RIP Peter McGough

[thethinker48]

RIP

Didn't realize he passed away from cancer a few days ago

 

[Knight9]

I hadn't seen it anywhere. RIP.

 

[Sides]

Used to read his stuff in the muscle mags all the time. I especially remember his article in Flex Magazine back in 1993, with the famous black-and-white pics by Kevin Horton of an utterly huge Dorian Yates seven weeks out from the Mr Olympia. We had never seen anything like Dorian at that time; he was so far ahead of any other bodybuilder of the day that it just blew your mind to see how monstrously big he was.

Sad to hear that McGough has passed on. Seems like more and more of the past is crumbling away every day.

 

[thethinker48]

Used to read his stuff in the muscle mags all the time. I especially remember his article in Flex Magazine back in 1993, with the famous black-and-white pics by Kevin Horton of an utterly huge Dorian Yates seven weeks out from the Mr Olympia. We had never seen anything like Dorian at that time; he was so far ahead of any other bodybuilder of the day that it just blew your mind to see how monstrously big he was.

Sad to hear that McGough has passed on. Seems like more and more of the past is crumbling away every day.

2020 has been some year...

A lot of guys (including myself) won't ever realize the novelty of magazines before the internet. You had no other way to access information on bodybuilders, and contests. I can't imagine waiting months to find out contest results; you literally had to be in love with bodybuilding to go that much out of your way to follow it. Now it's like every other kid with an instagram can yawn and scroll through bodybuilders

That 93 Kevin Horton shoot with Peter's article is one of things that threw Dorian into the monster category for the fans too; Dorian was impressive in 92, but retarded looking in 93. I think Peter also saw him at the World championships and knew he'd be something special

 

[lookslikesausage]

Well said Thinker. Flex, Muscular Development, Ironman Magazine, and MMI were pretty much it if you wanted to read about bodybuilding and see photos from the shows. Hell, i remember Greg Zulak's Q & A section in MMI is where first saw direct references to specific steroids.

 

[Dugbet]

My favourite writer in industry by far, he could transfer like no one all the details of an event or show and make you feel that you were living it live.

RIP

 

[Love_to_Bodybuild]

He was from uk that's how he knew about Doriani watched an interview with him and Dorian in iti noticed from his pictures around bodybuilding interviews he lost weight past few years

Bodybuilding is great do it while were young but don't abuse , when it's time to hang it up, it's time

I was around when magazines were still going as I started in 2002

He's in many pictures from the ninities as he was a writer as you all may know

 

[Dugbet]

The Life of Peter McGough (1949-2020) - The Barbell

After a seven-year battle with cancer, Peter McGough, the giant of bodybuilding journalism, died at age 71. We celebrate his life and career.

www.thebarbell.com

 

[benchmstr]

I honestly thought he was already dead! I met him twice when I was 18 years old. Once at the Arnold where I was powerlifting, and at the Olympia expo. Dude was polite and bullshitted with me and some friends for a good while.

the reason I thought he was already dead was because he seemed really old to me then! That was almost 20 years ago!

but nonetheless sad to hear, my only interactions with him were really good. Seemed like a solid dude. He didn’t even need to speak with us but he went out of his way to come over and congratulate

 

[FK86]

I'm 34 and miss the magazine days. I still have all mine. FLEX had a different tone than all the others. The goal was to make everything mythic, larger-than-life. McGough was top dog and his writing style definitely influenced Julian Schmidt, Greg Merritt, and Shawn Perine. Greg is the only one left now. Schmidt passed in '18, Perine died of lung cancer (non-smoker) at the age of 51 in '17, and now McGough. RIP

 

[nothuman]

Wow, used to read his stories in MD magazine. Sad news for bodybuilding.

 

[Sides]

2020 has been some year...

A lot of guys (including myself) won't ever realize the novelty of magazines before the internet. You had no other way to access information on bodybuilders, and contests. I can't imagine waiting months to find out contest results; you literally had to be in love with bodybuilding to go that much out of your way to follow it. Now it's like every other kid with an instagram can yawn and scroll through bodybuilders

This is absolutely true, and young guys today have no idea what it was like back then, or how much we all take for granted today. @hawkmoon and others have pointed it out in the 1980's thread, but it was a completely different world in the 80's and early 90's, before the wide acceptance of computers and cell phones and the internet.

Back then, the magazines and friends in the gym were all we had. If it wasn't printed...on paper...in Muscle & Fitness, Flex Magazine, Ironman, MD, MMI, and other mags, or if you didn't have friends in the gym who were insiders and connected to people in the scene, then you didn't know about it. And you had to wait months for anything to get printed in the magazines. Granted, sometimes you could watch something about bodybuilding, powerlifting, or the World's Strongest Man competitions on ABC's Wide World of Sports or other network programming, but these were really few and far between. When ESPN started, then we could stay up until 3am or set your VCR to watch American Muscle or the Flex Magazine Workout, or Kiana Tom's Flex Appeal for the hot fitness girls. Vince McMahon's brief foray into bodybuilding gave us WBF Bodystars on Saturday mornings for a little while, with it's sanitized but flashy version of the sport.

But information was so much harder to come by in those days. And when you did get information from the magazines, you had to sort out what was true and what was lies in between all the supplement ads and the Weider Principles and everybody else who was trying to make a buck from altering the truth to fit their business model.

That's why Dan Duchaine's Underground Steroid Handbook, or Bill Phillips' Muscle Media 2000, were so revolutionary in their day, although the scandalous information contained in them would be taken for granted today. However, for a lot of us, although we knew about steroids from our gym friends, these were our first maps to navigate our way through a world that had been hidden in shadows for a long time. And that's why Bill Phillips' abandoning his bodybuilding roots to make more money in the mainstream fitness world was taken so bitterly as a betrayal of our community.

It's funny to see how things changed over the years, if you are a historian of the sport. In the 60's and 70's, it was not unusual to read interviews with bodybuilding champions in the magazines where they credited their results to hard training, good eating, and anabolic steroids. Although rarely mentioned in the mainstream press, between bodybuilders, steroids were seen as products of science, and a way to make the most of your potential. Then came the "Just Say No To Drugs" attitude of the 1980's, and everything had to go underground and hidden, even as bodybuilding reached it's greatest appeal to the common population.

I looked forward to reading Peter McGough's work, and the gossip column of Don Ross, and Greg Zulak and Dave Fisher's columns, and Bradley Steiner and Bill Starr's work, and so many other writers. But their importance to us in the old days is hard to comprehend in the modern world, where everybody can get whatever information they want from the forums and Facebook Groups and Instagram and YouTube videos anytime they want. Not that the information is necessarily true, but then again it never was.

You always had to sort through the information to figure out what the truth was, and what was just somebody trying to sell you something. And that's still true today. The one thing that's never changed is that someone's always trying to find an angle to make money off selling you something.

But I look back with nostalgia on a time that was much simpler, even though so much of what we believed was an illusion. But then illusions are beautiful dreams, and if people were just telling us a story, who doesn't like to hear a good story?

 

[Bio]

Another of the men that helped build up bodybuilding is gone. RIP

 

[thethinker48]

This is absolutely true, and young guys today have no idea what it was like back then, or how much we all take for granted today. @hawkmoon and others have pointed it out in the 1980's thread, but it was a completely different world in the 80's and early 90's, before the wide acceptance of computers and cell phones and the internet.

Back then, the magazines and friends in the gym were all we had. If it wasn't printed...on paper...in Muscle & Fitness, Flex Magazine, Ironman, MD, MMI, and other mags, or if you didn't have friends in the gym who were insiders and connected to people in the scene, then you didn't know about it. And you had to wait months for anything to get printed in the magazines. Granted, sometimes you could watch something about bodybuilding, powerlifting, or the World's Strongest Man competitions on ABC's Wide World of Sports or other network programming, but these were really few and far between. When ESPN started, then we could stay up until 3am or set your VCR to watch American Muscle or the Flex Magazine Workout, or Kiana Tom's Flex Appeal for the hot fitness girls. Vince McMahon's brief foray into bodybuilding gave us WBF Bodystars on Saturday mornings for a little while, with it's sanitized but flashy version of the sport.

But information was so much harder to come by in those days. And when you did get information from the magazines, you had to sort out what was true and what was lies in between all the supplement ads and the Weider Principles and everybody else who was trying to make a buck from altering the truth to fit their business model.

That's why Dan Duchaine's Underground Steroid Handbook, or Bill Phillips' Muscle Media 2000, were so revolutionary in their day, although the scandalous information contained in them would be taken for granted today. However, for a lot of us, although we knew about steroids from our gym friends, these were our first maps to navigate our way through a world that had been hidden in shadows for a long time. And that's why Bill Phillips' abandoning his bodybuilding roots to make more money in the mainstream fitness world was taken so bitterly as a betrayal of our community.

It's funny to see how things changed over the years, if you are a historian of the sport. In the 60's and 70's, it was not unusual to read interviews with bodybuilding champions in the magazines where they credited their results to hard training, good eating, and anabolic steroids. Although rarely mentioned in the mainstream press, between bodybuilders, steroids were seen as products of science, and a way to make the most of your potential. Then came the "Just Say No To Drugs" attitude of the 1980's, and everything had to go underground and hidden, even as bodybuilding reached it's greatest appeal to the common population.

I looked forward to reading Peter McGough's work, and the gossip column of Don Ross, and Greg Zulak and Dave Fisher's columns, and Bradley Steiner and Bill Starr's work, and so many other writers. But their importance to us in the old days is hard to comprehend in the modern world, where everybody can get whatever information they want from the forums and Facebook Groups and Instagram and YouTube videos anytime they want. Not that the information is necessarily true, but then again it never was.

You always had to sort through the information to figure out what the truth was, and what was just somebody trying to sell you something. And that's still true today. The one thing that's never changed is that someone's always trying to find an angle to make money off selling you something.

But I look back with nostalgia on a time that was much simpler, even though so much of what we believed was an illusion. But then illusions are beautiful dreams, and if people were just telling us a story, who doesn't like to hear a good story?

Great post!

I think this is also why guys back then who built impressive physiques with not the best gifts had more brains than anyone gave them credit for; if you did the dumb stuff, your physique showed it. You had to use your brain.

Lee Priest's 40 set arm routine wasn't going to make your arm 22 inches...later down the road one figures out; nothing will

 

[TRENUP80]

So sad to hear. He was the pioneer of writers back in magazine days. I'm fortunate that im 40 to have read some of his amazing articles back in the day. He was a great ambassador for the sport no doubt. Another gone too soon. RIP

 

[method2madness]

I read as many of his articles as I could back in the 90's. THats when I first started competing and i was guided and driven by much of his work. He will be missed by folks in their forties and up who came up in bodybuilding at that time.

 

[pickapeck]

Rest in Peace Peter McGough.

 

[Rot-Iron66]

Peter was a great guy. Another iron-game writer/legend passed away earlier in the year as well (David Gentle). RIP...