1993 04 17 New Order NME Feature

LAZIO GUIDED MELODIES

• They’re still in the home of Gazza, they’re still at the Cafe De How Much? and that Italian waiter is still giving Bernard a hard time. Welcome to NEW ORDER Part Two, wherein DAVID QUANTICK discovers their recording secrets, how they ripped off The Cure and what became of The Adventure Babies. Snapping the ruins: STEVE DOUBLE

Rome again, and we’re having our dinner in a restaurant made entirely from plastic, where the head waiter is the double of the sergeant in Hill Street Blues who says, “Do it to them before they do it to you.” Peter Hook clearly sees this as his motto, eyeing up innocent female diners, muttering in a vulgar way behind his hand and talking to ace snap expert Steve Double about chilli oil.

"I’ve got some great stories for you,” says manager Rob Gretton and then ponders a while. "Oh no,” he sighs, “I can’t tell you that one, it’s true.”

Rob and Peter decide to bet Steve Double £20 that he cannot eat a teaspoon of chilli oil. Steve is so keen to do this that Rob and Peter change their minds and bet me £40 to do it instead. Piece of piss!

Steven Morris sighs in the comer. “Doing videos... everyone’s got their own stylist and they’re all really good.” He looks at his angular body, clad in something The Beach Boys might have worn in 1964. “I’ve got Blind Pugh.”

INTERVIEW TIME, and by the magic of two-part features we are once more in the Cafe De How Much? running up a £75 bar tab just by looking at lager. Time to get muso and ask Steven and Gillian about the very nuts and bolts themselves of working with a producer. Why not, eh?

Blind Pugh's victim makes a Mediterranean gesture and considers. “Stephen Hague helped a bit and he confused a bit. He took it from a very, I suppose, professional arrangement; the old, come in here, you do your bit, thank you, your services are no longer required," he snorts. “And a couple of weeks later you’d turn up and the song would have changed completely.”

“We did our homework," says Gillian proudly. "We had three studios going at one point.”

“Hague has got a very songwriterly approach to records, whereas we're very hit and miss, stay up all night trying out a mad idea, it might work and it might not," notes Steven. “Also, he’s very pop."

“I don’t think he likes dance music, does he?" says Gillian, as of one benighted.

Steven nods. "And the idea was he’d do the album and we’d do the remixes. So you might get a remix album out of it...”

Gillian expands. “We did a version of ‘Regret’ with stuff that Bernard wanted on and Stephen Hague left off. So we did a version with stuff that he'd left off put back on again!"

She looks amused. Steven looks bemused. "That was when it was supposed to be about Piltdown Man...”

Pardon?

“I know, I never understood it either, but there was something in it that evoked Piltdown Man for Bernard. I dunno, it baffles me, anyway..."

Yes indeed. The other new thing about ‘Republic’, as we noticed last week, is that it is coming out via The Man, ie London Records. Or... is it?

“This is one of the loose ends. It’s through London but you can ring up London and say, can you please tell us what label it's on, they say, um, I’ll ring you back after I’ve spoken to my solicitor. And they never do,” sighs Steven. “All it’s got on the label, I suppose, is just ‘A New Order release through London Records’...”

Out of New Order, Steven and Gillian are clearly the most relieved to be out of Factory. Talk of the Hacienda causes Steven to remark, “You could probably have the Hacienda for a quid if you wanted. I think that sum has been mentioned... Nobody's prepared to buy a car on the off chance that it might not have an engine...”

“One dodgy owner...” mutters Gillian cheerfully.

Steven expands. “Factory’s like your favourite car you’ve had for years and you spend money getting it fixed, you know it’s going to conk out one day, and it's like, oh well, here it is, take it to the scrapyard.”

The last of Factory will probably be seen in an upcoming South Bank Show special on the New Order story (“We're opening negotiation with Mike Baldwin to see if he’ll be Tony,” claims Steven). One wonders if it will touch on the obvious bitterness felt by Morris and Gilbert concerning their work as The Other Two. Well, I wondered, anyway. Because they are clearly pissed off even now.

“Factory never came to see us in the studio, never listened to the record..." claims Gillian. Steven smiles testily. “Like Tasty Fish' got loads of airplay but you couldn't buy it because the bloke who was supposed to take it to the shops, his car broke down or something. And it was, ‘don’t be too hard on him, his wife’s left him...’”

“What did Tony say? ‘We don’t sell pop records’,” tuts Gillian. “That was the sort of thing we had to put up with."

“There seems to be some sort of pride in being the label that didn’t sign The Smiths, the label that didn’t sign Black Box...” muses Steven.

And finally Factory went and New Order didn’t. Steven claims “The reason we’re still here is because the way we’ve done it has been completely unique. If anything that should get us an award," but even now, 14 years on, he’s still reluctant to explain what it’s all about. Although he thinks getting into dance music helped.

“As we’ve gone along there has been a bit of a process of demystification... and it’s gone from the start of getting into dance music. You can’t really philosophise and dance. Even though we ain’t exactly Mr and Mrs Personality, we’re not saving any rainforests, are we?” he asks happily. “Although Bernard’s saving dolphins.”

“It’s with Electronic, though,” says Gillian. "He doesn’t save ’em with us. He eats ’em with us.”

WE LAST saw dolphin-eating Barney at a pavement cafe, waging war with a surly waiter and a weird cup of tea. We rejoin him now as he sighs, “My life is one constant treadmill of making music.”

Barney is in a good mood, despite his dinner.

“I’m actually enjoying the interviews and the video more than the studio!” he says, almost chuckling. “It was strange because Stephen Hague likes to work on one of you at a time and it took a long time, so one person would be in the studio for six weeks and the others would be doing nothing. And you wouldn’t want to be in the studio for six weeks - you Italian c—.”

The waiter has just walked by. Barney squints at him and then returns to the conversation. “Sorry - for six weeks, watching Hooky playing his bass or Steve polishing his cymbals, so everyone used to f— off.”

"It was a bit odd... It was the first time we’d used a producer since Martin Hannett, who’s now sadly passed away, and the last time we used Martin Hannett was on ‘Movement’, which was 1981 or summat,” he says, then collects himself. "Normally when we write a track, I keep it in my hand from the moment I start writing it to the moment I put the vocal on. And I had to hand the track over to Stephen Hague and he’d mess around with it for a few weeks then give it me back and by the time it came back, I didn't know what to make of it. I’d kind of lost a bit, you know what I mean?”

Yes, I say. Barney looks worried.

"No, I’ve not explained that very well. Um. Let me try and rephrase that. Normally music is an obsessive experience for me, where I’m obsessed with the track I’m working on, so it was a new experience for me not to use that method of writing, it made it a bit harder...”

He takes a bite of his strange pizza and explains even more. “I still felt as involved but it wasn’t such a hands-on experience. It’s a bit like the difference between being a writer writing your own book or using a ghost-writer, and if you’ve done one method for the last ten years you’ll obviously find the other method... different.”

But it all still sounds very New Order.

“Yes, it does,” nods the Barnster. “‘Regret’ is classic New Order.”

One could expand on this theme, about the way ‘Regret”s final coda or whatever it is, “Just wait 'til tomorrow”, is a spooky echo of the “Watching forever” bit on the long-ago ‘Ceremony’. One could, but Barney has other plans. Just as well, probably.

“It’s a bit that sort of vein, innit?” he agrees and ploughs on, “and also the thing that made it different were the events going on at Factory. They’d not paid the studio bill for the last three months, which gets on your nerves a bit and also reflects on the band. There was a kind of pressure from that going down...”

Is that where the lyric on ‘Chemical’ about the “payroll” comes from.

Barney shakes his head. “Not on that particular song, no. You see, the thing about me is I’m not just a lyric-writer and a vocalist, I write music as well, so the lyrics are part of it as well, I don’t generally strip ’em out from the music. But I always write stream-of-consciousness, where I just listen to a track, make me mind go blank and wait.

“Sometimes I’ll pick a subject and I’ll say, right, it’s gotta be on this theme and I’ll wait and lines’ll come into my head. Or I’ll think about a fictitious character and I’ll think about his personality, or her personality, and I’ll wait and the lines’ll be about that person. It’s not a conventional way of writing lyrics but that’s the way I do it.”

It generally works. We may remembers certain lines above others - “You look just like a pig/ You should be in a zoo”, from ‘Every Second Counts’, say, or “You’ve caught me at a bad time/ So why don’t you piss off?” from ‘Your Silent Face’ - but on a good day, Barney’s lyrics are most effective. Check 'Thieves Like Us’, True Faith’, ‘Temptation’... but not the one about the bearded copper, because it was never finished.

“If I sit down and say, let's write about a subject, I can't’ mutters Barney. “I wanted to write a song about James Anderton two years ago, ’cos he’s such a c—. In Manchester he’s such a loathed figure, I really felt for once in my life I want to write a political song. But it just sounded really corny, it sounded like a newspaper headline when I f—ing read it back.

“I find words too direct,” Barney declares. “The thing I like about music is... I'm sure it’s that other pizza with a load of stuff on top...”

Barney picks up his pizza and through slabs of bread says “Let’s have some of this first and then I’ll pick the threads up.”

So we munch away. Is this the last New Order album?

“Heh heh! Heh heh! No-one’s said this is going to be the last New Order record. No-one’s said it,” declares Barney. “Who knows what lies in the future? We shall see.”

FAIR DOS. Let’s conclude our day of feasting in Rome and go quaff a yard of molten lead with Peter Hook. We talk yet again about Factory and the bluff pirate king looks sad and mentions Happy Mondays.

"I miss Factory now, but at least with London you’ve managed to come out of it,” he says. “With the Mondays, they’ve not managed to come out of it, which is even sadder in many ways. The Mondays weren’t dependent on Factory in the same the way New Order were, and the Mondays should have come out of it.”

Hook draws a deep, dragon-of-terror-having-a-rest type sigh,'

“It’s down to people, innit? Some people aren’t as strong as others or maybe they just lacked a bit of direction. We’re quite lucky that Rob lives and breathes New Order. The Adventure Babies have come out of it. The Wendys have, Vini Reilly’s gonna be all right, it’s just a shame that the only ones who seem to have fell are the Mondays.

“And,” Peter roars “I quite like their LP, which is really sad! Never mind... But if the Mondays were on London, they’d either disappear immediately or they’d pull through and carry on, ’cos London wouldn’t allow’em to do what Factory did. They need a bit o’ discipline, a bit o’ realism.”

Peter slaps his thigh, metaphorically speaking. “I like Shaun a lot but it’s quite easy to get sucked into that slippery slide and unless someone’s gonna f—ing batter you and pull you out of it...” he announces. “That’s what he needs. You want to give him a good f—ing kicking, lock him in a room for six weeks and f—ing show him the error of his ways.”

The New Order world is a different world to those of other pop persons. Hook is dearly delighted when he says “New Order have an impact on the way people work all over the world. People sidle up to me and say (squeaky voice) ‘I’m 21, I’m in a group, I really like the way you’ve done it and I’m gonna try and do it like you’. F—ing go for it, yeah,” and doesn’t even feel like having a go at any of his contemporaries, which is very confident of him.

For, when asked why New Order never took the U2 route to fame and success, not even the man Bernard Sumner once catted “Bongo” gets a bad word from Hooky.

“It depends on your view of happiness. If happiness is having your own TV station and your own private jet when you do your tours, then they’ve been successful. If happiness is being a bit more natural and normal, then...” Peter shrugs and looks pained.

“There’s nothing to say they’re wrong and we’re right. He’s all right, Bono. Bloody hell, he doesn’t hit anybody. He’s not like Axl Rose, he doesn’t persecute anybody. To me he seems quite a decent bloke. You may disagree. If you wish. Bastard.”

Captain Hook roars like a pig and concedes, “Maybe his image is a bit cornball, that Elvis Presley thing - which does seem to be a bit fashionable. I was thinking when I saw that Depeche Mode video... I was watching him take his clothes off and I thought, no... he’s not gonna show his tattoos. I do not believe he’s gonna show his tattoos, and he did. I was gutted. I thought maybe they’d cut it or that big fat bird’d get hold of him, something with a bit of humour to it, but no... It was so obvious.”

Hooky is raving happily now.

“But I still think we’re quite distant from this music machine, press build-up. It’s like most groups are perceived as the lead singer only and New Order aren't and I can’t think of anything fairer than that. It’s really dramatically unfair the way Depeche Mode are perceived as Dave Gahan yet that other guy writes the songs...”

Peter Hook straps on his mighty claymore and rises to return to the world of powerful bass-driven dance rock.

“To me,” he declares, “the thing about New Order is that it stands as New Order and it’s as much a part of Rob Gretton and it’s as much a part of Tony Wilson and Alan Erasmus as it is of me and Barney, Steve and Gillian. It’s an overall thing, that’s what I like about it."

Before departing, a final, fanboy, trainspotter question... how does the man with the most noticeable bass noise in popular music feel about the occasional imitative moments, like The Cure’s ‘Inbetween Days’ and, indeed, Depeche Mode’s ’Enjoy The Silence’?

“People like you tend to get more upset than I do," says Peter, head a-shaking. “The person most upset about The Cure record was me mam. She heard it on the radio and she thought it was us. She was gutted when she found out it was The Cure. She was complaining to me, ‘Well, don’t you think it’s disgusting?' I’m not really bothered. Mum...”

We depart and Peter confesses nonchalantly, “I remember the days when we played with The Cure and I was quite interested in this riff the bass player was playing and I ripped him off. ‘From Safety To Nowhere’ on the Earcom sampler, I ripped it off The Cure. That’s the way it goes, you take some, you give some back.”

NEW ORDER stay in Rome to make videos, drink too much and play with penknives. I go home with my tape of ‘Republic’ and play it to people who mostly love it. I love it too; I don’t know if New Order will ever make another record, but ‘Republic’ is not the sound of the old carthorse dragging itself up the hill one more time. New Order - unique, self-contained and at once the maddest and the most sensible people on earth - are still a haven of greatness.

They’ve taken some, but sod me, they’ve given everything back.