1993 08 28 New Order Melody Maker

Are New Order splitting up?

Only New Order can answer that. A concerned PAUL LESTER confronts the most important British band since the Sixties and asks the question that will be on everyone's lips at Reading this weekend

PETER HOOK

ARE NEW ORDER SPLITTING UP?

"Em?, I don't know. Good question. Ask Rob Gretton! Listen, they've been saying we're going to split for the last five years. We don't pay attention to it any more. They thought we were going to split after Joy Division. We've got no plans, apart from with Revenge, Electronic and The Other Two. We'll probably sit down after Reading and decide what to do in the future - which is probably to go home (laughs). I haven't got a clue, really.

"People do analyse us more than most bands, yeah, which is quite weird cos we never do. We never talk about New Order, it's just something we do subconsciously. It's a mystery? That's good, isn't it? Otherwise it could get a bit pretentious. We're not that amazed by our track record. We don't sit around and go, 'We've got better tracks than you, ner ner ner ner ner!' Someone asked me the other day, 'How do you feel about influencing all of Eighties music?' I said, 'That's a bit extreme, isn't it?' It's always complimentary, but! just find it a bit embarrassing. 

"You've just got to be true to yourself and do what pleases you. There are mistakes, like with Factory, but the whole Joy Division/New Order thing has been about pleasing yourself and hoping that someone will come along for the ride. Like with the Hacienda - we stuck at it even when there were only six people there. Then, all of a sudden, there were 60, so it proved we were right.

"When I think about it, we have achieved quite a lot, even though we're not that rich. I mean, Depeche Mode: they haven't got what we've got (credibility?). You can't buy that, you have to earn it. There's a certain depth to us - we're businessmen and musicians,

"We're a lot more confident now. Especially about meeting people and going places. We don't scare easily. I have got a bit of a reputation, yeah - I tell people to **** off - but it stops people bothering you. I know people think I'm a complete meathead, but I'm not. It's all bluff. Am I a Viking rock god? I f***ing wish I was! No, age gives you confidence and experience. It's quite nice being old cos you're one thing the young aren't - old! Age means f***-all - it's attitude. Would I go back if I could? [Pauses] Joy Division, maybe. That was a good laugh...

"We just like having a laugh, really, and that's it. That's got to be the ultimate end of it. It's like, all that stuff about us splitting up, it's such a crock of shit. I mean, we've really enjoyed ourselves recently, which I s'pose is a bit of a surprise, cos nobody expected us to. We didn't! And that sort of shocked us all - we must be getting old. It fills you with a bit more promise for the future, cos if you're enjoying it that much...

"I actually don't think 'Republic' is all that bleak a record. It sounds dark, but that's nice cos it means it's more serious. I mean, when you think what we were going through when we made it... Thing is, the next record [New Order have a three-album deal with London] will be much better, cos what we went through to do this one, with Factory and all that crap, it's fairly obvious the next one will be a fairly pleasurable experience in comparison. We can't really go wrong.

"It's pretty weird, though, that we're going to take time off just as "World" is coming our, cos everyone reckons it's going to be our biggest single yet. In America, they reckon it will do really well. And we're stopping now! Very, very New Order.."

BERNARD SUMNER

ARE NEW ORDER SPLITTING UP?

(Silence).

Have you enjoyed being in New Order again after the three-year lay-off?

"I have quite enjoyed it, yeah."

The general consensus is that from "Movement'’ to "Technique" - and with the possible exception of "Brotherhood" - there seems to have been a gradual shift from dark to light, from melancholic introspection to euphoric celebration. And yet people are now saying "Republic" is your most exquisitely miserable record since (Joy Division's) "Closer".,.

"I don't know about that."

Are you still the Young Men With Weight On Their Shoulders, even more than Morrissey and The Smiths the definitive pale outsiders?

"Please! Not Morrissey! Not in the same breath! Erm, I dunno. What is a pale outsider?"

Joy Division always had that reputation...

"I think with Joy Division we saw music as very important, and if you were going to commit something to vinyl and that vinyl will still be around in years to come as a Joy Division record, then it should be something quite serious. And you should write about serious subjects. Like football, for instance! (A reference to NO.'s Number One soccer anthem, 'World In Motion')"

People say you lightened up around the time of "Power, Corruption & Lies". 

"Well, we realised it was time to break the mould, so we started chucking in a few flippant things. Like 'Love Vigilantes' [from 1985's "Low-Life", .. Vigilantes" was, to all intents and purposes, a fusion of electro and country & western!] It was supposed to be cheesy, really. Or like 'Mister Disco' [from '"Technique"] - I wrote that for the chicken-in-a-basket set. Sometimes I think it would be fun to write a load of crap. But that's just my warped sense of humour, I just like really cheesy things, and really bad jokes that aren't funny."

So, your "down" songs don't necessarily mean you were feeling suicidally depressed when you wrote them?

"Not at all. I'm a very happy person now. Surely that should be the main objective in everyone's life, to be happy, cos everyone's happy as kids, cos you've got someone to look after you. And, when you lose them, that's when you get the weight of the world on your shoulders, which, for me, was the time of Joy Division) when a couple of my family died, so..."

A lot of people listen to your music when they're feeling low. Are you missing out because you can't rely on the Joy Division/New Order records to pull you through?! 

"Like I say, I'm a very happy person now and I don't get depressed. But if I did get depressed, I'd f***ing kick a door or squash a can of beans, or something. Or I'd play Beethoven's 'Seventh Symphony'." 

"Republic" - and this is a major compliment, by the way - is a far less joyous affair than "Technique".

'That's more the weight of the business on my shoulders. I know that sounds horrible and very down-to-earth, but it's real life, you know? Our business affairs were a nightmare, which certainly affected some of the lyrics on the album. Then again, a song like 'Ruined In A Day', you'd think it was about Factory, but it isn't, really. We'd been in a club and we got f***ing blasted and... [sniffs, then fires a jet-globule of phlegm towards the ground] sorry, I had to do that - erm, we just got in a really good mood and had a bit of a party in the studio, got totally f***ing zonked, then knocked out this really heavy track! That's what we used to do with Martin Hannett [Joy Division producer]. We’d stay up all night and party in the studio, then write all this heavy music."

New Order seem to like pushing themselves.

"To the limit, yeah."

Do drugs help?

"A lot of people, and I'm not saying us, do turn to drugs for help. But it's more to do with hard work, really. I never used to think of it as work, cos I come from a working-class family, where work is hard, physical labour, working in a factory or something. And this [J.D./N.O.] was like. I'm doing it with my brain, so it's not work. But it really is! Like when we did 'Low-Life', one day we started at four in the morning and I remember everyone came in the next day and all our faculties were gone and we had to keep taking showers to stay awoke. So we worked for 36 hours non-stop, finished the record, drove all the way up to Manchester then flew to Australia for 27 hours. We were f***ed. But we weren't taking a lot of acid or anything, we were just getting wrecked."

Could you work even harder and be even bigger? One can't help feeling that New Order have allowed lesser talents to steal their thunder.

The Cure, Depeche Mode and U2 spring to mind here...

"Yeah, but to sell as many records as they do, you've got to be prepared to work really f*“ing hard, and I'm not.

I mean, for Michael Jackson to get as big as he is, he must have flogged himself to death." 

Commercial achievements aside, surely no other band in the history of pop has managed to last so long without...

"... going crap? Yeah, I've noticed that. Bands start off making really good records, then they go crap. I've watched almost every band do that, and I've always been determined we wouldn't do the same."

How do you stop it happening?

"Well, when you first join a band, it's easy, cos you're new, so if you're any good at all you don't have to work cos the press are gunning for you. Let's take Suede as the perfect example. Now, Suede are all right, just all right - they're not fantastic, just all right - but they're passed as being fantastic cos journalists are..

Desperate?

"... enthusiastic - it's their band and they're gunning for them. The secret is, after that easy start, to really work f***ing hard."

Joy Division were called The Best New Band In Britain in 1979, as were New Order in 1981. Today, people are hailing them as the most important/influential British group since The Beatles or The Rolling Stones, while Bernard Sumner is described variously as the UK's own Michael Stipe, a Brian Eno for the Nineties, and the only genius currently working in pop.

What's he going to do next?

"Just normal things like drive my car or go to the Hac. I dunno, if you're talking about the future, my ambition is to watch TV for the rest of eternity... I'd really like to make an ambient record or an avant-garde album of instrumental music - people's jaws would just drop. Cos I do feel a bit tied down by commercial pressures, and cos we are successful and people expect radio singles."

Do people's expectations of New Order ever get too much?

'Yeah, sometimes I think I'll just run off to Iceland.. .1 don't think about it too much, really. I don't analyse it. It's just a laugh. People say all these things about us, but I can't see it. It's like, you can't recognise your own voice when you hear it on a tape recorder. I don't know about New Order."

Are New Order splitting up? Go see for yourselves at Reading, where they headline on Sunday. If your / our worst fears do come true, then console yourself with "World', the band's new single, out now on London

GILLIAN GILBERT & STEPHEN MORRIS

ARE NEW ORDER SPLITTING UP?

Gillian and Stephen (the Paul and Linda of New Order?) don't say. They do, however, substantiate the rumour that the pair are responsible for many of New Order's most sublime melodies. Moreover, Stephen, although he laughs when he says it, tells me he wrote all the songs on 'Technique'’ ("The rest of them just f***ed off to the beach in Ibiza!"). And Gillian expresses irritation with journalists who keep comparing "Republic" to "Closer", as if all her efforts on the New Order records in between were in vain.

"I hate that," she snaps. "I've been getting that al the time recently, interviewers asking, 'Haw do you see your role?' It's like it's gone back to Joy Division, like I had nothing to do with anything. Maybe I'm getting the wrong end of the stick.,. People always used to say, 'Oh, she doesn't do anything',which really annoys me."

New Order's gifted keyboard player also admits to missing the spirit of old ("It used to be a lot more fun") and bemoans the lack of control she and Morris had over the "Republic" material, implying that The Other Two have different working methods to Sumner, Hook and producer Stephen Hague.

Maybe she's having an off period. Maybe we shouldn't be reading too much into all this, not least because, after years and years in each other's company, a bit of friction between Hook, Sumner, Gilbert and Morris is inevitable.

Or perhaps we really should consider these as signs of potential schisms in the ranks. Certainly, "Republic" sounds as much like the (brilliant) Electronic album as it does a New Order record. One group insider agrees with my opinion, adding that New Order's sixth LP is more or less a Bernard Sumner solo project, and that Bernard did most of the essential knob-twiddling down at Peter Gabriel's studios in Bath.

Whatever, Morris signs off with a wry-verging-on-weary view of New Order's position in the scheme of things, either the result of typically wry, typically northern, typically New Order self-effacement, or simple fatigue, or a desire to Leave it All Behind.

"At the end of the day, it's just a couple of notes, isn't it?" he sighs, "It's like, when people say we changed the course of pop history or such-and-such a group sound like New Order, I think, ‘Is that a good thing?' I never felt like I was in the best band in the world. If you did that, it'd be totally crap - what would be the point of doing anything again? We don't like looking back. We don't like looking forward, either - we're existentialists, aren't we?!

'No, we never go, 'Oh, the good old days'. That's just wallowing in nostalgia. And it was never that good anyway."

NEW ORDER

God's Backing Band

Are New Order Splitting Up? Let's hope not. But if they do - and we can only pray they don't - but if they do, then London should immediately assemble the following Joy Division/New Order tracks, whack them on a compilation and get it out before Christmas. Suggested title: “God's Backing Band"...

SIDE A

1. "New Dawn Fades'' (from "Unknown Pleasures")

2. "Decades' (from "Closer')

3. "Ice Age" (from "Still")

4. "She's Lost Control" (from “Joy Division: Substance")

5. 'Chosen Time' (from "Movement")

6. "Temptation” (seven-inch)

7. "Too Late' (from "Peel Sessions")

8. "Your Silent Face' (from "Power, Corruption &Ues")

SIDE B

1. “Thieves Like Us" (12-inch)

2. "Sooner Than You Think' (from "Low-life")

3. 'Angel Dust" (from 'Brotherhood')

4. "1963" (B-side of "True Faith")

5. "Touched By The Hand Of God* (from "New Order: Substance")

6. "Dream Attack” (from "Technique")

7. "Round & Round" (remix)

8. "Spooky" (from "Republic")