A tribute to Barry McIlheney: godfather of EMPIRE

Remembering the force of a man who launched the film magazine I went on to edit, after his sudden death this week

I found out on LinkedIn.

Fucking LinkedIn.

I can see Baz now: indignant, then laughing until his bones shake the creases out of his (always black) suit. The passing of the man in a suit who was never a guy in a suit, marked on a corporate social media network not known for its soul (sorry LinkedIn, self-awareness is a virtue).

When Barry McIlheney – Baz, Barry Mac, B Mac, Barney Tabasco – magazine publishing’s man in black, was all soul. All heart. All velocity. Yet he had died in his sleep in the early hours of Monday, at the age of 65.

It seemed…impossible.

Not the way it should have been, should be. Any of it.

“I can’t believe it,” I dashed out to the man whose post I’d stumbled on (the only redeeming feature was that it belonged to Ballymena’s Paul McNamee, editor of The Big Issue, the only man I know who’s as passionate about magazines as Barry – himself from Belfast, some 32 miles up the road - and with a soul to match). “What a man. What a force. How can that end?”.

Everyone has their own specific line to Barry, has been inching their way back along the thread this week. Editors, journalists, designers, chief execs, marketers, all speaking of when he launched their careers, offered a hand or bit of creative genius, made them laugh until everything hurt. Of what they feel they owe him.

I knew of Baz for the first decade or so of my magazine career, the towering guy who’d written for Melody Maker, edited Smash Hits, launched EMPIRE and then scaled the cliffs of management without mortally injuring his glorious character (how many can say the same…?). We met occasionally at industry events, his energy, generosity and raw charisma pulling in me and everyone else gathered around.

Then, after I moved to New York, Barry asked if I’d be interviewed on my ‘success story’ - he’d become CEO of industry body the PPA - really, loving the story of how I got my very first job (my mum cobbed a drive-through McDonalds application form at me, prompting me to call editor Phil Hilton a likely-criminal number of times, begging for a job as his PA). He invited me to be interviewed again a while later: the PPA Festival was falling during a short trip back to London, the offer of a ‘primetime’ slot and on-stage grilling by Mike Soutar, then-CEO of ShortList (which I had edited at 29).

But the thread I’ve been tracing this week, is obviously, inevitably that of EMPIRE. The magazine he launched in 1989 after a suggestion from magazine genius David Hepworth (who’d co-founded music title Q with fellow-g Mark Ellen). Barry edited it for three wild, successful years. My own stewardship as EIC of EMPIRE came in 2015, my shift some six.

Just a day after landing back from New York for the gig, Baz took me out for lunch to Balthazar in Covent Garden. This is normally when ex-editors tell you the score, often try and assert the rules as they still see them. Baz, though, simply offered support, asked what I dreamt of doing with the magazine and, of course, told me a raft of spectacular stories from his days in the chair (David Lynch agreeing to come to the EMPIRE Awards if he could smoke all the way from LA; sitting next to Quentin Tarantino at the Awards [rest of the story part redacted, part forgotten]; David Schwimmer boarding the EMPIRE boat at Cannes).

And while things had certainly changed in the twenty-odd years between our tenures – A BOAT AT CANNES, ARE YOU KIDDING – some things hadn’t.

“Our mission statement at the time,” wrote Baz for the magazine’s 400^th edition in 2022, “though we would never have called it that back then, was ‘At last, the movies get the magazine they deserve’. I like to think it was a promise we lived up to in those halcyon days of 1989, and a promise that holds true to this day."

The pledges to deliver on that promise: EMPIRE would always make the film the star; lift the velvet rope and go elbow-to-elbow with insiders, closer than anyone else to the movies as they were made; would review and rate film after film, tell you what was really worth watching. It doesn’t sound radical, but it was. A blueprint, yes, arguably laid down by Q, but with EMPIRE, naturally, a different animal was born.

Baz built the structure of our house, made it easy for me, for those who took up residence between. He’d created a magazine with the spirit, the passion, the tug in your belly when the lights go down, all laid out on the page. He filled it with easy humour, knew that film lovers could be, yeah, a laugh. Something I grappled with as EIC. Were we too earnest? Did we dial up the granular obsession and down the garrulous joy of movies? Maybe. I don’t know.

But, what I do know, revisiting Barry’s own reviews this week, is that I probably would have (erroneously) marked up a line in his 1992 critique of Glengarry Ross that actually caused me to bark like a dog upon re-reading: “What wonderful guys, what memorable shite”. (See also: “Costner is less punchable here than recent outings.” The Bodyguard; “[It] lands like some species of oversized condom.” The Blob; “Ford [is] back to attractive leading man status after the disaster that was his haircut in Presumed Innocent.” Regarding Henry.

Fuck, I thought. I should have been just a bit more Baz.

Throughout my six years, he was a constant. On hand for advice, encouragement, a rollicking good tale, an excellent lunch. He’d pop up in my inbox, “Terri White!” (always my full name) “I need a favour!”. Could I host something/judge something/bring a director or movie star along to something. I never once said no to Baz. He was the giant I stood on the shoulders of.

When we published a special issue for the 25^th anniversary of Reservoir Dogs, I handed my editor’s letter back to Baz, the-then editor. His reminisces, as always, a riot. Upon being told the director was called Quentin Tarantin, thinking: “Great. Some ridiculous-sounding movie made by some unknown bloke with an even more ridiculous name”. And then he watched it, realised it was his and the magazine’s “Year Zero”.

I’ve read the end of the letter many times since the news came (fucking LinkedIn). The last two lines forming a lump in my throat I’m struggling to shift. “We are now further away from Reservoir Dogs than Reservoir Dogs was from the first man on the moon. Just strike up those opening bars, though, of ‘Little Green Bag’…and I’m gone.”

Italics all his. Oh, Baz.

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Barry McIlheney, Baz, Barry Mac, B Mac, Barney Tabasco – 1960-2025.

My heartfelt condolences to Lola, Frankie and Mary, who Barry spoke of often with such chest-bursting pride, and his brother Colin.