CTB wrote:
Blackett88 wrote:
jamie fairlie wrote:
Spotnick wrote:
Well, Steve is part of the live band so it's 3/4 of what was New Order.
Yeah but it's not though is it? I mean who really accepted Phil as part of NO - he just wasn't.
It would be really silly of them to do JD/NO songs - why not just stay as NO in that case with Barney surrounded by increasingly faceless session musos like John Lydon is doing with "PIL" at the moment.
No, leave the past behind and let the new thing live or die on its own merits.
The way I see it is this. Joy Division was Ian Curtis, Bernard Sumner, Peter Hook and Stephen Morris (and Gillian occasionally as a session musician). When Ian died, they weren't Joy Division anymore and became New Order. New Order was Bernard Sumner, Peter Hook, Gillian Gilbert and Stephen Morris. When Gillian left, they stopped being New Order and became...something else. Maybe Bad Lieutenant collaborating with Peter Hook, I dunno. That's not to say they were out-and-out bad during that period (I have a soft spot for the title track from Waiting For The Siren's Call and even Krafty), but they just weren't New Order.
Some bands can go through ridiculous lineup changes while preserving what's essential about them (The Cure is probably the de facto example here, but also arguably Siouxsie and the Banshees or The Psychedelic Furs). Not Joy Division or New Order-those bands were far too dependent on the interplay between their four members. When one of those members leaves for whatever reason, the dynamic is irrevocably upset and it's all over. IMHO, saying you could have New Order without Gillian (or Peter for that matter) ignores the impact she had on the group's sound, which was substantial, and it also sounds a bit demeaning: It's like saying she wasn't important or didn't really matter in the grand scheme of things and was ultimately, to be blunt, disposable and replaceable. I can't speak for Gillian or anyone else, but I at least find that pretty upsetting. She was just as much New Order as Bernard, Peter or Steve was.
To slyly reference something else brought up on this forum:
New Order was:
25% Bernard Sumner
25% Peter Hook
25% Gillian Gilbert and
25% Stephen Morris.
Adding that up I think comes out to 110%.
Good old 'math' to the fore
Not to be too blunt, but the way you see it is wrong - with recorded output and US and UK gigs under their belt, NO were originally a 3-piece before Gillian joined, so she's not an original member at all. Also, I think calling Gillian a session muso for JD is fairly wide of the mark - performing one song on guitar at a single gig on while Barn had an injured hand does not qualify as a session muso really.
Gillian's contribution to the NO sound is a topic that used to be debated here a lot, but you can't call her an original member. I wouldn't spend too much effort on being upset on her behalf from any slights towards her you percieve, her departure from the band was amicable and understandable from what we know.
I don't think anyone who's a NO fan really diminshes Gillian's role anyway, which can't be said for poor Phil. Without Phil, there would've been no gigs or recorded output from NO since 2001, and as he's the only person other than Barn that's been in 3 NO-related bands (NO, Electronic and BL), obviously Barney rates him as a musical collaborator. I'm not sure how this works out as a percentage in terms of how much of NO is BL, but with Steve and Barn, it's at least 2/3 of NO before considering the Phil factor...
Just an opinion, mind
CTB
First of all, I was being tongue-in-cheek with my "math" reference.
Second of all, while she may not have been an "original" member of New Order coming in after they'd already done a few songs and what not is sort of splitting hairs: I don't think NO's sound would have evolved in exactly the way it did without her input. (I didn't know exactly how many dates she did with Joy Division, by the way, I just knew she was involved with them in some fashion)
Put a different way, there are only two people in Iron Maiden left today who are founding members. It doesn't really matter though, because the lineup they have is widely regarded as the definitive one. Bruce Dickinson, Adrian Smith, Nicko McBrain and Janick Gers were not there from the very beginning and many of them left for a time in the 1990s before returning. The band arguably improved upon their arrival, changed for the worse when they left and dramatically improved again when they came back. While they were technically still Iron Maiden throughout that time period, very few people took them seriously until the "classic", "definitive" lineup came back
I'm not dismissing Phil either: I believe I did say I liked much of the output from that period and respect the direction the band went in, I just think it CHANGED and wasn't exactly what it was before. Even though Phil's addition did some good things for the band, to talk as if they could carry on exactly as before as if nothing had changed is a bit problematic, in my opinion.
While I'm not accusing anybody here of anything, I just think everyone's role should be acknowledged and respected. I'm responding more to discourse I'd heard other places and just wanted to voice my opinion, but it is just my opinion.
As for Bad Lieutenant (the original topic of this thread), I have no problem with them playing New Order/Joy Division songs at some point, but, for the moment, I think they should concentrate on defining their own sound and getting people on board with that before they start delving into their respective back catalogs.
