"I don..t care that you know nothing about me,.. he said, ..I..d rather have someone write about me who knows nothing, because I..m sick of these biographies that just repeat the same old simple things, and that attatch me to the same old simple past, and that repeat the same old half-truths about who I am and what I do...."
"Peter.., I said ..What if I write something that suggests you..re just a piece of shit, or a cup of cold sick."
"So be it,.. he sighed. ..Nothing could be worse than ..Peter Murphy..s new album is a fresh and surprising collection of personal, sensuous songs that will confound the doubters and thrill the believers.. Anything but something that goes on about how I..ve evolved as a songwriter, about how I pack out 10,000 seaters in America and have albums in the top ten....."
"Peter,.. I said, ..you pack out 10,000 seaters in America and have albums in the top ten...."
"..Yeah,.. he sighed like he believed it. .. So will you write a short biography to accompany the album?"
"Even though I know nothing about you?"
"Even though you know nothing about me."
"Except that in fact you are still ill looking and your favourite hobby is to catch and tame wild cats and teach them to dance."
"How did you know that?"
"I just made it up, but I figured that it was the kind of stuff that you would want in your biography."
"So will you write it then."
"Are you asking?"
"I..m asking."
"O.K."
So here I am writing a biography to accompany the new album by Peter Murphy, and in fact I..m not writing it simply because he asked me to, or because I..m being paid, but because oddly enough, the album is a nervous, intimate, curiously endearing set of confessions and secrets that doesn..t have anything to do with what I thought he was, or what he thought he was, or what his fans thought he was all those years ago. The first time I heard it I figured that I would be telling the truth but deadly dull if I wrote somewhere that Peter Murphy..s new album .. is a fresh and surprising collection of personal, sensuous songs that will confound the doubters and thrill the believers... For what it..s worth I would probavbly use words like relaxed, unburdened, gentle, fickle if someone sensible asked me to begin describing the record; if someone less sensible, or in a way more sensible asked me, I would ramble on with crafty coherence about a guilty guiltlessness reaching upwards into magical metaphysical spheres and downwards to the darkest relam of instinct.
It occurs to me that through, oddly enough, listening to the new Peter Murphy album, I now know a lot about Peter Murphy, about a few particular incidents and feeling and attitudes. I know that he..s making records for his own damned, quiet reasons in the way that some people write novels. I know that his songs have nothing to do with pop trends or rock fashions and in that sense they..re so old fashioned they..re plainly radical. I know that he..s two or three albums away from making one that..s as perfectly shaped and as mysterious as the shape of his head, and therefore he..s as close as he..s ever going to be to being the kind of pop star that pop music was invented for, a dangerous impulsive arrogant magician who only truly comes alive when thousands and thousands of people are paying attention all at the same time. I could even get even get quite enthusiastic: I mean, fuck Mick Hucknall, Jim Kerr, Belinda Carlisle, these agents of mediocrity, middle of the road journeymen, if there..s real life left in pop as a worldwide spectacle, then the Peter Murphy who I know called me on the telephone to ask me to write his biography, who I know speaks softly and deliberatley about the simple, complex act of writing songs and then performing them, is as good a hope as any. I know that I never thought I..d know that, but now I know.
So I guess if you want to know any facts about Peter Murphy, apart from learning that he loves a natural pause in conversation, the best thing is to listen to the record and, if you want to, make you..re own mind up about what to know. Make your own words about what Peter Murphy is making up. Look at the details the record company have no doubt attatched to these pages. And listen to the record again. If you want to.Oddly enough, I know I will.
I..m not sure I know why, but that..s a whole other two thousand words, and I..m sure you..ve got work to do.
by Paul Morley, London 1992
