Cuttings

"WE'VE GOT THIS FAR AND WE CAN"T EVEN PLAY!" So says New Order's Bernard Sumner. Dave Rimmer isn't saying anything. "Uuuugh! Who did that ?” bellows New Order's Bernard Sumner, nipping swiftly to another table in the pub. "Who farted?" He giggles, then accuses. "It was you, Rob. wasn't it?" "No," hurls back Rob. their manager, "it was you !" "We're feeling very accessible this year," Peter Hook is telling me meanwhile. "Accessibility. That's our catch-phrase." New Order? Accessible? Well, why not? Today is the morning after they recorded that TOTP , playing "Thieves Like Us" live. How did it go? "It's really weird," shrugs Hooky, "but the other groups come up and apologise for not playing live. They're alright at Top Of The Pops . Nice people." "We re a bit of a pain in the arse for them, I suppose," mumbles Bernard, almost apologet

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 rathe