1993 04 10 New Order NME Feature

REGRETS? NO .... BUT THEY'VE HAD A FEW!

• Three long years and one World Cup, doo-dah, doo-dah... After various solo projects, the collapse of their record company and the death of Madchester, NEW ORDER have finally delivered their sixth proper album. Amid stroppy Italian waiters, crap lounge bar pianists and exaggerated reports of the group’s demise, DAVID QUANTICK travels to their video shoot in Rome to sigh and snort in an effort to find out what the hell they have been doing for the last three years. Lambretta lovers: STEVE DOUBLE

New Order are sitting in the bar of the Hotel Amazingly Expensive in Rome, late at night, drinking beer and looking tired after a long day trundling round town to be videoed looking moody in alleyways and up steps. In a far comer of the bar, a pianist with a portable synthesiser works his way through some requests.

Bernard Sumner is agitated. “Go up and ask for that Elton John song," he demands, before croaking the opening lines of ‘Your Song'. Gillian Gilbert is chipper. “'The Lady In Red', that would be good,” she lies. Peter Hook is peevish. “He was doing ‘Groovy Kind Of Love' and someone said it was a Phil Collins song," moans Britain's last Wayne Fontana And The Mindbenders fan.

The pianist switches to 'Another Day In Paradise'. "I love this song," says Barney, dry as deserts, "it's got a message to it."

“Rock'n'roll..," sighs Steven Morris.

"Where?" says Peter Hook, and New Order collectively laugh the laugh of wise old rock persons..

SOME Of you may have forgotten New Order, the band who haven't released a single since 1990's 'World In Motion' or an album since 1989’s 'Technique'. In that time they have done solo things, seen Madchester and its New Order-sponsored cradle, The Hacienda, rise and fall, and watched the label that seemed as much part of them as they were of it, Factory Records, collapse into bankruptcy. In 1993, New Order are London Records recording artistes, elder statesmen of rock, contemporaries now only of U2 and perhaps The Cure, and still the most remarkable band on earth.

No band has ever been quite like New Order, no-one‘s ever managed to span the various valleys of pop with such style and ability, from the unique dance thing that was 'Blue Monday' and the arching pop dignity of ’Bizarre Love Triangle', to the cutting club sweat of ‘Fine Time’ and the sheer daft beauty of 'Love Vigilantes'. Born in the very 1979 great-coated mystique of Joy Division, New Order are both dance crazy and home to the most exciting guitar and bass noise in the post-punk world.

And now they are back with a single, 'Regret', which is hewn-from-marble classic New Order, and an album, 'Republic', which is the first New Order album to have a producer (Stephen Hague of Pet Shop Boys and 'True Faith’ repute) and which mixes consistency with brilliance. 'Republic' isn't 'Technique 2' and it isn't three solo projects jammed together at random. It is an extraordinary album that runs the gamut of New Order's patent styles and then races off into new pop avenues.

Thank God for that, eh? If 'Republic' had been bollocks then everyone would have looked very silly and we'd have probably had Electronic going on a package tour with Revenge and The Other Two. But instead, 'Republic' is great, 'Regret' is the best single of 1993 yet, and we're all in Rome drinking bloody expensive beer and asking for Elton John songs.

So hey! Let's throw another 50,000,000 lire at the waiter and go meet the gang!

NEW ORDER like to do their interviews in small mobile units. This is either because none of them have ever agreed about anything ever or because Hooky and Barney never get up before lunchtime. So come Sunday afternoon, Steven and Gillian cram themselves into a booth in the Cafe De How Much?! across the road from the hotel and do their bit of the interview.

Gilbert and Morris are God's own couple, the son of people who in Disney films adopt Benny the lovable eagle and train him to be part of society. Neither as dazed-sounding as Barney nor as cheerfully aggressive as Peter Hook, Steven and Gillian are dry, droll and sensible; musically, however, they have created some extraordinarily dreamy music, whether it's The Other Two’s wondrous 'Tasty Fish' or the last track on ’Republic', the stately ‘Avalanche’.

Steven drawls, "We wanted to call the album 'Carry On New Order' but Peter Saville wasn't up to the graphics," and we are off, commencing, for fact fans, with a resume of New Order - The Lost Years.

“We done that football record." sighs Steven. "And it was the November after that we were supposed to be doing this record, but we had previous engagements that we’d forgotten about. It was a bit awkward for me and Gillian because we’d turned down some soundtracks and we were at a loose end, so we done The Other Two for a bit. Finally got that finished just recently, which takes us up to 18 months ago, ha ha...."

"We were supposed to start with New Order in November, weren't we?” asks Gillian.

Steven sighs again. “That didn't happen, then it was supposed to be January, and that didn't happen ... about 18 months ago we all got together in one space at the same time. And that was an off-and-on thing because Barney went off doing ‘Disappointed' for a bit and Hooky went off doing gigs for a bit, and we carried on like that until last April, when we had 14 vague ideas under our belt, got them into the studio and hoped they were songs. Got Stephen Hague because we thought we needed some help ..."

"If we hadn't had a producer we’d still be doing it," snorts Gillian. "And probably not speaking to each other. Ha ha!"

The result is an album with a kind of beefy poppiness to it. ‘Republic' is great, but it’s not as odd as some New Order discs.

"I thought it would be a lot more extreme, to be honest, and that’s all I can say about it, because we've been in the studio for three years now and we’ve not had time to get reflective about music," says Steven, tiredly. Then he perks up. "We just started the other week with a Gram Parsons evening Cheered me up, anyway. Didn't do much for you," he snorts to Gillian.

"I'd never heard of him," confesses Gillian happily. "And we put Morrissey on..."

"Morrissey always cheers me up." Steven announces. "Yep. Old Moz.”

Less cheering than the music of Union Jack Boy was the collapse of Factory, home to most of New Order since 1978, a collapse which began and ended during the making of 'Republic'.

"I think all that comes across if not through the lyrics but the mood of the album..." muses Steven. "There's stuff in the press about a lot of tension, which suggests it was tension between us four, and it wasn’t really; if there was tension. It was 'What the bloody hell is going on?’ tension. There was one day when it suddenly dawned on us that we thought we were the only ones not getting paid; then we realised that absolutely f—ing everyone wasn't getting paid and it was. 'Oh my God! Look, we'll all get together and we'll go on strike, sort it out...'.  Never bleeding happened."

If 'Republic' had come out on Factory, would it have saved the label financially?

"It probably would, but you'd just have been postponing the inevitable, really." grimaces Steven.

Gillian shrugs. “They were just bad at business, full stop, really."

“So many bad decisions or the right decisions at the wrong time. Like buying property just when it was going down. They can't say we didn’t tell ’em,’ says Steven, shaking his head like a strange uncle. “Biggest shock for me when we were just going in the studio was finding out the Mondays were going to Barbados to do their album. It was like, hang on a minute, you've got your two major acts in the studio at the same time, you're already a bit jittery, shouldn't you stagger it a bit?"

Factory is now being presented as a label of anarchy, so why did it last so long?

"I think certain people having the gift of the gab and managing to persuade. Bullshit, I think, sums it up. bullshit that everything would be OK," says Steven, searching for le mot juste. "You can only bullshit banks so long, eventually they get fed up. If they'd been able to find a mad multi-millionaire, they’d’ve been able to carry on. But they could only postpone it."

Why didn't New Order just walk away?

"I would have loved to have been in that situation." says Steven. "No, you've got emotional ties because you've known ’em so long, it's not really been a business-type relationship. You started off together and all that you feel a certain obligation to them... Also, because they're spending our money, for want of a better word, you're always holding out, hoping you'll get a bit of it back."

“They owed New Order a lot of money as well," says Gillian, practically.

"They owed everybody a lot of money,” sighs Steven, "You can't get away from it."

Steven and Gillian seem happy to be with London Records, although there are “loose ends" to tie up. but Gillian acknowledges that the company treats them well "because you've got something to sell. You've been used in a way.”

"That was how you felt with Factory," announces Steven. “They thought you were battery hens, you were stuck in a studio and they were waiting - 'As soon as we get this one out. we’ll be rocking!’ We were very depressed battery hens."

This depression was, naturally, compounded by our very own Fred Dellar, whose diligence as a researcher unwittingly plunged the band into even deeper gloom.

“One thing for me when I really gasped was actually the NME, when they did the Factory discography. My eyes nearly popped out of my head," goggles Steven. "It was the FAC numbers - after every New Order record, the number after was a complete f—ing white elephant. FAC 50 was ‘Movement', FAC 51 was the Hacienda. There was 'World In Motion' and the one after 'World In Motion' was the Factory building. Uncanny... You could see your history... Making money, wasting money, making money, wasting money.”

“We took it to the studio. It was just like having a diary," says Gillian in amused horror. "There was a whole raft of bands at the start, Section 25 and Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark and all that, and then as it got on it was less and less records and more stupid, wasteful..."

"More dumb things...." snorts Steven.

"Then it just came down to us and the Mondays,” Gillian notes. Steven elaborates "It was Mondays, Mondays, Mondays, Rob Gretton's teeth, New Order, New Order, New Order..."

The whole business is reminiscent of the last days of The Beatles. Solo protects, chaos, huge sums of money wasted and total disarray...

"It is a bit like the Apple thing,” Steven agrees “They bought all this gear and people walked off with it, never saw it again... It was completely disorganised, very like Factory. We were going to play on the roof of the building but I can't stand heights."

On that note, the Fab Two rise as one to hit the sunny streets of Roma; and I gird my loins to meet Peter Hook, Pop’s Rudest Man.

PETER HOOK - aka Hooky The Pirate King, aka The Bike Messenger From Hell, aka The Hookster Who Laughs As He Puts Another Enemy To The Sword - sits down and immediately orders a foaming flagon of human blood. The first question — the one about what have you been doing since ‘World In Motion’ - produces a shower of invective.

“No wonder you're here 'til Wednesday! F—inell! Can't you be more specific? F—inell! I'll have to get me diary."

Hook squints at the tape-recorder. “It's been on pause all the bloody time, you dickhead. We've missed all them pearls of wisdom."

Peter roars like Bluebeard. He likes the New Order album.

"Stephen Hague's kept 'em all very good New Order songs. The journalists in Germany were saying it sounded too New Order and you're thinking, well, f—inell, what do you expect? If New Order can't do a New Order record, who can?"

Hooky roars again then sighs melodramatically. "Some people are never happy, are they?”

Asked about his solo career, the Pirate King becomes strangely pensive. "It made you feel better about life and about New Order." he says, using the word “you" to mean "I" in a way that, oddly enough, all the band adopt. "I don't think it had a big impact musically, because Stephen Hague stopped that. The biggest factor in it was you found yourself a little bit outside of New Order and you felt happier. And whan you came back, it made you want to be in New Order again."

Peter sighs. “It wasn't like that before: you were heartily sick of it, 14 years is enough for any man or beast. But when you got back together again, it was, oh God, this is good. It also made you appreciate what New Order had, so that was nice."

Hook likes being to New Order, he says, "'cos I get to come to Rome and talk to dickheads like you and get pissed," but then he becomes serious and amends his statement to "No, I've always liked being in New Order, I'm proud of it, so... no problem." The Factory situation is a different fish, however.

"I was very sad about it, but it was such a long slow process the way it went through, they'd been juggling eggs for a long time and they were getting more and more eggs thrown at them and you knew they wouldn't be able to keep them in the air, really," says wise old Hooky and then, in a typically Hook-like mixture of sincerity, black comedy and sentiment, declares. "One of the saddest momenta of me life actually - apart from when he died, what was his name? - was when I was walking down Deansgate and there was a billboard, you know, where the guy sells the papers, and the billboard said FACTORY IN $3,500,000 BANKRUPTCY CRASH’. And even though I knew it was all happening, to see it written down on some guy's billboard selling papers to Deansgate... F—ing weird. It was really sad..."

Peter is optimistic about the future.

"Even though it was so sad and you've lost so much money and you stand to lose much more, like the Hassie and Dry and that, you’ve got to carry on,” he declares. “And the thing about London Records, even though they seem very trad, dad, I'm sure after they've worked with us for a while they're gonna be more like Factory than Factory were. They're changing already..."

Really? It seems unlikely that a major European multinational will change its practices to accommodate four people in a pop group.

"They are! Listen, I'm in a f—fog group and I’m telling you, right!" bellows jolly Peter. "What are you f—ing going on about?! Ha ha ha! You journalists are always right! Bastards!”

After some years, Hooky calms down and says, "You’re four people who have the ability to sell f—ing five million records. It's not as if you’re four people who've just wandered into the office looking for a drink of water, is it?”

Peter Hook's main obsession in life, it sometimes seems, is the fact that he is one of those four people. His love for New Order is matched only by his pride in the band. His eyes fill with a fatherly delight as he says. "When he was doing one of our videos, Jonathan Demme said. ‘After meeting you, 1 realised that none of you, brain-wise, have got a f—ing clue about what you're doing’. He said, "I just want to show your fingers, 'cos that's where it comes from.'"

Peter orders a Bloody Mary then muses. "That's what keeps you normal, ’cos you're not conscious of it. People like Prince, Axl Rose, they're conscious of it, and that's what makes them obnoxious, is that the word for it? I'd much rather be as I am, I couldn't imagine being any different. Happy as a pig in shit."

Will this happiness last? Will New Order go on past this record?

"I don't know, really," Hooky ponders. "Sometimes I look at Barney and even though he thinks he could maybe do without it, it’s pretty bloody obvious that he can't. It's the same with Steven and Gillian, you know, we ail call each other shit, but the fact that you're here again means you can’t do without it. The whole point about doing the solo projects in the first place was everyone's thinking, ‘right! Thank God I've got rid of those twats, they were driving me f—ing mad!’ And then a year later, it's, ‘when are we doing our record?'"

The idea of a New Orderless life is clearly vexing. “I don't know, Hooky says again. "I’d hate to think so and I'm really looking forward to the next bit, it's like a rebirth, when we get to play again. I‘m really really looking forward to it, just to walk out onstage and play New Order songs again. I really can't wait... I think Barney, even though he's still got a down on this whole live thing, when he actually goes out and does it, he'll change his mind."

Peter stretches and considers.

"It's ’cos we're a lot different now. By just getting away from each other, you've been able to grow up a lot, relax a lot more. Because everyone's doing the other things - they're doing The Other Two. I'm doing Revenge, he's doing New Order, er, Electronic... that's a Freudian slip there! Ha ha ha ha!" he cries, laughing merrily.

Before the Pirate King roars off again to search of some unspeakable vice. I ask him if he is the one most keen on being in New Order, and he is briefly pensive.

"Maybe it's just your personality.” he nods. "Steve and Gillian and Barney aren't like me, I'm a bit more bombastic, surly, confident, whatever. It's like the Hacienda..."

Hooky becomes agitated. “Whenever I see them getting disillusioned with Factory. I feel like grabbing hold of them, shaking them and going, come on, you f—ers, there's 1500 f—ing idiots out there going mad every f—ing Friday and Saturday for you, you've done it for ’em, for your music and whatever you've achieved, you should be proud of it... But they're not that type of person."

”I dunno. I'll have that on me gravestone - ’New Order'. F—ing hell. Bollocks! Ha ha ha!"

Peter Hook quakes with devil laughter. “No, what I'll have on me gravestone is 'I'll Be Back’!
Ha ha ha ha!"

Oh dear. Let’s make video!

MAKING VIDEOS is really boring. Sometimes Barney pretends to play the guitar in his hotel room and sometimes the rest of the band stand around in an alley at night. I am Mr Lucky and stand in the biggest dog-do to the history of Italy. Later we dine in what Bernard Sumner claims is a kosher Italian restaurant and I receive an invaluable piece of advice from Hooky ("You want the toilet?
Turn left and its the door with the woman on it").

Repairing to the hotel bar for a drink, we are all exhausted from our hectic schedule. "I'm so tired," says Barney. "This bloke came up to me and said 'Hello, I'm Toby from MTV,' and I said, 'I'm sorry, mate, I don't speak Italian.'"

Time for bed.

THE NEXT day. Bernard Sumner is up early to buy sunglasses but all the shops are shut owing to a quaint Roman tradition known, according to Barney, as "siesta fiesta". Instead, we go to another pavement cafe. A waiter blessed with the insouciance of Nero and the waiting talent of Eddie 'The Eagle' Edwards reluctantly lets us sit and disappears for a thousand years before taking our orders and, it would appear, burning them.

Time to begin. Barney - at 37 looking like a teenage street urchin, like the Artful Dodger cast in The Tin Drum - recaps on his current career. He is still working veth Electronic.

"We got future collaborations planned, we’re gonna do a truck with DNA, we're gonna be doing a truck with Wolfgang Flur and Karl Bartos, the two that left Kraftwerk." he drawls. "One of the reasons for doing Electronic was with New Order no-one's really into collaborations and, uh, I was."

It’s hard to imagine members of New Order - producers of some of the most self-contained, self-invented music on earth — doing something as normal as collaborating. They are not musicianly.

“It’s peculiar. We never talk about music. We talk about shit all the time. And we always have done," snorts Barney. “When I started back working with New Order, that’s the first thing I noticed. I work with Johnny (Marr) and all the time it’s always, ‘Have you heard this record, have you heard that record, I think this track should go in this direction, I think it should go in that direction,’ but with New Order everyone comes in the studio and talks about what they had for breakfast. And I realised it’s always been like that. It’s quite healthy, I suppose.”

Barney’s tea comes and an argument about its lack of milk ensues. Milk is brought. “I asked for milk,” Barney mutters and then adopts a frightening Italian accent. “You no ask for milk! You English bastard! Friend of Gazza! ...What was I saying?”

We move on to the topic of Factory and Barney’s feelings on its demise.

“I feel very sad and angry, really,” he muses. “I’m sad because it was a good idea and some of the groups were pretty successful on it, and I’m angry because they didn’t realise their potential. Used their money wisely... When they went down, they had the Mondays who made money and New Order who were going to make money - not that we saw any of it, heh heh! - and Electronic who, although Tony denies it, made Factory a lot of money. He had those three bands that should have made Factory financially secure... But they blew it.”

Barney sips his tea and concedes, “It’s not all managerial faults. There were a lot of events that couldn’t be avoided, like the Hacienda closing down for six months, which was an incredible drain on the finances of both Factory and New Order, but we had to try and stop the violence. We all felt that if we didn’t shut the Hacienda somebody was going to get killed and we had to show the gangs that it was either all or nothing, really.

“Tony quotes about 17 different events that eventually brought Factory to its knees, but that's the way disasters happen, isn’t it? And to be fair to him. I’ve seen articles insinuating that Tony’s a money-grabbing arsehole breadhead, and he isn’t that at all. In his favour, he’s really really upset that he’s let people down and he’s trying desperately to pay back people that Factory owe money to.

He’s not the ogre that certain articles have been insinuating. He’s just not the world’s best businessman, that’s all.”

Barney confesses himself happy that New Order didn’t deliver ‘Republic’ in time to “save” Factory.

“I’m very glad that we’ve not been touring and we’ve not made an album because they would have owed us a fortune if we’d gone down, so the fact that we didn’t was a nice turn of events so far as I’m concerned. And they shouldn't have to rely on one band, because that puts too much pressure on us... I sound like a right self-righteous bastard, don’t I?”

Barney warms to his theme of bastardry. “Basically it's their bank account and they should look after it. New Order didn't have any business dealings with Factory apart from the Hacienda and Dry... And, being an even more self-righteous bastard, the Hacienda and Dry make money! Whose f—ing fault is that then?! Ha ha! But I'm not bitter about it. I still like Tony, I still like Alan... What the f—ing hell is that? Scusi!”

A pizza has arrived. It does not resemble the pizza Bernard ordered, so it is sent back after complex debate with our pal the waiter.

“Lying Italian c—!” mutters Barney. “Now, what Rob Gretton (New Order's manager) would do in a situation like this is give the guy a huge f-—ing tip to make him feel better. Honestly, I’m not joking. But I’m not Rob. This is the Fawlty Towers of Italian restaurants.” 

Meanwhile, life goes on. New Order are considering playing 13 concerts around the world but “We’ve not got any plans yet, contrary to what Hooky said in the NME about confirmed gigs, heh heh. We’re doing gigs hopefully in July, but I don’t wanna do loads.”

Barney is not the king of live performance. “I used to like it more when I was in Joy Division and I could stand at the back with a synthesiser,” he claims. “Like being at a party, standing at the back watching everyone else... Also, I tend to overindulge at gigs and sometimes it has a disastrous effect on my, ah, health. I don’t really want to drink myself to death, so that’s one of the reasons I’m not too keen on gigging these days.” 

One of New Order’s idiosyncrasies is that live they are always either great or appaling; there is no middle ground. Barney agrees.

“That’s true. I don’t think we could do it any other way, heh heh! We've tried rehearsing and all that shit, but it just doesn't work. We're either appaling or brilliant... F—ing hell, that's weird tea. Isn't that a weird colour?"

Barney’s attention wanders. “Can I have some of your beer? Oh, you’ve got a cold, haven’t you? The cold virus lives on a glass for two hours. What was that last question? Live, yeah. I don’t how the f— that happens after years and years... I think when a lot of groups play, it’s like an act. There’s two parts to music, there’s the creative part which is writing and there’s performance, and I prefer writing. Your performer’s more kind of an actor type.

“A lot of bands will play the same songs every night, crack the same jokes, they do the same thing every night so you get a consistently good show, Whereas with New Order we don’t even know what songs we’re gonna play, just sit in the dressing room before and go, 'Which songs do you want to do?’ It’s usually Steve and Hooky decide the set list because I’m crap at it. I might say, ’Alright, I fancy playing ‘Perfect Kiss’ or ‘Bizarre Love Triangle’,’ and we just make it up an hour before we go onstage. So, ha, that doesn’t help in terms of getting things right... But it makes life interesting.”

Which is part of the reason why New Order are replete with greatness. They are the only giant band in the world who act with any degree of life and oddness.

Or, as Barney puts it, “I remember in Preston we played the dub version of ’Shellshock’ live! People at the front of the stage were laughing!"

Carry on, New Order...

• Next week; Peter Hook on giving Shaun Ryder a good kicking. Steven and Gillian on being a pop group, and Barney on the problem with this lying Italian waiter.