Gathers interviews with Quentin Crisp, Boy George, Gary Glitter, Ted Nugent, Meatloaf, Lou Reed, Iron Maiden, Wham!, Duran Duran, Phil Collins, and Sting

Ask: The Chatter of Pop

Arts & Photography

Morley, Paul

Music

Faber&Faber

Morley revisits the past he has long struggled to forget: his childhood in Stockport, his teenage years, and the unfathomable suicide of his depressive father. He also considers how the deaths of Ian Curtis, Elvis Presley and Marc Bolan might have had an impact on the story.

Nothing

Biographies & Memoirs

Critically-acclaimed and bestselling author Paul Morley's long-awaited biography of Factory Records co-founder and Manchester icon Tony Wilson. "When forced to pick between truth and legend, print the legend." --&nbsp; Tony Wilson To write about Tony Wilson, AKA Anthony H. Wilson, is to write about a number of public and private characters and personalities, a clique of unreliable narrators, constantly changing shape and form. At the helm of Factory Records and the Haçienda, Wilson unleashed landmark acts such as Joy Division and New Order into the world as he pursued myriad other creative endeavours, appointing himself a custodian of Manchester's legacy of innovation and change. To Paul Morley he was this and much more: bullshitting hustler, flashy showman, aesthetic adventurer, mean factory boss, self-deprecating chancer, intellectual celebrity, loyal friend, shrewd mentor, insatiable publicity seeker. It was Morley to whom Wilson left a daunting final request: to write this book. From Manchester With Love, then, is the biography of a man who became eponymous with his city, of the music he championed and the myths he made, of love and hate, of life and death. In the cultural theatre of Manchester, Tony Wilson broke in and took centre-stage.

From Manchester with Love: The Life and Opinions of Tony Wilson

Arts & Literature

A haunting, tragic exploration of Michael Jackson's life, repackaged for the tenth anniversary of the singer's death. Michael Jackson died on June 25 2009 in Los Angeles, from of acute propofol and benzodiazepine intoxication (according to Wikipedia). The one-time King of Pop was preparing for one last assault on the mainstream with a proposed 50 night run of shows in London (thereby trumping his arch-rival, Prince, who had just concluded his legendary 21 Nights). His exhaustion, paranoia, and general ill-heath were an open secret. He had lived many lives and inhabited many bodies; PT Barnum, Fred Astaire, and Peter Pan in one mortal coil. His death was mourned by hundreds of millions of fans, but it was almost as if he had been dead for some time already. And in his death, in vivid technicolor, we relived the dreams, nightmares, fantasies, and perversions that we had all projected on to him as a celebrity for four decades. Paul Morley’s short biographical portrait of Michael Jackson looks at how we turned the most outrageous child star talent of the late 20th century into a monster; how his decline soundtracked the end of Pop and the end of American Imperialism; how his once staggeringly modern and funky music became secondary to the dysfunctional freak show of watching a vulnerable man literally disintegrate. Tender, erudite, and provocative, Morley's monograph documents a tragedy that is so Shakespearean in scale that it obscures the legacy of the last of the great Song and Dance Men. This is a rare piece of pop cultural alchemy that cuts through the myth in a way that only a writer as great as Paul Morley could do.

The Awfully Big Adventure: Michael Jackson in the Afterlife

Faber & Faber Social

Here is the north, this is where it lies, where it belongs, full of itself, high up above everything else, surrounded by everything that isn't the north, that's off the page, somewhere else...Paul Morley grew up in Reddish, less than five miles from Manchester and even closer to Stockport. Ever since the age of seven, old enough to form an identity but too young to be aware that 'southern' was a category, Morley has always thought of himself as a northerner. What that meant, he wasn't entirely sure. It was for him, as it is for millions of others in England, an absolute, indisputable truth. But he wondered why, when as a child he was so ready to abandon his Cheshire roots and support the much more successful Lancashire cricket team, and when as an adult he found he could travel between London and Manchester in less than two hours, he continued to say he was from the North.Forty years after walking down grey pavements on his way to school, Paul explores what it means to be northern and why those who consider themselves to be believe it so strongly. Like industrial towns dotted across great green landscapes of hills and valleys, Morley breaks up his own history with fragments of his region's own social and cultural background. Stories of his Dad spreading margarine on Weetabix stand alongside those about northern England's first fish and chip shop in Mossley, near Oldham. And out of these lyrical memories rise many disconnected voices of the north; Wordsworth's poetry, Larkin's reflections and Formby's guitar. Morley maps the entire history of northern England through its people and the places they call home - from the frozen landscapes of the Ice Age to the Norman invasion to the construction of the Blackpool tower - to show that the differences go deeper than just an accent.Ambitiously sweeping and beautifully impressionistic, without ever losing touch with the minute details of life above the M25, The North is an extraordinary mixture of memoir and history, a unique insight into how we, as a nation, classify the unclassifiable.

The North: (And Almost Everything In It)

Historical

Bloomsbury Publishing

Has pop burnt itself out? Paul Morley takes the reader on an epic drive through the history of music to find out. A succession of celebrities, geniuses and other protagonists led by Madonna, Kraftwerk, Brian Eno, Erik Satie, John Cage and Wittgenstein appear to give their points of view. Detours and sights along the way include Missy Elliot, Jarvis Cocker, Eminem, Human League, Radiohead, Lou Reed, Now! That's What I Call Music, Ornette Coleman and the ghost of Elvis Presley.

Words and Music: A History of Pop in the Shape of a City

University of Georgia Press

Paul Morley knew Joy Division intimately. He not only wrote extensively and evocatively of the mood, atmosphere and ephemeral terror” that enveloped the group and their doomed front man, Ian Curtis, but he was present when Curtis suffered his life-changing epileptic seizure following a London concert in April 1980 and was the only journalist permitted to view Curtis’ corpse. Joy Division: Piece By Piece encompasses his complete writings on the group, both contemporary and retrospective. In addition to collecting all of Morley’s classic works about the band, the book includes his eloquent Ian Curtis obituary and hindsight pieces on the group’s significance, framed by an extensive retrospective essay, as well as his reviews of the films 24 Hour Party People and Control. Morley, who emerged from Manchester at the same time as Joy Division, effortlessly evokes that city’s zeitgeist and psycho-geography to tell the story of this uniquely intense group.

Joy Division: Piece by Piece

Humor & Entertainment

Plexus Publishing

Joy Division: Piece by Piece is the definitive collection of writings on the legendary cult band. In addition to collecting Morley's own classic works about the band from the late '70s/early '80s, this unique book includes his eloquent Ian Curtis obituary and his hindsight pieces on the significance of the group, framed by an extensive retrospective essay. Contemporary elements include Morley’s critique of the films 24 Hour Party People which told the story of the band’s record label, Factory and Control, for which the author visited the set during production. Most movingly, Morley includes the original text that grew into his literary work Nothing, which parallels the suicide of Curtis with that of his own father. He also evokes the zeitgeist and the 'psycho-geography' of Manchester, which combined to produce the most uniquely intense rock group ever.

JOY DIVISION: PIECE BY PIECE: Writing About Joy Division 1977 2007

A Sound Mind: How I Fell in Love with Classical Music (and Decided to Rewrite its Entire History)

A Sound Mind

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Books by Morley, Paul