New Order Smash Hits December 1986

Interesting to read this and then a much more recent conversation that Sylvia Patterson had with Miranda Swayer, saying that in hindsight she would not have written the article in the same way 

Swizzing around the West Coast of America in search of New Order, Sylvia Patterson encounters an ill-tempered fellow who says...

"Ask us anything horrible and we'll break your legs!"

Well, actually, he put it rather less “politely” than that. Ah - good old Barney from New Order - never one to greet “reporters” with any false pleasantries. In fact, not only does he appear less-than-ecstatic about Smash Hits arriving in the final week of their longest ever American tour, but New Order didn’t even know we were coming. Ah - good old Factory Records - never ones to hinder themselves with tedious “details”.

So here we are then, viewers, half way round the world under the blazeaway Californian sunshine of Los Angeles (man) - to spend the next two days with a band who’d rather we didn’t exist.

Jings. . .

Barney is sitting in the offices of his American record company. He has his nose buried in some “serious” rock journal and he isn’t feeling too well at the moment. . . “Oooooh,” he groans, “this is my third hangover today. And I’ve been sick.” Oh dear.

Drummer Steve, meanwhile, is getting rather excited about an American fitness catalogue. “Ha ha! Look at these!” he pipes gleefully, pointing to a rather gruesome pair of running shoes with inbuilt mileage clock. “Must get a pair of these. Imagine if it had a point where it came up 'You are going to die very soon if you don’t stop’. Ha ha!”

Well! He seems a jolly enough soul anyway. Gillian, on the other hand - who as well as doodling on the keyboards is also Steve’s girlfriend for the past nine years - is sitting quietly in a corner doing and saying absolutely nothing. Peter Hook (bass and beard) is sitting with his head buried in his hands - also nursing a severe hangover. Mmn.

What were you up to last night?

“Oh - we write our lyrics in the middle of the night,” lies Barney.

“Ha ha HAAAAH!” bellows Pete, starting the two of them off into a 5 -minute giggling spree without the faintest intention of telling us exactly what they were doing last night.

We’ll see what you get up to after the concert tonight though, won’t we?

“What concert?” sniffs Barney.

Er. . . is there not a concert tonight in Santa Barbara starring your good selves?

“No! We’re playing there tomorrow and then going to San Francisco. We’re going to a barbeque tonight.”

Ooooer. Looks like some more “details” have been somewhat “over-looked”. In the meantime, though, New Order spend a leisurely afternoon pilfering some very horrible American “rock” bands’ promotional t-shirts from a nearby filing cabinet and giggling manically at the brand new video for their new tune “Bizarre Love Triangle”.

“The title was inspired by the News Of The World,” reveals Barney, “I was reading it one Sunday and thinking how ridiculous it was - especially the headline 'Saucy Vicar Caught In Bizarre Love Triangle’ and thought - we’ll call our new song that! Basically, y’see, I’m just a dumb bastard from Salford. . .”

Anyway, soon we’re whisked away to the barbeque, held by New Order’s American press officer in his open-plan and bare floor-boarded “apartment”.

“Right!” screeches Barney, “let’s start some serious drinking. ."

“Oh my Goooood. . .” whines Pete the next day, flaked out on the settee in his hotel room. Oh dear. Pete is not a well man. Out by the pool, Barney is having breakfast - English muffins and cream cheese (groo!). Suddenly there’s a rustling by the palm trees and the foreboding figure of Terry The Tour Manager appears.

“What’s going on then?” he demands - he doesn’t know anything about our “presence” here either. “How long d’you think you’re ’ere for?”

“Er. . . we go with you to Santa Barbara tonight and then San Francisco tomorrow I believe,” I venture.

“Oh yeah,” he snaps, “And how do you think you’re getting to San Francisco?”

“Er. . . er. . .”

“Well, you can’t go - we haven’t booked flights for you.”

And with that, off he stomps without further “ado”. Oh well, Santa Barbara beckons - a sleepy Spanish-“style” town one hundred miles along the coast. Can I have a birrova “chat” with you during the drive, Barney?

“Er. . . there’s no room for you in the car,” states Barney flatly. Five minutes later an enormous mobile zooms off into the blue beyond — with Barney in the back of it alone. We are being avoided.

Off we trail, then - New Orderless - down Lost Hills Road (!), down Santa Claus Lane (!!) and into the extremely beautiful palm-tree-bestrewn idyll that is Santa Barbara. The band are already here — Barney and Pete having swanned off Gawd knows where but Steve and Gillian are still in sight.

“Foooo. . . beautiful ’ere innit?” sighs Steve mid-journey. “Beautiful trees. Don’t think much of the American breakfast though,” he says for some strange reason, “it’s the eggs! They’re just not.. .eggy enough. And the tiny little bits of bacon. . . and as for the sausages! (mimes size of sausage i.e. not very large) That reminds me - I’m starving! Must get a MacDonalds - that’s the only decent thing worth eating round ’ere. . .”

He proceeds to ramble on at great length about the “nutrition” in a McDonalds and then about his Volvo back home and then how he likes Glasgow much better than Edinburgh because “Edinburgh’s too snobby and stuck-up”. Steve is what is known as “a right blether”. And still Gillian sits silently - not one solitary utterance to behold. I see you carry a video camera about with you all the time, Gillian.

“Mmm.”

“Oh we take film of a lot of the places we come to,” rambles Steve on her behalf. “It’s just home-movies really - just to remind us.”

And off the pair of them sidle - Gillian to look for a new handbag and a MacDonalds and Steve for the very boring soundcheck. Afterwards he’s found lurking in their dressing-room which sports wall-to-wall sarnies and floor-to-ceiling alcohol - scoffing his face with about 17 “Nice” biscuits. . .

“America’s a funny place. . .” remarks Steve. “Don’t know if I quite believe everything the people say. And it’s all sell sell all the time. Can’t stand that. And MTV! David Lee Roth’s groin every minute of the day. And Journey. And Tina Turner. They don’t like us much either! I’ve never once seen any of our videos on there.

“Mind you - Japan’s worse than America. . . Now that’s weird. They’re all so polite - gets on your nerves a bit really. And then they’ve got all this pornography on their tellys! Ah. .. suppressed if you ask me. . . all that politeness and all that pornography. . . weird. And they’ve got live chickens in plastic bags! It’s like the middle-ages! Straaaaaange. .

And off he rambles some more about how “seedy” China is and how he much prefers being at home with Gillian in their “cosy terraced house in Macclesfield with a garden, a Volvo and a dog. And a hoover.” But wait! A head appears round the door. It’s the errant Barney.

“Er. . . I can’t talk to you just now because I’ve got to do me sound check.”

Surprise!

A very snoozesome two hours pass of more soundchecking and arguments about which songs to play -Gillian being the one who eventually sorts them all out - until. . . they’re ON! And the packed-out “house” full of be-miniskirted young nubiles and American-“style” blokes in Bruce Springsteen-type breeks teeter on their chairs and flail their arms about shrieking and hollering when Barney so much as even sniffs into the microphone.

The concert isn’t the most thrillsome event ever witnessed - New Order looking distinctly bored by the whole thing, and Barney screeching to be heard above a not-very-good “sound” (man). Later this is to be blamed on “technical faults”, but for now the band shuffle off without an encore and the crowd file out looking rather bamboozled by the whole thing. Swizz!

A quick jaunt round to the dressing-room, however, reveals some much more interesting “goings” on. Never before in the history of hero worship have there ever been quite so many girlies swarming around a dressing room, clamouring ’n’ squawking and each other jostling for the merest glimpse of their idols - mainly, it seems, Barney. The worshipped one’s spiky hair (S50 a time - a snip!?) is just visible amongst them . . .

“I didn’t ask them back!” he shrieks - then zwings off into the sunset with a very suspicious smirk on his face. We pursue! Back in his hotel he finally concedes to a spell of quiet “conversation”. . .

So - tell us Barney, just why were all those girls in the dressing room?

“I don’t want you going on about the girls!” screeches Barney very haughtily and proceeds to grab the tape-recorder and switch it off.

“It’s nothing to do with me - I didn’t let them in.”

He switches the tape back on.

“I was signing autographs.”

A long silence and a stubborn stare follows.

I don’t believe you.

Barney shrugs his shoulders and looks away - he’s not going to utter another syllable on the subject. But you live with your girlfriend back in Manchester, don’t you?

Swipe! Barney repossesses the tape-recorder and rewinds it over the dreaded word “girlfriend”. A very touchy subject. . .

“Look! That’s my private life and I’m going to keep it that way - I’ve had too many holes dug in my life already and that’s not going to be another one.”

Oh dear. What Barney will talk about, though, is how much he doesn’t want to be a “star” - how much he “treasures” being able to walk down the street un-noticed, how he’d rather New Order didn’t get much more successful because “it’d do me head in. And I’d much rather lose my voice every night and people think I wasn’t much good than lose my brain.” ,.

He’s also very willing to talk about how he doesn’t feel particularly “lucky” to be spending the vast majority of his life swanning around in snoot-hotels all over the world, because “I’ve squeezed me brains through me nose to get what I’ve got - I deserve it. I could have any amount of drink or anything, warehouses full of women - but I don’t want all that — it’d do me head in. We’re clever y’see -that’s how New Order operates. I’d certainly rather be here in the sunshine than back at home in the pissin! rain. I’m no fool...”

Mmmn. A lot of people do think you could be somewhat. . . erm, mad though.

“Mad? Er. . . I suppose I can be. . . I like that though because I don’t like normality, normal lifestyles. I make a point of never ever watching any soap operas back home - except Dallas because that’s a bit mad... but anything else is just too normal. I hate normality. It scares the shit out of me. If I ended up like that... I’d be insane. Every day’s got to be different, that’s why I wanted to do this in this first place . . . and you know why that is?”

No.

“Because when I was 10, I had a Huckleberry Hound annual. And there was this story where Huckleberry had this really boring job - a postman or something - and he kept on having to do all these really boring post jobs until one day... (dramatic pause) he got this job flying parcels over a shark-infested sea — and one engine on the plane was permanently broken. And that’s when it bloody dawned on me - as a ten year old kid! - that that could happen to me — that I could be swallowed up by the rat-race.

“And that was the first time I realised that adults may not be right - and what your teachers told you in school may not be right. Just because everyone in your street has a nine-to-five job you assume you’ll do the same when you grow up. You never assume that everyone in your street could be wrong. But I did. And I was right. Damn right.”

And with that he springs up and out of the room - obviously well chuffed with the bravado of his final statement. Next door in his room Barney can be heard ushering out all the masses who’ve been waiting for a pop-star-strewn party.

“I’m too tired,” Barney trills. “I just want to go to sleep.”

Ten minutes later some very un-male-like giggling can be heard resounding through the walls - is Barney having some very restless dreams?

Next morning, two American foxtresses are spotted scurrying gleefully along the hotel balcony holding aloft a pair of very horrible shorts bearing a striking resemblance to Barney’s very own. How very, very “strange”. Swiftly we trundle downstairs to confront Barney who’s supposed to be having breakfast at this very second.

The restaurant looms. . . and it’s empty. They’ve gone. The entire New Order “entourage” - GORN! Without so much as a measly “fond” farewell. Somehow, we hadn’t really expected one. ..