1988 Record Mirror New Order Feature

BLUE FAITH

Over 200 weeks in the top 200, more than 800,000 12 inch single sales, five years in the chart... 

And now New Order's 'Blue Monday' is back - 1988 style. 

At the recent San Remo pop festival, Francesco Adolphi met Barney Sumner and Peter Hook who reveal 'we're not hip' 

Bernard Albrecht and Peter Hook are sitting in the bar of one of San Remo's trendiest hotels.

New Order embracing the rock 'n' roll carnival that is the San Remo pop festival? Surely not.

Perhaps they've realised that San Remo is the only way to reach 20 million Italian viewers ...

"The reason we are here," Peter Hook announces forcefully, "is that we as a band have never done play-back and when we were asked to play San Remo, we said that we wanted to play live. They said no, so we answered 'well, we won't do it!'.

"But our record company implored us to play and we thought, 'well, we've never done play-back so maybe we should try it'. So we're here to see what it's like miming ..."

Why?

"Because you get older and sort of mellow. You have more patience; you're willing to try more things — you become more tolerant."

Tolerant? Miming? New Order? How things have changed since that day in 1983 when Barney sang the original 'Blue Monday' on 'Top Of The Pops' while all others around were opening and shutting their mouths like beached whales to the usual backing tracks.

As the Quincy Jones re-mix of this classic track soars up the charts, Hooky and Barney look back over the last five years of Blue (and not so blue) Mondays.

THE SECOND BEST CITY IN THE WORLD

"Manchester's a boring city," reveals Barney, "but I think it's the second best city in England besides London. Manchester is just a big, boring commercial city — no-one takes good care of it so there are a lot of very ugly buildings built in the Sixties. But a lot of groups tend to come out of there — if you're nice and sensitive, it's difficult to fit in with our city. The only alternative is beer and to get pissed. So you tend to do more radical things, like join a group."

Isn't that an escapist perspective?

"No, I think it's very hard work, not escapist at all," states Peter firmly. "It becomes escapist when you become  popular, but it's such a struggle when you begin..."

"No, I don't agree with you Peter," Barney says softly. "To be in a band is escapist, 'cause it's not very natural."

THE ONLY INDEPENDENT BAND AROUND

So, five years on from their first major hit, how do New Order stand in the greater scheme of pop culture? It's a subject on which Peter has strong views.

"You see, England has gone very commercial. I think we are the only independent and underground band around. The good thing about New Order is that with such tracks as 'Confusion' or Touched By The Hand Of God', we managed to cross over into being commercially successful.

"The Fall or Echo And The Bunnymen never actually managed to be that successful from a commercial point of view. And because they haven't been successful, they tried to be accessible in other ways."

Do you think New Order made mistakes along the way?

"Possibly," replies Hooky. "But we have enjoyed ourselves and still do. The mistakes were obviously something that we had to cope with, but don't ask me what — I'm not gonna tell you what went wrong with the band!"

How would you characterise New Order?

"I don't know, I never thought about it. We just began and we're still here. We do speak with our fans but you can't generalise — you can't say your fans think this or that about us. But they certainly think we're different from normal bands. We have a lot more going, for instance, than most bands have ..."

So what's the basic difference between you and them?

"I think we have more say about what we do," says Barney. "We control what we do — we're not controlled by our record company. We're in San Remo because we want to be .."

Don't you think that all sounds a little pretentious?

"To my mind," Peter starts, "Joy Division and New Order were the least pretentious bands around because we didn't — and still don't — do anything. We don't demand anything from our audience or from the public — we just make records and put them out. People buy them if they like them.

"I think we're not hip. Most bands and record companies manipulate people into thinking that groups like Wet Wet Wet or Terence Trent D'Arby are important, but they've got nothing going for them at all. I think that Terence Trent D'Arby and Wet Wet Wet should be honoured that New Order were here in Italy with them, 'cause it's the only strain of credibility that they'll ever get.

'We are a fixed point in music" continues Peter. "In the same way as the Doors, the Stones or the Beatles were. Take U2 ... We were a starting point for their career. They tried to emulate Joy Division. The same with Simple Minds."

NAIVE, YOUNG AND FOOLISH

Do you ever feel political when you write?

"No," replies Barney flatly.

Or somehow responsible towards your audience, perhaps?

"The audience is old enough to look after themselves," says Peter. "I don't think you should be political, I think it takes away people's naivety. You should be allowed to enjoy yourself; to be naive, young and foolish."

"If you're gonna teach something to someone," says Barney, "then you should teach by example and not by preaching like, say, Billy Bragg does."

"Or Paul Weller," adds Peter. "He's just mouthing off, saying what you should do and then actually doing completely the opposite. We try to determine our own politics. People look at us and see how we are and that's what should be perfected first before you start preaching about what people should do."

Have you ever thought of recording a live album and possibly to combine it with a video documentary?

"No, not really. The thing is that over the last few months a lot of our fans have asked for a live album but we never actually considered that possibility. Doing a live album is like doing a very cashing-in thing. You don't do it for any constructive thing, it's just half a way of making money."

"A live LP," says Barney, rejoining the conversation, "doesn't appeal to us ... I don't know why."

"You see," continues Peter, "if someone sat down and said to us, 'If you do a live album now you will make £300,000', then we would do it because it's the easiest thing to do. So far nobody has said that, so we don't care.

"A live album or video, like the Cure did in 'Orange', is not a learning experience, it's a fly on the wall thing. To me, when you do things like that it means that you're short of creativity."

Although New Order's latest top 10 hit is really only someone else's re-working of a five year old song, there's still a legion of devotees out there knowing that creativity is the one thing these down-to-earth Mancunians are certainly not short of.

©S.I.N. 1988