1994 Barney Interview
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That's the most interesting interview with Sumner I've ever read, really insightful. Thanks for posting.
Who is the Helen that he keeps referring to?
And what is the unspeakable incident that he alludes to?
Barney has a good subject for a book... The Past and Future Lives of Ian Curtis. And we learn that Gillian doesn't party.
Always get a sense from Bernard in these 90s interviews that he thinks Joy Division was sort of good by accident, and that New Order in the 80s was pretty awful all around. Bernard finally thinks he became "good" with Electronic and Republic.
Tarbox23 wrote: Who is the Helen that he keeps referring to?
And what is the unspeakable incident that he alludes to?
It's a long interview. When i got to the end I thought: Hang on, who are Johnny and Helen? Did I not take it all in? But perhaps it isn't explained. I'm guessing someone who has read David Nolan's Confusion biography may be able to tell us.
It's certainly quite dark stuff. I had assumed that Ian was very much the centre of JD's darkness but Barneys's life aint (or wasn't) no holiday either.
Bernards forthcoming autobiography and chat at Hay festival on 7 June may be a darker experience than I had expected. Sky Arts seem to be involved with the Hay festival so it may make it on to TV. http://www.hayfestival.com/p-4810-bernard-sumner-talks-to-charlie-connelly.aspx
edit...I was also surprised at the Astral Projection stuff. I just didnt expect that from Barney for some reason.
With some of the atral projection stuff he was talking about,there may have been a little element of him taking the piss? It was a rivetting interview though..
Oh wow. This is from SO LONG AGO - 18 years! It sounds like a continuation of some conversation they were having what with the references to people who aren't introduced. Or should we know? I have the book, Confusion by David Nolan, but haven't gotten round to reading it yet. If there is to be an autobiography, even better. I guess Barney's thoughts on the matter may have changed since then? I used to have an interest in astral projection after stumbling across a library book on the subject by sylvan muldoon and hereward carrington. Never got anywhere though, not so much as an inch out of my physical self, whereas if you have that experience, it has to be explained somehow. Though I did also have a dream about Ian, he was wearing a green raincoat, and it was sometime before I read Touching from a Distance, in which the green colour of his raincoat is mentioned. Don't know if it was the right shade of green though. In my dream it was khaki, practically luminous. I think the real one was dark green? but I digress.
The most honest, insighful, personal interview from the barnster Ive ever read.Very interesting but quite dark.
Barney's had a rather difficult life.
He grew up kind of poor, had no biological father, his mother was disabled (cerebral palsy I think?), his grandparents also had disabilities, he couldn't afford to go to college for graphic design as he had planned, grew up a in culture that constantly told him he would never accomplish anything in life because of the economic class he was born into...
Yet, he in spite of all of that, he went on to become an internationally successful and influential musician, and he did that because he never gave up, which is something I have always found inspiring about him, he never gave up.
Andy wrote:
Zachery Starkey wrote: ...had no biological father...
Darth Sumner.
Interesting to get some insight into the lyrics to The Eternal, Ian seeing the mongol boy that never left his house all his life, never went further than the garden gate - "Stood by the gate at the foot of the garden"
