken interesting to the extreme. And there’s a certain one that sticks out firmly in the Radio 1 DJ’s memory: when she interviewed a dog, well, a man-dog.
“It was the maddest interview I’ve done,” she laughs. “Rex the dog was a man who pretended to be a dog the whole way through an interview. He basically had bark sounds, and if I asked him a question it was one bark for yes, two barks for no.” A few seconds later after clearly thinking about the odd interview she nods, smiles, and adds: “Yea, that was pretty cool.”
On the opposite end of the scale was another interview Annie did for Switch with American pop singer JoJo (one of those all-American teens) who she had to take out shopping. The DJ turns awkwardly on her car seat, her wide-blue eyes divert to the window, and then after a brief moment she states flatly: “She was dull as fuck.” Annie continues: “JoJo was really boring. It was bad, and it was painful. You can tell by my face in that video. I mean I tried.”
Moving back to more successful times in her various jobs and Annie recounts last summer in Ibiza as her craziest moment DJing. It was her 30th birthday, and during a set at Amnesia the nightclub gave a box of fake moustaches and wigs to a group of her friends.
“It was insane, they stormed the DJ booth half-way through the set, and they all looked like clowns. I was like what the fuck is going on? But it was such a great birthday present.”
After speaking for about ten minutes Annie’s life seems like one massive party and still upbeat in these early hours she’s clearly loving it, but does she get any sleep, I mean when can she fit it in?
“I got some in at the start of this year but as the tour progresses I won’t. I’ll get less and less. Tonight I’ll get about 6 hours and then tomorrow I’ve got a gig in Huddersfield and I’ll get in about 8am. You miss out on sleep at the weekend but then I always try and catch up on Mondays.”
Amongst sleeping and DJing, she loves going out for a dance. In-fact there’s a night on Thursdays at Nottinghill Arts Club which she describes as ‘nice to dance at before my sets on Friday.’ This is one woman full of a lot of energy.
The night, called YoYo, plays ‘proper urban music, like hip hop and garage, funky and jungle’, a genre mix showing Annie’s wide range of music tastes that relate directly to her varied sets.
Looking towards the summer and her schedule is rammed with a range of festivals, including Bestival, and Glastonbury, which Annie counts ‘as closest to my heart,’ but also Oxygen in Ireland and possibly Sonar in Barcelona where she played last year. There are also plans laid out for America.
“Miami is the one I’m most looking forward to. It’s a daytime party around a swimming pool and I’m bringing a lot of my favourite DJs from the UK to America, like Fake Blood and Rusko. It’s going to be all over the place, and it’ll be really exciting playing to Americans who I’m not sure are aware of it all.“
After the summer, the Annie Mac Presents Tour starts up again, but with such a demanding schedule will there ever be some original releases from the remix queen?
“I’d like to make music, but I want to make sure that it’s the right music and it’s perfect, and I don’t really like DJs on the radio who make tunes. If I do it, I’ll do it for myself and just play it out. I’d release it under a different name and keep it on the low. “
But for now, the music is turned off, because as I clamber out of the car into the quiet street, Annie is heading back to London to sleep. I guess she needs to make the most of it.