2012 02 New Order Mojo

DREAMS NEVER END

IN THE FACE OF THE VERY PUBLIC PROTESTS FROM THEIR DEPARTED FOUNDER BASSIST, MANCHESTER'S GREATEST GROUP REACTIVATE TO ADD ANOTHER CHAPTER TO THEIR LAUDED HISTORY, PONDERING CONTROL, LOSS AND REDEMPTION, THEY REVEAL THAT "NEW ORDER IS A WOUND THAT'S HEALED ITSELF."
WORDS: IAN HARRISON. PHOTOGRAPHY: KEVIN CUMMINS

IN THE RAIN-LASHED NIGHT OF OCTOBER 18, 2011, Paris’ 11th Arrondissement has an ambience approaching the classically Mancunian. The noisy bar attached to concert venue Le Bataclan, built in the cod-Sino Chinoiserie style in 1864, resounds with northern English accents not long embarked from the Eurostar terminal at the nearby Gare du Nord, while inside the 1,500 capacity hall next door the soundtrack is a Hacienda-friendly mix of Kraftwerk and A Guy Called Gerald. It’s a suitable setting for New Order’s second live performance since Bernard Sumner, Stephen Morris and Gillian Gilbert announced the surprise resurrection of their monumental group on September 5.

The line-up’s completed by guitarist and keyboardist Phil Cunningham and bassist Tom Chapman, both members of Sumner’s group Bad Lieutenant. Estranged co-founder Peter Hook, until now a vital and volcanic presence in the New Order story, was not invited to participate. Ladling on the history even more, the sell-out event is a benefit for their old film-maker friend Michael Shamberg, who’s stricken with the debilitating brain condition encephalitis.

Understandably, the scene is initially one of lamentation. With the stage in near-darkness, the applause fades in the presence of opening song Elegia, a crystalline, neo-Morricone instrumental of mourning and nemesis from 1985’s Low-life. Screen visuals depict out-of-focus headlights, pharmaceutical drugs and what look like blood corpuscles raining down. An injection of adrenalin hits, though, when it segues into 2001’s piledriving requiem Crystal. Here is hard-won wisdom and an inescapable fact for any musician that made their vinyl debut in 1978: "It was summer,” sings Sumner solemnly “Now it’s autumn."

Contrastingly, 1993’s soaring Regret concludes this cathartic opening triptych on a more elevated note, illuminating the group's tumultuous past with hope and absolution, and for the next 90 minutes' glide through their back catalogue, there are resonances at every turn. This is electronic/acoustic dance music made with an ear for melody, a fealty to the beat and an oblique lyrical integrity; ghost conceit Love Vigilantes and a gigantic Temptation receive particularly ecstatic cheering, while an unexpected reboot of 5-8-6 from 1983’s Power, Corruption And Lies sounds propulsive and even now, futurist. When Gilbert — who bowed out of New Order in 2001 — straps on her guitar for the group’s first single Ceremony, the sense of homecoming is complete.

Triumphantly, they conclude with a thunderous Blue Monday, marked by Chapman’s tone-perfect bass twangs and Sumner standing beside Gilbert to play synth, and a sublime, statuesque take on Joy Division’s signature Love Will Tear Us Apart. When the animated Sumner asks the audience, “Who would ever think that such a sad song would one day become so joyous?" you wonder if he’s commenting on New Order’s more recent history as well.

Afterwards in the dressing room, the throng includes Pet Shop Boys Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe, and Ed Simons from The Chemical Brothers. Simons is in exultant mood. "That was genius," he effuses. “It’s just some of the best, most emotional music ever made — whether you’re a sensitive student or a football hooligan."

Sumner, composed and steady of gaze, is less starry-eyed. “I fucked Crystal right up last night,” he says of the previous evening’s show at Brussels’ Ancienne Belgique. “It ended up sounding like a jazz version, I started singing the second verse first... quite a lot of panic set in. But I pulled it back together."

Which begs the question, Is it daunting, returning to New Order five years after their last concert, with a different line up? “It depends where you position yourself in your head," he says, calmly. “I like it when you can get everything on-stage right and you’ve got a great audience. Then you work well. Mind you, if you do get a shit audience, then you get, Fuck you bastards, we'll show you. I like it when things are under control...”

CONTROL, THE LACK OF IT, or the wresting of it, has been germane to this story since May 1980, when the suicide of vocalist Ian Curtis forced the remaining members of oracular post-punks Joy Division to transform into New Order. The last time MOJO was in Morris and Gilbert’s studio, situated in an outbuilding of their Cheshire farmhouse, was in March. Then they were discussing the 30th anniversary of New Order’s debut LP Movement and how it led to the epochal Blue Monday in March 1983. In November 2011, they’re again reflecting on departures, and how to deal with the weight of the past in order to look forward. The ever-rational Morris has a closed circuit TV monitor to his right and a hank of vintage Pearl, Roland and Simmons drum machines at his back. “When anyone asked about us getting back together," he remarks dryly, "I always said. Never say never.”

The pragmatic approach has been necessary, considering the strange catalogue of chance, hubris and bloody-mindedness that makes up the New Order story. The band's contrarian streak is a matter of record, whether they were refusing to mime to Blue Monday on a March 1983 edition of Top Of The Pops (they played it live and stalled its chart ascent), not putting singles on LPs or suspending operations at the zenith of their success, as they did after 1989’s Technique. Seemingly indifferent to commercial matters, they preferred to direct their energies into heroically inspirational, functionally aesthetic records, with charismatic mavericks like their Factory label provost Tony Wilson and manager Rob Gretton helping them become what amounted to an internationally successful cult band. But this freedom came at a devilish price, as New Order effectively bankrolled the profligate Factory and its tabled club The Hacienda until the former collapsed in November 1992. That the group endured is testament to their instincts for survival. Since then, the core members have enacted safety-valve side projects (see sidebars) before being drawn back together for another phase of activity. This time the situation is different.

Their most recent hiatus officially began in May 2007, when Peter Hook brusquely announced that the group had split. Sumner and Morris issued the statement: “We can only assume he no longer wants to be a part of New Order.”

Since then, Hook — whose ownership of the trademark of the Hacienda and touring of Joy Division’s albums with his group The Light suggest a psychic landgrab of the group’s shared past — has done his best to keep the wound raw. In September 2009 Sumner even told MOJO he no longer wished to make music as New Order. Now to Hooky’s immense chagrin, they are once more operational. But how?

“I must’ve thrown my rattle out of the pram when I said that, which I occasionally do,” says Sumner, reclining on a couch in Le Bataclan’s dressing room. “But it was always on the tabic, really. In our minds, we'd never split up. Hooky left. Surely in a partnership, if you’re splitting a company up, you have to get all the directors together and get them all to agree to split the company up, and... he didn’t get on with us, particularly me, for some reason. A lot of ego involved. But we get on together."

They all agree that the ill health of Shamberg, whose NO involvement includes making the early performance film Taras Shevchenko and producing their ever-outre videos, was the catalyst to reunite. “We’ve seen him deteriorate," says Morris. “So we wanted to do a benefit for him. Bernard had actually said, ‘Bad Lieutenant will do it,’ but in his confused state, Michael kept saying. ‘Well, New Order are doing it.’ In the end we just stopped arguing. So let’s blame a poor ill person, shall we? Actually, let’s not.”

The commitment was made, Gilbert was primed to return and their right to use the name was secured (says Morris) “by the law of majorities". It was left for Sumner’s group to provide the extra manpower. Cunningham, who’d played guitar and keyboards in New Order since Gilbert’s departure in 2001, and bassist Chapman, were half-way through recording a new Bad Lieutenant album when a band meeting in July presented a new set of possibilities. Nursing afternoon beers in Macclesfield pie-and-pint lounge The Snow Goose, they reflect on the moment thev realised they were playing in New Order.

“It was one afternoon when we were in the studio, rehearsing," says Chapman, an enthusiastic Anglo-Parisian Manc-ophile whose mind was blown by Joy Division and The Smiths, and who’s been resident in Manchester since 1993. “It was just thrown into the conversation - very exciting! Bernard gave me some top advice which was, ‘There’s going to be criticism, so don’t listen to what people have got to say about you, good or bad.’ You have just got to think in terms of the songs; the basslines really contribute to what those songs are, so you have got to be true to the bass. 1 didn’t want to be a cabaret of Peter Hook, with my bass down there, though..."

Cunningham, who first met Sumner 14 years ago when Johnny Marr was producing the first LP by his band Marion, is aware of Chapman’s sensitive position. “The hardest thing in any band is replacing someone,” he says. “I felt the same standing in for Gillian. So it’s been great getting her back in the band - when we were working on Bad Lieutenant stuff she was spending more time in the studio and almost beginning to get involved in that. And having a girl in the band, it puts a different slant on it you know — it adds a bit of grace to the whole thing.”

Morris concurs with his prognosis. Explaining his own decision to return to New Order, he reflects that the process began when he played live drums with Bad lieutenant. These differed from the last round of New Order dates (he recalls a lacklustre evening show at Glastonbury 2005, which involved comedian Keith Allen wearing a matador outfit and riding a pantomime horse for football song World In Motion, and shudders). “We’d really liked doing the Bad Lieutenant gigs,” he says, “and you thought. Why was it a bit of a pain in the arse before? Hmm. Another thing was that, for the last two years everything about New Order has been bloody negative. And this is, not reclaiming the past exactly, but it is something positive... like going backwards to go forwards, in a way."

In August they began taking suggestions for the setlist (“We wanted to introduce some new old stuff," quips Sumner). Cunningham voted for Age Of Consent, then spent hours reminding himself how erratic New Order could be when listening to old live tapes. Sumner’s ’80s-mindcd producer pal Stuart Price helped resurrect 5-8-6, with the band rehearsing hard for two months in Gilbert and Morris’s live room. It has to be asked — What makes this distinct from an augmented version of Bad Lieutenant?

“What’s different?” ponders Sumner. “Songs, really. The history and the heritage. One of the things about not doing New Order was like, all that work and effort and blood, sweat and tears, you were just dropping it in the bin. That felt wrong. I didn't do all that work just to dump it by the wayside, just because Hooky left."

The rigour and efficacy of the comeback shows aside, there is a mammoth-sized, bass-wielding pachyderm in the room. Can we ask, for the record, why exactly did Hooky leave?

“He wasn’t happy,” says Morris grimly. “And to use the old marriage analogy, if one person isn’t happy, nobody is happv. That said, part of me understands [his objections]. There was the same sort of thing when Ian died. Debbie [Curtis] said, ‘How can something you have been part of carry on without you?’ I suppose we should have talked about it, but really, it isn't an easy thing to talk about. It’s always been like that in New Order. We never had screaming rows. There was just... years of seething."

Can they see a time he might be re-admitted to the group?

Sumner’s response is steely and unequivocal. “After some of the things he’s said about me I certainly don’t want to work with him again. But he’s got his way of embracing the heritage of what we’ve done, with The Light, and good luck to him. We’ve got our way. The thing is,” he continues, “none of you journalists really know what musicians are like. You see a caricature, cartoon figures. You can’t possibly know what we’re like, because you’d have to be with us every minute of the day to find out. It’s like an iceberg; you only see part of it, the rest is submerged. You could get the gist, but I’d have to give you a thousand-page document about what went wrong with New Order.” 

Suitably chastened, MOJO can only querulously enquire what it’s actually like doing shows without... you-know-who?

“You know, it’s something I came to terms with a long time ago,” says Sumner, almost wistfully. “I’ve just got to accept the fact. Ian committed suicide, and he’s never going to be around again.” Conversely, Sumner says of playing with Gillian again: “It felt very natural. It seemed like to solve the problem, the way to go forward was in front of our noses. Which was to get Gillian back in the band. In that way, New Order was like a wound that had healed itself.”

AS SUMNER NOTES, WHAT made this New Order, and not Bad Lieutenant playing the music of New Order, is the return of Gillian Gilbert. Her connection with the group goes back to a date at Liverpool’s Eric’s club in 1980 when she played guitar for one song with Joy Division. After Curtis’s suicide, she was brought into New Order as an apprentice figure. Through highs, lows and various lay-offs, she stayed at her keyboards across their flush of stunning albums, musical intrigue and drama until 2001, when family reasons—her daughter Grace suffers from the neurological condition transverse myelitis - caused her to step down. Unbelievably, there was more — in 2007 she was diagnosed with breast cancer. Now; she’s returned to health and is fully back in contention.

“It’s been nice going back into it after taking that break,” she says with typical understatement. “When you were so close with everybody for so long, to not be a part of it was a shock at the beginning. I got used to it, but when Stephen was doing production and Factory Floor would come round, I’d think, I’d like to do something again. So yeah, I am glad to be back. Playing in a group, when you like the music — and I am quite, y’know, not shy but quiet - it makes you forget about being an individual. And everything is a lot more ‘up’ and relaxed now."

Like her husband, Gillian evinces levelheaded good sense, but while she agrees when MOJO wonders if Hooky’s predicament might warrant a degree of sympathy, it seems her forbearance has limits. “It is quite sad,” she admits. “But I’ve been through sadness, and nobody gives a stuff about it, you know?! And that... blooming hurts. In the band and outside the band. I don’t see why he thinks himself any more special than anyone else when a relationship breaks down, band stuff or not. I had to go, because I had a daughter to look after. I didn’t say, Now I’m gone you lot can’t do anything, did I? You can’t control another person, can you? Are you feeling sorry for Hooky in the same way I think you are? With Barney and everything?”

Considering that Hooky and Bernard’s friendship began when they were both 11, maybe we should be. The former comrades spent decades together, tendons straining in unison; for the creative tension to become merely tension and antipathy is dispiriting. Morris admits some songs in the canon can seem pertinent to changes in circumstance and their ramifications. Their unexplained references to “you” and “I”, and scenarios of broken trust - Blue Monday’s “How does it feel to treat me like you do?” or True Faith’s “Our valued destiny comes to nothing" - already contained inner dialogues that have attained greater pointedness and weight as relations have fractured.

“That’s the funny thing," says Morris. “When you write 'em, you don’t really think about the meaning. It’s only later, sometimes years later, you see them and think, Bloody hell, this is all about... whatever. Hang, on how could it actually be about that when I came up with those three words, and someone else came up with those three words, and we just wanted to get the bloody song finished!? It’s not like we wanted to write a song about my confused anti convoluted relationship with x, y or z... and you think, why didn’t you see it at the time? It’s like what we did with Ian’s lyrics after he died - it was obviously all about what he was going through, but at the time you just thought, What a cracking song. I think it’s completely unconscious. It’s not like you’re writing about something specific, but when you do see it from end to end, you can’t help but see — Oh yeah, there is a pattern here. But we are great at seeing patterns.”

There remains the feeling that too much has been said and done for Hook to go back. “1 used to be really good friends with him,” says Cunningham. “Then you could tell he didn’t wanna be in the band any more. Maybe in an ideal world Hooky would still be in the band — sorry to say that, Tom. But things change, life goes on.”

FOR NEW ORDER, TOO, PUSHING forward is not simple either. Lost Sirens, a mini-album of tracks left from the sessions for 2005’s Waiting For The Sirens' Call, was due for release in early December. It is now cautiously expected in April 2012. Similarly, New Order’s other plans after late 2011’s run of shows in Brazil, Argentina, Chile and London plus Australian dates in March are undisclosed, though Morris say's he’d like to do Thieves Like Us live and rules out the band performing any of their albums in full. Chapman is keen to record new music, but has no idea if they will, while Cunningham shrugs that, “the New Order lot aren’t great communicators. They’ll just do things in increments, rather than have a massive plan for the future.”

At the mention of a new New Order LP Morris shivers. “They all turn into a bloody slog,” he winces. “There are a lot of expectations. If we did do one, it would have to be fantastic. You’d have to write a lot of crap to come up with one good song. You can do it more easily when you’re young, because everything up to that point finds its way, somehow, into what you do. After that, it’s done, it dissipates. So one step at a time... anyway. I’ve got an Other Two record to finish off.”

“You said that last time,” laughs Gillian, adding, “I think he would do another New Order record.”

Morris pauses, then asserts: “You might as well have a bit of fun, even if it does all bloody go pear-shaped. There were some very profound words I remember from watching Futurama: ‘When push comes to shove you have got to do what you love, even though it is not a good idea.’ Wise words indeed."

As Stephen and Gillian ponder these hypotheticals, Bernard is on holiday sailing off the coast of Brazil. It remains to be seen if New Order is to be a leisurely cruise happy to revisit old haunts, or whether they’ll head to places yet unexplored. However thrilling connoisseur hits sets can be, it’s the potential for new creation that makes this a more tantalising reformation than, say, The Stone Roses’ reunion, announced on the day that New Order played in Paris. Significantly, both Morris and Gilbert mention how freshly-coined they think Power, Corruption And Lies sounds, in ways that the bigger hit Technique does not.

As we prepare to leave, Morris looks to his wall-sized assemblage of early digital and analogue drum machines. “We don’t use as much of the old gear as I’d like live,” he muses, “which is probably for the best. Otherwise you really would have a classic New Order gig — we’d be saying, put everything through the guitar amp, the drum machine’s just melted. People would love it!”

He glances over at a wood finish Voyager monophonic synthesizer. With its array of filters, oscillators anti modulation busses, it looks like a relic from an age of simpler technology that was harder to use. Is this another repair job in waiting, Stephen? “No, this one’s fine actually," he says. “It’s all ready to go. Really, it just wants turning on.”

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THE VIKING IN EXILE

Estranged, confused and unhappy, Peter Hook holds out the olive branch - after a fashion.

(Note: Hooky was first interviewed on the phone on November 22 at Manchester Airport. His mood was acerbic, with talk centring on his departure from New Order. The next morning, he requested to do the interview again from his hotel in Tel Aviv.)

Why did you want to speak again?

‘Because after I'd talked to you. I was reflecting that it was a great shame that it was overshadowed by stuff that had happened quite a long time after the end. I thought, I’m getting a little bit obsessed with the end bit. I'm forgetting all the fucking wonderful things and the great stuff we achieved before. Y'know, me and Barney made a deal four years ago to stop this, but yesterday, it was. Fuck. I've done it again."

The sniping is dismaying.

“It's a really odd and horrible situation, yes. I’ve said some horrible things about them and they've said some horrible things about me as well. But you always let your ego, unfortunately, dictate what you were doing."

Some people might think it strange that you departed the band yet insisted New Order had actually split.

'Y'see the point is, I still work on the adage, the same thing that we said when we were Joy Division. That if one member goes then it's not Joy Division. In New Order, when Bernard went, we were happy with that. So I do feel that they shouldn't be playing as New Order without me. It is that simple."

But don't you think you've been your own worst enemy?

"I am not. It's emotional, you know, when you're wound up about something, it's very, very difficult. Because of the emotions involved in what you've done and how special it is and how proud you are of it. New Order has been a huge part of my life for 34 years. Just because they're going out as New Order doesn't take it away from me. You're still gonna be the elephant in the room, always. If we'd have patched it up, and made each other... maybe not happy, but you'd found a solution where you could have gone on, then you wouldn't be the elephant in the room."

Losing members is a fact of life when it comes to bands, though, isn't it?

"Last night, actually, I was reading Jerry Hall's autobiography and she was talking about Bryan Ferry, and I'm like, Fucking hell, these groups are all the same! It can end up quite acrimonious, but they always end up like the Eagles - they get back together again because the beauty and the strength of what they do is when they're all together. Have you read Keith Richards' book? Don Was has this theory about groups, which is that principal songwriters nearly always can't live without each other. It's the fact they can't achieve anything outside that partnership - that's what drives them fucking mad."

Would you play with them again?

"For Michael Shamberg I would have, yeah. 'Cos he was such a huge part of Factory - it was him that introduced us to Arthur Baker, and on to Jonathan Demme, Kathryn Bigelow... even if it hadn't led to something afterwards, you could have gone, all right, shook hands, I'm happy doing that, you go on. Then you wouldn't have had everybody watching you destroy each other again."

You've compared the situation to a school-yard scrap.

'It is like the school playground. Would I back down? I don't know what I'm backing down from. I'm so fucking confused with it all, and so obsessed with it all, I dunno even now what's going on. The thing is, I’m isolated. I've not seen them for four years."

So how did Lost Sirens sound when you re-listened to it?

"It reminded me that when we did Sirens, we still had the drive and the passion for writing. Rob Gretton always used to say something that we've proved time and time again, with Electronic, The Other Two, Bad Lieutenant, Freebass... New Order is bigger than them all. He always used to say, 'Stop fucking around with your petty, ego-driven side projects and concentrate on New Order and you won't ever have any problems.' Another thing I liked about it was it is very lush, big and well produced. Bands can't afford to spend that kind of money these days. I'd been away from that for five years, working in a different way. It's a really sad aspect that you can't work like that any more."

After Joy Division, will you be playing the New Order albums live, as you hinted in MOJO 212?

"Hmm. Could have been a red herring couldn't it?"

You said you liked the groups on this issue's Power, Corruption And Lies Covered CD...

"All these groups, in a funny way, they're like your children. It's funny you know, they're all so respectful. A miserable moment I had was seeing the bill for the Ultra festival in Brazil New Order played at; Swedish House Mafia and Soulwax were on, and I was thinking, That's such a fucking great dance bill. Actually made my heart pang. 'Cos those bands that you've influenced have now become your favourite bands... and it'd be wonderful to be a part of it. But I'm not there."

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HIATUS 1

When? August 25,1989 saw New Order sign off nine years of activity at the Reading Festival. They'd released their ecstatic Number 1 album Technique that January, and followed with a lengthy tour of America.

Then... It wasn't long before the side projects that blighted manager Rob Gretton's life commenced. First out of the traps was Hooky's not-at-all-suggestively-named project Revenge; their debut, New Order-lite single 7 Reasons was released in November, followed in May by the album One True Passion (left), which featured the songs Fag Hag, Surf Nazi and Slave, and came clothed in soft-pom cover art. Hook took to the road with a vengeance, with one of Revenge's early shows played at a party for S&M smut mag Skin 2. More intriguingly, that December saw Bernard and ex-Smith Johnny Marr's supergroup Electronic reach Number 12 with their elegant debut single Getting Away With It. However, Electronic proved reluctant showmen, playing just seven shows before retiring from live work the following year. As Sumner observed, 'I'd rather be on the dole than go on tour again.' They didn't release their muted self-titled debut album until June 1991.To complicate matters, in June 1990 New Order recombined - as EnglandNewOrder - to score a Number 1 hit with the World Cup song World In Motion. More sensibly, Morris and Gilbert waited until November '91 to reveal themselves asThe Other Two, releasing the super-catchy Tasty Fish, which cruelly stalled at Number 41.

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HIATUS 2

When? On August 29, 1993, New Order again played a farewell show at the Reading Festival. They'd begun work on sixth album Republic in 1991, but it would not be released until May 1993 - on the London imprint, after label-as-situationist-prank Factory Records went down in a saturnalia of raving financial incontinence, drugs and old-fashioned incompetence. The group was left fried, traumatised and Impoverished by the experience, making the split almost inevitable.

Then... The first to re-enter the fray were Morris and Gilbert, whose first album The Other Two & You arrived in November. Though this and accompanying single Selfish failed to go supernova, the shimmering electronics of their debut put it among the most successful of the NO side LPs. During this period, Morris and Gilbert also wrote the themes to TV shows including Common As Muck and Cracker. Comically, the hibernating NewOrder carried on releasing singles anyway, with November 1994's True Faith and August 1995's Blue Monday re-releases charting in multi-remix packages. In July '96 Electronic released their misleadingly-titled second album Raise The Pressure. Now fronting Monaco, in summer 1997 Hooky reached Number 11 with the Steve Harleyish What Do You Want From Me? ("You've taken my life, ruined everything," went the chorus) and its parent album Music For Pleasure. Then, joy of joys, Rob Gretton persuaded the group to reunite. They played their comeback show at - inevitably - August 1998's Reading Festival, though they warmed up at the Manchester Apollo in July.

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HIATUS 3

When? After a show at the Alexandra Palace on New Year's Eve 1998, there are no New Order shows for 18 months and no new music until August 2001, when Crystal is released with no less than 14 dance remixes to choose from. Says Barney later, the time spent apart had 'purged all the animosity between us.'

Then... Possibly due to some conditioned Pavlovian behaviour, the side projects proceeded as usual. The Other Two’s Super Highways came in March 1999, while Electronic's third LP Twisted Tenderness - a more band-oriented record with mad monk Rasputin on the sleeve - followed in April, featuring a cover of Blind Faith’s Can't Find My Way Home and the fine, New Order-like title track. Opined Johnny Marr, 'I was really into whatever modern technology and modern culture was gonna offer, and to understand what it was like to be in a DIY, indie, worldwide successful northern band, who were burned out... if ever there was someone who could understand it and deal with it as a friend it was Bernard Sumner.' Monaco's self-titled second album came in August, though New Order did manage tuff new recording Brutal for the soundtrack of film The Beach, and as '99 turned into 2000, Bernard could be heard playing guitar on Primal Scream’s XTRMNTR and singing Out Of Control on The Chemical Brothers' LP Surrender. When New Order returned to play the Liverpool Olympia in July 2001, Phil Cunningham replaced Gillian Gilbert for the first time.

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HIATUS 4

When ? On November 18, 2006, the group played a last show in Buenos Aires. With no side projects between 2001's Get Ready and 2005's Waiting For The Sirens' Call, it seemed that serenity and contentment had finally come to New Order; "We're destined to be together," Hooky told MOJO In 2005. Then he began engineering his estrangement, unilaterally declaring that New Order were no more.

Then... Hooky had started planning new project Freebass - a bass player supergroup featuring himself. Mani from Primal Scream and ex-Smith Andy Rourke - in 2004. He also began to DJ more regularly, wrote the hair-raising Factory memoir How Not To Run A Club in 2009, and having bought the name of the Hacienda, opened new nightspot FAC251 in February 2010 In the old Factory offices on Manchester's Charles Street. Other ventures have included themed Hacienda bass guitars made out of floorboards from the club and, since May 2010, touring the Joy Division albums Unknown Pleasures and Closer with his band The Light. On the eve of the September 2010 release of Freebass debut It's A Beautiful Life (above left), meanwhile, the band disintegrated with Mani accusing Hook of being 'despised' in a super-OTT Twittergasm of fury after Hook elected to put his energy into revisiting Joy Division instead. ("It's just what happens between friends," said the forgiving Hooky. "It's what happens between my friends, anyway.") In the meantime, Morris produced Factory Floor and Sumner's Bad Lieutenant (top), featuring all the current members of New Order except Gilbert plus second vocalist Jake Evans, released their debut album, Never Cry Another Tear, in October 2009. On learning that his former bandmates were to reform without him. on October 7, 2011 Hook told US music site Spinner that he is, "all the more determined to fuck New Order over in any possible way I can."