From Manchester With Love - 08 February 1986

NME - THE SOUND & THE FURY

FROM MANCHESTER WITH LOVE
Liverpool Royal Court

AND SO THEY came, grumbling down the East Lancashire Road - three container trucks full of drums and wires - with love from Manchester. So here we are. Listening to the psychotic violence of Peter Hook's bass leading us into 'The Perfect Kiss' and several hours of dark satanic pop in aid of the 49 Labour councillors up before the beak.

New Order do what they've alway done. Switching on their machines they play Joy-less tunes for metropolitan cathedrals, so careless, so uncomplicated, so uncalculating, that splintered symphonies emerge just when they’re concentrating most intently on pleasing nobody but themselves. "Fuck off", requests the bald-headed Barn before scraping away at his guitar, his ear to the fretboard, his face contorted in a “I’m sure this is out of tune" fashion.

I'm happy for them. New Order have jumped all over the carefully shorn privet hedge of a reputation which was always too cruel, too unforgiving to live with. They make mistakes, they steal, they cuss and sweat like human beings (for Christ’s sake). For the tits in overcoats who disagree, they conclude with a hollowed exhibit called ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’.

John Cooper Clarke dusts down the pink marble-ette notebook and reels off some gag-infested speed speech. John plays the rabbit, we are the dogs forever chasing him smiling three lines too late. Always handy at an occasion like this, those poet fellers. The thin man and his slow-motion explosion that pretends it's his hair plug the gap while a vast collection of wires are re-arranged for the coming of The Fall.

Some morse code from Mark and his starless battalion are off on their remorseless surge for the blackest, barest bones of the species. Squeamish Smiths fans begin to yawn. There are no cosmetics, no visual pleas, just a relentless bread and water thrash possessed of a curious precision. Mark E can delay his fall no further. His mouth is dry; his eyes narrow as he takes his revenge on the form. They have consumed and excreted the real possibilities of guitar and drums. They should knock it on the head and book a front seat for the funeral.

The Smiths fans, by now asleep, begin to shake each other as they sense imperfection at hand. Quaint. George Formby sings of his ‘Little Wigan Garden' while the lights dim. I smell a show. I will not be disappointed.

The Smiths saved the worst for first. ‘Shakespeare’s Sister’ gives Morrissey the chance to do all the things you’ve read he does. The worker Smiths keep a perfect beat. Johnny dreams of a little guitar shop in the country while the tall one revolves on one leg, tugs at his clothing, raises an arm in the air, feigns a fall and sings very, very badly. As I had feared, The Smiths lean towards their live predeliction for fast and perishable rock songs with only occasional relief in the dwindling ways they manage to juggle the clichés.

The songs you skip are all here. ’Rusholme Ruffians' admits its debt to Elvis’s ‘Latest Flame' and speeds to oblivion. A respite. The new‘Frankly Mr Shankly’ thankfully brings the humour a little closer to the surface and shows that the words - oh those cleverly twisted words - will always be The Smiths most redeeming feature. But back to the breathless chase, the chaps speed onwards like they've just been told that somebody has turned the oven out on their cheesebake. All recorded subtleties are trampled underfoot. A foolish waste.

And there is an end to it all. The trucks, their drums and wires, the jolly pop groups and their happy, modern sounds will soon be grumbling back up the A580. Thankyou, Manchester. A right nice gesture. But, Steven it was really nothing.

John McCready

Melody Maker - MANCHESTER UNITED

Manchester goes to Liverpool! Penny Kiley reports on the Manchester bands' benefit gig for the Liverpool councillors. Photography: Gary Lornie

"FROM Manchester with love?" It seems an unlikely idea: there's never been much love lost in the past between Manchester and Liverpool. But suddenly there were three of Manchester's most desirable acts - The Smiths, The Fall, and New Order - all agreeing to devote their names and their talents for the benefit of Liverpool City Council in a unique gig at Liverpool's Royal Court Theatre.

Specifically, the cause was to raise funds for the legal costs of the Council's current High Court appeal against surcharge and disqualification, on which rests the political and financial futures of 48 councillors. Whether the gesture was particularly pro-Liverpool or just anti-Government was never quite clear.

It was Morrissey who'd put this impressive line-up together, after offering support to Derek Hatton and being enthusiastically taken at his word. Derek Hatton, from the stage, gives the official version: "I got home from work one day and there was this bundle of records in the post and with them a letter from Morrissey offering support... And it took my kids to tell me who Morrissey was!"

The official version from The Smiths was: "The Smiths aren't talking to anyone. They've said their statement is that they're doing the concert." The official version from New Order is their advert in the programme: "Q. Why are we doing this? A. Because we're rebels."

Over to Ronnie Flood in Liverpool, the man behind the legendary "Hatton Rap" single, who's masterminding the event. "They're only 30 miles away and they've seen the problems here. With Liverpool playing Manchester United the next day it's like a double billing."

From 30 miles away it's easy to see what's happening in Liverpool as a good old romantic class struggle. Living with the tensions of perpetual crisis it's not so easy.

Yet the facts directly behind this concert remain. In September 1985 the District Auditor issued surcharge certificates against Liverpool City Council for failing to set a "legal" rate until June, 10 weeks into the financial year. The penalty is £106,000 and disqualification from office for five years and affects each councillor individually. An appeal against the charge is currently being heard in the High Court in London and a "fighting fund" has been set up to cover the legal costs, expected to reach at least £200,000. Hence tonight's concert (the £6 tickets sold out fast) and other spin-offs like a benefit by The Redskins on March 10, a single "Maggie's Farm" (does Bob Dylan know?) by local nonentities the Lloyd Collection, and tonight's merchandising.

"It's better than Red Wedge," Ronnie Flood had enthused about the line-up, but Red Wedge it wasn't, as The Redskins were only too pleased to point out at the end of the show. Red Wedge, apart from running a lot more smoothly, communicated the harmony and honesty of a common purpose. This event communicated nothing, offstage or on.

Communication of any kind has never been New Order's strong point. Their only spoken words tonight are to the hecklers and do nothing to suggest a drop in hostilities between the two cities. Yet their music speaks for itself, and makes specifics irrelevant for 45 minutes. From a cold start on a cold evening, they warm up from being just another (good) group, building into brutal beauty and then crashing into a cascade of casual splendour that climaxes with "Love Will Tear Us Apart".

Next is John Cooper Clarke, actually referring to the event in question. "Something to do with not paying the rates?" he quips before providing the most pertinent question of the night: "Better to keep silent and be thought a fool than open your mouth and be proved one". We then get an entertaining encapsulation of his act: prose, poems, jokes, impersonation, speculation on the Lone Ranger, Tonto and AIDS, and "from my town to your town", something that says more about the condition of Liverpool than any amount of statistics, "Evidently Chickentown".

Then it's The Fall (as usual, no words), the most inexplicable band in the universe. Like New Order, theirs is not the usual type of pop communication, rising relentlessly above the literal. Listening to The Fall's seductive torture after most modern pop music is like being taken out of cotton wool, placed in a large dark box and shaken very hard - to the rhythm of your mother's heartbeat.

It's almost a relief to get back to real life, even if that means Liverpool's Margi Clarke doing two shows from her current show and then introducing "the biggest scally in Liverpool - Derek Hatton". Remarkably brief, Hatton contents himself with leading a Pavlovian chorus of "Maggie, Maggie, Maggie..." and thanking Morrissey for making the concert possible.

And not before time, to the man himself. The Smiths (first word: "Hello", second word: "This is from our new album") get the big build-up, the big response, and turn the evening into what most of the punters had paid their money for - a Smiths concert, no more, no less. It's worth it.

The pace is for the most part fast and almost frivolous, with new songs like "Frankly Mr Shankly" bringing Morrissey's dry humour to the fore. No-one who, having written "Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now", and who can also come up with a line like "I didn't realise you wrote such awful poetry", can be accused of taking themselves too seriously.

The Smiths encore and leave, and the ritual applause starts, in anticipation of a promised grand finale. When the house lights go up, half the audience leaves, and then the house lights go down again. Someone announces the impending arrival of "The Smiths, The Fall, New Order, The Redskins, and the Lloyd Collection doing the Lloyd Collection's new single 'Maggie's Farm' out now on Rough Trade". (It isn't: it's distributed by Rough Trade). Three men calling themselves "the flying picket faction of The Redskins" (they can't seem to stay away from Liverpool) arrive and tell us why they don't support Red Wedge - because Neil Kinnock doesn't support Liverpool City Council.

Someone comes back and promises "all our guest stars and the Lloyd Collection... in two minutes". The only star to materialise is Bernard from New Order.

 Eventually the Lloyd Collection arrive and begin some very ugly early Seventies guitar noises. They haven't even arrived at anything resembling a Bob Dylan song when the expletives and the beer cans start to fly. They return them with equal venom and increasing frequency until someone has the sense to put the house lights back on and the audience retreats to the strains of "You'll Never Walk Alone".

Your photographer goes home with a black eye. Your writer goes home wondering if something else Bob Dylan wrote would have made a better conclusion to the evening. Something that said "Don't follow leaders"...

NME (?) - PUNK POLITICO

THE METAMORPHOSIS of Liverpool's Derek Hatton into latter-day punk anti-hero was finally achieved on Saturday night, when New Order, The Fall and The Smiths staged a benefit gig, 'From Manchester With Love', at Liverpool's Royal Court, in aid of the councillors’ Legal Appeal Fund.

But Morrissey and Johnny Marr spoiled the Deputy Leader's Valentine party by choosing at the final curtain not to appear on stage with local combo The Lloyd Collection. With the mikes turned off, The Fall away and gone, and only Bernard Albrecht of New Order actively joining in, Lloyd’s attempt at ‘Maggie's Farm', sans Hatton, trailed off into a spasm of gobbing, can and bottle-chucking, effectively scuppering the grand political finale.

Earlier, Hatton, self-consciously dressed down for the occasion in blue leather jacket, open-necked shirt and cords, pronounced himself ’dead made up'. And well he might, the Manchester bands’ presence alone ensured a massive shot in the arm for his credibility, as well as helping the Fund to top £109,000 in only 10 weeks.

The idea for the event came after Morrissey sent Hatton a letter of support and some albums. Having - he admits - ascertained who Morrissey was, Hatton travelled to Manchester where he met New Order and John Cooper Clarke, who compered Saturday's gig.

Morrissey was unavailable for interviews. The Fall, true to the old capitalist punk ethic, demanded and got a sizeable fee for their efforts.

Liverpool's own Margi Clarke, of Letter To Brezhnev fame, waxed lyrical about the city's future under Hatton, a future - she believes - where the city has the chance to become the Hollywood of Britain The one thing that Liverpool's got is talent, it's got more stars than Bethlehem.  "What about the whispers?" "I don't know what he's guilty of, myself."

New Order's Bernard Albrecht explained why the band took part. "It's basically to give him a chance; also because he's fighting the Government; it's a David and Goliath situation. We did it to get an equilibrium, really, not to say, this person's right, and that person's wrong; we're not experts on the situation."

Peter Hook's view is of Hatton as a political punk. "It’s very interesting; it’s very anarchistic, what he’s done; I admire that and I admire him as a person; I don't particularly believe in his policies. He's a nice guy. In fact he reminded me of us, just the way he talks, his attitude, the way he acts; I think he's quite normal. I think he's been put into a position that he doesn’t really enjoy, being a political sort of superstar. The funny thing is that we don’t enjoy that either, so we get a kind of affinity from that. Also his attitude- he's challenging the powers that be, trying to do things differently; it's very like the way we work, with Factory. He's very Sex Pistolish in a way; what the Pistols did with music, he's done with government- it's punk."

Which brings me back to a remark Jamie Reid made about the recent Sex Pistols court case. Reid ("the man who put the pin through the Queen's nose") revealed that the Pistols case, and the Lambeth and Liverpool councillors' case were running in adjoining rooms in the High Court, and Malcolm McLaren dearly wanted to meet Derek Hatton, but missed him by a whisker. So maybe punk isn’t dead after all - even if it's pushing 40 and wears a blue leather jacket, open-necked shirt, and cords...

Quentin McDermott