Paul Morley - The North: (And Almost Everything In It)

This north was made up out of memory, conversation, a number of journeys that began or ended at Stockport station, or Manchester Piccadilly, and various facts, quotes and dates scattered around the Internet. The combination of recollection, impression, assembly and wandering is not intended to achieve conventional scholarly precision. If there was to be a series of bracketed academic numbers attached to these facts, dates, quotes and traces, the straightforward explanation of their source would be that they were found on the World Wide Web, and then framed, filtered and spun until they fitted into my story of the north. I do not claim objectivity, viewing any such certainty, all things considered, as impossible, so there seems no need to produce any proof, evidence or verification, other than its all out there.

This north is a hallucination as much as it is a history, a non-fiction dream of what might have been rather than a documented expression of the definite. None of the facts, deeds and claims were included unless they were repeated so many times almost word for word on various sites that they had turned into fixed, neutral objects. These objects became walls, gates, trees, steps, lanes, faces, valleys, roofs, showers, locks, flagstones, patterns, fixtures and fittings, and, at the other extreme, a series of illusions, a miscellany of emotions, owned by no one, something in the air, available to anyone thinking of producing their own map, model or manifesto, their very own version of events.

Thank you to David Godwin, my agent, who sat me down one day, gave me a cup of tea, and told me in so many words, perhaps to get me out of his office, to take a train to Stockport, wander down the hill into the town centre, look around, and write down whatever occurred to me. When I returned many years later, with bags of material, he sat me down, gave me a cup of tea, and like the gentleman he is ignored the fact I was dressed in rags and mumbling deliriously about bus stops, bridges and Reddish Baths. The Venerable Bede, as well, although eventually the great mind-changing monk of Northumbria and the father of English history never quite made it into the book. Thank you also to Caitlin, Anna and Heather at David Godwin Associates.

Thank you to Mike Jones, who commissioned the book in the days before the phrase back in the day was in common use. Before I had even got to the stage of constructing the canals, roads and railways, while I was still stumbling through the woods, digging a few holes, sniffing the air, he moved elsewhere. I hope this north shows him that when I told him at our first meeting what I was going to do, there really was a plan.

Thank you to Michael Fishwick at Bloomsbury, who took over the book, and firmly but gently ushered me into the era of motorways and colour television. Even though I ended up following a number of paths, and a few waterways, and got carried away counting bricks, he made sure I never lost sight of the original path, and that there was enough of a connection between my feet and the ground.

There is a soundtrack to this book that contains, perhaps, for me, the more obvious and expected northern sounds Joy Division, Magazine, Roy Harper, the Hollies, the Watersons, Cabaret Voltaire, Vini Reilly, ABC, Frankie Vaughan, Ewan MacColl, Autechre, Billy Fury, the Smiths, the Fall, Buzzcocks, the Stone Roses, the Animals, the Brighouse and Rastrick Brass Band, A Certain Ratio, Echo and the Bunnymen, Neil Tennant, Jilted John, Harrison, Lennon, Starr, the Mekons, the Spinners, the Passage, Pulp, Van der Graaf Generator, Robert Smith, Ladytron, Mick Ronson, Frederick Delius, Elvis Costello, New Order, John Barry, Bryan Ferry, the Blue Orchids, Joe Cocker, Everything But The Girl, Paul Rodgers, the Human League, Godley and Creme, Julian Cope, Be Bop Deluxe, the Undertakers, 808 State, the New Music Manchester group, the Searchers, British Electric Foundation, Deaf School, the Distractions, Badly Drawn Boy, Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark, Arctic Monkeys, William Walton, the Scaffold, Electronic, Gang of Four, John Cooper Clarke and then there is another (even) ghostlier soundtrack, also useful for creating the correct atmospheric weight, and weightlessness, inside, and outside, of the thoughtful, and brawling, north, which includes Derek Bailey, Gavin Bryars, Tony Oxley (and therefore the Joseph Holbrooke trio of Sheffield), Harold Riley of Leeds, Trevor Watts of York, John McLaughlin of Doncaster, Georgie Fame of Leigh, Big in Japan of Liverpool, Fila Brazillia of Hull, Elkie Brooks of Broughton and Vinegar Joe, Robert Palmer of Scarborough and Vinegar Joe, John Taylor of Manchester, Azimuth and the University of York, Ian Anderson of Dunfermline and Blackpool, Clock DVA of Sheffield, Section 25 of Blackpool, Prelude of Gateshead, Graham Collier of Tynemouth, Penetration of Ferryhill, County Durham, Lee Griffiths of Collyhurst, Lita How Much is That Doggie in the Window Roza of Liverpool and the first female singer to top the UK singles chart, Alan Hull of Newcastle upon Tyne and Lindisfarne, Annie Haslam of Bolton and Renaissance, Arthur Brown of Whitby, The EmCee Five of 1960 Newcastle, Kathryn Williams of Liverpool and Newcastle, Iain Matthews of Scunthorpe and almost Bradford Park Avenue FC, Back Door of the Lion Inn, Blakey Ridge, Hood of Leeds, John McCabe of Huyton and the Royal Northern College of Music, Mike Harrison of Carlisle and Spooky Tooth, the Oldham Tinkers, Lonelady, the Unthanks, Marconi Union, Antonymes, Quando Quango, Michael Chapman of Hunslet, Ernest Tomlinson of Rawtenstall, Harry Boardman of Failsworth, Alan Rawsthorne of Halsingden, Leslie Thomas Barrett Stuart of Southport, pitman bard Tommy Armstrong of Shotley Bridge and Tanfield Lea, William Blezard of Padiham, Nol Coward and Playschool (and this is where a new path opens up, looping back to Ronnie Hazlehurst of Dukinfield), Ted Astley of Warrington and the theme tunes to The Champions , The Saint and Civilisation , Wally Stott of Leeds, the Goons and Angela Morley, Arthur Wood of Heckmondwike and the theme tune to The Archers , and Barry Mason of Wigan, Delilah and The Last Waltz.

Thank you to those who have had an influence on this/my north whether they knew it or not; David Peace of Ossett and Tokyo, Simon Armitage of Marsden, Anthony H. Wilson of Salford, Marple, Granada & Factory, Alan Erasmus of Palatine Road, Didsbury & Factory and Peter Saville of Hale & Factory, and Gretton and Hannett of elsewhere, Johnny Marr of Ardwick and the major 9th, Ron Atkinson of Didsbury, Simon Stephens of Heaton Moor, Richard Boon of New Hormones and the library, Peter Coyle of Liverpool and the middle of somewhere, Kevin Cummins of Salford and City, Mike Garry of Chorlton-on-Medlock and Fallowfield, Philip Cashian of Warrington and the Royal Academy of Music, Chris Austin of Norwich and Peter Maxwell Davies, and Dave Haslam of Manchester and Manchester.

Thank you to everyone at Bloomsbury for waiting so patiently for me to return, and Anna Simpson for making sure once it was all built that the paint was dry, the windows polished, the timetables followed, the roads correctly numbered and the bridges tested. Thank you to the nerveless copy editor, Hugh Davis, who gave the foundations a damned good going over, and recommended a few time-saving short cuts and time-travelling edits, to David Atkinson for the index, which created a wonderful new order, and to Sarah-Jane Forder, for the final survey.

Thank you to Madeleine Morley, for knowing her Marx, as well as her Alice, and questioning everything; Carol Morley of Reddish and way beyond, for checking, and seeing, things, coupled with Cairo Cannon of the east coast and east London; the travelling Morleys, Jayne, Natasha and Florence; and the Mitchells of north Wales, Aunt Sally, Lizzie, Sian and Andrew.

Thank you to those that I miss, who helped me find my place.