A Record Label With A Indifference To Profit That Bordered On Performance Art

And so, I finally finished Paul Morley's Joy Division: Piece By Piece. Mind you, I didn't start it until last week (which makes my frantic hunt for it last November a little laughable). It's the book he's been destined to write ever since he crossed the path of Warsaw, and yet at the same time, it's an evasion of that book, an abdication of his responsibility to fulfil the role Tony Wilson appointed to him, while at the same time fulfilling it. Typical Morley, in other words (the bleak humour of Wilson and him battling back and forth on the question of whether Wilson really did pull him in to see Ian Curtis's dead body is one of the book's many highlights).

It repeats itself, and yet every repetition, every article showing something from a slightly different angle, sometimes off by only a few sentences, reveal a bit more of the story. Morley flips between the past and the present, between evasions and truth, evasions and lies, evasions, evasions, and the look back in the mirror, apologising to Alan Eramus over and over.

And then everybody dies.

Wilson, of course, had the temerity to do it while the book was being written; Morley even initially thinks that he's managed to pull off another wonderful publicity stunt to showoff the release of Control, before the reality sets in. I love how the book repeats itself in miniature at this point; a series of obituaries follows; all written by Morley, all different, and yet all the same. How this fool of a man managed to drag Manchester into the 21st century seemingly by sheer force of his own personality, like he knew it was his destiny all along. You couldn't help but love and hate him equally, it seems.

Sadly, I don't think Paul is ever going to write the book I want to read (not that I don't love everything of his I have, but I'm greedy). He talks a little about how he spent the 1980s trying to avoid Joy Division, to escape Manchester in the folds of New Pop and ZTT. I really want to hear this story, as the machinations of ZTT, Frankie and The Art of Noise are still somewhat shrouded (as, obviously, ZTT never had a Paul Morley quite like Factory had Paul Morley). And a collection of the Morley/Penman years? I would swoon. Get to it, somebody!

It's like when everybody laughed in 24 Hour Party People when we lost money on every copy sold of Blue Monday because of the expensive sleeve. I thought, you bastards - that's my life, that is, that really happened!
Bernard Sumner

currently playing: Lovage - Strangers On A Train
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