Record Play Pause

by Stephen Morris

  23

  MUSIC ON THE MOVE

  One of the downsides of the job multi-tasking was that I found I had less and less time to actually listen to music. When I did, it was usually a crackly late-night John Peel show on the Cortina’s ailing radio. What I needed was some proper In-Car Entertainment. Hilary, one of the girls at work, was getting rid of her lovely beige Ford Capri and though there was no way I could afford the motor, I made her an offer on her Capri’s Motorola cassette player and speakers. This was snazzily mounted on the Capri’s transmission tunnel between the two front seats. I assumed that it would fit perfectly into the Cortina. They’re both Fords aren’t they? I was over-optimistic. Yet again.

  After a bit of struggling, first of all with some gaffer tape, scissors and screws, I finally managed to instal this not quite hi-fi into my vehicle: I managed to hold it in place with some badly knotted fishing line, which was fine so long as I kept my elbow on the cassette player. To achieve this, I cornered gently and didn’t change gear too often. A small price to pay on top of the £12 I’d managed to haggle Hilary down to.

  Music on the move, you can’t beat it. I copied my current fave albums onto tape and hit the road.

  Ian was impressed – he was easily impressed by technology. Once I had explained that it was now his job to keep his elbow firmly pressed on the unit when cornering or shifting gear, we were off.

  The rest of Joy Division for some reason found my new music system hilarious. Maybe it was the underwhelmingly quiet, muffly sound that the Motorola produced.

  ‘I’ve not figured out how to turn the Dolby off’ was my excuse.

  They also found my selection of cassettes tortuous listening. I know Amon Düül 2 are a bit of an acquired taste and the Doors live at the Matrix bootleg had a bit of an iffy sound, but come on, it was classic stuff. Despite this, my suggestion that we should have some music on to speed our journey generally produced howls of derision from the back-seat drivers. Cassettes were frequently flung out of the window in disgust.

  Philistines, I thought.

  The unit only caught fire once, just off the Bayswater Road in London. A cloud of acrid smoke poured out of the windows, and was eventually extinguished with a handy tin of Coca -Cola.

  The Motorola’s precarious existence came to an abrupt and mysterious end on the night of 3 October 1979. A night in Leeds that’s best forgotten. It wasn’t our gig at the university that was bad. No, that was a fine performance. But what transpired in the show’s aftermath was an unspeakably shameful study in depravity. So I’m not going speak of it. Just the thought of it makes me shudder. Just forget I mentioned it.

  Well, since you insist.

  The night in question ended with Me, Bernard, Ian, Twinny and Dave finishing off the last of the pale ale in some poor unfortunate’s hotel room. With nothing else to entertain us a game of forfeits was suggested. It was probably a mistake to allow Ian and Bernard to define exactly what these forfeits should be. Suffice to say they were for the the most part scatological in nature. The top prize being the taking of a dump out of the hotel window. I’m not entirely sure what happened after that but things certainly went downhill. The next morning I awoke with a sore head and several gaps in my memory to find that the Cortina, which had been parked outside, was covered in . . . er, footprints and my prized hi-fi had disappeared – see I said it was mysterious. It’s fair to say the night ended as a blur but no one ever owned up to the theft. I still have my suspicions.

  Playing gigs usually meant skiving off work, and picking up Ian, Rob and Bernard, then meeting up with Hooky and the Transit before actually hitting the road to the night’s venue in a Hooky-led convoy. This was all pretty exciting, setting off on a lad’s trip out to new and uncharted territory. Most of the venues weren’t that great but the gigs themselves were always exciting and cathartic. We would feed off each other’s playing and energy. After the euphoria of the gig would be the comedown of packing up the gear and loading up the van. It was Hooky, Terry, our roadie Twinny and me that usually did that. Then autopiloting the car back down between the strobing orange lights and white lines of the motorway, struggling to stay awake while, despite my lousy driving, my passengers snoozed. The odd line of speed helped keep my eyes on the road but it could be unpredictable and jittery.

  Then dropping everyone off home in reverse order before finally hitting the pillow in Macclesfield for an hour or two, then up and back to work. The up of the music always beat the down of the ferrying around though – every time. Doing one-offs here and there was the only way we could play and keep the day jobs going at the same time.

  The long drive back up the M1/M6 after a gig in London was always the hardest slog. There always seemed to be some unexpected hazard lurking. The drive home from the Nashville Room in west London on 13 August 1979 was (after Ian’s seizure returning from the Hope and Anchor) the most potentially catastrophic.

  Coming out of a long section of roadworks on the M1, an articulated lorry bulldozed into the back of Hooky’s Transit, pushing it into a spin and ripping open the rear doors in the process. Gear and drums poured out in slow motion, bouncing over the central crash barrier, before rolling off down the opposite carriageway.

  I could never watch Hell Drivers in the same way again.

  TW: WHAT’S HE DRIVING?! WHAT’S THAT?!

  IC: Only cost him forty quid.

  TW: Ha ha ha ha ha.

  BS: The thing was, he sold it originally to the lad that he bought it off for three hundred and forty . . .

  IC: And bought it back off him for forty.

  TW: OUTRAGEOUS!!

  RG: I didn’t know it was him, then.

  TW: It’s incredible.

  BS: But he wrote the van off. Did he not tell you?

  TW: I’ve heard about the van, you know, after that gig at the Nashville, lorry went right through them.

  MH: Really? When was this?

  IC: Driving back up the M6 and this artic just ploughed into the back of the van.

  MH: Yeah, so what happened to you?

  BS: I was all right, I was in the car . . . ha ha.

  RG: We were in the car behind, we were watching it.

  Another trip to London, another disaster . . . Ever get the feeling someone’s trying to tell you something? That Twinny (who normally slept with the gear in the back) was not killed was a miracle. The van was a write-off as was most of my drum kit. It could very easily have been a lot worse.

  It was a very tight squeeze, sardine-packing everyone in the Cortina for the rest of the journey home.

  * * *

  The ramifications of this were that we were now vanless, a bit low on gear generally and I was totally drumless. The kit that I’d proudly built up and collected over the years was no more. There would be a long battle with the insurance company before we could expect to get any money from them . . . if we ever would.

  Somehow I managed to persuade a bank to lend me some money. They were reluctant but by talking up my future financial prospects they agreed to a loan of £1200. A king’s ransom!

  With this, I bought myself a brand new black Rogers kit (I wasn’t bothered who made the drums, so long as they were all black) from the London Drum Centre in Portobello Road. For the first time, all my drums were the same colour. They made their TV debut on Something Else on BBC2, 15 September 1979. It’s imprinted on my mind, like remembering where you were when Kennedy was shot, only slightly more positive.

  Rob persuaded me that some of the leftover cash would be best spent on flight cases. Nothing signifies a professional road-hardened rock-and-roll band more than a selection of heavy-duty trunks on wheels with the band’s name stencilled prominently on the side. This was the first sign of what is known in the trade as THE BIG TIME.

  That one of these cases would occasionally be pressed into service as a makeshift bobsleigh shows just how seriously we took these things. Our first proper flight case was a large blue chest on four sturdy wheels, its ample interior lined
with a thick layer of protective foam. One particularly unproductive Sunday afternoon, we came up with the idea of converting it into a go-kart, presumably for a bet or dare. Ian got in the case wearing Bernard’s gloves and crash helmet. This wasn’t for protection from a crash: it was because he claimed to have a severe allergy to foam. We would lock him in the case like Harry Houdini while Terry and Hooky pushed it at speed down the steep staircase at T. J.’s rehearsal rooms. It was a Poundland version of Evel Knievel jumping the Grand Canyon. These were the lengths we would have to go to to get inspiration for some of our most sombre and profound works.

  An undeniable fact of life and potential source of hazard and pleasure for any band is that sooner or later you will have to tour. Wave goodbye to one-off gigs and, for richer or poorer, hit the road for a lengthy spell of joined-up gigs.

  It’s widely documented that what can occur on these excursions can be somewhat bacchanalian in nature, and there are certain rites and traditions that must be observed. As a keen student of rock-androll behaviour, I had paid close attention to the lurid accounts put forward by Frank Zappa in the film 200 Motels and album Fillmore East – June 1971 describing the life of a band on the road. The touring exploits of the Who and Led Zeppelin were legendary. Hotel room wrecking, hotel towel stealing, hotel TV set destruction. Why did hotels even allow bands through the front door? They must have known what they were letting themselves in for.

  These were the 1970s, remember that. In many respects, a completely different world to the one you’re living in now. In others, exactly the same. Unfortunately.

  TW: So what’s the news? Any news?

  RG: No, nothing I can think of . . . Oh, someone told me we might be going on Buzzcocks’ tour with them.

  TW: Oh yeah?

  RG: Oh yeah! Not Pere Ubu!

  TW: Pere Ubu cancelled out, have they? Cancelled out?

  RG: Don’t know. Well, they were still talking about it yesterday . . .

  IC: Aren’t Pere Ubu supposed to be doing?

  TW: Buzzcocks’ tour . . . mmm . . . You fancy Buzzcocks’ tour?

  RG: Don’t know. It’s the money involved . . . apparently. I phoned Genetic up and asked them whether they had to put any money into the tour. Which is bad news if you’ve got to pay on to . . .

  TW: That is bad news – to buy on to a Buzzcocks tour. I know. That is one thing I used to get really angry with Magazine about, the fact that on all their tours they used to put out, they used to always have . . . they had Simple Minds and the Zones on two tours . . . I mean, real Arista buy-ins, you know, and Buzzcocks never used to do that. They used to put the Gang of Four on, they used to do people like that, no buying on.

  RG: I mean, I can’t see why we should . . .

  TW: Why you should . . .?

  RG: Pay.

  TW: Because other bands pay.

  RG: Yeah, but we’d be pulling people where . . .

  TW: Other bands wouldn’t.

  BS: But why should other bands pay?

  RG: Because, a lot of them, it’s a way . . . it’s a quick route to building an audience.

  TW: Probably at some point back in about 1967, some record company had a band they wanted to get somewhere that were getting nowhere and they said, “Hey, can we go on your tour?’ and the guy said, ‘No you’re not good enough,’ and they said, ‘I’ll give you three thousand towards the costs,’ and the guy said, ‘Yeah,’ and the principle was established and it’s now the established thing.

  The doorway to hideous excess creaked open a crack and we shouldered our way through.

  Richard Boon and Buzzcocks were very good to us, much better than we were to them as it turned out. We got the support slot on their UK tour promoting A Different Kind of Tension, Buzzcocks’ ‘difficult third album’ and we gleefully ran amok in the metaphorical sweetshop.

  There was never any question of buying on. We were there because Buzzcocks wanted us to be there.

  We’d had a small taste of playing larger rock-circuit venues when we’d done a few gigs supporting John Cooper Clarke earlier in 1979. But this was a full tour. To do this would mean either an extended absence from the day job – potentially resulting in the sack – or take the plunge and say goodbye to life in the office. Which was what I did. I had a leaving do, a slice of cake, and was presented with a light-blue two-tone shirt instead of a gold clock. I did get to keep the car. It had become so unsafe and rancid that no one else wanted it.

  We were now a full-time band though not necessarily what you would call professional in outlook. I know it’s a hard line to swallow considering the sincere reverence with which Joy Division is held but, honestly, we were all fun seekers at heart.

  The tour itself was a riot in nearly every sense of the word. The litany of carnage was fairly comprehensive. Breaking into hotel bars for extra late-night alcohol, the bizarre game of Forfeits that I still shudder to recollect, Bernard wearing beer-can shoes for a bet, the mysterious and to this day still unexplained disappearance of my much loved in-car entertainment system, someone generally sabotaging the car, piss-drinking bets, hurling eggs at Buzzcocks from a circling Ford, a plague of white mice and maggots, and, of course, drugs and booze.

  Buzzcocks were great but I think I can say, in all modesty, we were totally brilliant (nearly) every night.

  We were playing a mixture of Unknown Pleasures stuff as well as new songs that would end up on the next album. ‘Twenty Four Hours’ and ‘Colony’ went down particularly well, as did ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’.

  Halfway through this tour (on 15–16 October 1979), Buzzcocks had a few days off but we obviously did not see the point of a day off, so we made our first trip abroad, to Brussels.

  A few weeks earlier, after a gig in London, I think it was our second gig at the Nashville, a girl had approached Rob asking to do an interview with the band for a fanzine. Nothing unusual about that. That she was from Belgium was a little bit novel though. We were spending the nights after gigs in London at the Walthamstow house that Dave Pils, our drum roadie, shared with Jasmine Hooper, who ran the local youth club. It was there that we agreed to do the interview after the gig. The journalist’s name was Annik Honoré.

  Bernard and Ian had by this time become ‘copping partners’, the main question of the night being who would end up with Annik.

  During the Buzzcocks tour one of the pair would sheepishly ask me if I could lend them the keys to the car on the pretext that they could get some, cough, ‘badges’ to hand out to fans. I didn’t delve or point out that Rob had all the badges in his briefcase. Just blithely handed over the keys. The sexual potential of gigs seemingly increased in relation to the distance they were from Manchester. It also seemed to be linked to the widely held never-on-your-owndoorstep philosophy. Like much in life, there is a hierarchy that exists in bands. It may not have been there at the inception, but believe me it will develop like algae on a pond. As a rule of thumb, I have found this usually equates to the individual band member in question’s proximity to the audience.

  The hierarchy would be 1 – singer, 2 – guitarist, 3 – bass player, 4 – keyboard player (if any), and then a close tie between the drummer and the more visible members of the road crew. This hierarchy is perhaps driven by primal survival traits or the appearance of who looks the cleverest, but I’m sticking with the idea that sexual allure was relative simply to proximity to the audience.

  Despite my fervent refusal to be educated as a teenager, there was one area of study that I did find fascinating. It was the widely regarded waste-of-time subject (now discarded) called Classical Studies. The Latin bit was pretty useless (it did come in handy when talking to Tony, who would come out with the odd Latin quote), but the Greek myths I thought extraordinarily interesting. They actually made sense, seemed symbolic of the way the world actually worked. I was fascinated with the Odyssey and the Iliad, and read and reread bits at home. It was the Trojan War that especially got to me. Specifically how that conflict began in the first
place: a war over a woman or a war that originated with the disputed result of a beauty contest of the goddesses. The judgement of Paris lay at the root of it all. A cultural dilemma.

  Annik was a well-educated woman. She worked at the Belgian Embassy in London and belonged to a world that, to a lad from Macc, seemed exotic and rare. She was cultured and intelligent. She and a friend were organising some events in Brussels and wondered if Joy Division would be interested in taking part.

  A trip abroad? Why yes, of course. Travel broadens the mind. And we were an aspiring international band.

  Annik appealed to Ian’s intellectual streak. His artistic side. It is a pivotal event that occurs time and again in the history of nearly every band. The transition from lovable knock-about pop mop-tops to serious artists. It is closely related to that tragic condition more commonly known as taking yourself too seriously. It’s a very, very fine line. But there’s usually a golden apple in there somewhere.

  We would be seeing more of Annik. That was a safe bet.

  All that lay ahead. For now, the Belgium show filled a gap in the gig calendar. A trip to Brussels with Cabaret Voltaire.

  We’d done many gigs with the Cabs and got on with them really well. Musically we seemed to complement each other. A night at Plan K, a disused sugar refinery on the appropriately named Rue de Manchester in Brussels, was agreed for 16 October 1979. A trip over the choppy sea to the heart of Belgium. Here, we would enter yet another stage of band development: the upstairs-downstairs (us-and-them) problem. Hierarchies again.

  Over the years of my involvement with musicians I have often wondered if there wasn’t something subconsciously or unconsciously at work. Some invisible force that influenced their behaviour and somehow shaped their personalities. A system or process that worked along similar lines to that of the astrological system of zodiac signs that infallibly inform and influence the daily lives of the fanciful true believers.