1984 05 06 New Order, Jamming

Most of this feature is the same as this Record Mirror interview. Below are the additional parts...

PART 1

BERNARD SUMNER:
WORKING WITH ONE ARM

AFTER SEVERAL WEEKS persuading New Order’s manager, Rob Gretton, to give us a firm date for this interview, he agreed to let us confront his charges prior to their one-off appearance at the Brixton Academy in early December. As could possibly be expected, events didn't occur exactly as planned, and so we waited over two hours before finally being admitted into the Academy. We were then directed into New Order's dressing room, where we found a heavy fog of herbal smoke and an extremely relaxed Rob Gretton. I was at long last introduced to a very friendly and honest Bernard Sumner (alias Albrecht, alias Dickens), and we immediately started talking about New Order’s recent happenings . . .

What have you been doing for the past six months, because not much has been heard of you around here?

Well, for the first half of those six months, we were playing; and for another month we were in America. The two months previous to that, we played, er . . . in . . . I don’t know! I can only remember as far back as America! Anyway, in the last year we’ve actually been very, very busy; we’ve been to America twice, we’ve been to Australia, New Zealand, Finland, Sweden, Scotland and Ireland. That’s all in one year; so when we came back, we decided to have a holiday. When we came back off holiday, I went into the studio with a group called Section 25, and produced an LP with them. Steve and Gillian have been producing an American group, and I’m now doing someone called Marcel King who used to be in a group called Sweet Sensation. He's releasing a record on Factory, which I think is really good. The production side of it has been quite heavy over the last three months, so after January I’m going to try to shut it down a bit so we can concentrate on New Order. The frustrating thing is that we’ve a lot of new songs, but we can’t play them tonight because they’re not finished. We’ll be playing a couple tonight, but we’ll basically just be jamming. We’ve got no words for them or anything, no lyrics; we’ve just got an idea - say, a few riffs and that, so we’ll jam them live.

PART 2
PETER HOOK:
A GRATUITOUS 15 MINUTES

AT THIS POINT Bernard was required for the soundcheck, after which I searched out Peter Hook for another short chat. After two more hours spent waiting around, ‘Hookey’. . as the rest of the group call him, grudgingly agreed to let me have fifteen minutes of his time, before he drove back to their hotel; therefore the following interview actually took place in Peter Hook’s BMW . . .

How much of an influence did Martin Hannett have on your sound, and your way of working in the studio?

He didn’t change much of the early stuff; he used to do it pretty straight. He only restructured a couple, because we’ve always been pretty good at structuring songs. But he used to put a lot of things on ... he always used to try and make’em a bit more subtle, which was quite good. He taught us a lot - he taught us to experiment. So he did have an effect, I suppose, but considering we started together. I suppose we had an effect on him! No man is an iceberg!

That’s rather cruel, isn’t it!? [in response to answer about Gillian joining]

True though! You know what I mean; bring her round to our way of thinking . . .!

In the early days of New Order, when you and Bernard were taking over the singing, were you confident as vocalists? Did you always feel you could do it?

Well, anyone could do it! You could do it! Whether you’re any good at it or not is open to interpretation. We thought that we were alright, which was all we wanted for the time being, while we felt our way. I don’t particularly think that Ian was a great singer, as a singer: I don’t think of myself as a great bass player - and I certainly know Barney’s not a great guitarist!

Are you consciously now making records that people can dance to? Because I know that “Blue Monday” is a really popular dance...

No. The records we’ve written since then, apart from ‘Confusion’, have been unlike ‘Blue Monday’ - they’re not danceable rhythms. We’ve written six new ones, and they’re all medium-paced to slow.

Do you intend to carry on making singles that are 12-inch only?

I don’t know. ‘Blue Monday’ was a 12” because it was a 12” song; we dind’t want to cut it down. ‘Confusion’ was going to be a 7” - I mean, Factory weren’t supposed to release ‘Confusion’. We did actually do a 7” edit, and a 7” mix, but we never got round to putting it out, because we were too busy. It’s really good, actually, the 7”! We were going to put it on juke-boxes, and then release it; but it just never happened, unfortunately. Factory had a lot on, and just couldn’t pull it off. You’ve got one minute, otherwise I’m gonna be late!

Can you give me some inkling of what New Order are likely to be doing in the near future?

Christmas, that’s what we’re doing!

You’ve no idea what the next LP will be like? You said they were mid-tempo, the new songs you’ve got . . .

I don’t know yet, we’ll have to see how they turn out. They’ll probably change a lot before they get to the recording stage, anyway. We never finish anything - we’re always changing it, all the time!

THAT WAS MORE or less that; ‘Hookey’ sped off to his hotel, and I made my way back to the dressing room - only to find that the door was locked, and that all members of the Media had been ordered out. Of course, it would be entirely irresponsible of me to speculate as to what Morris, Gilbert, Sumner, Gretton and friends were up to behind the locked door, so I’ll leave that up to you. Whatever, one thing that had been made clear to me throughout the day was that the only kind of criticism that New Order respect is that which comes from the consumer, and which is expressed via the sales of records and concert tickets. If, as happened at Brixton that night, New Order can appear before their public in various stages of intoxication, stumble through a series of half-finished and/ or half-remembered songs, and still get treated as heroes, then they are unlikely to see any reason to change their patterns of behaviour. If, on the other hand, their followers start to turn away from them, then New Order will be obliged to start paying more attention to what’s going on around them. Having said all that, it should not be forgotten that the people we’re talking about have been responsible for some of the most powerful and influential music of recent years; but the question that now needs to be asked is whether New Order, as they are at the beginning of 1984, still deserve our admiration. It’s a question that I wouldn’t presume to try to answer for you.

DAVE JENNINGS

All photos by Kevin Cummins