Cuttings

HATE MAIL The Smiths were "like a life-support machine" to Morrissey. Without STEPHEN STREET - co-writer/producer of 'Viva Hate' - it's conceivable that Les Miserable himself would either be six feet under or reconsidering his career in flower arrangement. LEN BROWN (assisted by knobbly-kneed namesake James) met The Smiths' fan turned saviour. Picture: DEREK RIDGERS. I imagined Stephen Street would be old and plug ugly. Why else would the famously insecure Mozzer force himself to appear naked and unchaperoned on Top Of The Pops ? Yet before me sits a disturbingly youthful-looking denim-clad character; a cross between Smiths clone - stick some NHS specs on him and dig those comfortable shoes - and Face/Blitz style fash boy. True, he does chunter on about ‘vocal levels’, ‘samplers', 'string lines’ and ‘rolling toms’ (a tremendous strain on the eyelids), but frankly he is not at all what I expected. Most alarming, the man who co-wrote ‘Viva Hate’ with Ste...

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2007/aug/12/tonywilson Idealist, chancer, loyal friend: why I will miss Tony Wilson Paul Morley pays tribute to his mentor, the man who shaped Manchester's culture from punk to the Happy Mondays and who died on Friday at the age of 57 Sun 12 Aug 2007 16.57 BST Sometimes, Tony Wilson was just too much. Perhaps he was just too much all of the time. Sometimes I hated that he was too much, too sure of himself, too convinced that his ways were the right ways, rampant with self-assurance, self-belief, self-confidence, self-indulgence, a man crammed with busy, swashbuckling selves to the extent you were never quite sure what he was up to, and what he was. Could someone so forward, so garrulous, so indiscreet be trusted? Was he really the idealistic northern philanthropist determined to fight a lazy, complacent and derelict south, discovering and enabling all kinds of local talent to help in his battle for an absurdist form of north-west independence? Or ...

Peter Saville on his album cover artwork https://www.theguardian.com/music/gallery/2011/may/29/joydivision-neworder Next month sees the release of Total , the first compilation to combine the back catalogues of Joy Division and New Order - who shared band members, a record label and a sleeve designer. Peter Saville was a co-founder of Factory Records and credits the label’s unique culture for providing him with a creative freedom on a par with its bands. "I had the opportunity to make the kind of objects I wanted to see in my life," says Saville, who went on to design the England football strip, art direct adverts for Dior and was creative director of the city of Manchester. Here, he talks us through his favourite designs for Joy Division and New Order sleeves Unknown Pleasures Joy Division (Factory, 1979) This was the first and only time that the band gave me something that they'd like for a cover. I went to see Rob Gretton, who managed them, and he gave me a fold...

9 BLUE LINES MASSIVE ATTACK Wild Bunch, 1991; chart position: 13 Ben Thompson on the West Country’s finest FROM THE metropolitan angst of‘Safe from Harm’ -‘If you hurt what’s mine, I’ll sure as hell retaliate’ - to the insistent shaken bottle-top rhythm of‘Unfinished Sympathy’, the most striking thing about this album, 13 years on, is how urgent and dramatic it still sounds. The journey-time between ‘bold artistic breakthrough’ and ‘widely accessible lifestyle accoutrement’ has shortened considerably in the interim, but Massive Attack’s universally admired debut has made that trip without forgetting where it came from. With ex-Rip, Rig & Panic bigshot Neneh Cherry (whose boyfriend ‘Booga Bear’ - alias Cameron McVey - was the record’s executive producer) scoring a co-writer’s credit on ‘Hymn of the Big Wheel’, and a young Enterprise Allowance whippersnapper called Geoff Barrow (later one half of Portishead) working as studio tape-op, it’s easy to see how Blue Lines has acquired it...

Love will tear us apart They married when they were both 17. Within three years he was a star, lead singer with Joy Division, and she was a mother. At the age of 23 Ian Curtis killed himself. Here, for the first time, Deborah Curtis tells her own story of their brief life together IAN was a performer from a very early age forever taking his fantasies to the extreme. Once, when he had decided to be a stunt man, he persuaded Tony to help him rig up a wooden sledge as a landing pad. After drumming up local children to watch, he donned an old crash-helmet and jumped from the roof of a one-storey garage. The sledge shattered in all directions and the showman walked away from his first stunt. Ian never did anything by halves; any interest became a vocation. Rather than just kick a ball around the field with a few friends he organised a football team called the Spartans — his childhood admiration for the Ancient Greeks helped him to choose the name. He arranged fixtures by advertising in a m...