Paul
Morley was born on the 26th March 1957 in Stockport. He first made a
name for himself as a journalist for the British music
paper, New Musical Express (NME) in
1977 and around that time he had also been the manager as well as the
producer of the Manchester punk band The Drones. His style of journalism
was that of someone who spoke his mind and wrote down his thoughts in
print, regardless of it was a review or an interview. This made him the
perfect journalist for the NME,
as the paper was well known for its harsh coverage of acts by
being as critically brutal as they could. One such victim of the
journalist was Trevor Horn during an interview in 1979. Horn was being
interviewed about the Buggles, in typical Morley-style, he called Horn "a
dustbin man of pop" as this wasn't the kind of
music that he favoured unlike other acts from that period like Public
Image Ltd. & Joy Division. The journalist would later interview
Horn again and started to take more of an interest in his work as a
producer after producing hits for Dollar, ABC along with
Malcolm McLaren leading to the two men becoming friends.
Four
years later Paul left NME to co-found
a brand new record label in 1983 with Horn and his
wife Jill Sinclair. Horn was impressed by journalist's style and felt
that he was the perfect man to head up the label’s marketing as
well as it’s spokesman. He named the new label Zang Tumb
Tuum, affter reading the sound poem of the same name by Italian Futurist
Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, which was the author's description of the
sound of machine guns and cannons being fired during the Great War.
Another
name taken from a publication from an Italian Futurist was given
to
ZTT’s first ever act conceived by Gary Langan & J.J. Jeczalik
after
being turned into a group along with Horn and Anne Dudley. He
named
them The Art Of Noises (translated from the original Italian title L’arte Dei Rumori),
a manifesto by the Italian Futurist Luigi Russolo
published in 1913. The name fit their unique style of
music by taking
sounds from the outside world and turning them into
music by
pioneering the sampling revolution, the name was altered by
Jeczalik
to the Art of Noise. Paul became the fifth member of the Art of
Noise, but unlike the other members, his role was to inject ideas into
the group rather than contributing to the music itself along with
giving titles to their music. One of his ideas was to have Thereza
Bazar of Dollar as the group’s lead singer after arranging a photo shoot
for her to be photographed within metal spikes, but after a
meeting with her manager Paul's idea was dropped and thankfully
she never became part of group. From
the start, the group wanted to be invisible, Paul had four drama masks
made to represent each of the four musicains from the group. Instead of
the group featuring in publicity shots, he arranged for pictures
of statues, the drama masks, and spanners to represent the group and
package them as a non-group. In
addition to that he had a large part in designing the sleeves and
writing the sleeve notes along with various quotes, which would
also be used for all of ZTT’s signings along with
presenting ideas to the various video directors who directed the
promotional videos for all of ZTT's acts.
The
ex-NME journalist became a very clever marketing man by creating four
series of catalogue numbers for each of label’s acts: Incidental
Series, Action Series,Perfect Series and Certain
Series along with IQ
numbers designed to confuse the public. As well as being the front man for
Art of Noise, he was also the man responsible for bringing the
attention of Frankie Goes To Hollywood to the public, a group he didn’t
want to sign to the label but was overruled by Horn &
Sinclair. With the success of that group, Paul came up with the Frankie
Say… slogan T-shirts that were so popular with
the public that Wham! came out with their own Choose
Life T-shirts. In mid February 1985 he married
Propaganda’s Claudia Brucken, an act signed to ZTT and that later
appeared at an event called the Value Of Entertainment, held at the
Ambassador’s Theatre in 1985, showcasing some of ZTT’s acts. This event
left Paul to fill in as Art of Noise after Dudley, Jeczalik & Langan
left ZTT. Under the pseudonym Otto Flake he contributed a short essay
mildly mocking their decision to leave ZTT in the booklet to the CD "daft".
During his time with ZTT, the label’s spokesman also
turned his hand to directing some of the promotional videos for
various acts signed to ZTT.
After leaving ZTT, Paul set up his first record label,
entitled Sense, where one of the label’s signings was non other than the comedian Vic
Reeves. During the 1990s the former Art of Noise member became a TV
broadcaster, appearing on such television shows throughout the 90s and
2000s as The James Whale Radio Show, The Thing
Is...Hotels, The Thing Is...Babies, Greatest TV Moments From Hell, 100
Greatest Number One Singles, I Love The 80s: I Love 1981, Top Ten: Pop
Princess, The 100 Greatest TV Characters, 24 Hour Party People: The
Factory Records Saga, Best Ever Bond, Celebrity Naked Ambition, Cilla In
Black & White, Deaths, Coronation Street: Secrets, John Travolta: The Inside Story,
X-Rated: The Pop Videos They Tried To Ban, The Curse Of Noel Edmonds,
The Fall: The Wonderful And Frightening World of Mark E. Smith, The Most
Outrageous TV Moments Ever, TV On Trial, Newsnight, Michael Portillo's Great
British Losers, Favouritism, It Shouldn't Happen On A TV Awards Show,
Top 50 Greatest Celebrity Animals, Blood Bank, Absolute Power, 50
Questions Of Political Incorrectness, Fad Gadget By Frank Tovey, Double
Acts, Big Brother's Efourum, Richard & Judy, Doctor Who
Confidential, Pop And Easy Listening, The Story Of Light Entertainment,
Joy Division, Legends, How TV Changed Britain, Most Shocking Celebrity
Moments Of The 80s, Most Shocking Celebrity Moments Of The 90s, Most
Shocking Celebrity Moments Of The 21st Century, Fame,
as well as appearing as a panellist on Newsnight Review.
Towards the end of the 1990s Paul returned to
ZTT for a short time and was involved in the reformation of the
Art of Noise along with two other original members. He also took
to the stage as the groups's frontman during their 1999/2000 concerts in
the USA & England. In 2000 he also co-remixed the remix album
Reduction that was based on material from the 1999 album The
Seduction Of Claude Debussy with producer
James Branbury from the Auteurs. This collaboration led to him and
Banbury setting up the own label ServiceAV and forming a group
originally called Image Of A Group, a reference to the reformed Art of Noise, that
used the slogan "as the image of a group"
on their releases. They issued a download entitled Matterin 2005 before changing the group name to Infantjoy
and released two albums to date Where The Night Goes
and With.
Paul still writes and has written for the
likes of The Observer, The Sunday Telegraph, GQ
Magazine, The Guardian, Esquire and The
New Statesman. In addition to that he has also been
the author of a series of books including Ask: Chatter
Of Pop, Words And Music: A History Of Pop In The Shape Of A City, Joy
Division: Piece By Piece: Writing About Joy Division 1977-2007,
and Nothing that deals with
aspects of his own life in true Morley-style. In 2006 he once
again returned to the Art of Noise to contribute towards the making of
the archive box set And What Have You Done With My Body, God?
and it’s accompanying book. After co-founding ZTT more than twenty five
years ago, he is still associated with that label due to
his radical marketing ideas. In late 2008 he once more contributed to a
ZTT project, in the form of writing part of the book that is included inZang Tumb Tuum: The ZTT Box Set released
by the Salvo label. It would be almost impossible to think of
the Art of Noise, Frankie Goes To Hollywood and ZTT without thinking of
Paul Morley, a lasting legacy to one of England's most original writers
& broadcasters.
Paul
Morley was born on the 26th March 1957 in Stockport. He first made a
name for himself as a journalist for the British music
paper, New Musical Express (NME) in
1977 and around that time he had also been the manager as well as the
producer of the Manchester punk band The Drones. His style of journalism
was that of someone who spoke his mind and wrote down his thoughts in
print, regardless of it was a review or an interview. This made him the
perfect journalist for the NME,
as the paper was well known for its harsh coverage of acts by
being as critically brutal as they could. One such victim of the
journalist was Trevor Horn during an interview in 1979. Horn was being
interviewed about the Buggles, in typical Morley-style, he called Horn "a
dustbin man of pop" as this wasn't the kind of
music that he favoured unlike other acts from that period like Public
Image Ltd. & Joy Division. The journalist would later interview
Horn again and started to take more of an interest in his work as a
producer after producing hits for Dollar, ABC along with
Malcolm McLaren leading to the two men becoming friends. 
