EARTHBOUND by Paul Morley (Penguin Books, 2013)
By common consensus Paul Morley is a pretentious tosser and, moreover, he knows it.
He was a weekly source of irritation during his tenure at New Musical Express from 1977 – 1983 but somehow his pieces were impossible to ignore.
His self-consciously provocative style was exasperating but I have to concede that the man can write. With the benefit of hindsight, I think he was providing a valuable service to NME readers by making the point that writing about music is always subjective and personal.
When we listen to recordings or find bands, we bring our own baggage which includes plenty of prejudices and preconceptions. We can never hear these sounds in a vacuum; our responses are coloured by our mood, background and the space in which we experience the music.
In Earthbound, Morley admits that his articles would “seem to be about one thing and then half way through, start to be about something else altogether” and this book follows much the same pattern.
The book is one of twelve pocket-sized Penguin paperbacks inspired by a different tube line to celebrate 150 years of the London Underground. They are intended to illustrate how, although we are all connected in some way, the space we live in shapes our imagination in different ways. Continue reading
