Ask: The Chatter of Pop

by Paul Morley

Gathers interviews with Quentin Crisp, Boy George, Gary Glitter, Ted Nugent, Meatloaf, Lou Reed, Iron Maiden, Wham!, Duran Duran, Phil Collins, and Sting

Genres: Music

128 pages, Paperback

First published August 6, 1986

About the author

Paul Morley is an English journalist who wrote for the New Musical Express from 1977 to 1983, during one of its most successful periods, and has since written for a wide range of publications. He has also has been a band manager and promoter, as well as a television presenter.

Reviews

[Rob · Rating 2 out of 5]

Paul Morley perhaps influenced my formative years as a music fan as much as anyone. The overarching narrative is that Punk swept away the decrepit, over-indulgent excesses of prog rock and the hippie era and that, The Velvet Underground aside, anything recorded before 1976 was suspect. This book of his interviews from the early 80s New Musical Express fully illustrates that – indeed, the chapter on Jim Kerr of Simple Minds is an exemplar of that newspaper’s “build ‘em up to knock ‘em down” blueprint. Other pieces record Morley’s encounters with any number of rock dinosaurs and it’s an insight into a long lost trait of rock journalism – the confrontational interview. Morley sits down with most of his interlocutors fully prepared to point out their weaknesses, having in many cases already slagged off one of their records or gigs – so tension is there from the start and in a way, it’s a refreshing change from the fawning, PR led machinations of music writing today.

But it’s a deeply pretentious book (and that’s from me – a lover of flowery, over the top prose). The format is infuriating – some of the interviews receive centre stage while others are recalled in snippets in a running sidebar. It’s a deliberate collage-style approach and it jars – while one suspects that even the main interviews are displayed via piecemeal extracts. Morley very often comes across as mean too – his picking apart of Wham! (a band I admittedly loathed myself at the time) is bullying and ungenerous. Yes, they were very rich men who were open about entertainment as their sole modus operandi but Morley’s tone makes him sound gratuitously unpleasant (a false impression as I have always found him to be quite genial in his TV appearances). Phil Collins vents fury about being labelled as ‘the ugliest man since George Orwell’ by Julie Burchill (of whom, the less said, the better) while Steve Harley and Fish get it in the neck (sometimes amusingly – Marillion’s output is described by Morley as making The Bible look abbreviated) and Morley displays real disdain for Goth (Bauhaus and Killing Joke are filleted with the latter threatening physical violence).

Only, surprisingly, in a final chapter on Sting and a tour The Police made to Bombay in 1980 does the book improve. Morley’s writing on his impressions of the city is brilliant – a fantastic evocation – while Sting cleverly disarms him via the age old technique of rising above it.

[Ryan · Rating 1 out of 5]

If it were possible to give a book a minus rating I would give it to this one. The lay-out is abysmal, the writing awful.