'Where's the rock'n'roll?'

Paul Rees helped to revive the rock title Kerrang!. Now, he tells Clare Dwyer Hogg, he hopes to do the same for its ailing stablemate, Q magazine

Paul Rees is the new editor of Q magazine and the man credited with making a success of Kerrang!, the one-time heavy-metal title. During his two-year editorship, the circulation of Kerrang! went up by 60 per cent – it was 83,988 in the last audit period. And although he denies it was a solo effort, the move of the publication away from tight leather trousers toward a more diverse music style seemed to coincide directly with his editorship. Suddenly, it was cool.

"The thing with Kerrang!", he says, "was that the stench of spandex hung over it for years – every time you spoke to somebody, you'd try, never that successfully, to get them away from saying, 'Kerrang! – the heavy metal magazine'."

But this year's Kerrang! awards proved that things have moved on from the days when it seemed fascinated by ageing rockers and men who bit the heads off bats on stage. Bands such as Ash and the Red Hot Chili Peppers won awards, and – finally seeming cooler than the Brits – the ceremony was a big pat on the back for Emap, the parent company.

Now, at 34, Rees is the editor of Emap's flagship title. If a visible difference is not apparent in the magazine yet, it's because he has been in his new workplace only two weeks. When I meet him, it is in the space between a television interview and a meeting that, he says, will go on "for hours".

He is unassuming: not in a boring way (his red zip-up top with go-faster stripes and multiple earrings wouldn't allow that) but in his casual manner. He apologises for slouching. He looks like the friend of a friend whom you would bump into in the pub. Except perhaps with more enthusiasm. Rees is excited. How does he feel, being the editor of such a music institution?

"It's a great job; a fantastic job," he says. And is he ready for the glamorous lifestyle? "Well, it's not a case of swanning around in a chauffeur-driven limo." He laughs, and quickly leans forward. "I have got a travel card, though."

Joking aside, Rees says he is committed to what Q stands for, and to what it could stand for. At this point, the magazine's circulation figure is 160,950 – that's about 20 per cent down on the same time last year, when the figure was 200,159. He says, loyally, that Q was already on an upward curve when he joined, but in reality, he has a challenge on his hands. How will he tackle it?

"I'm a music fan. I like music." Which is a good thing, really, but turns out to be something of an understatement when he goes on to explain what his ideas are. Essentially, he wants Q "to surprise and excite people". And how exactly will he do that? "The Q revolution will be to strip it down and rebuild it. We're not going to go away right now and redesign it – it's had enough of that. It is about reshaping, refocusing, and I think it'll become apparent by the editorial content that we'll just continue to move in the right direction."

The plan is to take all the good things about Q and intensify them: make the writing deeper, the coverage of new bands broader, the pictures more – for want of a better word – glamorous. In effect, the plan is to change the image of Q as a magazine that dwells on what was good in the past. Rees wants it to concentrate on the present and the future – especially on the future. Publications such as the NME have long believed that they can make or break bands. Rees wants Q to break new ground in this area, but knows that the only way it will work is to build on the magazine's authority and develop it so that "if Q gets behind something and says, 'This matters', people will know it's going to be something worth investigating."

Of course, the potential pitfalls are numerous. The topography of Q is a much wider, more rugged one than that of Kerrang!, and getting it right is a tough business when you're trying to be cutting-edge.

"You have to be aware – know what works and what doesn't work," Rees says. "But the worst thing is trying to second-guess the readers, thinking, 'What would they like?' We need to tell them what they should like." What he thinks it comes down to, ultimately, is that "music magazines are a simple thing – it really is about great stories, great pictures, great presentation, and that's it. That's what makes it. You do what you believe in."

It is a sound philosophy, especially when you consider the plentiful competition. As well as obvious rivals such as Uncut magazine, the radio station Xfm, which prides itself on playing "tomorrow's music today", has just launched the magazine X-ray.

But, Rees says, Q doesn't always have to be first. "The important thing is to do all ranges of music, and do everything with the same authority, the same passion and the same depth. The messy business of hyping things out of proportion is, I think, dangerous. Readers are intelligent and sophisticated enough to be able to make their own decisions."

Despite strong views on his new magazine, he's not sure what the official mission statement will be yet. But he knows what he wants it to mean. "It needs to be edgy and it needs to be exciting; it needs to be about people who matter; it needs to be now; it needs to be glamorous and it needs to reflect a rock'n'roll attitude to life. It needs to have that swagger. I think it just needs to be a bit more exciting, a bit more passionate, and I think they are easily achievable things."

Easy for him to say; harder to achieve. But there's something about those go-faster stripes on his jacket that says he'll do it.