Penny Valentine was born in
London, England, of Jewish and Italian ancestry. In 1959, she became a trainee reporter, first on the
Uxbridge Post, and in the early 1960s on
Boyfriend, a weekly magazine for teen girls. In 1964, she joined the staff of
Disc, a weekly pop music magazine (later
Disc and Music Echo), as a journalist and record reviewer, becoming for a time Britain's most influential reviewer of new pop singles. According to fellow journalist
Richard Williams, "She was probably the first woman to write about pop music as though it really mattered." As a young woman, Valentine also wrote articles for a variety of publications on the "
Swinging London" phenomenon.
Chris Welch commented that she "was part of a social whirl of receptions, parties and night-clubbing that made Swinging London such fun.... The Beatles and Rolling Stones certainly preferred to be interviewed by the vivacious young lady from Disc magazine than by some spotty chap in a raincoat". She also appeared regularly on
Juke Box Jury in the mid-1960s. In 1970, she left
Disc to join a new magazine,
Sounds, and in 1973 was hired by her friend
Elton John to become the press officer for his record label,
The Rocket Record Company. She also wrote for
Record Mirror and
Melody Maker and in the 1970s for the American rock magazine
Creem. After a period working in
New York City, she returned to London in 1975 to help launch another new magazine,
Street Life, later joining
Time Out, before leaving in 1980 to help found the more politically radical
City Limits. She became active in a number of bodies, including
Women in Media and the
National Union of Journalists. After gaining a BA degree in film studies and English, she pursued a freelance career teaching and writing. With
Vicki Wickham, she wrote a biography of
Dusty Springfield entitled
Dancing With Demons (2000). Valentine died at the age of 59 in 2003 after suffering from cancer for some time. ==Bibliography==