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Spike | 15 YEARS OF BOOKS, MUSIC, ART, IDEAS | www.spikemagazine.com
actually! So in some way we behaved properly. There
was a contract and the contract said we own nothing,
the musicians own everything, That was a mistake, but
it was very nice at the time and very idealistic, but looking
back on it fuck the musicians I say.
We actually I’d say, were responsible for removing
the world’s greatest rock’n’roll writer for about 15
years, which is Greil Marcus, from rock’n’roll. He got
a copy of our first record and stuck a Durutti Column
sticker on his deck and looked at it for two years thinking
‘What the fuck is this?’, and finally discovered it
was a Strasbourg (Andre Bertrand) political cartoon at
the end of which he got completely involved in it and
became buried in it and became the world expert on
Situationism. Which is bit of a shame because it took
him away from writing until he wrote his Elvis Presley/
Bill Clinton book which I adore that he really came
back to the fold. The greatest book on rock’n’roll is
Mystery Train by Greil Marcus by a million miles.
What’s your involvement in the upcoming Joy
Division film?
I’m a producer on the movie and in a way I think
that’s because it makes it more official having me involved,
(stupidly) and it does reflect to a degree what
was their concern about the rival film. The rival film
has now completely fucking gone, thank god. There’s
always only been one project, the film which is based
on Debbie Curtis’s book (Touching From A Distance)
BUY Tony Wilson books online from and
and that always been how it’s approached. The people
making the film are two American guys; there was an
American man and woman from New York that were
making the film called Double A Films, however they
fell out and also the woman fell out with Debbie Curtis.
An option on a book has to be renewed, and they didn’t
renew the option otherwise they’d be still be making
the film, but I presume they kept promising Debbie they
were renewing it. Some of these Americans have so
much money they don’t know what it’s like for us over
here. No money was paid, the option ceased at which
point these two guys Todd Eckert and Orian Williams,
who had been friends from school years decided to step
in and take up the option. Todd is a Pittsburgh guy, and
Orian works out of Los Angeles, so it’s a Pittsburgh/Los
Angeles pairing that are doing this. They had actually
talked to Sophia Coppola who is a Joy Division fan,
there was interest from her, but in the end they chose
Anton Corbijn which I think is a great idea.
So their choice of Anton mirrored my own choice
because I realised that when I had to make a video
for ‘Atmosphere’ in 1988 I would have to use the old
photographs, and therefore it seemed logical to use
either Kevin Cummins or Anton. There was only two
photographers who took the great photographs of Ian
and for whatever reason I chose Anton even though
I’ve just recently done a photo shoot with the beloved
Mr Cummins, who moaned at me. He said ‘If I do a
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