Stephen Paul David Morris was born in Macclesfield on 28 October 1957 at some ungodly hour in the morning.
With his younger sister, he was brought up in a house bordered by green fields, on a quiet road with a bus stop. From such an ordinary, everyday beginning, great things were to come. Record Play Pause isn’t that typical music autobiography, high on mischief and low on the music.Part memoir, part aural history, the book perfectly captures Stephen’s wry and witty voice as he weaves a dual narrative of growing up in the North West during the 1970s with how the music actually works. It also explores what it is to be part of a mythologised band and the idea of what you do becoming who you are.
This is the first volume following Stephen’s life during the days of Joy Division. Coming early next year will be the next instalment, featuring his time in New Order up to the current day. About the author: From Joy Division to New Order and beyond, Stephen Morris has been behind some of the most recognisable drumbeats in pop. Morris attended the same Macclesfield school as Ian Curtis, and joined Joy Division as their drummer in their early days, while they were still known as Warsaw. After Ian Curtis’s tragic suicide, the remaining trio – Morris, Bernard Sumner and Peter Hook – reformed as New Order, with Sumner reluctantly taking over as vocalist and the addition of Morris’s future wife Gillian Gilbert on keyboards and guitars.
Stephen Morris has been a consistent fixture in New Order’s line-up from the 1980s until the present day. The band’s long career has included multiple world tours and headlining appearances at festivals, as well as a performance at the closing concert for the 2012 Olympics. Outside of New Order, Morris has released albums and television soundtracks with Gilbert under The Other Two, and has contributed in the studio and on tour to Bernard Sumner’s project Bad Lieutenant. He is also well known for owning a collection of tanks, which he drives near his home.