A SHORT, insightful new book about the making of the modern world – told in microcosm – has just come from the pen of a noted indie rocker.
I guess I don’t see much of a relationship when it comes to religion. In the centuries that separate these bands from the people I look at in the book there’s a good case to be made that Christianity has almost died in Britain. With the economy there may be more of a connection. These bands are to de-industrialization what Ryder was to pre-industrialization. And without the industrial revolution, Manchester and Leeds would still likely be small towns with little of the context–gritty urban decay, university life, radical class politics, and so on–that helped define those bands and their sound, especially when their music was recorded by Martin Hannett. It’s a great question, and I wish I had a better answer.