Joy Division: Piece by Piece by Paul Morley

"This collection tells not only the extraordinary tale of Joy Division and Factory, but also the story of Morley himself... essential reading." - Word
"Illuminating, even revelatory. This book is a quixotic scripture for true believers." - Metro
"[Morley's] engagement and insight are unmatched... If you fancy a sometimes inspirational, sometimes maddening labyrinth of ideas... well, this is the way, step inside." - Q
"Joy Division: Piece by Piece offers a fascinating insight into what it feels like to have a rock legend crystallise inside your own head... A remarkable achievement." - Ben Thompson, The Independent on Sunday
"Another book about Joy Division? No, THE book. One engages here with a master of his craft, unafraid to surrender control to the reader wise enough to know that all writing, however lapidary it may seem, is provisional." - Matthew d'Ancona, The Spectator
“It’s almost always brilliant. It’s everything that good rock writing should be: unfolding, examining and always straining to find a glimpse of the magic.” - Mick Middles, Record Collector
Joy Division are the perennial cult post-punk band. Four young men with weight on their shoulders, the drama and tension of their music remains unsurpassed.
Paul Morley was their contemporary and Northern English compatriot, who wrote extensively and evocatively of the ‘mood, atmosphere and ephemeral terror’ that enveloped this unique group and their doomed front man, vocalist Ian Curtis. These are his complete writings on Joy Division, both contemporary and retrospective, forming a close personal account of the band’s brief, turbulent history: from primitive beginnings as Manchester punk band Warsaw, to Curtis’ near-fatal epileptic seizure following a London concert, and his tragic suicide in May 1980.
As Morley says, ‘The more that time moves on, the more I have to say about them.’ In addition to collecting all of the author’s journalistic writings on the band from the late 1970s/early 1980s, this unique work includes retrospective essays on the significance of the group, the post-punk era zeitgeist and the ‘psycho-geography’ of Manchester.
Contemporary elements include Morley’s articles on the background to Anton Corbijn’s acclaimed film, Control, recounting the brief life of Ian Curtis. Movingly, Morley also includes the original text that grew into his literary work Nothing, paralleling the two suicides that marked his life: those of his own father, and his young contemporary Curtis.
Paul Morley is the UK’s foremost pop-cultural commentator. At the New Musical Express, during its 1977-1983 heyday, he pioneered post-modern rock journalism, influenced by Lester Bangs, Roland Barthes, JG Ballard and Tom Wolfe. In the 1980s he regularly contributed to the new glossy style mags, writing for the first few issues of The Face before moving to Blitz.
Paul embraced the style-obsessed new decade with a guest appearance in the video for ABC’s big hit, ‘The Look of Love’. He staked his claim to the 1980s as co-founder of the Zang Tuum Tumb record label, with producer Trevor Horn. In 1984 ZTT would dominate the charts with Frankie Goes To Hollywood, whose bold-type slogan T-shirts (‘Frankie Say Arm The Unemployed’) were Morley’s brainchild. With Horn and Anne Dudley he also formed the label’s influential house band, Art of Noise.
In 1985 Faber published a collection of Paul’s NME journalism called Ask – The Chatter of Pop. He has also been represented in the Penguin Book of Rock ’n’ Roll Writing and The Faber Book of Pop. The 1980s saw his territory expanding from rock journalism, with TV criticism for Blitz (1985-1988), The New Statesman (1990-1991), The Guardian (1992-1993), Esquire (1994-1997) and GQ (1998-1999). He also wrote magazine articles on figures as diverse as Martin Amis, Naomi Campbell, Tony Curtis, Charlton Heston, John Major, Norman Tebbit, George Best, Gary Lineker, and his old Manchester compatriot Morrissey.
Paul moved into the TV medium as one of the original presenters of BBC2's The Late Show in 1989, and also made two documentary series entitled Without Walls: The Thing Is for Channel 4 in the early 1990s, which included films on Motorways, Boredom, Brian Eno and Entertainment. He wrote, produced and co-directed a fifty-minute documentary on New Order for ITV and an Omnibus film on Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer for BBC1.
Recent documentaries he has written and presented feature subjects as diverse as Ikea, Roy Lichtenstein and Kylie Minogue, and he is currently filming a documentary about pop music for BBC4 featuring Robert Wyatt, the Sugababes, Sir Peter Blake, Suggs, the Slits and Richard X. In the past year he has written sleeve notes for albums by Bryan Ferry, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Depeche Mode, Joy Division, Echo and the Bunnymen and Josef K.
Today, Paul Morley is a regular contributor to a range of magazines and newspapers, including The Sunday Telegraph and Observer Music Monthly. As a broadcaster he regularly appears on BBC2’s arts programme, Newsnight Review. He has also recorded two albums as half of ambient musical duo Infantjoy (with James Banbury).
Paul’s first complete book, Nothing, was published by Faber in 2000, an acclaimed meditation on the suicide of his father. (‘ . . . Should be read by anyone interested in the myriad responses to grief that we have to deal with in our lives.’ – British Medical Journal.) His second, Words and Music: A History of Pop in the Shape of a City, a musical polemic extending ‘from Stockhausen to Steps’, was published by Bloomsbury in 2003. (‘One of the top three books about pop ever written, up there with Lester Bangs and Nik Cohn.’ – Uncut.) After Joy Division: Piece by Piece, Paul Morley’s next project will be a book on the North.
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