1989 04 01 Sounds New Order Feature

THE ADVENTURES OF CAPTAIN HOOK

The members of New Order are beavering away at solo projects and the gossips are thundering. John Robb meets bass brute Peter Hook to discuss tension, 'Technique' and the truth about the Hacienda bar. Photo by Richard Haughton

IN THE gloomy darkness of a Bury studio, hit by a sudden power cut, New Order bass beast Peter Hook is starting to bear an uncanny resemblance to James Anderton.

The similarity between the hulking, Viking brute bassist and Manchester's top God cop can be attributed to both men's bristling beards and no-bullshit philosophy. But, fortunately for us, Hook treads a far more agreeable path than the police chief.

This year, the world's biggest bumbling pop outfit have built on their megabuck successes of 1983, when remixes of fusty old material were launched chart wards like primed ballistics.

The reapparance of that old carthorse, ’Blue Monday', in the chart meant a happy bank manager and the consolidation of the band’s legendary status. But they also found time to spurt out their best single yet, the beltin' 'True Faith', a swirling accident of ideas that rampaged over the calculated pop of Pet Shop Boys et al.

1989 has seen them return to business as usual, with the current album 'Technique' and the new smasheroonie, 'Round & Round'.

In the short gap between this frantic chart action and their imminent American tour in May, the band's two most public members, Hook and Albrecht, are beavering away in the studio on solo projects.

The bearded bass slugger is involved in a three-piece project called Revenge with a Cornish-speaking ex-member of long dead Mancunian outfit Lavolto Lakota. The tracks that I've heard are not a million miles removed from New Order's lager lad disco footstomp. But there is talk of a heavier side, and some sub-ZZ Top riffing.

Barney, though, is involved in something that, in music biz terms, has a much higher profile.

"Barney is working with Johnny Marr up in the Lake District and getting some stuff together with the Pet Shop Boys," says Hook. "I haven't heard any of it yet, but he's going for the all-out, star-studded approach to making a solo album."

It seems strange, or almost counterproductive, that he's working with the Pet Shop Boys after they've digested the New Order blueprint for their own scurryings.

“I don't really agree with that. If everyone is using the same technology, then things do tend to sound the same. I mean, Samantha Fox did one of the best versions of 'Sub Culture' on the B-side of Touch Me'. It's such a rip-off that I think it’s great. I like the Pet Shop Boys a lot — I'm not that arsed about ideas. It doesn't bother me whether people sound like us or not."

Hook slouches across the comfy studio leather — slobbing around in a rancid tracksuit bottom and a fetching 'Life's A Beach' sweatshirt.

He cuts a rather less dashing figure than the onstage, granite-faced, leather-bound rock god, gunslinging a bass held so low that it now requires wheels to transport it around the stage. His Manchester accent is a surprisingly soft blur compared to some of the harder twangs that occupy his end of town.

THE SOLO work has set the gossips chundering, especially with Barney now recording for London Records and escaping, albeit temporarily, the family bosom of Factory. The temporary separation of the two front men is a moot point.

"You've got to be diplomatic. I don't really want to talk about the solo stuff — it's like using New Order to cash in on it. I don't want the interview to appear that I'm plugging what I'm doing just because I'm the only one that does them."

Well, the rest of them should turn up.

"Mmmm, that's one way of looking at it. But, like I said, you've got to be diplomatic. There has been a little bit of friction."

In what way?

"Well, demands on time mean you start to get split loyalties. It's like the old 'Don't give up your day job' routine."

There was a rumour going round town at one time that Bernard was going to leave.

"Hmm, I heard that. The situation is still there. I don't think that he would leave, he's not that interested in that sort of thing. He pretty well rules the roost here, anyway, so he's not likely to get so pissed off he would leave."

From the outside. New Order remain very much a successful four-piece unit.

"It's all our lives - it's very important. A lot of the time we go with Barney's stuff in rehearsal, and as he does tend to be right, it's just as well."

'Technique' is standard New Order fare, a brilliantly-produced piece of plastic. As usual, a clutch of good songs and neat ideas share the grooves with half-cocked numbers that only survive thanks to their monolithic production life jackets. The Pink Floyd of the '80s are still seeing off their rivals in the ninny charts with panache and vigour.

One of the most noticeable improvements on 'Technique' was the work done on Barney's vocals. Usually, the frontman's wispy, fey tones sound at odds with the smoothly-oiled technological machine purring lazily in the background but 'Technique' shows the evidence of a rethink, both lyrically and vocally.

"Barney spent a lot of time on the words and his singing on this album. I think that it really works well. With the word writing. I've always enjoyed writing together, and with Barney writing nearly all of them this time, I've come to feel really divorced from it."

Even the singing sounds a lot better this time. Has he been taking lessons?

"Well, that was PJ Proby (Hook produced his cover of 'Love Will Tear Us Apart') who showed us what to do there. He showed us that it's a lot better when you put all the songs into the same key. It really screws up the guitars, though. A typical live example was 'Confusion' - Barney always had a lot of difficulty singing that. But now he finds it a lot easier."

What about the lovable element the Albrecht mouse squeak used to have?

"I really liked it - it was like Lee Marvin singing 'Wand'rin' Star' or something. Technically, it's not that great but it sounds really good."

The early days of New Order saw Hook indulge in a bit of the microphone banter himself but, in the mega-success era, the bearded one has been strangely muted. Was he not tempted to bawl a bit on the new LP?

"The reason that I stopped singing was that I couldn't play and sing at the same time, and as I play all the way through a song, and Barney doesn't, he found that doing the vocals was a lot easier. When we did our first record, 'Ceremony', me, Barney and Steve all had goes of singing it and it all sounded pretty much the same."

But, for all the excitement, Technique' is pretty standard New Order. After evolving rapidly from their early, post-Joy Div rumblings to an ass-wobbling dance beat, they have remained largely static Will there be any new developments?

"Well, the music changed quite a lot at first as things got more hi-tech. Now it just moves along with the technology. The rest of the band think everything sounds the same because of the bleedin' bass!"

There was talk last year that the band were nearly busted financially, and that the remix albums had been put together to pay off certain bills. There's nothing more consumer-friendly than the artful compilation. But Hook scotches the gobshites.

"The reason we put out 'Substance' was that Tony (Wilson) wanted all the New Order singles on one CD. No one ever believes you when you say this, but it's true. We did the Joy Division remixes because we felt that was a more valid project - those records are a lot harder to get hold of. The money thing in this band has never got to the stage of do or die.

"’Blue Monday 1988' was released because of our American deal. It took us seven years to get a proper deal in America because, basically, no one spoke the language that we wanted to hear. Finally, we went with Quest and they gave us a deal where we had the final say on everything. The only concession that we had to make was that we would take two singles off each album.

"So, when we released 'Substance', they wanted to put out 'Blue Monday' - they had had it on hold for years anyway, because they didn't want to put it out at the time, which really annoyed us. As another compromise, they said. Why don't you get Quincy Jones in to produce it? And since he runs the bleedin' label, we thought. Yeah, fine."

The remixes and New Order's avid popism have obviously been criticised from some quarters.

"People say things like, The remixes were a waste of time, or completely futile - well, that's a load of rubbish after you've sold another 500,000 records. I mean, are you right, or are the audience right? Our audience has changed an awful lot from the early days. There's a completely new audience, who think that New Order start with 'Blue Monday'. The whole point to music is getting people to listen to it.

"When you start off with a certain amount of people listening to the music and not others, it causes a lot of snobbery. Like, Those people can't listen to it, they're rubbish. But you can't stop people going out there and buying it because they are less interesting intellectually — you just can't do that, you've got to be realistic about it. When you're young and idealistic these things are important but, when you get older, they fade into inconsequence."

The band seem to have opened up since their earlier, more taciturn battles with the press. Do they ever look at their early clippings, or have any sense of their past history?

"When we started, journalists were fishing and we were fishing, so we had to form a middle ground of mutual disgust. The books about Joy Division were very melancholy - It's like reading a diary. The whole thing is like starting your first job. You're scared to death and you don't talk back to the boss. After a couple of years, you start to get a bit lippy - and when you get promotion, and get level with the boss, you get very lippy and become more relaxed and as confident as you want."

VERY MUCH part of the constantly-evolving Manchester scene — currently sailing through its most productive era ever — New Order own the world's coldest hangar, The Hacienda, where the acoustic and design problems have become a long-standing joke.

"They put the stage in the wrong place. It was meant to be where the bar is now and vice versa, but Tony Wilson just walked in one day and decided that the stage should run down the side, so it did. We are opening a bar on Oldham Street called Dry. and it’s going to be different from The Hacienda.

“It's the old once bitten, twice shy thing. Even though it's packed most of the time now. The Hacienda has such huge debts that it will take years to pay them off. It was run like a boys' club to start with, and boys take advantage."

Hook has had a hand to play in the band scene as well .

"I really like The Stone Roses. It was particularly gratifying for me that they’ve finally got some attention, as I worked on some early singles with them, I would have produced 'Heart Of Stone* as well, but I was caught up in the sessions for 'Technique'.

"Happy Mondays are great too - they seem like they're just about there now. I just wish that they would stop supporting us! They could end up like A Certain Ratio who seemed to rely on supports from us too much, even when they were in an equivalent position. They never really stood up on their own two feet."

With that, Hook waddles off to his "day job", explaining that the Kirk Douglas, classic film The Vikings (1958) is one of his favourites of all time -hence the soundtrack adorning the New Order set - and that his other top film is the much more serious Spartacus.

THE BIZARRE contradictions remain — a man who stomps around with a no-bullshit philosophy and sharp, scathing humour, yet has decorated the New Order catalogue with some of the most achingly beautiful bass lines ever heard; the band that pretend they don't care, but turn out records of such high standard their rivals look daft.

It’s almost as if they are too embarrassed to come out of the closet, content to remain behind their self-imposed smokescreen. The brooding legacy of Joy Division and all the crap that was written about them has left them on their guard.

Pete Hook still debunks those Joy Division myths with sicko cracks about Ian Curtis, claiming that Curtis himself is chuckling away upstairs, reserving rooms for himself and Barney.

But today New Order are pop’s blundering aristocrats. They make pop life look almost too easy.