Paul Morley

2:30pm Thursday 3rd January 2008

Comments (0)   Have your say »

HE LEFT Manchester in the blink of an eye. One minute in 1979, standing attentively in the rear of The Russell Club in Hulme with his girlfriend of the time and soaking in bands such as local eclectics Ludus and unpretentious visitors, Crass before uploading his thoughts onto the following week's NME.

Then, at the precise point when the pos-punk structure seemed up and running and London papers were at least taking notice of parochial outposts such as Manchester - yes, with Joy Division in speedy ascendence - Paul Morley quit the town for the glamorous environs of the capital, where he could mingle to good effect with media bodes and surly hipster.

"You can't really be in a young band nowadays without being influenced by JD. They are right there with the Velvet Underground. All that people like me can do is recognise how lucky were to be near them and try and convey why they were and remain so special to us."

Paul Morley

We caught him a few years later, on the run from gun toting taxman - like many a hapless freelance - tentatively sneaking along an unlikely pavement in Reddish.

"Paul...Paul...is that really you?" we screamed, and it was. A young, penniless Paul Morley, wholly unaware that, within weeks, producer Trevor Horn would pick him up, dust him off and use his PR brilliance as the heart of a new eccentric pop label, named, by Morley, Zang Tumb Tumb (ZTT), the name being the sound of a drum.

After almost signing Manchester's Distractions offshoot, The Secret 7, he hauled in his mates from Liverpool. Hooky gay guys, Frankie Goes to Hollywood. Occasionally, in 2008, he still receives a royalty cheques. His life twisted into overdrive.

Today, we are used to seeing Morley hurling upbeat, intelligently quirky lines into BBC 2 arts' programmes, his interjections swaying wildly from inspired perception to maddeningly pretentious, such is the Morley way.

This is true to his writing, which always rallied hard against the stoic library-like critiques of, say Mojo or Uncut. It is writing to love and loathe, often within the same elongated sentence, it is always fun, often gloriously illuminating and occasionally critically scathing.

However, throughout a career peppered with confrontations with pop and rock stars, Morley has remained an unashamed champion of the pop song - one band towers above the rest in terms of intensity, intrigue and fascinating mediumistic power; Joy Division.

Give or take the pop diversions of the early eighties, Morley has been writing about Joy Division since before Joy Division existed as such. Indeed, rom the day he and I stumbled across their lumpen punk set at Manchester Electric Circus in 1978. The band, then named Warsaw, promised to supply little that would echo down the ages.

Morley's writing, which can be as maddening as it is illuminating, has always seemed perfectly suited to Joy Division, a band who always seemed to beg further investigation.

Now his writings are gathered together, slightly reshaped and welded by up-to-date interludes which accept the unprecedented fact that, a band who collapsed in tragedy 27 years ago, have finally gained their true status on the world's stage, via films, books and careful remastering of their two still astonishing albums, Unknown Pleasures and Closer. I wondered if this latent success always seemed inevitable to Morley.

"I remember when I first held a copy of Unknown Pleasures, complete with Peter Saville's sleeve and it just looked and felt and sounded like the kind of record that would sit levelly next to, say Led Zeppelin or The Velvet Underground of The Stooges. It seemed weird to me that a band from our local area should produce something like that. I mean, it just didn't happen. We produced bands like The Drones and Slaughter and the Digs in those days, in Manchester."

In Morley's case, he litereally' produced an EP by The Drones, a band he managed for a short while before unceremoniously slamming' their debut album in an NME review that sent ripples of discontent through late seventies Manchester.

By that time Morley had decided to decamp for London. I wondered, was this a decision that would later help him gain greater objectivity, in particular in writing about Joy Division.

"Yes, Oh absolutely yes," he confirmed.

"I think it was essential for me, even though I understand why people in Manchester felt a bit betrayed. Tony (Wilson) was furious with me for leaving and, of course, he never did. But I just knew that I had to broaden my experience. People forget that the London based music press just wasn't interested in Manchester at all and the only way I was going to make any headway was to move."

It was a move that helped bring Joy Division - and later, their rival Factory band, A Certain Ratio, to the NME's hallowed front cover. The Ratio piece is included in the book....as are peices on Cabaret Voltaire and OMD. I wondered why?

"It helps add a certain context," he said.

"The book does pick Joy Division out and make them the central force, but it wasn't just a story about them. In fact, I admit, the book is as much about me as the band...it's just MY story. I am not saying it is any better or more important than other stories....Manchester is a great story and it belongs to everyone who played a part.

"You could centre this book on Vini Reilly or Mark E Smith or Morrissey and obviously other books and films will flow. But it is also about everyone who played a part...as you did and you have written books. Its a story that goes from a small huddle of scruffy punks in Collyhurst to the city of regeneration today."

That stated, Morley careful to play down the rather simplistic notion that the road to Beetham Tower and Urbis began with Pete Saville designing a Factory poster.

"Yes, it is easy to jump to that conclusion but, if the Manchester punk scene hadn't happened or Factory hadn't happened... would the city be any different today? I honestly don't know the answer to that but I do know that a great many remarkable people were involved in creating some kind of change... and I don't just mean Wilson, Gretton, Saville and co... I mean many people were involved and it does now seem that something unique happened in Manchester which is why I still want to write about it."

And Joy Division in particular, remarkable for the endlessly intriuging gulf between their laddish, some might suggest, clueless' natures and the extraordinary lasting sophistication of their music. It's an old question....but how could those boys have made Closer?

"I don't think they know how they did it themselves," suggested Morley.

"I remember interviewing them, as you did, and they could barely speak. Ian as well. They didn't seem particularly knowledgeable or artistically driven, It was like talking to a road gang. Then you would listen to their music and it was clearly, even then, something so effortlessly special. I don't think they had a clue how special it was...right up until, perhaps now. Now it is really coming home to them because, in a sense, the music they made then is outliving them."

To the detriment of New Order perhaps?

"New Order made some great music but they are not particularly fashionable at the moment, are they? I think that will return. It's just that the focus has shifted back to Joy Division and I sense it will go on and on.

"You can't really be in a young band nowadays without being influenced by JD. They are right there with the Velvet Underground. All that people like me can do is recognise how lucky were to be near them and try and convey why they were and remain so special to us."

But could the resonance of their music actually fade with this increased exposure as it surely would had Ian Curtis remained alive? Or are they still perfectly sealed in their state of youth and time?

"That's a really good question because the time factor has now been removed. They will always be young men, as such but over-familiarity might still drain some of the power. It could happen."

It could be that people just become bored with endlessly hearing about Joy Division and as such, books such as yours and mine, will not help.

"Yes, that might be the case. But I think the music will always return, even if it falls out of favour for a while."

And for Paul Morley? Is he lost to Manchester? Forever the London bod?

"Oh I don't know. There is a possibility that I might return and it is something I have thought about. I have always said that the moment someone calls me a Londoner, I will come straight back."

I just have, I think.

"Well, it's possible. I am certainly looking to the north in terms of writing so, in a sense, I have already returned."

Piece by Piece: Writing about Joy Division 1976-2007 (Plexus) is out now.