Capsule Review Archive – Record Play Pause by Stephen Morris
This review originally appeared on Goodreads on September 25, 2020.
Record Play Pause
By Stephen Morris – Constable – February 7, 2019
Review by Robin Marx
This book made an interesting contrast to the memoirs by Peter Hook and Bernard Sumner. It was more entertaining than I thought it would be, but a bit lacking in other respects.
As the drummer of Joy Division, Stephen Morris was generally silent and stuck in the back. As a result it was difficult to know what to expect from this book. While not as entertaining a storyteller as Hooky, this memoir has a wry, self-deprecating sense of humor throughout that caught me off guard. While Hooky and Sumner more or less grew up together, Morris was a later addition to the band who joined through Ian Curtis, giving him a slightly different perspective on events. Both Hooky and Sumner’s memoirs are largely about how they related to Ian Curtis and secondly how they related to each other, so insight into Morris himself was also in short supply in the previous books. Hooky portrayed him as semi-autistic and Sumner didn’t mention him much at all. Morris relates his own story in a humorous and engaging fashion.
Morris offers his own perspective on Curtis, humanizing this much mythologized figure of post punk music. He also shares his experiences with manager Rob Gretton, Factory Records co-founder Tony Wilson, and record producer Martin Hannett. The frustrating thing about this book is that Morris’ living band mates remain mostly ciphers. Apart from some amusing anecdotes about drug-fueled pranks, he fails to portray Hooky and Sumner in the same depth as his deceased musical collaborators, and some more detail about the band’s internal dynamic would have been greatly appreciated. Perhaps we’ll get more of that in the soon to be released follow-up volume, covering the New Order era.
★★★★☆
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