The Blue Monday Diaries – in the studio with New Order, by Michael Butterworth. (Plexus Books)
One for the fans.
In a day-by-day, minute-by-minute diary, Michael—who was there at the invitation of the band and their manager Rob Gretton—documents the making of New Order’s second studio album and the 12-inch single it spawned.
Other people and subjects meander through his narrative including Ian Curtis, Michael Moorcock and Linda Steele, PJ Proby (lots of him), Peter Saville, Malcolm Whitehead, Claude Bessy (who used Savoy-supplied visuals, from comic books to hardcore weirdness, in his role as official Haçienda video jock), Fenella Fielding, Michael Johnson, Open Head Press, the Altrincham music scene. Most of all, the Savoy bookshops themselves—purveyors of literature, comics, bootlegs and independent records in the 1970s and 80s to the Factory and Manchester music scenes.
(Savoy news release)