Bernard's technique

Who thinks it has improved over the years? Who thinks he got lazy and never recovered?

Everyone seems to worship Hooky and barely acknowledge Bernard's playing, but arguably a major portion of the best and most popular NO songs (excluding those among casual fans) are guitar driven, or equal parts guitar and bass:

Ceremony, Temptation, Age of Consent, Leave Me Alone, Lonesome Tonight, Run, Dream Attack, Regret, WFTSC, Turn...just to name a mere handful.

I think his playing is most distinctive from '80-'86.

I would say his earlier work is more instintive and creative. The thing I use to love about Barneys guitar playing was it was very basic (and easy to copy) almost to the point of being amaturish (e.g. the D barre chord played 5 times before the big cressendo on Age of Consent.

But although it appears simple to play its extremely effective. Temptation, AOC, Ceremony, Leave Me Alone, Loveless, are classic examples.

I think over the years, NO's songwriting style has changed and become more professional and less experimental. Therefore I feel that Barney has lost his ability to belt out a riff or distint guitar tab as such and tends to play more safe. This is emphasised by his more playing of barre chords.

I've always been interested in how they use the guitar in songs, naturally, so this is a subject close to my heart. Bernard has never really strayed far from the barre chord structure, most of the JD songs were grounded on this, with even the riffs being picked barre chords in the main.

It's a pretty rare occasion where he plays anything other than a barre in a lot of NO material, obviously the Taras Shevchenko EGG was "proper" chords, but it is usually governed by the main part of the song. If it contains a lot of C or F then he tends to hang around the C major structure (Temptation, Run, Lonesome Tonight to name but three), and I guess it also depends on how much overlap there is between the guitar part and the vocals.

He is very much under-rated though, while none of the stuff is particularly difficult to play, he's got a natural sense of timing. To write some of those parts takes a bit of doing, you have to have the ear for the composition, and he's certainly got that!

I meant to say more playing of OPEN chords. Soz.

The thing that I personally love about his playing is that he doesn't feel the need for the obligatory guitar solo; instead he tends plays passages that he feels are right for the song. Many other more "professional" bands would have rejected him for his limited playing skills but within New Order somehow all that often gelled perfectly with whatever Steve, Hooky and Gillian did.

That being said, I think that the few cases when he's done a "traditional" guitar solo (even though they've been carefully mapped out beforehand, John Fogerty-like) are some of the most emotionally powerful guitar passages I've ever heard. I'm thinking of the ending solos to Shadowplay and Dream Attack in particular.

I kind of prefer his old picking away style like on a live version of Lonesome Tonight from the Hacienda 83.Live these days he seems to just strum unremarkably on quite a few songs.

But his work on songs like Dream Attack are great.And i would say his guitar part on Primal Scream's Shoot Speed/Kill Light is a brilliant and perfect example of his style.

With Phil in there he definitely picks his spots, and usually plays leads only when it comes to JD standards (how could he forsake 'Transmission'?). Although people don't seem to care a hell of a lot for Brotherhood, the guitar playing is pretty memorable-it's like NO doing VU in a more pop-oriented context, and better.