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Joy Division: Piece by Piece

Joy Division: Piece by Piece
By Paul Morley

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Product Description

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.

Product Details

  • Amazon Sales Rank: #356476 in Books
  • Published on: 2008-01-28
  • Original language: English
  • Number of items: 1
  • Binding: Paperback
  • 384 pages

Features

Editorial Reviews

Review

"This collection tells not only the extraordinary tale of Joy Division and Factory, but also the story of Morley himself... essential reading." – Word

"[Morley's] engagement and insight are unmatched... If you fancy a sometimes inspirational, sometimes maddening labyrinth of ideas... well, this is the way, step inside." – Q magazine

"Joy Division: Piece by Piece offers a fascinating insight into what it feels like to have a rock legend crystallise inside your own head... A remarkable achievement." – Ben Thompson, The Independent on Sunday

“It’s almost always brilliant. It’s everything that good rock writing should be: unfolding, examining and always straining to find a glimpse of the magic.” – Mick Middles, Record Collector magazine

"Another book about Joy Division? No, THE book. One engages here with a master of his craft, unafraid to surrender control to the reader wise enough to know that all writing, however lapidary it may seem, is provisional." – Matthew d’ Ancona, The Spectator

Customer Reviews

"the past is now part of my future, the present is well out of hand."4
A cerebral, spectacular look inside the Manchester scene from one of the best writers in rock history. The book takes you back to the post punk era then to the present for Morley's feelings, and inspirations for his writings, which are very poignant, especially his revealing how his fathers death boookends the journey of Joy Division, and how it may have subconciously influenced him.

This is the best book I have read on the enigmatic Manchester scene, which I have always been fascinated with. If you are the same, this is a must have.

If you have read or own the 1984 book "An Ideal For Living" which chronicled every gig of Joy Division with the writings of Paul Morley, you will be reading things that you have in the past, but "Piece By Piece" is presented in such a more organized and engrossing fashion that it is worth purchasing.

I would give 5 stars, but would like to have seen more rare or unseen illustrations.

Title quote is from the song "Heart and Soul" by Joy Division

Joy Division3
I got this book because I am still a bit obsessed with Joy Division after all these years - after what seems like a commonly experienced 15 years of avoiding them. And so of course I bought a book with this title. I even enjoyed quite a bit of it. Be warned - it is not easy reading. Morley makes a point of not wanting to write a standard book, e.g. who did what, where and when, arguing that others have and will, and that the subject matter requires a different approach. It is deliberately disjointed. This can be understood and accepted. There is also a lot of word-for-word repetition (is this deliberate?). My main disappointment is the fact that a lot of the book is about other things. Some of this is interesting, particularly his attempt to come to terms with his father's suicide (note: a suicide in the family does not seem to be a prerequisite for obsession with this band, but it probably helps). But there's a lot of other stuff, like on the general music scene at the time. The final straw for me was when I reached a very lengthy "interview" with Cab Voltaire. One could argue that this puts things in context but I reckon not. Like another reviewer, after I had established what the real title of the book should have been, I ended up skimming through looking for words like "Joy" and "Division" where I would pause and read for a bit. On the main subject matter of the book: when all's said and done, no one will ever "understand" Joy Division, not the members themselves, not those close to them and not those interested from afar. Certainly, Morley doesn't in the slightest seem (or claim?) to have come to an understanding of them and what happened and why it happened and why their music affects us still.

Perhaps too many pieces?3
For any fan of Joy Division (of which I am one) I recommend this book with some reservations. This collection of articles (by the same writer) on the band are of varying interest. I found however that as the collection progressed the articles become less about the band and more about the writer. They also tended to repeat themselves and by the final third of the book I was merely scanning the text and flipping through pages searching for anything of interest.