Rock group fall-outs can be vicious and unrelenting. You suspect that Lennon and McCartney never really got on after 1969, whatever Paul said about impromptu jams at the Dakota in John's last years. The rift between Roger Waters and the rest of the Pink Floyd millionaires was risible, but deadly serious to rival fans as I know from bitter, boring experience. An Algerian friend refused to have the name Gilmour mentioned in the same sentence as Pink Floyd. "Roger is a visionary", he enthused. A sex club hostess in Prague produced a battered photo of Gilmour from her wallet and swore he was the man.
The Rolling Stones went through World War Three at some point in the mid-1980s when Mick's preening got too much for Keef. Fleetwood Mac survived years of marital and studio-based turbulence, drugs and shagging featuring strongly. Best not to mention The Kinks, or Oasis. Then there was Paul Weller having nothing good to say about Bruce and Rick from The Jam, who finally went off and formed 'From The Jam'. Touchingly, Paul and Bruce appear to have got over all that, so you can listen to 'Beat Surrender' again without wincing. Jerry Dammers was not part of the comeback by The Specials. And...whisper it quietly, even the Rubettes don't appear to get along these days.
I find all this both needless and strangely distressing. Does inter-band friction generate great music? Yes and no. The endearing greatness of The Fall appears to owe little to the fun and harmony fostered by Mark E.Smith.
Now, according to an excellent piece by Rob Fitzpatrick in The Guardian http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2011/jul/14/new-order-split-peter-hook
there are fresh schisms in New Order. The podgy fiftysomethings, one time kings of the north-west, have fallen out over the Joy Division heritage and an upcoming compilation. Peter Hook calls Bernard Sumner, his Salford boyhood friend of over 40 years "a twat". Bernard, Steve and Gillian say it's the other way round
All good stuff, but really... New Order have never suffered fools gladly, but have often come across as fairly earthbound, wry and mercifully unpompous. They survived the suicide of their singer and friend Ian Curtis and the morbid veneration that came with it. Just a few years ago, a blogger wrote up his Bed and Breakfast visit to a Macclesfield homestead to see the room where Curtis killed himself, surely the kind of devotee Hook, Sumner or Morris would denounce as a 'twat'.
I was never in that league, but like many slightly pathetic sixteen-year-olds of the time, had an Ian Curtis poster in 1980. Actually, it was a photo cut out from an NME post-suicide feature on the band (Paul Morley, I believe). From having barely heard a Joy Division track, I doggedly acquired most of the limited back catalogue. I have read Deborah Curtis's 'Touching from a Distance' memoir, more honest and banal than its pretentious title, and own both Anton Corbijn's doomy but solid 'Control' and the 'must-see' (so said The Guardian) documentary on Joy Division. I greatly enjoyed '24 Hour Party People' and drank to the ludicrous, but much-missed Tony Wilson when he passed on and regretted missing the exhibition based around the group at the Macclesfield Silk Museum in 2010. I have a cherished 12-inch version of New Order's first single, 'Ceremony' (written by Curtis?) and still like 'Procession' and 'Temptation', but can't rhapsodise with great conviction about 'Republic' and other releases.
Does anyone really need a Joy Division/New Order compilation (remastered?). I guess previous financial cock-ups and mismanagement have left them all shorter on funds than they should be, but does it have to end like this?
Ian Curtis is long gone, so too Tony Wilson, manager Rob Gretton and producer Martin Hannett. It would be nice if there were some mutually loved mucker from the old Manchester scene to sort things out.
No comments:
Post a Comment