Love will tear us apart

I have just woken up from a dream which involved me saving Martin Hannett from a heroin overdose. I was successful. The dream had a positive feel to it. This is not as surreal as it might sound. I know what sparked memories of Martin and it's not surprising that in a short week when we have lost Victoria Wood, Prince, Papa Wemba and Billy Paul my thoughts turn to mortality. The memories of Martin were sparked by going to see a play about Joy Division and Manchester, New Dawn Fades. I've written a review which will be shared on Pennyblackmusic's pages soon. But I am aware that I am having a very personal response to the play as the days go by. I had wanted to see the play since I first saw Shay Rowan's fantastic publicity photos posted on Facebook. There's always a risk in seeing people and events you knew portrayed on film, on stage and in books. I have never been disappointed by the depictions of the Factory family. 24 Hour Party People, book and film, Control, Deborah Curtis' Touching From a Distance, Mick Middles and Peter Hook's accounts,Colin Sharp's Who Killed Martin Hannett?,I've followed the retellings over the years as I have gone through the process of recognising my own past and the influence of those formative years. I've written before about not being able to access the memory of where I was when I heard about Ian Curtis' suicide. But I do remember the phone call from a friend when Martin died. What a waste. I couldn't face going to the funeral because it was a year to the day of another close friend's. In those days my children were very young and I didn't get much opportunity to go over to Manchester. To only go to attend funerals was deeply depressing.Tony's illness and death were well publicised. I was out of his loop by then and didn't get one of the Savile designed perspex invitations, though I knew the church, the Hidden Gem, really well. Bizarrely Rob Gretton's death was one I remember most clearly because two personal worlds collided. I was with a group of work colleagues, heading for a team trip to Kew Gardens as we were all part of a government nature conservation organisation. On the tube I saw a full page obituary in a stranger's copy of the Guardian, and couldn't help my surprised reaction. It was a real blast from my past. The newspaper reader was impressed and sympathetic. My colleagues had no idea who or what I was talking about! As the decades have passed,the stories have become myths, the characters have become legends and it's sometimes hard to keep it real. But I did share a house with Martin in my late teens. The room where I found him in the dream, was the room I was familiar with. Heroin wasn't part of the picture in those days. Our friendship survived for a few more years and eventually faded out after a difficult incident which alerted me to his changing drug and alcohol use. New Dawn Fades is both entertaining and intense. There are some fantastic individual performances but the cast work together as a team in the same way a band does.There's such a sense of loss and waste at the end, especially when photos of those who have passed are projected onto a screen as the audience leaves the venue. Victoria Wood's death was announced on the Wednesday, Prince's on the Thursday and I saw the play on the Friday. No wonder I'm dreaming of mortality.