Record Play Pause

by Stephen Morris

  I also got an accounts book, which I suggested we could use to record our expenses, gig money and so forth.

  ‘What do we need that for, you daft bastard?’ (meaning the book not the Tandberg) was all the thanks and encouragement I got from Bernard and Hooky.

  1 Tandberg tape machine £45

  4 tins of coke £1.50

  Those were the ledger’s only entries before it was consigned to a cupboard of wasted dreams for eternity.

  Things were changing. Ian in what I guessed was an attempt to provide some company for Debbie while he was out gallivanting bought a puppy. A black and white bundle of fluff he named Candy. A sheepdog of sorts. A bundle of fluff with remarkably large paws.

  Now I’m no expert but I did know one thing about dogs. Large paws equals large dog.

  Ian thought otherwise.

  ‘No, the kennels said it’s only a miniature. It won’t get much bigger.’

  It didn’t take long. The animal expanded exponentially. Over the next twelve months my weary dawn drop-offs at Barton Street were lightened by the sight of Ian reappearing from his front door moments later. A freshly lit Marlboro in his mouth, his long mac flapping as he was dragged from the house by the eager and ever expanding hound, Ian would laugh and wave to me while struggling to keep up with Candy’s pursuit of the milkman.

  My mother, who was an expert on all things canine, remarked at hearing of the singer and sheepdog combo.

  ‘Be a baby next.’

  17

  THE MANAGER

  What are my ambitions? My ambitions are never to work again. When I was twenty-three I decided that working was pretty boring anyway. So I decided to give up working.

  Rob Gretton, in Play at Home (1983)

  When young people looking to get ahead in the music game ask me for advice (yes, I know that seems unlikely), I usually respond with, ‘Get yourself a manager, it will save you a lot of grief in the long run.’

  This advice is generally not what they’re looking for and is universally ignored because young people always know best. They want me to point them to the secret unmarked door that leads to success and lend them the key.

  A manager is the band’s helmsman and navigator. You work out your destination collectively and he or she gets you where you want to go (or once thought you wanted to go). Managers also tend to serve as emotional punchbags, functioning a lot like the artwork in Dorian Gray’s attic: they age and wither with worry while the band members themselves remain young, virile and ostensibly carefree, though they are constantly thinking of new ways to torment their theoretical handler and each other. Managers, in short, are the designated adult in the outfit, though adult may at times be pushing it a bit. The band will take the credit for all the manager’s good ideas, and the manager and the manager alone will be blamed for all the disasters.

  Rob Gretton was naturally competitive. He loved sport and he loved to bet and he hated to lose. He would keep on playing whatever ‘game’ he was involved in until either he won or every other participant gave up or fell asleep. This competitive nature, combined with his charm and outgoing jovial hooligan personality, meant he was the perfect pack leader. Ideal manager material. I couldn’t help but respect someone much more confident, outgoing and possibly crazier than me. That Rob had a generally optimistic outlook counterbalanced our ‘the world’s against us’ attitude. He was not fazed by anyone or any bizarre predicament. He was the definition of self-belief in a nutshell. He was also very smart, certainly smarter than you would credit if you went off first impressions.

  Rob had seen a bit of the world. He’d worked for a time on a kibbutz in Israel, and he told stories of being questioned by the secret police in Cold War Yugoslavia. I respected Rob and trusted his judgement – I didn’t always agree with it, but that’s usually the way with bands and their managers.

  We should be a ‘cult’ band, Rob informed us. That was enough of an aspiration for me. Going on Top of the Pops and global domination felt like a waste of time and energy. The Velvets and the MC5, along with pretty much every punk band early on, were all culty in appeal, unusual, not for everybody, at the fringes of normal. That would definitely do for me.

  The idea here was to quote Rob, ‘Never peak’. Just keep steadily working, getting bigger and better. To succeed by doing cool things and clever things, not large splashes of ‘we are the next big thing’ hype. Hype was to be avoided at all costs. ‘Grow virally’ I suppose you’d call it today. Rob would never call it that though.

  The manager as the fifth member of the band. Where we went, Rob went. He would turn up at rehearsals, listen to what we’d done and give his appraisal. At gigs he would stand with Terry, by then doing live sound at the mixing desk, and tell him what to turn up. He would sit in at interviews, interrupting and usually saying something more inciteful than us.

  ‘You lot are basically a bunch of idiots so don’t say much. Just try and act dark and mysterious. Especially you, Hooky. For fuck’s sake, button it.’

  Most of the time it was Rob who did all the talking; Rob loved to talk, as did Tony Wilson. Hooky, at times, also had difficulty keeping quiet. Me, I gave up trying to get the edgeways word in. It’s always the quiet ones you’ve got to watch.

  Rob had exceptionally good taste in music. All the best groups on Factory were Rob’s discoveries.

  We would have meetings with Rob at rehearsals. He’d pull out his notebook and tell us about our future. We’ve been offered this, so and so wants you to do that. He was always talking about the next thing. It’s the next thing that keeps you going. The thrust that drives a band. The next thing is always going to be better than the last thing, and that was good so this’ll be mega. The next song we write has to be better. Onwards and upwards, that’s the trajectory.

  But like the perpetual motion machine, sooner or later entropy sets in and eventually bands reach a peak, squabble a nd stall. Which usually means coming out with statements like:

  ‘I felt like I needed a new challenge.’

  ‘I’ve always wanted to work with other people.’

  ‘I wanted to break out of the closed shop of the band structure and try new things.’

  It’s the biggest cliché going: the singer goes solo. Occasionally (though very rarely) to greater success. Usually it’s self-indulgence that lets down these solo endeavours. Dealing with a group of musicians can be a tricky business. They by nature have an ‘artistic’ temperament, which if pandered to can be encouraged to grow to an uncontrollable size. There are no two ways about it. Success can do terrible things to a personality. The nice boy next door can easily transform into a monster – fighting with journalists, cancelling gigs willy-nilly, falling over at awards ceremonies – you know, the stuff you love to read about in blogs and gossip columns. All because the ‘artist’ has been denied his rattle.

  It’s a manager’s job to keep a lid on all this, ideally to stop it happening in the first place. When I first met Rob, he had a small patch of grey hair in the front of his short fringe. In time this would bloom until it covered his entire head.

  We were all friends. We were not businessmen and we were all doing it more for fun than the thought of any eventual financial reward, though that would have been nice. I wasn’t in it for the money. So long as we could do what we wanted – write songs, play gigs, make records and have fun at the same time – I was happy.

  Rob wanted, above all, to be fair. He would do his best to be as even-handed as possible with us. He got the best deal anyone could get for the band from Tony. He believed in us absolutely.

  Rob would not do anything that was blatantly commercial. We would much rather do quirky or interesting gigs than the ones that paid the most. Rob and Factory were, if anything, anti-promotion. Factory didn’t advertise or, in the early days at least, use any record promotion at all. Rob thought the idea of band T-shirts corny (although he did get some Joy Division badges done).

  We would not be marketed. If you don’t like it fuck off
.

  That was Rob’s catchphrase.

  He’d worked in the insurance game when we first met, so I figured he must know a bit about the risk business.

  RG (on seeing Tony Wilson in cowboy boots): God almighty!

  BS: It’s like that clown.

  RG: Oh no, now what am I . . . how am I gonna . . . I’ve been trying to get Hooky to stop wearing a pair of cowboy boots for the past two years! And then you wearing ’em . . . oh God almighty.

  TW: You’ve got no sense of style! That’s right, which is why the NME described him once as being ‘flamboyant’.

  MH: You? Described you as . . .?

  TW: Him. HIM!!

  MH: Flamboyant?

  RG: Wear one of these on yer head as well, yer style . . .

  TW: The NME described him as flamboyant – look at those flamboyant corduroys.

  MH: Ha ha.

  RG: I’m thinking more of Hooky, y’see. I’m going to have problems with him.

  IC: He’s easily influenced.

  RG: He’ll say well, I’m the new Tony Wilson you know, and he’ll start walking round with these cowboy boots again.

  TW: Just tell him that Peter Saville started it, that’ll put him off.

  RG: Have you seen this?

  TW: Aren’t they good, eh?

  RG: Took your breath away, hasn’t it? . . . Too polite, this lad.

  TW: Too polite to say anything nasty, ooooooh.

  RG: So where’re we going then?

  TW: Well we can go to the Bella Napoli, which is the nicest, if it’s open, and if it’s not then there’s the all-day one up by Piccadilly. It’s not that far to walk. Five minutes . . . Do you want an Italian or is there anything else you fancy?

  RG: I don’t mind, I’m not bothered.

  TW: Do you prefer Mexican?

  IC: Ooh err, where’s the Mexican? Hooky won’t eat anything that isn’t absolutely plain on account of . . .

  BS: Doesn’t like tomatoes, doesn’t like . . .

  TW: Well, there’s a Mexican takeaway, but you can sit down in it. It’s great. I mean it’s a bit cheap.

  RG: Nah, I don’t thin . . . I think you’d be better with the Italian with Hooky.

  IC: Where is it?

  TW: It’s up by Whitworth Street bus station, it’s a really good Mexican takeaway. It’s excellent.

  IC: Must remember that. Is it open on Sundays?

  TW: It’s open late night . . . Like a taco? Do you know what a taco is?

  TW: Taco is like the little kind of like bent over kind of er bread thing with mincemeat, refried beans, bit of cheese, bit of salad and a bit of hot sauce on it. 39p! It’s really cheap.

  RG: Hey, trying to take us for a cheap meal out here now! 39p’s no good.

  MH: Ha ha.

  18

  THAT MAN OFF THE TELLY

  I was and I am very clever and I’m very arrogant. Put the two together and you become a very unpleasant person unless you behave like an idiot. Like an idiot, rather like Shakespeare’s fools, who are the idiots in the play and are always very stupid and stuff. But at the same time they are the only ones who have read the play. From the very beginning of the play they always know exactly what’s going on. They’re always the cleverest. But to avoid being persecuted for that cleverness you behave like an idiot. It’s like being in the bath with you now. It makes me appear less awful and arrogant and elitist and extremist than I am.

  Tony Wilson, being interviewed in the bath by Gillian Gilbert for Play at Home (1983)

  So how come Tony Wilson is suddenly a big part of the story, threatening to force-feed 39p tacos to members of Joy Division and their manager? And what’s all this unexplained Factory stuff? How did all that happen? I’ll squeal the rewind and give you the precious details later, but first let me tell you a little bit about Tony . . .

  In the late seventies, Tony Wilson was ‘that trendy bloke off the telly’ to the watchers of Granada Reports. Bob Greaves, the older, safer, more traditional TV presenter, was usually his straight man. Tony, ever so trendy and full of himself, was the perfect fall guy for the quirky and slightly dangerous spot after the serious biz of the news was done: the ‘And finally . . .’ slot, where it might involve the intrepid reporter in a bit of ‘dangerous’ hijinks.

  ‘Are you sure it’s safe?’

  ‘Of course it’s safe, Tony.’

  How we laughed when he came a cropper.

  At the time, the world reflected back to us through our TV screens seem to consist almost entirely of old people.

  In real life, too, everyone in sensible jobs, such as doctors or dentists, seemed old. Even if they were only twenty-five or thirty, they wore the uniform and carried the demeanour of a fifty- or sixty-yearold. They stuck to the script of the 1950s with the odd nod to the crazy young people of the recent 1960s with their wild ways, long hair and flared trousers.

  Tony Wilson was different. With his long locks and with-it shirt collars, he looked young, but you could tell just from the way he read the news that he was confident in his own cleverness. This cleverness was of an arty bent, as demonstrated in his ‘What’s On’ entertainments section. That the section was all his idea, of course, seemed to radiate through the tube. (I can’t watch Chris Morris on The Day Today without being reminded of Tony at his most serious and pretentious.)

  Through this tiny slot of TV airtime his love of subversive rock bands and obviously Manchester’s new wave contingent was manifest. Admirable as this was – and it was a lot more than that – there was also a strong suspicion that he was showing off, and no one likes a show-off. So he was loved and hated in almost equal measure, usually by the same person at the same time.

  ‘He has some good things on that show of his, that Tony Wilson, but he’s a bit of a twat if you ask me!’ was the man in the pub’s begrudgingly considered opinion. I could see his point. Tony had new ideas and a not-from-round-hereness about him.

  Think I ran out of Tipp-Ex writing this one.

  Me, I learned to like him. Though he never seemed to talk the same language as me. He was magnetic and funny and clever (he always made that very clear), and anyone who got the instrumental intro from ‘LA Woman’ on the box at teatime was OK with me. He was a celebrity though. Untouchable and unreachable, I imagined, ex-directory at the very least, but he was still an obvious target for letters from my typewriter while I was pretending to work.

  Unlike the BBC, ITV had never really had a proper heavyweight rock show. There had been Ready, Steady, Go! back in the sixties. Then there was Muriel Young’s Lift Off, which was really just a glammed up version of 1960’s kids’ fave Five O’Clock Club (though sadly without that show’s stalwart, Bert Weedon, who was probably living the high life with the royalties from his great big lie of a book, Play in a Day).

  Lift Off was no competition for the late-night serious music spot monopolised by BBC2: first Colour Me Pop, then The Old Grey Whistle Test with Richard Williams and later Whispering Bob Harris. Bob Harris starting to get all bitchy when the Dolls and Roxy Music were on in 1973 was a sign of things to come. When the show did not offer punk a warm welcome – they tried to justify its curious exclusion with the explanation that the show was about albums and punk was about singles (bullshit) – I’d had enough.

  A gap in the market then – a breach that Tony filled on ITV with So It Goes, a legendary TV show if ever there was one. Where else would you see Soft Machine, the Pistols’ TV debut, the Ramones, Buzzcocks, John Cooper Clarke, Jonathan Richman, that ace archive stuff of Sister Rosetta Tharpe and Clive James? It was fucking brilliant. I was never too sure when it was on exactly – it kept getting moved around in the schedule, almost as if the Granada bigwigs were trying to bury it. It was ahead of its time and gloriously doomed from the start. They say it was Iggy getting a bit sweary that got the show cancelled in 1977, but the erratic scheduling didn’t help.

  So, Tony Wilson was one of us. Well musically, at least, it looked like he might be. A man to mither at an
y rate. He’d put all those other bands on the box, so why not us?

  Getting yourself on the telly is a must, I thought, if you want to get anywhere in this game: stars of stage and screen, as they say. Overnight success would be pretty much guaranteed. Those (despised and envied) idiots wouldn’t bother miming like prancing poodles on TOTP every Thursday if it didn’t do them any good, would they? Yup, getting on the tube was a big must.

  Mixing music and television is a tricky business. TV has its own set of rules and ways of doing stuff, and these usually clash with those of the would-be rock star of tomorrow. Take the miming business for a start. From the musician’s point of view, it’s shit: you’re a musician, you play live, you perform, you keep it real, man. You don’t pretend, you don’t act, you don’t deceive. ‘That’s tantamount to selling out!’ the inner hippie shrieked. But still the TV beckons you with its glamour, so compromises have to be made in the name of what they call ‘promotion’ today.

  So the rock band and the TV studio are uneasy bedfellows. Now I should make it clear that I’m talking about TV as it was in the late 1970s and the 1980s, and that in the twenty-first century most of the technological difficulties of accommodating a pain-in-the-arse band that wants to play their new song live can be easily overcome.

  In the era of Joy Division/early New Order, there was, on the part of most TV shows, little will to allow a band to do a live performance. And if there’s not a will, there’s always a drink. The highlight of our rare and usually not too successful appearances on TOTP was the trip to the upstairs bar at the BBC, where you could see household names getting three sheets to the wind on subsidised booze.

  When you did get to perform, amplifiers were apparently a problem. ‘You’re too loud for the cameras, darling!’ a man with a headset (aka the floor manager) would say. ‘Do you think you could turn it down just a touch? Thank you.’ The old ‘You don’t hit all those drums at the same time do you?’ would be heard again.