Matthew Dancona

Let Joy be unconfined

Matthew d'Ancona on Paul Morley's latest book

issue 26 January 2008

Matthew d’Ancona on Paul Morley’s latest book

In 1980, the Manchester pop impresario, Tony Wilson, showed Paul Morley the dead body of Ian Curtis, the lead singer of Joy Division, who had hanged himself. Wilson hoped that Morley would one day write the definitive account of the band and Curtis’s martyrdom. He also knew that Morley’s father had committed suicide, and that, alone with the body in a room in Macclesfield, the young journalist would be confronting much more than the earthly remains of his favourite singer.

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