Joy Division by Paul Morley

Author:Paul Morley [Paul Morley]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780859658812
Publisher: Plexus Publishing Ltd.
Published: 2015-04-13T04:00:00+00:00

XXXVIII

Article on Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark – New Musical Express, 22 November 1980.

Andy McCluskey and I are the last two of the Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark party left in the Edinburgh hotel bar.

It’s the early hours of a Wednesday morning: four hours after Orchestral Manoeuvres had played a sell-out show at the Edinburgh Odeon, with the takings second to Wings for the year. McCluskey, Paul Humphreys, Malcolm Holmes, Martin Cooper (OMD) and Paul Collister (OMD manager, currently on a three-way split with founder members McCluskey and Humphreys) had each received a charming presentation mirror – the sort you see on market-stalls, usually with Travolta or Debbie etched in – to mark their achievement. Pure kitsch.

OMD appreciated that; the tackiness seemed more realistic than the fact they’d sold out a major city hall.

Earlier in the afternoon McCluskey and I had sat at the back of the Odeon’s empty rows, and slowly looked around at its mock ornate grandeur.

‘Y’know, I used to come to halls like this when I was young,’ McCluskey sighed in wonder, ‘and see people on a stage like that, and I used to think they were famous!’

McCluskey’s pleasant openness, combined with the newness of what’s happening, can make him seem fey and prosaic. He is a very puzzled 21-year-old.

‘It doesn’t sink in,’ he tells me as we order one more nightcap in the Edinburgh hotel bar, ‘that I’m playing venues like that.’

McCluskey and I are last up in the bar to discuss the importance of OMD being earnest.

I’d spent two days with OMD, getting to know their idiosyncrasies, sensing the walls closing in, appreciating their complete confusion at their raving new success. I’d got to know things like when McCluskey laughs he clasps his usually gloved hands together and brings them up under his chin, a representation of an odd humility. I’d also realised that he likes talking. He talks plenty trying to sort things out. Right now, he’s remembering … the A-Level schoolboy who wanted to be an archaeologist, then wanted to be an artist, and ended up if not a ‘musician’ then someone trapped in all the trappings.

‘We started because Paul and I had been writing songs out of our own personal interest. We’d been doing it for two years and we’d never heard them on stage played how we wanted them to be. That’s the only reason we got up at Eric’s and did it. Everything since there has just been a bonus really.

‘That’s what is the hardest part. We never intended to make money. We never thought we could. I know it sounds a cliché, but we just seemed like the ultimate no-hopers, we had a stupid name – the first time I ever rang up Sounds to get us in the gig guide they said, “You’ll never get anywhere with a name like that, sunshine.”

‘We had everything stacked against us. There we were, two guys with a tape recorder and a stupid name playing songs that apparently no one seemed interested

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