Totally Wired: Postpunk Interviews and Overviews by Simon Reynolds (Soft Skull Press 2009)

Simon Reynolds: Thinking about the city’s post-punk scene, it struck me that none of the Manchester bands inspired into existence by punk were particularly political. Certainly there was no protest punk, no agitprop.

Tony Wilson: I always thought the Pistols were the greatest band because they weren’t really agitprop. The more overtly agitprop lines were thrown in by Jamie Reid. None of real punk was Red Wedge. That would be too reasonable. Agitprop is socialist, but the whole background to punk is situationist. Punk was more simple and brutal, which is why post-punk had to happen. One of my only regrets is that Bernard in New Order is clever, and that so fucked me off. So, 1990, Radio One, I’m listening to a programme on the Joy Division/New Order story, and Bernie says, ‘Punk was wonderful, it got rid of all the shite. You can’t really remember how bad music was in the early seventies. It was diabolical, a total wasteland. Punk was an explosion that blew it all away, but it was simple and simplistic. All it could say was, “I’m bored.” Sooner or later someone was going to use the simplicity of punk to express more complex emotions.’ I was like, ‘Fucking hell, the bastard’s right again!’ My reworking of Bernie’s comment is, ‘Punk was wonderful, but all it could say was this one simple emotion: “Fuck you.”’ Sooner or later someone was going to have to use that music to say, ‘I’m fucked.’ And that was Joy Division.

I see Joy Division as the first band of post-punk and U2 as the second. Sure, they can be soap boxy and sermonizing.

Simon Reynolds: Oh yeah, you can hear PiL’s ‘Public Image’ in the early U2 sound. Talking about PiL, there’s a story about the Factory people driving around Manchester at night, stoned, listening to the first PiL album.

Tony Wilson: We loved PiL. We loved them so much, I rang them up and said, ‘Will you do a number on Granada Reports?’ This is early PiL. They came to Manchester and did some songs on the show. And then at 3.40 in the afternoon, John turns to me and says, ‘You still do that fucking club of yours?’ I said, ‘Yeah.’ John says, ‘While we’re up here might as well do a fucking gig. Organize it.’ I asked Keith Levene, ‘Is he serious?’ and he says, ‘Yeah.’ So I called Alan Erasmus and asked if he could open the club that night. We’re running around like idiots. Got the news on Radio Piccadilly. At 7.30 in the evening I got A Certain Ratio out of bed to support them, and that night was Manchester’s first PiL gig. Fucking great. Another big band in Manchester was Suicide. Manchester loved Suicide. They played the Factory club at the Russell twice. When they supported The Clash, in every other city in Britain they got booed. But in Manchester it was ‘Fuck The Clash, we’re here for Suicide.’

But back to post-punk – I always think of Joy Division and U2. Two months after Ian died, U2 still hadn’t broken. There was this wonderful kid who was a radio DJ and plugger, and he used to bring U2 to every radio station and every TV station in the north of England every three months to break his beloved U2, whom no one cared about then. I remember him bringing Bono into my office, and Bono sat on the desk and said to me how incredibly sorry he was about Ian’s death. How it had really hurt him. How Ian was the number-one performer of his generation and he knew he was always going to be number two. And he made some statement – it didn’t sound as silly as ‘Now he’s gone, I promise you I’ll do it for him,’ it wasn’t as awful as that, but it was something like that. I thought, ‘Yes, thanks a fucking lot, fuck off.’ Until the afternoon of Live Aid. I was watching, so angry because all the dinosaurs at Wembley were playing and going out to the world, and they were all utter shite. And then U2 came on and they were good. And then a girl fainted, and Bono began to move off the stage to help her. I actually leapt out of my seat and said, ‘All right, I give in! You did it, you did it for Ian! God bless you.’ So God bless U2. They were fantastic at the Superbowl. Edge’s guitar was unbelievable.

The great line about U2 is Bernard’s again. It’s Rapido in 1989, and he’s asked whether as a pop star you can take yourself too seriously. And Bernard says, ‘Yeah, you can. You can get a bit above yourself. Like that guy, what’s his name . . . Bongo.’

Killing Bono by Neil McCormick (Pocket Books 2004)

I always knew I would be famous.

By the time I left school, at seventeen, my life was planned down to the finest detail. I would form a rock band, make a series of epoch-shifting albums, play technologically mind-blowing concerts in the biggest stadiums on the planet until I was universally acknowledged as the greatest superstar of my era. And I would indulge in all manner of diversions along the way: make films, write books, break hearts, befriend my idols . . . oh - and promote world peace, feed the poor and save the planet while I was at it.

You might think I was just another teenage airhead with fantasies of omnipotence. Indeed, there were plenty around me at the time who did their best to persuade me that this was the case. But I wasn't about to be put off by lesser mortals jealous of my talent. Because I knew, deep, deep in the very core of my being, that this wasn't just another empty dream. This was my destiny . . . 

So there I was, thirty-five years old, sitting in a shabby, unheated little excuse for an office above a bookie's in Piccadilly, watching the rain drizzle down my single, grimy window, wondering where it had all gone wrong. I'd wanted to be a rock star and wound up becoming a rock critic. To compound my torment, I was suffering from a bad case of writer's block with my newspaper deadline looming and the fucking telephone hadn't stopped ringing all morning with a succession of PRs pestering me about their shitty rock bands, all of whom I secretly resented for, I suppose, just being more famous than me. But at least talking on the phone gave me an excuse for not writing my column.

"It better be good," I snapped into the receiver.

"This is the voice of your conscience," announced my caller in a gravelly, wasted Dublin accent that reeked of smoke, late nights and fine wines.

"Bono," I said in recognition.

"You can run but you can't hide," he laughed.

"The way I feel right now, I don't think I could even run," I sighed.

It was, indeed, Bono: rock legend, international superstar, roving ambassador for world peace and (though it is unlikely to feature prominently on his CV) a schoolfriend of mine from Mount Temple Comprehensive.

The Next 30 Day Song Challenge - day 08

Day 08 - The song that sounds best played live

Ok, they're bloated, pretentious, sanctimonious, hypocritical and Bono's the biggest arsehole since that bloke who shot Bambi's mother - and have been since they walked out into the desert and discovered the Joshua Tree in the mid-eighties but once upon a time  . . . (catch the Simple Minds reference there?) - there was U2 performing 'Gloria' at Red Rocks:

And still one of my all time favourite videos, to boot.

Red Hill: A Mining Community by Tony Parker (Coronet Books 1986)

- He says it'll burn me up in flames one day, my husband does, me and my blazing hate. He says it can't be kept up for ever, you've got to forgive and forget. I'll never forget, that's one thing that's sure: and I'll never forgive neither, at least I can't see myself doing. The Coal Board's turned my husband, who all his life's been an honest upright working man, into a criminal. They've made him someone with a conviction, and a criminal record for it. And as well as that they've made him into someone who because of it'll never again in his whole life get a decent job. He did nothing wrong in the first place: but they won't relent and give him his job back. So neither will I relent either. Those people, the Coal Board, Ian MacGregor, Maggie Thatcher, the Tories - I hate every one of them and I'll hate them till my dying day for what they've done to my husband. He can forgive them if he likes, and if he does he's a better person and a better Christian than I am. To me they're the biggest bastards who ever walked the face of the earth, and every morning when I get up I curse them and I curse them every night when I go to bed.

(from 'Me and my blazing hate')

Killing Bono (2011)

30 Day Song Challenge - day 02

day 02 - your least favorite song

I'm not the angry young man I once was so picking a least favourite song was more difficult than I imagined.

My decades long hatred of Bon Jovi's 'Living On A Prayer' melted away once I moved to the States and realised that Jon Bon Jovi didn't stand a chance. The poor swine's from New Jersey. He couldn't help myself. My loathing of the BritPop also rans such as the likes of Cast and The Seahorses is so all encompassing that I couldn't pick out the one song to hate above all others. Their combined back catalogues merge into one mass of mediocrity; and it's a cop out to hate a novelty hit or a charity comedy record. They're there to be shot at.

Ten seconds before penning this post, this tuneless pious crock of happy clappy liberalism shite was stepping up for the gold medal - dishonorable mentions also go out to here and there - but I suddenly remembered that one particular song that I always hated above all others from the first moment I heard it. Twenty years on and it still raise the hackles.

Step forward James, Ian, Derry, Mark and Zac:

Number 1 in the US Charts back in '91, and still number one for me - but in a very different sense - all these years later.

The chosen feud

No apologies or shame for the cliche of posting this classic from U2 on the blog on today of all days.

When they were still good. They should never have swopped Sälen for the Californian desert.

Lemons

And you thought Bono would always be the biggest wanker in U2. Looks like Larry Mullen Junior is giving him a run for his money.

Old Waves

Morphing Into A Music Blog (5)

Accidents Will Happen I hope it amounts to more than Elvis Costello doing a 'Phil Caine'* ('Don't like paying the taxes . . . . they've got no ambition in Britain'.) Just don't tell me that he lives in Chelsea, Manhattan.

Time's Up I listen to the first couple of U2 albums and always want to cut Bono some slack, but when I read him spouting shite like this in the Rolling Stone:

"Just being in D.C., and meeting all the people I've met - I've now been going there for nearly ten years. They let me in their rooms and they listen to my rhetoric or invective or whatever it turns out to be. And I come away from that city not with nausea but with admiration. These people work like dogs. These lawmakers, they're trying to move between their families back home and Washington. All of them could make much more money in the private sector. Not all, but most of them are there for the right reasons. There's very little glamour. And they're listening to me, who's completely over-rewarded for what I do."

. . . I just want to take an axe to his Joshua Tree. I don't think I've ever witnessed a smarmier politician than that *@#%. I don't care if he thinks he's doing it for the right reasons. Spot the reference to the Buzzcocks' 'Spiral Scratch' EP in the interview, and wonder if Bono thinks it's 1993, he's Damon Albarn and he's talking about his new album, Modern Life is Rubbish.**

Step Back in Time That's enough ranting about the posters on your wall falling to the floor, back to when old waves was post-punk, and the best track from Scritti Politti's 1979 EP, '4 A-Sides'

Scritti Politti - P.A.s mp3

For extra credit, flick through Robert Lumley's 'States of Emergency', whilst wondering out loud 'Whatever happened to Big Flame?'***

*The alternative name was Michael Collins. You figure it out.

**Yep, first found out about Bono in the Rolling Stone via The Blogging Equivalent of U2 (Had a soft spot for the early stuff. Turned into bloated insufferable wankers ever since.)

***Yep, I know Green Gartside was a YCLer and had a bad case of the Gramscian MT's to prove it but, in an alternative universe, back in 77/78 he should have been the activities officer of the St Pancras branch of the Lotta Continua

'I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For . . .'

News reports today mention that the rough cut of U2's next studio album has gone missing, presumed stolen, whilst the band were doing a photoshoot for the cover of the  proposed album. French police have issued the following description of a man they want to interview about the disappearance of the CD.*       * OK - It's a fair cop - the joke above is fifteen years out of date, but: 1) So are U2. 2) I had to post something to get back in the habit of blogging.