Have ordered a copy from Hive.co.uk - £10.45 and free delivery (in UK at least) if you select standard delivery.Cheers again , Andy.

Just ordered this --- how did we miss this when it came out???

Thanks, Andy!

Edited by user 08 February 2016 15:09:33(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

There's some new copies on Amazon via 3rd party sellers from £10.04 including postage.

My hive.co.uk account tells me my copy was dispatched today so looking forward to receiving it next day or two

Worth pointing out the author is one of the main movers at Savoy Books:

http://www.savoy.abel.co.uk/1people.html

Who were responsible for this:

http://www.discogs.com/Savoy-Hitler-Youth-Band-Blue-Monday-/release/3536473

Friend of mine read this book recently and sent me the following 'review', I haven't got a copy yet, one for the plane to NYC in a few weeks.....

Just finished reading Michael Butterfield’s book about the recording of P,C & L. Although the book’s a bit odd in parts (the opening and closing chapters are about Butterfield’s own publishing career) the diary bit about the recording sessions is good, quite interesting.

In particular, interesting (in the context of the court case) how much input Gillian is reported to have had (not just a wonky table leg!). Also interesting is the impression you get of Hooky and Bernard being quite relaxed around each other, not competing egos at that time – the way Butterfield describes it, all the members of NO trusted each other with the production/mixing/lyric writing etc., took it all in turns etc. Confirms the view of Bernard as primary writer, but far from being the sole maestro at that stage. Also portrays Rob as a bit of a knob, but clearly a highly important element in the group dynamic – setting the tone and perhaps imperceptibly moderating the personality clashes that might come to the fore without him.

Anyway, worth a read.

The other book I mentioned was Lyndsay Reade’s book about her relationship with Tony Wilson. Very different to some of the other Factory histories – more personal, more paranoid, more hysterical in places. So, again, an interestingly different take on a well-known story.

Book popped through the letterbox today, yay

Not started reading yet but have had a quick flick through - looks like it could be fairly interesting.Wonder if there'll be any confirmation of that old story about Bernard recording vocals and/or guitar wearing his white lab coat

About halfway through the book now - pretty good but i'd say only of interest to obsessive New Order fans, but i'm pretty obsessive so it gets the thumbs up from me.There's other bands i really like but probably wouldn't bother reading a whole book about how they made an album.


Yep, it certainly seems Gillian contributed a lot of work to P,C & L; as well as the synths and keyboards there's mentions of her playing the guitar on songs that i'd only ever assumed was Bernard.Also i think it was mentioned she did some programming and/or dubbing.So what do you say about that, Hooky?


Sounds like they had quite a few problems with some of their machines when doing the album.

Early on in the book Butterworth mentions Stephen was unhappy about Murder being left off the album.Haven't yet got to any bit in the book where more light is thrown on this - so there must have been a group vote on it and Stephen was outvoted? Maybe the others felt it wasn't strong enough a track to make the final cut? Maybe they thought it too similar in mood and sound to something like Ultraviolence? Or they just felt it didn't sit with the rest of the songs or the running order? This got me wondering if in a parallel world where Murder did make it on to the album where would it sit in the running order? I'd go for it on side two, either between Ultraviolence and Ecstasy or between Ecstasy and Leave Me Alone.Probably the latter.


Sorry, will try and hold back from posting any more spoilers.

Edited by user 13 February 2016 10:41:58(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

On 23 April 2017, it will be exactly 31 years, some months, a fortnight and then a week or something since the release of State of the Nation. To commemorate this historical and indeed historic occasion, Hodder and Faber print 'How Many More Fucking Times?', an exclusive accunt by Richard Staines from Stoke. No one is in a better position to tell the tale as he once took a dump in a factory which is the same name etc etc.
'Peter Hook told me to fuck off once,' Dick boasts. 'His syntactical morphology of an imperative, intransitive phrasal verb pre-echoed - mea culpa, adumbrated - the Beckettian sylloligisms neophytically post-employed by anti-futuristic literature in the seventeenth century... I also met Gillian. She used to wear too much make-up and sit in the corner all day. This fascinating juxtaposition - being a part of yet apart from the material soil - would of course become a symbolic anthithesis of the Christian struggle for altruism and the Zen ideal of non-attachment.'
You can get a free pdf of the book or spend enough money to resolve third world debt on a signed copy.

bit 'arsh.Funny though.

You'll like this, Michael.Listen up - it's my story of how i discovered New Order and P,C & L


Spring of 83 i was 14 and had heard Blue Monday on the radio a few times and quite liked it but went right off it when i saw New Order do it live on TOTP.Maybe at 14 i didn't realise they were playing it live and i just went right off the song and this new band New Order.In September 1983 Blue Monday re entered the UK charts and started getting played on the radio again. I found i did really like the song so went out and bought it, which was a job in itself as at that time i was uninitiated and couldn't at first spot the sleeve in the record shop racks .Eventually i worked it out that it was this black thing with holes in.Parted with my hard earned paper round cash and took the thing home.I played it a lot but that's as far as my interest in this band New Order went at that point.I was vaguely aware they had an accompanying album out with a painting of some flowers on the cover but had no desire to buy it or hear it at that point.

Everything changed forever one Saturday tea time in late October 1983 when by brother came home from town with an album he'd bought .It was that album with the flowers on the cover. Mildly interested i sat down as he put it on the record player.Within the first 30 seconds of the first track ( i was later to read on the disc's label it was Age Of Consent) i was totally transfixed and interested.This music was utterly unlike anything i'd heard in my life, it was just fantastic.Age Of Consent , to me, was a far superior song to Blue Monday.I think at that point i'd decided even if the rest of the album was shite i didn't care because Age Of Consent was so good. The rest of side one of the album played and i found the songs after AOC ok-ish but didn't have quite the impact that first song on the album had.Then my brother put side two on and this song played which had almost the same impact on me as AOC had.I worked out from the disc's label it was Your Silent Face.The music was incredible, i couldn't believe what i was hearing.I was gobsmacked.The rest of side two played out and i think i found the remaining 3 songs a bit so so.But at the end of this first time of hearing this album with the flowers on the front i was just speechless from those 2 songs Age Of Consent and Your Silent Face.Over the next days and weeks i played the album to death and started to love the other songs i'd at first found a bit so so. I basically claimed ownership of the record as my brother decided he didn't like it much - he was pissed off Blue Monday wasn't on it and felt the songs were nowhere near as good as Blue Monday.I was the opposite, i thought a lot of the songs were way better than Blue Monday.


Over the next few months i looked for any scrap of information i could find on New Order which was bloody difficult in those days as they were still in their mysterious and enigmatic era.Just before Christmas 1983 the Radio 1 evening session broadcast a recording of New Order live at the Rosehill Hotel , Kilkenny.This was my first introduction to songs like Ceremony, Temptation and Everything's Gone Green.I taped the concert and played it to death.Upon hearing it my brother commented "bloody ell they sound well shit live" I got what he was saying but i didn't care - i loved the tape.

And that's how it all started for me.Over the early months of 1984 i tracked down and bought every New Order record i could find in the record shops in town.I think the first one i bought was the green cover 12" of Ceremony followed by Confusion 12", Temptation 12", Movement, and the Factus 8 EP.After discovering they were previously Joy Division i then started finding and buying all the Joy Division records i could , starting with Closer.It was then that the itch and impatience for new New Order material began.In March 1984 i heard Thieves Like Us for the very first time and i thought the song was incredible, that long drawn out intro was the dog's bollocks.Annie Nightingale's Sunday night request show on Radio 1 was where i heard the song first but only managed to tape the last half of it and so tuned in the next week to see if she played it again.She didn't, but she did play Lonesome Tonight.This song was even better than Thieves Like Us.It was just fucking incredible.A week or two later Thieves Like Us was in the shops and i eagerly went into town and bought it- upon glancing that incredible sleeve for the first time i was just lost for words.


Such heady times and all just completely ingrained in my memory forever.Butterworth says Blue Monday was his epiphany.Mine without a shadow of a doubt was Age Of Consent. I feel i was really lucky to discover New Order at the time i did, i was mid teenage years and had been looking for a band i could really get into and has luck happened New Order were the one.And it was such a time to get into them -a time of their career when they were developing in such an exciting and innovative way. A part of me sometimes wishes i'd been around when Joy Division were, well i had been around but was too young to be aware of them, but you can't have everything.


The rest of my teenage years and the 80s was the height of my obsession with New Order.It all reached a peak with Technique.I had just turned 20 when Technique was released.It was the end of being a teenager, the end of the 80s and after Technique it was in a way my end of my absolute obsession with New Order.They've never topped Technique IMHO- that was the pinnacle of all they'd been working towards in those 80s years.

Well that was all a load of sentimental gush wasn't it and nobody gives a fuck how i got into New Order.But hey, i enjoyed taking the trip down memory lane which the Michael Butterworth book triggered and that's all that matters

Really? I thought Top Class Manager was fascinating, curious as hell how an indie band struggles in the trenches, living off nearly nothing, focusing their resources on key spectacles and such. And interesting to learn more about the enigmatic Gretton. I realize it isn't for everyone, but for the obsessive factory records nutters here, it might be worth checking out.

I don't mean to say I found it boring; I literally have never opened the covers. I think after I bought it I stuck it somewhere safe, then later on I read a summary online of the new facts that were uncovered from reading it and that kind of took away the impetus to look at it. I still may do so some day :) It's sat next to the MC deluxe edition box and Factory Records: The Complete Graphic Album (which is not actually all that complete)