Paul Morley (born 26 March 1957 in Stockport, Cheshire) is an English journalist, who wrote for the New Musical Express from 1977 to 1983, during one of its most successful and relatively notorious periods, and has since written for a wide range of publications. He pioneered a distinctive style of post-punk, post-modernist music writing which drew on the New Journalism of Tom Wolfe, the gonzo style of Hunter S Thompson, the cultural theories of Roland Barthes and the adventurous rock writing of Lester Bangs. While his style divided the NME readership of the time (an early, confrontational interview with Jerry Garcia was judged to have lost the paper several thousand regular readers), he is recognised as an influence on almost every significant British music writer to have emerged since.[attribution needed] British Alternative band The Cure played a version of their song 'Grinding Halt' with new lyrics parodying Morley's writing style after an unfavourable review of their debut album Three Imaginary Boys. Morley first came to wider attention with a brief appearance in the video for ABC's "The Look of Love" (in which he mimes the words "what's that?" in a call-and-response routine with singer Martin Fry), but he achieved genuine notoriety as co-founder, with Trevor Horn, of ZTT Records, and electronic group Art of Noise. Morley is also credited with steering the marketing and promotion of the phenomenal early success of ZTT's biggest act, Frankie Goes to Hollywood. Although it has never been confirmed, it is generally accepted that it was Morley who authored the provocative slogans on the band's T-shirts (e.g. "Frankie Say Arm The Unemployed", "Frankie Say War! Hide Yourself"), which became a fashion phenomenon in 1984, and are almost as well remembered as the band's music. He was the first presenter of BBC Two's The Late Show, and has appeared as a music pundit on a number of other programmes. For the shortlived Channel 4 arts strand Without Walls he wrote and presented a documentary on boredom. He is the author of Words and Music: the history of pop in the shape of a city The book is an authoritative, scholarly and highly idiosyncratic journey through the history of pop; it seeks to trace the connection between Alvin Lucier's experimental audio recording, "I am sitting in a room" and Kylie Minogue's "Can't get you out of my head". A synthetic Kylie features as the central character of the book. The book was later turned into the hour-long epic musical track "Raiding the 20th Century" by DJ Food, which features Morley reading from his book and speculating on the cultural significance of the mashup amidst the sounds of those very mashups. His other books include Ask: The Chatter of Pop (a collection of his music journalism) and Nothing, a biographical book reflecting on his father's suicide and that of Joy Division singer Ian Curtis, and unhappy parts of his teenage life such as the time he spent at Stockport Grammar School. Morley has teamed up with The Auteurs' James Banbury to form the band Infantjoy and in 2005 released an Album entitled 'Where The Night Goes' on Sony BMG. A new album, With, featuring collaborations with Tunng, Isan and Populous amongst others, is released in October 2006 on Morley and Banbury's own label ServiceAV. He was married to Claudia Brücken with whom he has a daughter.
References
- Paul Morley: Words and Music: a history of pop in the shape of a city. Bloomsbury, 2003. ISBN 0-7475-5778-0
External links
- Morley and Banbury's virtual record label
- Infantjoy official homepage
- Paul Morley on John Peel
- An extended review/meditation on Paul Morley's book 'Nothing'. [1]
- spikemagazine.com on Paul Morley
- Raiding The 20th Century featuring Paul Morley and a cast of thousands
- Zang Tuum Tumb and all that
- Paul Morley Interview 1999
