The Star Online > eCentral > music Friday August 19, 2005
New Order's world is in motion
By ZACK YUSOF
New Order is still going strong after surviving 25 turbulent years together. ZACK YUSOF spoke to bassist Peter Hook about the band’s acclaimed new album and the forthcoming Joy Division biopic.
In general, long-distance phone interviews are often somewhat cold and impersonal affairs, even more so when you’ve got someone like Peter Hook on the other line who has a reputation as a cantankerous, difficult kind of bloke with a serious dislike for journalists. That was the impression this writer had prior to interviewing the New Order bassist recently.
But contrary to popular belief and media folklore, the man who has spawned thousands of imitators with his distinctive style of bass playing turned out to be a perfect gent.
Not many bands would have managed to overcome the death of their lead singer but somehow New Order has managed to rise from the ashes of Joy Division and the suicide of frontman Ian Curtis to become one of the most significant British bands of all time.
New Order frontman Bernard Sumner. After six studio albums and 34 singles, including the best 12” single of all time – Blue Monday, the fact that New Order is still making records today is a testament to their survival instincts. Quite simply, the founder members of the band – vocalist/guitarist Bernard Sumner, drummer Stephen Morris and bassist Peter Hook and keyboard player Gillian Gilbert – has been through it all from financial despair, alcohol/drugs burnout, the acrimonious split in 1993 right up to their reformation back in 1998.
In the seven years since New Order has been back together, the band has suffered the loss of manager Rob Gretton who managed them for 22 years and Gilbert who quit the band in 2001. Keyboard player/guitarist Phil Cunningham was been brought in to replace Gilbert on the band’s latest album Waiting For The Sirens’ Call which was released earlier this year to fawning reviews.
Beautifully produced and featuring 11 expertly-crafted songs tinged with the band’s trademark melancholy that effortlessly hark back to vintage New Order, the album has drawn favourable comparisons with 1989’s Technique, still regarded by many as the band’s most successful melding of indie rock dynamics, dance technology and new wave aesthetics.
But like all New Order albums, recording Waiting for the Sirens’ Call was anything but a straightforward process.
“They are never easy to make which is a great shame because I think in the early days when you start a record, you finish it in three weeks,” explained Hook, 49, in his distinctive Mancunian twang. “Unknown Pleasures (seminal Joy Division) was eight days from start to finish. Closer was three weeks. Movement, which was a very difficult one to make, was six weeks. They seem to get longer the more experience you have. On this record, we got carte blanche to come back as New Order. Our plan on this record was to be ourselves. But it didn’t make it any easier.”
Boasting four different producers – Stephen Street (Blur, The Smiths), John Leckie (The Stone Roses), Stuart Price aka Jacques Lu Cont from Wall of Sound’s Les Rhythmes Digitales as well as the band itself – Waiting for the Sirens’ Call comes across as more varied than previous New Order efforts. While the band’s last album, 2001’s Get Ready had a heavier and more guitar driven vibe to it, the new album finds the band going back to their electronic dance pop roots.
“I have to say that the sound of our previous album Get Ready was a bit unnatural in the way we directly said that we weren’t going to be like New Order, which felt difficult while we were doing it but when we finished, it sounded great. With Sirens, we were also really happy with the way it turned out as the album was just us being us.
New Order bassist Peter Hook tearing it up on stage this year with their acclaimed album Waiting for the Sirens’ Call. “With four producers on the record, I personally was the happiest with Stephen Street who I thought was right up our street, if you can pardon the pun.”
New Order also gets a nod on the big screen this year. After Michael Winterbottom’s 24 Hour Party People film from 2003, which depicted the rise and fall of Joy Division as well as the chequered history of Factory Records, New Order is about to be portrayed on screen for a second time. Control, which is about the life of Joy Division frontman Ian Curtis, marks the directorial debut of rock photographer Anton Corbijn and will be based on Touching From A Distance, the 1995 memoir by Curtis’s widow Deborah.
“I read the first draft of Control and it was really weird. It was one of the strangest feelings I ever had, like an out of body experience,” recalled Hook. “I think this one is going to be more moving, more melancholic and more powerful whereas 24 Hour Party People was more light-hearted and comedic. I spoke to Anton about it and he seems very passionate and very serious. I think that power and passion is going to shine though. I just hope it’s good.”
Hook took a moment to gather his thoughts on Ian Curtis.
“The whole thing about Ian’s story is that it is very sad and it’s amazing the legacy he’s left behind. It’s a strange feeling because we feel that we never really lost Ian. He’s still with us mentally and metaphysically. That scene when he hung himself in 24 Hour Party People was really unsettling and it wasn’t something we confronted at the time. So to watch it on screen, it had a profound effect on me. If the movie (Control) helps us understand why he did it, as well as his kids and his parents, then the whole thing would have been worthwhile.”
New Order’s Waiting for the Sirens’ Call is available through Warner Malaysia.
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From the Malaysia Star
http://www.star-ecentral.com/news/story.asp?file=/2005/8/19/music/11674418&sec=music
