TOUCHED BY THE HAND OF GOD

NEW ORDER formed in the aftermath of lan Curtis' suicide and the demise of Joy Division, and went on to become the most culturally significant British band of the past 20 years. But their career was always fraught with drug excesses and internal arguments that bordered on open warfare, and they finally split in 1993. For five years, they didn't even speak to each other. Back together at last, they look back on their years of trauma and achievement in this definitive interview with Paul Lester

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"AND NOW, FOR THE VERV LAST TIME - JOY Division!" It is July 16, 1998, and Alan Wise -local comedian and former manager of Velvet Underground charneuse Nice - Is onstage at the Manchester Apollo, havingjust hailed the two weeks after Joy Division's last ever concert, his announcement is, all things considered, both comical and possessed of mythic significance. Would it mean Electro pioneer Arthur Baker is here, as is Gary "Mam" Mountield, formerly of The Stone Roses, no* ers of the past 20 years. They have travelled from all over the world, from LA to London, to watch New Order play - to see them actually stand, side by side, In the same place - for the first tuna since headlining the Reading Festival In 1993, after which the four Band members famously stopped communicating for almost half a decade. Some of Joy Division's gravest hits - "Heart And Soul", 'Isolation", "Love Will Tear Us Apart" and "Atmosphere" - are performed alongside New Order's Monday", "Confusion"; "Bizarre Love Triangle". "True Faltn". "Touched By The Hand Of God" and "Regret". Both groups' exalted, extreme machine music Is poi-ished to a brilliant shine, all of it suitably remade/remodelled for the penuiiimate year of the century, "Temptation", in particular, has the Brute ineviiably, Tony Wilson, erstwhile head of the sadly defunct Factory label (home of Joy Division, then Mew 'It Is extremely rare for any group or set of musicians who are part of a previous revolution to play any part In the next one - they are always rendered dinosaurs," he excitement (rom what Manchester's City Life listings magazine has Just nominated as its Gig Of The Veer, "One of my proudest pieces of art was the NME review of the Hacienda's lOtn birthday party [in 1992]," Wilson continues, as he drives past Manchester's Southern Cemetery, resting piece of Martin Hannett. late producer of Joy Division and New Order, "which is the story of Bernard |Sumner] and Gillian [Gilbertl as pied pipers, leading 300 E'd-up scallies through the streets of Amsterdam at four in the morning. It was a most wonderful thing. 'The fact Wat a group who were so significant in creating postpunk, and then the next thing with 'Blue Monday', should be so alive and so much a part of trie around, but really intimately involved in it - Is a phe- edge" of dance such as Underworld, Chemical Brothers, Laurent Gamier, Lionrock. Monksy Mafia and Andrew Weatherall will prove him right when they appear at later, at Alexandra Palace, under the neon banner, Temptation, Top of the bill? New Order, who knowathing "They are still children, they are still open to it all," says Tony Wilson of a group who have been together, in one form or another, for 23 years, and in that time helped bnng Hie future that little bit closer. A group loathing", in Paul Morley's 1993 TV documentary. neworderstory, and finally reunited, just when everybody thought it was all over, by a fierce mutual respect, THEY ALMOST CALLED THEM SELVES THE HIT OR THE Witch Doctors Of Zimbabwe, Stevie And The JDs was fairly quickly dismissed, as were Slack September, The Eternal and Barney, Stephen And Peter. Even The Sunshine Valley Dance Band. the name of the group formed Oy l&year-old ex-acid casualty Stephen Morris, didn't quite mate it past trie first post when someone suggested it be resurrected. Instead, they decided upon New Order, either after "the New Order of Kampuchean Liberation" from an article in The Guardian, orfrom a phrase that manager Rob Qretton had read In a book of Situationist essays entitled Leaving The Twentieth Century. Its Nazi connotations were immediately seized upon By the press -including Private Eye-although the band sidestepped closet fascists, just as they had three years earlier when they plucked the name Joy Division from the pulp And so, on July 29,1980.10 weeks after the suicide of Joy Division's lead singer, tan Curtis. New Order

People were staring, waiting... - Gillian Gilbert
form that served as a stage at Manchester's tirry 100 capacity Beach Club, by all accounts a cool venue with a room for grgs, another for dancing and a third where they showed Andy Warhoi films or British arthouse movies like Performance. "Our mates couldn't make ft," began guitarist Bernard Sumner (born Dicken, aka Albrecht) as he approached the microphone, understandably nervous yet somehow relishing the rismg panic. "We're me only surviving members of crawling chaos.M As drummer Stephen Morris points out 18 years down the line, quick to debunk the myth, 'Crawling Chaos were a band from Whitley Bay. They were on Factory, We played with them a few times We had a thing about them." They had lost their vocalist and lyricist They were, as Dave McCullough of Sounds wrote, "a band decapitated". New Order had emerged from the wreckage of Joy Division Now, here they were, the chaos t»ehind them* reborn, learning to crawi. With macabre wit. Sumner managed to capture the bewildering sense of loss, the sheer drama; the pathos and the poetry, the horror of it all', in one eight-word sentence, "That's my dry humour, you s£e?' says BeMuS Sumner tociay "it was a sort of comment on the^situation, it was, what, two months/after lan nacl died? | remember we did aJI instrumental, that was a pretty good way of ducking out * Bassist Peter Hook recalls New Order's Irve debut rather differently, Insisting that all three of them took rums at singing ("I sound like Bernard, even now. We've all got voices the same,' he says. Meanwhile. Stephen Morns w^s responsible for the vocals on the four-track demo the band recorded ihree weeKs before ihe Beach Club gig at Sheffield's Western Works Studlosj. Although he can't name the songs they played that night, Hook will never forget how he felt '! can't remember what we played because I was too frightened, to be honest with you," he says, "it was reaily frightening and you're really unsure of yourself, so it wasn't like you were going to enjoy it" Gillian Gilbert, a friend of Stephen Morris1 (later his girlfriend, since 1994 his wife), was one of the hundred or so people down at the Beach Club A student of graphic design at St.ockpon. Technical College, a member of all-girl group The .Inadequate^ and a Joy Division fan of long standing, within two months she Would be invited by manager Rob Grecton to Join the and as second guitarist and keyboard player New Order's soon to-become fourth member noted the ::excitemeniof the crowd as soon as they realised who; ;{W'as onstage. "It must have been weird playing a gig like that in Manchester/ says Gillian, "They looked very strange being cut down to a three-piece, after seeing Joy Division, and then seeing this weird ifttle triangle. "it was all eyes. People were just staring, waiting for something/ They were waiting, specifically, to see what the three pale, young men onstage were capable of, to hear how, their music - reworkings: of "Ceremony" and "In A Lonely Place", wntten by lan Curtls two weeks before he hanged himself, plus tentative versions/of "Dreamt Never End", Truth" and a few other electrohically-enhanced pieces that would later kwlnd upon New Order's debut album. Movement - would develop over the 'OOurse of the evening. Perhaps they; were also waiting, wrth voyeunstic ilifttent for the latest installment in v* '"•" ' rock's Atrocity Exhibition For three years, they had waited - 'outside concert halls and record stores—for "the last British band." .according Jo Uncut* David S.tubbs. ''who truly mattered, for whom ^Something was truly the matter." Now they were waiting for a group that might replace Joy Division. ^ They got New Order. They would not be disappointed

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[center]MOVEMENT (1981)
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The difficult first album. You could almost smell the fear. Listeners Immediately solved the acronym on side two. "ICB". lan Curtis Buried. Peter Hook sang the comparatively upbeat "Dreams Never End" while "Doubts Even Here" had the bassist on vocals with Gillian Gilbert providing the enigmatic voiceover. "The Him" jolted from stark proto-eleclro to furious thrash. "Truth" featured a melodica and ectoplasmic synth. "Senses" was an overlooked exercise in ghostly stereo-panning interrupted by the noise of shattering glass. "Denial" was oppressive yet strangely, arhythmically, dance-able. An unjustly maligned return - literally - from the dead.
Gillian Gilbert: "Everybody had a lot of ideas."
Stephen Morris: "There was a bit of an atmosphere. We were just Ending our feet again. Some of the songs are not quite there."
Peter Hook: "I think they're all really good songs. A very good album."
Bernard Sumner: "It was kind of nervous writing, really. I hate those songs. We recorded them, I played tho album once, and I don't think I ever played it again. In fact, I don't own a copy."
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GIVING UP IN THE WAKE OF IAN Curtis? death wasn't an option. As Stephen Morris puts rt, "We never had any big discussions about tt. We just got on with it" Bernard Stimner confirms that they already had "Ceremony" and "In A Lonely Place"- the songs that would form New 'Onder's first single release, in March, 1981 - under their belts; after that, it .Was Just a question of building op '•these very fragilefoundations. •! "We had written the backing tracks yvhile lan wa:s in some sort of psychl-atrie hospital after he'd tried to corn-it suicide/ says Sumner of Curtis' overdose oh Phenobarbitone on April 7, 1980. "And we. rather than sitting at home and panicking, decided to carry on rehearsing. So we wrote 'Ceremony1 and 'In A Lonely Place' while lan was having treatment. And then, when he came to the next rehearsal, we. presented him with these songs, and he said, 'All right, I've got some lyrics.1 "We wrote them in this horrible rehearsal room the^ used to have in Salford. There were rats- very suited to the music of Joy Division; they complemented the weird atmosphere Anyway, we wrote the songs and lap added the words, and we had this really shitty tape recorder, so after going through each;sbng oricfc, he went away. And he died that weekend. So the first job we had as New Order was to take this horrible garbled tape and put it through a graphic |;equaiteer and try to decipher what words he was singing/ The words lan Curtis was singing -I on the funereal "In A Lonely Place" i - were these: 'Hangman IOOHS round as he waits/Cord stretches tight, then it breaks/Some day we I will die fa ybur drearris/How I wish we were here with you now," "That was=a ve?y shocking line to hear after he's' hanged himself;!* says Bernard Sumner. When asked whether he was concerned about-, the fidelity of his interpretation of ritis' cnginai lync, he replies: *! think they were pretty accurate. I am sure there are one or two phrases which he's probably spinning in his coffin over. But that serves him fucking right for killing' himself. He put us through a He Lfaughs. Then, more seriously; '* After wards, I listened deeply to what he was singing, and I just thought. 'What .a heavy set of lyncs for someone at the age of 23.' They seemed to me to be the words of a much older man. T-didn't really go back and listen1 to those (Joy Division) records until probably a year later because, obviously, It was too emotionally painful - he was a dear, dear friend of all ^tne 'group and w4 were all very close. But it was also annoying that we'had done all this work for seemingly no reason. This -is- unspoken but, to be honest. I think we all felt a I bit angry that we had Just been, pawns in his play, 1 "We all felt a bit powerless, We had all given up our various day jobs and there was nothing else to go back to. I know1!! sounds very mun dane and down to earth, but the reality is thai we had lo pay the rent We had been on the verge of niega success when it happened and we werellke. 'What are we going to dp now?' "I,think, 'horrible' is th& expression that comes to •mind," Sumner glances over his -shoulder at that Beach Club gig. "It was an ordeal It was like going to the local municipal swimming baths having JUST had your left arm amputated, and trying to swim Literally painful. And thinking, 'Fucking hell, il was better before %hen I had another arm.' going over on a 747 and helping them to put a coffin on the plane. It was pretty traumatic." But then something really unexpected, strange even, and the problems they were facing, NewOrder rediscovered something that had been lost since Joy Division's neyday. before lan Curtis' epilepsy, his physical and a bomb inside the band: the art of partying. "We realised what a great fucking party town New York was." says Bernard. 'We started going to all the clubs, like Danceteria, Hurrah's, the Peppermint Lounge. There was a lot of rapping." They even took the loss of their equipment in tfieir stride, as Sumner recounts. "The plan was that Martin Hannett would Jersey after a few days of living It up. So we recorded 'Ceremony' and 'In A Lonely Place' and that was kind we all had a go, but I ended up doing it. It felt odd. "Then we had our first taste of 'poppers' [amyl Smell it.1 I had a big snort of it and it nearly blew my fucking head off. They (the 'poppers'] made us laugh his hands on. He loved itouttnere. and Rob [Gretton] were all sleeping in the same room. like the three bears. I remember Tony Wifson coming into the room and waking the three bears up. He just And we said, 'What?' And he said, "vbu've had the fucking van nicked with all the gear In.'and pissed himself laughing. this American Precinct 13 or whatever it was, and there was this copper witii a big ghetto blaster playing •Good Times' by Chic, and he was dancing to it, and the fucking record finishes,' So I've got this less than endearing memory of'Good Times'by Chic. tome, the naive Englishman, like a tobacconist's, and I thought, 'Right, I'm here In New York, parched with thirst, it's 100 degrees outside. I'll go into this tobao' conist'sandgetacanof Coke.'So I went In and said, 'Excuse me, do you sell Coke?' And he said, 'No. sir. we BACK IN BRITAIN THAT OCTOBER, NEW ORDER, AT the behest of Rob Gretton. decided to draft in a fourth younger sister. Amanda. who had known the band since their days as Warsaw. Although quite accomplished on guitar and synthesiser. Gilbert was picked, Sumner told me, "It's always been based on friend-the fact that she did not have a developed, recognisable or In compatible musical style. Gillian's arnval freed Sumner up sufficiently for him since he "couldn't play and sing at the same time". Considers Morris, "there was no way we were ever going to replace lan. We thought about getting another Ambulance was in the frame-"but it just wasn't right." Gilbert admits to feeling nervous on day one. "especially when you're learning to play songs they've didn't feel that frightened. I was sort of cocooned. And I liked the music, so I just got on with it."
"I thought Joy Division were a great group, and lan was a greal performer and a great lyricist, ana tne chances of getting anywhere near that again must be heading towards a precipice. Personally, I thought, Tuck it. if my life is going to turn into a dive bomb and go into a steep dive, then I'm going to make sure I have "But it never crossed my mind to give up. There was no question. Although the odds didn't lookgood." New Order faced more difficulties during their first and Joy Division were due to embark on Monday. May 19. tlie day after he killed himself. The dates were Maxwell's in Hoboken. New Jersey, and Hurrah's in NYC. On the Tuesday night, between the Maxwell's and Hurrah's dates, while parked outside New Order's $50.000 worth of uninsured equipment [which had been left unlocked and unalarmed because the band's puts] was stolen by a gang operating under the name of The Lost Tribe Of Israel, who, explains Stephen Morris, "specialised in nicking English bands gear". The portents were not good for New Order's first Stateside trip. As Peter Hook recalls at the studio based feet. We were still very young." To Stephen Morris, speaking to Uncut at the farm house (with built-in studio] he shares with Gillian Gilbert in Macclesfield. they were, "basically, just getting on with It." As for Bernard Sumner, interviewed for this article at his modem-style residence close to Alderley Edge, 15 pared for the worst. "I remember having a horrible dream the night before [we left]," he says. "We were

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Joy Division, has painful memories of this period of transition leading up to trie recording of Movement, "I wouldn't say we gelled straight away,' he admits. •It was really difficult because everybody was chang ing. Put it this way; it wasn't like I'd get up in the mom-ing and go, 'Wow. this is great being in New Order.' It was too difficult. 'Why? Because of thedealhof lanandallof us jock what. It was a big change, a big upheaval. I don't think you ever fell comfortable with it. And Gillian came in ing in saying. -Right, well, how about trying this or thai?' She was more or less Just sitting there being didn't have somebody changing the way you did things But you very much had to teach her. I'm sure she wouldn't dispute that." Did the band not feel liberated, freedom to do what you want in a group. Being in a group and having the freedom to do what you want din ri gu ;ogether. I'msure you must know that, it II was his idea to get Gillian in. And it went front Being a very laddish band to having a girl, which made it different, which you sort of resented for a bit - or I did. anyway, because it spoiled my fun, which is a very stupid attitude, bul that's just what it is. TOu had to cope with that. YOU had to cope with the death of tan. music nearly as easily or as confidently as you used to. "You know, you're used to walking onstage with Joy
Everyone was an arsehole, did things wrong, bullied, cajoled, was selfish. Nobody was God - Peter Hook
Come on. you bastardsl We're gonna glue it yer!' AnU you go on as New Order and." Hook adopts the voice and stance of a scared little boy. -it's like, 'On my God, (hat was pretty rucking traumatic. It was like crawling your way up a slippery slope. And then. In and behold. This, explains Hook, might account for his reputation for surliness and aggressiveness. "Those bits where you had your back to the camera," he says, and as usual when he speaks, for "you" read "1", for •your" read "my". "When you lookat the videos ol me playing with my back to everybody, just fucking thrusting your groin in their face, well, I'm sure if you showed that to a psychologist he could Quite easily interpret il. It's about getting your confidence back. people, whether they deserve it or not. •Regrets'5 No more than anyone else. Everyone was an arsehole. Everybody knows tlie score. Nobody was God, Everybody has their own little nig^es. did things wrong, bullied, cajoled, was veryselfish. Everybody did it," AFTER THE SEX PISTOLS AND THE CLASH, THERE were two bands - two bands without whom the late Seventies/early Eighties would have been quite differ- attracted a ferociously loyal, devout following, though to belong to both camps was highly unlikely. They were as dissimilar as England's North and South. with their icily Imperious though sonlcally exploratory rock and lan Curtis' poetic anguish, seemed to inspire Street Preachers and fiadiohead, only raised to fever pitch, "Love Will Tear Us Apart" was the "Smells Like Teen Spirit" of its day: "Atmosphere" trie "Everything Must Go"; "She's Lost Control' the "Subterranean Homesick Alien" "There was a dark, cold, terrible, authentic centre to Joy Division which exists in no other rock band, European or American, past or present." as David Stubbs wrote in Uneufs review of the Heart And Soul boied set last winter. Then the singer dies, the remain-media who had canonised Curtis (Dave McCullough's notorious "this man died for you" was typical) are con cerned-nottiing. aged to survive the death of a crucial member; only Pink Floyd have sustained a career well beyond the departure of their slnger-sortgwriter. So you can Imagine the sense of anticipation when New Order finally played Iheir first date in the capital in February, 1981 ['The Haunting Of Heaven" was the title of Paul Morley's NME review of New Order at must have felt for New Order to have the crushing when they plugged in to perform live, or In the studio If anything, what startled about New Order's debut single. "Ceremony" [backed with "in A Lonely Place", and with a sleeve design, all ecclesiastical typeface and solemn ambience, courtesy of Peter Seville - along with Rob Gretton, Joy Division's unofficial fifth member), released in March, 1981 - the first new recording " Love Will Tear Us Apart" the summer before - was the weightlessness of the production and Uie uplifting quality of the song. A little light had been shed upon New Order's art of darkness. That "Ceremony" sold 100,000 copies within two weeks was less surprising. But with all that had gone before, and with all the changes they were experiencing. II was no wonder trial New Order found it difficult to gel to gnps wrtfi the recording of their first longplayer. which they worked on mrougrv out 1981, again with Martin Hannett at the controls. says Stephen Morris of producer Hannett, who was particularly badly affected by Curtis' untimely tit ordeal for him.- "Movement was very painful, for thousands of tea-sons." says Peter Hook. -Hannett was off his head,
going to sing. It was going to be me and Steve, and then Bernard Begged for another go. Not that it both- thmk It's a very good album. Bernard and I wanted it to be much rockier, whereas Martin went for the more •gothic'-type wimp^ut feel. We were still learning." "I never liked Movement,' says Bernard Sumner of the LP he describes now as "like Joy Division without lan". Caught in the shadow of Joy Division's Ctoser. s fault-it wasn't. "You know, a lot of people say depression is a good trigger for writing, but for us, I don't think it was. It was and depressed, but we were very up In Joy Division, very into having a good time, having fun. 8ut around IF MOVEMENT Giorgio Moroder [whose £=MCssolo album became a i huge inspiration). Joy Division's "As You Said" (8-sideof g homage to Kraftwerk, wnile tne 12-inch mi* of "She's Lost Control" features a crisp and pristine piston hiss-in Joy Division from a kit. learning about circuitry ana ts from manuals. As the Eighties began, he
They say depression is a good trigger for Writing. It Wasn't for US -Bernard Sumner
Futurist design and chilling synth lines, those start one-word titles - "Truth". "Senses", "Denial" (working title: "Death Rattle") - and the frigid terror of the lyrics 1 "There I am ma house full of doors with no exits . served to prolong the myth of New Order, cast in stone by Joy Division's "Decades", as "t/ie young men. i weight on ther shoulders. ~ after Martin got his hands on il but I always felt I [Movement], it w h. But he as also a 31 aisappeanng during the re their electronic pop revolution: the crude yet exhilarat- shards of synth, some preAeid squelches, and mood-shattering Moog FX. punk, but also the dawn of the dighpop age. lan Curtis would regularly turn up to recording sessions with Pop's Bowieproduced Tlie Idiot- with its stow but relentless "motorik" beat - is well documented (he was listening to it the night he died), During the recording of 'Love "I Feel Love", arguably a more useful 1977 benchmark than The Sex Pistols' "God save The Queen"), as well as in early Italian disco and Chic's urban symphonies. appeared alongside New Order at Hacienda precursor. The Factory Club, and Sumner believes "were probably logue tape [an early form of sampling) and sequencers. and The Human League ware hatching their plans for global synthesiser domination. New Order - as they ing. from Dusseldorf to New York to South Yorkshire.

They just knew the future should be synthesized. "It was Bernard," says Peter Hook, "his love of experimenting with electronics. It's like he's always looking for something else ... he had so much of It, he was like a kid at Christmas. Spoilt for choice. He wanted to get into that dancey thing that lan had introduced him to - that Kraftwerk, machine-type beat.. "I think what Bernard really wanted,* he hints at some of the darker urges pushing the band forward, "was to be able to write without talking to us. He wanted to write drums without having to talk to a drummer and he wanted to be able to write bass parts without talking to the bass player. As technology moved on, he achieved that. "There was a lot of being written out. It was quite easy to write me out. I'd be playing acoustic and he'd be trying to programme sequencers. And I'd come up with something and he'd go, 'Can you hang on a minute, I've just got to programme this little bit here, can you just wait?' And then sometimes it would sound like what you'd been playing, and other times exactly like something else. But then he'd go. 'Oh, we don't need that bit there because we've got this bit on the keyboards.' "It's quite easy to be written out. It's just taste, isnt it? It's the way taste evolves. His taste changed. He didn't like writing in the group format. It's only taste; it1 snot personal. "I wrote keyboard lines for 'Confusion', I wrote Touched By The Hand Of God', I wrote 'Death Rattle*, so I do write keyboards, but it isn't my love, it Isn't my lust My lust in music is playing bass guitar. When I get a shit-hot basshne, that's what makes me happy. I can do keyboard lines till they're coming out of my arse; I'm not interested in them. "I think Bernard felt very frustrated by my resistance to change, and the more he wanted me to change." says Hook, imagining himself back in the studio in 1981/2, confronting a gadget-hungry Sumner, ~the less I was going to fuckin' change, right?' New Order's frictional relationship produced groundbreaking music, and great art. Following an appearance at that summer's Glastonbury festival— which saw Bernard Sumner, nervous at having to sing before such a huge audience, literally keel over and collapse onstage, blind drunk- the band released "Everything's Gone Green". Originally the B-side of second single "Procession" in September, 1981, the track had a far greater impact when it mysteriously reappeared on 12-Inch on Factory's Belgian imprint, Factory Benelux, three months later. Extended to almost six minutes. "Everything's Gone Green" was, as Stephen and Gillian explain, the result of Martin Hannett finally setting his proteges free: he set the band up with the right equipment, then stood back and watched them go. Surnner mixed it. "Martin was happy with that." says Morris. "'Everything's Gone Green* was the first step in the new direction," agrees Bernard, who employed a "boffin guy, like a top scientist, a real genius'* called Martin Usher to design circuit diagrams and generally help New Order realise their electric dreams. Usher, "an old hippy", was rewarded for his efforts with tabs of acid.
"We didn't own any sequencers," furthers Sumner, "but I'd heard some going to clubs - music done with tape loops like disco, where they'd looped the drums, the way people now use samplers. I found the precision very interesting. That was what I really wanted to do: find a new kind of music." Using a variety of modified gad-getry and customised, purpose-built synths which allowed Gillian's^ keyboards to pick up electronic pulses from Stephen's drum machines or Pete's bass, they were able to tngger mechanically precise rhythms or sequence patterns from each member's instrument. "We just made it up as we went along," posits Gilbert. "I suppose-it was kind of state of the art," grants her husband. "It didn't get any flashier at the time." "Temptation" (performed as; "Taboo Number 7" on BBC2's Riverside in January 1982); evinced New Order's rapidly* advancing techniques, and was: their first experiment with digital recording. Their most popular song to date, too: released in June, the 33rpm seven-men of "Temptation" b/w rHurt" (with its equally perverse, impossible-to-decipher Peter Saville sleeve) reached the Top 30. They weren't just experimenting with electronics, though. There was some chemical exploration going on as well. Bernard's lyric ("Up, down, turn around, please don't let me hit the ground... Oh, you've got green eyes, oh. you've, got blue eyes, oh, you 've got grey eyes") was about as far removed from the dolorous introspection of Movement as it was possible to get without the aid of pharrnaceuticals. Actually, it was-jachieved with the aid of pharmaceuticals. "I was on acid when I recorded the vocal to Temptation'," he says, revealing that it was virtually improvised on the spot, part of the reluctant lyricist's

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POWER, CORRUPTION & LIES (1983)

Then there was light. Featured alternative "Blue Monday" in "586", the trad-NO sound of "Leave Me Alone" (formerly "Only The Lonely"), the atonal "Ultraviolence" (a nod to/\ Clockwork Orange), the heavily-vocodered "Ecstasy" and the -no other word -jaunty "The Village". The studio name for track one. side two - "Your Silent Face" - was "KW1". ie, "the Kraftwerk One", a homage to the Germans whom Sumner believed epitomised everything he wanted pop to be: "rhythmic, abstract, aesthetic, arty, fucked-up and with a sense of humour." The lyric bore this out: "You Ve caught me at a bad time/ So why don't you piss off?"
Bernard Sumner: "I like dropping bombshells in my lyrics. You can't be serious and weighty all the time. We are all deeply shallow people."
Stephen Morris: "The lyrics said what we wanted to say."
Gillian Gilbert: "What could we say? 'Wrong direction, darling'? 'Well, you come up with something better, then!'"

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policy of "freaking out my conscious mind to send a signal to my subconscious" to galvanise his brain into, summoning forth words of wisdom - or. in the case of "Temptation", a visi_on.gf romantic love seen through a psychedelic prism. "I just made it up in the studio," he recalls New Order's burgeoning sense of adventure - and fun. "I'd been doing acid all night with a mate over in Blackpool. Not organic stuff, no - tabs. I was actually on acid when I sang it I remember we were in this studio called Advision near the Telecom tower in London, and it started snowing, and we looked out the glass windows, and if you listen to It carefully you can hear Rob Gretton come in while I'm doing the vocal and shove a snowball down the back of my shirt. We kept it on the record. "He was tripping off his box. We were all tripping." THEN THEY RECORDED THE BIGGEST-SELLING 12-inch single of all time. "Blue Monday" is an accountant's dream and a sta-: tistician's nightmare. It has sold three million copies worldwide. Since records began in 1952, only five acts have spent longeron the charts than New Order's 52-week run with their fifth single (for the record, they are: Frank Sinatra with "My Way", Judy Collins' "Amazing Grace". Bill Haley's "Rock Around The Clock", Englebert Humperdinck's "Release Me" and Acker Bilk's "Stranger On The Shore" Frankie Goes To Hollywood's "Relax" ties with "Blue Monday"). It reached Number 12 in the UK Top 30 in March 4983, re-entered at Number 9 in August after it became the summer's Eurodisco anthem, peaked as high as Number 3 when Qumcy Thriller Jones reworked it in the capacity of "production supervisor" in 1988, and stalled at Number 17 after being overhauled for a third time in 1995. There had been electro pop records before, and "club culture" - essentially, the white British media, having got bored with rock, picking up on black music, its attendant nightiife and lifestyle - had been a buzz-phrase since 1981. But "Blue Monday" was arguably the first point of access to this strange new world of pleasure for the general public. Overnight. New Order acquired a massive fanbase, Including, not just Joy Division's stereotypical greatcoat-clad student miserabilists ("Thank God," says Stephen Morris), but high-street fashion victims, secretaries and football thugs. "Blue Monday" was credited as the first true crossover record since "Anarchy In The UK", the one that rebuilt the musical landscape shat-

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There was the influence of a certain Mr AM Phetamine... - Stephen Morris
tered into numerous tiny fragments (genres) by punk. It probably inspired a thousand bedsit technocrats to buy some cheap equipment and create their own DIY dance as well. And if you want to locate the source of 1988's Second Summer Of Love, that shortlived Ecstasy-fuelled Utopia where "luv'd-up" casuals and college kids surrendered to the machine delirium, look no further than "Blue Monday". Typically intransigent and wilful, they performed it live - unheard of at the time - on Top Of The Pops and The Human League and U2's Bono (who would later pay tnbute to the band on neworderstory) came over afterwards to apologise for miming. Neil Tennant, former editor of Smash Hits and. later, one half of the Pet Shop Boys, broke down in tears when he heard "Blue Monday" and saw the sleeve's facsimile of a computer floppy disc. This was exactly the future he and partner Chris Lowe had envisioned, How dare New Order beat him to it? Fairly impressive for a song that evolved out of a comical misunderstanding between Bernard Sumner and Stephen Morris. "It's meant to go. 'Dedede.'" "'Dedede'??- "No, •Dedecte.'" "'Dedede'?' "No. that's not it. But it'll do." "How does it feel, to treat me like you do?" A masterpiece of impromptu invention. "Blue Monday" was, maintains Sumner. a riposte to critics who had, as he saw it, .pallously dismissed their debut. "The press had turned on us by that point. The sympathy angle had gone and they were sticking the knife m and twisting it. It was our 'fuck you' to them. Movement hadn't been very well received and that personally made me a bit angry. I thought we should have been given a bit of breathing space. Not only had we had this great catastrophe, but now all the - no offence - parasites had turned on us."' If New Order had their detractors in' the music press, they were few and far between. From "Blue Monday" onwards, the band were regarded with almost religious awe. each of iheir releases seen as signposts for pop's future. "Confusion", the next single, was produced by Arthur Baker, the Manhattan-based technician responsible for the slice of Teutonic Americana - the Rap goes? to the Rhineland of Afrika Bambaataa And The Soul Sonic < Force's "Planet Rock" from 1982 - 1 that spawned an entire movement. 3 The result of Baker locking the four { m the studio and forcing them to -* .write a track on the spot, "Confusion" was effortlessly contemporary. Journalists were fascinated by New Order's easy absorption of the aesthetics of dance, sending eyewitness reports home from the States of the band dressed in casual beachwear - shorts, T-shirts, sneakers - as they flitted from one hi-tech danceteria to another. They were especially intrigued by Puerto Rican hip hop joints like The Funhouse. where local breakdancers would contort their bodies to the latest streetbeat: the mutation of rap into electro. Although it would prove crippling and contribute to escalating tensions within the band later on, New Order's financial support for Manchester's Hagienda - that dazzling example of industrial futurism which opened In June, 1982 - emphasised their commitment to. and synonymity with, the new club culture. THEIR SECOND LONGPLAYER. Power. Corruption & Lies, featured a still-life of some roses on the front by Henri Fantin-Latour and another faux-floppy disc design on the rear. Subdued, anonymous (minimal information, no band photos) and stylish, Simple yet sophisticated. Arty. Intelligent. Modern. Released in May. 1983 it was actually recorded five months earlier. Provisionally titled, variously, Fuck, Piss Off You Lot and How Does it Feel?, those sessions down at Pink Floyd's Britannia Row studios were unusual to say the least. For a start, it was, as Stephen Morris recalls, "bleedin" freezing", which meant the band had to wear overcoats in the studio. Or rather, Morris. Peter Hook and Gillian Gilbert wore overcoats. Bernard Sumner's choice for bodywarmmg . outerwear was a white lab coat, as worn by nuclear scientists. That wasn't all. On one bizarre occasion, the increasingly mercurial, wayward Sumner decided, for some unfathomable reason, to purchase the soul of their soundmixer, programmer and tour manager. Andy Robinson. Then Bernard unveiled a brand new method of getting connected to his muse and generating lyrics: picking up New Order • fans'thoughts and dreams about the group by way of an invisible radar system wired up to his brain and converting them into songwords. Oh, and the taskmaster had, as far as Stephen and Gillian can remember, taken to lashing his three bandmates with a stick. "It was this wood-cracking thing," they both laugh. "There he was in his white coat, holding a stick with a sort of belt attached. 'Oh. you bastard. Owl' That had us in stitches." Self-produced for the first time, Power. Corruption & Lies was remarkably different to Movement - almost the sound of a different band. Exuberant. Confident. Audacious. Joyous, even. The sound of a band coming to terms with their past and fired up by all the possibilities -* technological, instrumental, emotional - before therri. Power, Corruption & Lies offered a seamless blend of the acoustic and the automated, the real and the virtual, where computer wires and guitar strings were afforded equal priority. Whatever had been going down between the four musicians in the studio - and, like any band, there were disagreements, points of disorder, moments where the proverbial creative differences gave away to genuine discontent - to the listener it wasfhe so« >nd of ?a band high on life. It was also the sound of a band pumped full of drugs. "That was the influence of a certain Mr A M Phetamine." says a droll Morris, referring in particular to Sumner's frenetic rhythm guitar playing on opening track "Age Of Consent" that would become as much a signal New Order sound as Peter Hook's plaintive top-end bass notes. Stephen Morns' immaculate clatter and Gillian Gilbert's over whelming waves of synth. Sumner backs up Morris* account although he recalls a different stimulant being at hand during recording "We were out of our heads on acid the whole fucking time," he says although, for the sake of accuracy. Stephen was strictly on alcohol {Pernod and Asli Spumante cocktails were a band favourite) since, as he told me, "I'd done all that |ie. acid] when I was 12.* Bernard will not be'swayed, however "We used to do it every single day. Not enough to give you hallucinations. A full block would give you hallucinations, but just a bit would be enough to give you a change of per spective. We'd get a razor blade and cut off a little slice every day. That's when we wrote 'Ecstasy' [the penulti mate track on the LPj, which is funny because, when people got Into E later, they wrote tracks about acid. "It was very much an experimental thing," he goes on. "'We've found something new and interesting, let's experiment with our psyches, let s experiment with this new form of music, let's experiment with all these drugs.' We realised it was more fun to be up all night when you were off it tnan to be up all night when you weren't. It was just basic need, really." Sumner lays the blame for this quirky new regime at

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LOW-LIFE (1985)

Gruelling 36-hour recording sessions yielded album of fabulous electro love/hate songs. Title swiped from Spectator columnist Jeffrey Bernard, who sued for the removal of his voice on "This Time Of Night". Their first album to feature the band on the (tracing paper-effect) sleeve (Morris: "What was it trying to say? 'Hey, this is what we look like.'"). Contained actual single releases: "Sub-Culture" ("One of these days when you sit by yourself/You 'II realise you can't shaft without someone else") and "The Perfect Kiss", the latter either a revenge fantasy, an AIDS parable or a celebration of masturbation ("Tonight I should have stayed at home/Playing with my pleasure zone"). "Love Vigilantes" was, of all things, a country'n'techno song about a Vietnam soldier returning home to his wife.
Bernard Sumner: "It was a pastiche; a pisstake. People are so pious about lyrics. The first single I ever bought was 'Ride A White Swan' by T-Rex. Absolute gibberish. But I didn't give a fuck. Bow down before the tune. The tune is God."

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the door of their former mentor, "It was Martin • Hannett's fault. He'd got us into this thing where you'd •arrive at the studio at about five pm. lock the sturllo door, wait until the staff had gone, and then get as = fucked-up as possible and see what the end result was • the day after. That kind of mentality carried over when we started producing ourselves." Although Peter Hook says he has "no reservations" : about the music they were making - and he describes ; Power, Corruption & Lies as the last album that they : actually "sat down and worked on together, until it was finished; we used to write together a lot more then" -1 he does have mixed feelings about the period as a whole, the problems within the group, with Factory Records and the Hacienda, all of which were bound up , together in one potentially explosive package. On the one hand, they were "having fun, going out partying all the time". On the other, there was : Sumner's emergent facility with the new technology, • which tended to ostracise the rest of the band. "He was wearing his white lab coat; he used to go into his other persona. Bernard likes, or he used to like, tn write on his own. I think he used to feel that everyone

We actually hated each others at Ibiza. We stopped functioning as a group altogether. It was really sad. - Peter Hook
got in The way. I don't think he does now - he seems to have changed completely. Back then. I think one of his frustrations was that he felt he wanted to move on and the rest of us weren't particularly keen on moving on." Hook was frustrated by the fixed roles of the New Order players. Mlt was like, 'We're in a group, right, that's it, we don't do anything else. That's what we do. We're punky. No. I play the bass. You fuckin' shut up and play the guitar, c* * *.' It was like that. "It was always very difficult. It was prejudiced by Rod's attitude to the group and Factory. It was prejudiced by Rob's involvement in Factory. It was prejudiced by everybody being unhappy with each other, the business side of it The Hacienda was crippling you. Dry (the Manchester city centre bar New Order acquired, and had a stake in. later on] was crippling you. It made you not want to see people;* Hook is keen to stress that he is "only talking from my point of view. The others might have enjoyed It Immensely," adding: "Basically, we had a big falling out because I didn't like the way he [Sumner] was changing, which is a purely selfish attitude. I know. Musically or personally? Both. I mean, there's a lot of stress and strain. You don't realise how much fucking pressure .singing is until you do it yourself (Hook provided the vocals for two Movement tracks and, later on, sang with Revenge and Monaco). "But then, unfortunately, it's too bleedin' late. You can't go back and say. 'Sorry about that 15 years of being thwat. I've only just realised what it's like.' It's like realising what your mother or father did for you 15 years later. It comes to you and it's like. 'Oh, my God I've been a complete arsehole and it's too late."* POWER, CORRUPTION & UES ENTERED THE ALBUM charts at Number Four. "Confusion" reached Number 12 in September The band toured Australia, New Zealand and Japan (where the technophile Stephen Morris was singled out for special attention). They were huge across Europe and had an enormous cult following in the States. Over the next few years, via a series of increasingly successful records, they would find themselves, simply, the biggest independent band the world had ever seen. The more they eschewed conventional music business practices (no record .company promotion or advertising, non-album tracks as singles; a non-existent "image"; few, if any, inter views, refusing to leave Manchester for the capital) the more popular they became. When they began as Joy Division, their peers were the Pistols and The Clash, then Public Image Limited ana Wire. In the early days of New Order, they were part of-yet remained supremely aloof from - a scene that included the likes of ABC and Heaven 17 By the mid Eighties, only Echo & The Bunnymen, The Cure Siouxsie & The Banshees, The Smiths and The Cocteau Twins combined credibility and commercial "appeal to anything like the same degree (U2 were only begrudgingly acknowledged by the music press). Even the Pet Shop Boys' microchip-off-the-old-block electro pop wasn't in the same league. Eventually, they would see them all off. It was not deliberate; it was certainly nothing personal. New Order couldn't help themselves. They were just... better. "Thieves Like Us", in spite of its stately 150-second intro. became a Top 20 hit in May. 1984. Dating back to the Arthur Baker sessions (who received a credit on the record as co-writer), and reputedly based around the hookline from Hot Chocolate's "Emma", it was a level above their previous efforts. All the usual elements were present and correct - Hook's bass. Gilbert's synth. that Morris pitter-patter. Sumner's lost-na/fvocals-only the chemistry (as opposed to the chemicals) kicked In like never before. Majestic yet melancholic, with a melody that seemed to meander for ages, "Thieves Like Us" confirmed, rf proof were needed, that New Order's examination of emotional decay and the destructive nature of love was every bit as profound and powerful as Joy Division's. Less cryptic than lan Curtis, though; more candid (more trite, say detractors of such disarming honesty) "it was quite a personal song," says Bernard Sumner of a lyric that includes the lines, 'I Ve lived my life in the valleys/I've lived my life on the hills/I've lived my life on alcohol/I've lived my life on pills," He corrects the assumption that it is somehow upbeat. "It wasn't optimistic at. all." he says of this deceptively pretty song. "It. was very pessimistic. It's the sound of a person down on his knees, hoping and praying that things would get better. There's hope In it, but really it's i don't really want to go any further Into it; it's really quite personal. It's a down song with a lot of hope in it," Sumner. born in 1956 (the same year as Hook, a year before Morris, and five before Gilbert), grew up In Lower Broughton m Salford in a neighbourhood that was "completely decimated in fhp midSwies" in.a "Coronation Street terraced houbc with a chemical factory at one end and 100 yards from the highly polluted River Irwell. Still just a boy, his entire neighbourhood was uprooted to a tower block over the river. Joy Division, for him, was "about the death of my community and my childhood It was absolutely irretrievable." This was undoubtedly the case for lan Gurtls, too, whose lyrics expressed the sense of dismay at the col lapse of traditional family virtues and. later, the devastation of the North as a whole as it fell victim to late Seventies Thatchente economic policy. On a more global level, apocalyptic dread informed his words, while a less specific existential despair couldn't help seeping into his troubled consciousness. As for Sumner, he had In his background enough raw material for a dozen albums' worth of soul-searching lyrics. An only child and something of a dreamer, he • lived with his grandparents and divorced mother until she re-married when he was 12. He used to hang out with a gang of evil local delinquents whose chosen form of evening entertainment, was tormenting dogs, going on the rob, and breaking into people's cars. Bernard describes it as "a fairly difficult upbringing", his relationship with his mother - like that of many sons, to be fair - quite turbulent, although he insists that he "didn't have bad parents or anything like that; they were good parents. "But." he continues, filling in the gaps of this vivid portrait of his adolescence, "there was a lot of severe illness In my family which I won't go into In too much detail, some very severe Illness which occurred round about the age of 16 and went on for quite a few years. "Physical or mental? Physical. I had family members dying and I don't want to go into it too much because it's too personal and too painful and I don't want people to feel sorry for me, but there was a lot of severe illness and death of family members. "That," he concludes, "made me a bit black inside, because it was difficult to deal with. Basically, my family disintegrated through ill health. They're all dead now. It's quite a tragic story. What happened fucked me up really badly and that was the driving force in my life and my attitude." The struggle to overcome misfortune and poverty, he sort of mundane or distressing problems that most of us have to face (his first marriage didn't last the Eighties) . . none of these may be explicit in his lyrics for New Order, but they're all there, the events from his past, haunting those happy-sad words like so many spectres. BY CONTRAST. THERE WAS "MY COCK'S AS BIG AS The Ml". This was Sumner's original title for New Order's first single of 1985 (in the interim, there had been grisly Factory Benelux instrumental "Murder", which was athrown together one night in the studio" and contained a sample from the film. Caligula, which went "Craw//, Crawl! Crawlf I hate them!" and another from Stanley Kubrick's 2001. A Space Odyssey)* It was promptly dropped (Bernard: "the B3293 is probably closer to the truth") for the rather more poetic "The Perfect Kiss", a suitable title for such an awesome piece of Euro-romanticism. Described by Stephen Morris as "a movie for the ears". 'The Perfect Kiss1" was an orgasmotromc epic of quicksilver guitar and silvers of synth onto which were placed layer upon: layer of keyboard-strings, complex bass and drum cross-rhythms and ricocheting, gizmo-triggered vocals Pure sonic architecture (and you should hear the 12-inch). The climax, a triumph of disco artifice, fea tured a Rrepower pmball machine and a frog chorus - "flown in," jokes Gillian Gilbert, "from the rain forests" - because the band couldn't afford to pay Warner Brothers the phenomenal sum of money they were demanding for what they really wanted to close the show: Elmer J Fudd's "Th'th-th-that's all, folks!" "The Perfect Kiss" was released simultaneously with New Order's^ third album, low-life, one of the standout LPs of the year along with Propaganda's A Secret Wish, Scrittl Politti's Cupid & Psyche, Prefab-Sprout's Steve McQueen and Kate Bush's Hounds Of love. "Etegia" was a Philip Glass-inspired, atmospheric piece of modem classical music commissioned for an ID magazine film night "Sunrise" was an intense rocker while the cinematic "Sooner Than You Think" was written by Sumner "in a pretty bloody unglamorous hotel in Ramsgate, like a boarding house" following a "pissed-up fight between some roadies .1 wasn't a very happy chappy in those days." That September. Factory - notorious for their ad hoc arrangements - reportedly drew up its first formal recording contracts. New Order's deal stipulating that the band only had to give six months' notice if they wished to leave the label. Two below-par singles followed in 1986: "State Of The Nation" and "Shell Shock", the latter written for John Hughes' Bratpack vehicle, Pretty In Pink. At the film's premiere in LA, remembers Morris, a gaggle of excited photographers and TV reporters mistook the

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BROTHERHOOD (1986)

Crystalline pop meets olectroid rock. With its throbbing bass and sensuous pulse, "Paradise" was simply groovy. "All Day Long" tackled child abuse. "Every Little Counts" doffed its cap to Lou Reed's "Walk On The Wild Side" while its lyric scaled new heights/plumbed new depths of perversity ("Every second counts when I am with you/I think you are pig. you should be in a zoo.")
Stephen Morris: "It was a bit higgledy-piggledy."
Gillian Gilbert: "One side was acoustic, the other electronic. I don't like the songs as much as our others. I don't like the sleeve. I don't like the name."
Peter Hook: "There are some really good songs on it. Some of the best music Is made when you're desperately unhappy or desperately fighting, Isn't it?"
Bernard Sumner: "It's not as good as Low-Life. I remember going on holiday to Corfu, playing it on a Walkman and thinking, 'Fucking hell, that's shit.' What songs are on it? [Uncut reels off tracklisting]. Really? Well, fuck that, then. It sounds like a good album."

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New Order themselves, allowing the b to stroll in unrecognised amid a galaxy of stars. Also in 1986, they performed alongside The Smiths, A Certain Ratio. The Fall and Echo & The Bunnymen at Manchester's G-Mex for the Festival Of The 10th Summer (ie. since punk) and appeared, again with The Smiths, at a benefit concert in Liverpool for the city s councillors, then facing a legal dispute over rate-capping. Bernard, ill with flu, lost consciousness back stage m a chair, virtually sleepwalked onstage before the others by mistake and was assailed by flying beer cans from a crowd wrongly assuming he was a member pf a much-loathed local act New Order's fourth album. Brotherhood, came out in October. 1986 Admittedly a quiet time for British rock, it was still unrivalled by anything that year bar The Smiths' The Queen is Dead. Recorded in Dublin, Liverpool and London. Sumner vaguely recalls "having a good time making It". Morris and Gilbert are non-committal about the sessions. Hook Is adamant "It was like all the albums. We were so fucked off we couldn't wait to get home. I couldn't anyway. But then, I fucking hate recording. I hate being in a studio, I hate it with a vengeance. It's unbearable. Unfortunately, it's essential for my job." Densely produced and overdubbed to the max, Brotherhood alternated between jangling guitars and jugger naut rhythms, punky thrashing and flawless electronics. "As It Is When It Was" was about as startling as hearing Kraftwerk strumming a folk song. "Bizarre Love Triangle", the obvious single, was consummate synthpop with a killer chorus. The mighty "Angel Dust" concerned the fatal allure of narcotics. "Rob, our manager, hated that," says Bernard. "It freaked him out. There's another version of it called 'Evil Dust'. 'Angel Dust Is fangel dust - a drug, like elephant tran quilliser; PCP i think it's also called. 'Evil dust is what they used to call cocaine. "I don't want to get too specific about drugs because I don't want to start sounding like Shaun (Ryder, ex Happy Mondays and Black Grape], and I don't want to be responsible for anyone getting into them, but yes, they can be a creative tool." Indeed. Sumner appeared on a BBC TV programme in 1996 discussing the creative potential of Prozac. "I d never touch heroin. though. Not after seeing what it did to Martin [Hannett).M There was a member of Happy Mondays (whose excellent second single, "Freaky Dancin'", was produced by Sumner in 1986) present in the studio when New Order worked on five tracks - available to this day only on rare copies of the vinyl soundtrack - for a little-known US movie satire of televangelists called Salvation!, which starred Exene Cervenka of LA punk band. X. Cabaret Voltaire and Arthur Baker also contributed music, but it We fell out because I didn't like the way Bernard was changing. - Peter Hook
was New Order's "Salvation Theme", a prototype . "Touched By The Hand Of God" (New Order's only vocal tout on the LP, sequenced bassline courtesy of Mr Hook. melody by Ms Gilbert, and a single in December 1987), the superb "Let's Go". "Sputnik" and "Skullcrusher'' that really stole the show. Bernard still can't quite believe some of those song titles. '"Skullcrusher'! What a splendidly bad title that is! Fucking great. Maybe we should do it at one of our gigs. Trouble is. I can't remember whal it sounds like.... I do remember Bet from the Mondays coming down to the studio. He was fast asleep on the couch behind me while I was singing the vocals, snoring his fucking head off. if you get the master tapes. I'm sure you'll be able to hear him." Both Happy Mondays and New Order would be immediately receptive to the latest development In British music, which began when a group of south Londoners who spent the summer in Ibiza held reunion parties at the Project Club in Streatham and then relocated to Danny and Jenni Rampling's celebrated Shoom nights: Acid House. FIRST. NEW ORDER RELEASED the best double A-side of the Eighties. Side one: the unofficial national anthem of 1987. "True Faith" (with accompanying BRIT Award-winning video). Side two: the sublime electro murder ballad, "1963". with a gorgeous vocal from Sumner and a sick lyric about a jilted lover who shoots his girlfriend between the eyes - what the singer calls his "anti-sugar element". Factory also compiled Substance, a double CD featuring all of New Order's singles and flipsides to date (sole omission: "Cnes And Whispers", from the "Everything's Gone Green" 12-'Inch), Substance is responsible for six million of New Order's 20 million total worldwide album sales to date. Not bad for an LP put together because Tony Wilson wanted to be able to play all of his favourite tracks by his favourite band in the car. Then they went to Ibiza to see what all the fuss was about. On their return, they made Technique, regarded by many as their best album, one apparently imbued with the spirit of smiley culture, full of the joys of Ecstasy and nights spent clubbing and carousing.. Not so. Of the narcotic dujour, Stephen and Gillian say they "never touched the stuff, insisting that they stayed on the quiet part of the island. Peter Hook maintains that the band "hated each other m Ibiza". that they "went out separately", and that all they had to show for their interminable sojourn in the party capital of Europe were "12 drum tracks". "Basically," he shakes his head, "we lost sight of each other. We stopped functioning as a group. It was really sad." Bernard's view of their extended working holiday is only slightly more rosy, not least because he was there

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TECHNIQUE (1989)

A high point in a career full of peaks. Sheer automanik autobiography, this was Sumner's Blood On The Tracks, at last. "Fine Time", complete with daft sheep bleats and a lyric iiddrcssed to a younger woman, saw an Aciiieeed-crazed Top Of The Pops performance almost as surreal as Kathyryn Bigelow's heavy metal video parody for "Touched By The Hand Of God". "Love Less" was aimed at an ex-lover who "won't even talk to me'' despite the singer having "spent a lifetime working on you." "Round & Round" was sequenced in heaven and spiteful as hell ("If you mess with me. Ill get rid of you"). "Run" got them sued by John Denver due to its apparent similarity to "Leaving On A Jet Plane". The closing trio of "Mr Disco". "Vanishing Point" and "Dream Attack" threw down the gauntlet for electro-pop bands the world over. None of them dared to pick it up.
Bernard Sumner: "I wrote 'Mr Disco' for the chicken-in-a-basket set. Sometimes I think it would be fun to write a load of crap. But that's just my warped sense of humour. I like cheesy things and really bad jokes that aren't funny."

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with new partner Sarah, very probably his muse-fqr "True Faith" (opening line: "/ feel so extraordinary") and "Touched By The Hand Of God". ~^ "The DJs were fucking crap, because they kept switching records after 20 seconds. I preferred the more hardcore Acid House music they played at Spectrum and; the warehouse parties in London. It was great staying up all night in the open air, but in the whole time we were there, all we recorded were the hi hats for the album, And a guitar solo for 'Guilty Partner1. "We were about 15 miles from the centre. God. what a; time that was We used to drive over to San Antonio where all the English football fans were, get something to eat. then get shit-faced from that point onwards. We'd go to Amnesia 10km outside San Antonio and gel. really fucked-up there and stay until it closed at 6.30am. then we'd go back to San Antonio and go to a club called Manhattan which stayed open till 12.30pm Then, stupidly, one of us would drive home about 25km, "One night - no. morning; actually. Ik-was probably the afternoon, to be hon--est - I was driving home and we got about half way and I saw this farmer ploughing his field, or doing something with a pitchfork, and I stopped the car,. went over to him. gave him the car keys; and told him to take us to another club. This poor farmer is standing there holding our car keys, staring at us sitting in: the car. Steve {Morris] and Sarah said. 'What the fuck are you doing?' So Steve-took the keys off the farmer, started the car. then crashed into a ditch." New Order spent the remainder of; their stay in Ibiza reluctantly entertaining gangs of marauding 18-30 types because their roadies fancied the: women and wanted to impress them with their famous rock star employers. "They were horrible." Bernard shudders. "They used to throw up all over1 the studio." Notwithstanding the circumstances; behind the recording, Technique, their first Number One LP. was unimpeachable. It had nothing to do. as many have; claimed, with the plodding indie-dance^ of the "Madchester" scene. On Tech-' ntque, the Joins between rock and. rhythm were airbrushed to the point of invisibility. It was superlative New Order. To paraphrase a Melody Maker review, this was the state of the embers of the-dying art of shimmering white funk/ Bernard Sumner had come into his own as a writer of been-throughthe-mill. sensitive, adult confessional songwords. "I've seen what a man can do/I've seen all the hate of a woman, too." he sang on "Vanishing-Point", while on "Dream Attack" the boy loner was fmaK ly ready to commit: "/ cari'f be owned by no one/But / want to be with you." As he asserts, "With Technique, the cycle from the total pessimism of Joy Division and the early New Order stuff to total optimism was com*-plete. When I met Sarah, my whole life changed." MIND YOU, THE TECHNIQUE TOUR ALMOST KILLED HIM.; New Order had already circled the globe several times. Including one memorable occasion in Bangkok where illegal drugs such as morphine were on sale in sweet shops. Gillian Gilbert's dyed red hair caused local pandemoni-

It wasn't just me. Hooky, Steve and Gillian used to drink a lot as well. But it was always me that ended up on the floor of the airport, throwing up. - Bernard Sumner
urn arid the hotel porters carried sub-machine guns. Success, on whatever level or whatever form it took, just didn't faze them. "I thought more about what my corn beeffcash on the plane was like than how successful we'd become," says Bernard. The Monsters Of Alternative Rock triple-header with PiL and The Sugarcubes was different, however: more dates, more punters, more extreme behaviour, just more. John Lydon. for one, was shocked by the Mancunians' gargantuan capacity for excess. "New Order," rock's erstwhile hell-raisertold MTV reporters, "take more drugs than The Grateful Dead." ' Peter Hook loved being on the road. "It's a way of life." he told me. The others were less keen on being away from home for so long, staying in one strange city after another, surrounded by ghouls and groupies, dealers and hangers-on, quite apart from the inevitable pressures of performing and constantly having to repro-gramme their material every time a new piece of equipment arrived. Says Gillian. "We were sick of touring." In her husband's opinion, rock groups should call it a day when they hit 30 (he was 32 in 1989). After one exhausting night on the tiles in Chicago, Sumner - prone to nausea - was hospitalised. "What happened was," he picks up the story, "I burned the lining off my stomach. See, I used to drink Pernod and orange juice. Now, at the start of the tour. I would have an inch of Pernod and five inches of orange juice. By the middle of the tour, it was one inch of orange juice, and five Inch es of Pernod. "So me and Sarah went out one night to this club in Chicago, and we were in this limo and we got to the club and I started coughing. I didn't make it into the club: I just wanted to go back to the hotel - which isn't like me at all. I just started coughing and coughing and eventually I began to throw up at 3am and at four the next afternoon I was still being sick. I was just delirious - only this time / had not had a drink. Maybe one drink. _^__^_ "Anyway, we were due in Detroit the following evening and we were meant to have this big party with Kevin Saunderson and all those Detroit house guys, but I just couldn't get out of bed. I was sick for 12. 13 hours. That was the bad news. The good news was there was a hospital right across from the hotel; I could see it from my room. So all it meant doing was getting in a lift, going down, walking across the road, going m another lift and getting into the hospital bed. It was one of those Touched By The Hand Of God moments. "It wasn't just me. though. Hooky, Steve and Gillian used to drink a lot as well. But rt was always me that ended up on the floor of the airport the next morning, throwing up. "You know. I sometimes wonder If we hadn't, been so extreme, whether New Order would have disintegrated sooner."
BETWEEN 1989 AND 1993. NEW Order took a break from each other, although the planet's finest purveyors of digital existentialism did convene in 1990 to record a football song with England's World Cup squad and comedian Keith Alien. Based on a rhythm track Morris and Gilbert had come up with while writing for TV series Making Out and credited to EnglandNeworder. "World In Motion" became the group's first Number One single that summer. Over the next few years, the band undertook separate projects (Bernard: "I hate that word"), each one demonstrating, if nothing else, that New Order was in each member's DNA. Electronic, Revenge and The Other Two all provided variations on a theme - electro-melancholia - with varying degrees of artistic and commercial success. Despite trying their damndest to express their differences, what heightened the poignancy of each venture were the essential similarities. When they decided to get back together in 1993. it wasn't easy. The cause of the friction was obvious: they were sick of the sight of each other, but they didn't want to be apart. Melodramatic as it sounded. Paul Mortey's assessment on neworderstory wasn't far wrong: "They seemed to love each other and hate each other." So they reunited for one more LP - Republic, their first for London Records - and it nearly split them up for good. "Things started going pear-shaped with Factory," says master of understatement Stephen Morris. Peter Hook is more specific. "The Hacienda was

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REPUBLIC (1993)

The difficult sixth album. You could almost smell the decay: the demise of Factory, the downfall of the Hacienda and the subsequent deterioration of the band's relationships. Still, for all that, some of New Order's best music is here, spoiled only by Stephen Hague's insufficiently hardcore production and the glutinous "soulful" warbling of the female backing singers. The first four tracks were singles, on "Regret", Bernard yearns for normality; "World (The Price Of Love)" was curiously passionless commercial house; "Ruined In A Day" dealt in betrayal, although Sumner insists it wasn't about current events; and "Spooky" was peerless techno pop "Liar" was a poison dart aimed at a certain "King of Nothing", for which no prizes for guessing. "Everyone Everywhere" was magnificently moody. The too-glossy topcoat smothered the colossal sorrow of "Young Offender". Near-instrumental "Avalanche" was Gillian's own "Decades".
Stephen Morris: "Strangely enough, I don't mind it."
Gillian Gilbert: "We listen to it a lot."
Peter Hook: "We weren't writing together. If we had. it might have turned out more like Technique."
Bernard Sumner: "I was crawling up the walls in a room on my own, wondering why the others weren't coming in."

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full tilt." he says of an enterprise allegedly costing each member of New Order £10,000 a month, "and Dry was as well, And we had a producer [Stephen Hague] for the first time [since Movement], which I actually agreed with because the four of us hated each other so much. He encouraged Bernard to write away from us. and that's what it sounds like. "Things reached a head all the time. It was all really, really difficult. The fact that you didn't earn any money for a long, long time - until you were 32 or whatever -even though you'd been a successful group for 10 years, well, that's something you wouldn't put up with now. You'd just go fucking bonkers. But you didn't know anything about it then. So you'd say, 'Rob. look. I can't pay the gas bill, and rt would be like. 'Oh, we'd better do another fucking tour, then.1 The only time we were given something to do was when they'd run out of money. And you'd be like, 'What? Wliatf WHAT?' It was. like that for seven fucking years. We were so pissed off, "I'm no businessman. I've got papers on my desk, but I'm naive when it comes to business matters. We all flirted with unsuccessful ventures. It was ego, mainly. My ego was really gratified by being part of the Hacienda. I used to lord it up. The bouncers would walk me through the door, all that crap. Free drinks all night. Brilliant. Absolutely wonderful. And then suddenly you wake up and it's like, 'Fucking hell. I lost how much?' I could have bought drinks for everybody in Manchester and still made a profit. "It was heartwrenching. Heartbreaking. You had personal guarantees everywhere. The business side of it was dragging you down. Steve and Gillian In particular were almost destroyed by it. And they quit, leaving me, Bernard and Rob But you just couldn't crawl out of ft. It was a shame And it affected the music." Sumner corroborates Hook's frank account of the Fall

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Of Factory and the breakdown of relations within the band. "We had tremendous business problems around the time of Republic. We were having weekly meetings with Rob and Tony Wilson; meanwhile, we'd be trying to write an album And it was like, 'If Factory goes down and the bankers pull out of the Hacjenda, will you guarantee all the bank loans' - which were hundreds.of thousands of pounds - 'with New Order's assets?' "Storm clouds were gathering on the horizon: everything seemed to be going wrong. The whole business side of the band was about to collapse, and really, we were making this album for nothing, because we were going to lose every penny. "We're probably very proud of the fact that we actually finished the LP. because we did talk at one point about going on strike, which is what we should have done. Factory didn't just owe the banks loads of money, they owed us - and other bands- money. It was demoralising. "On the other hand, we still liked Tony. It was a very confusing situation. Because it wasn't like a normal business relationship where your boss fucks up and you say, 'You twat, you fucking arsehole.' I mean, I'm sure those words did pass our lips, but in our hearts we thought his intentions were good. It's just that we felt the business side of things had been managed irresponsibly, whereas we had busted a gut delivering the goods- ie. enormous record sales. "Suddenly, it seemed as though all those moments where I'd woken up on the floor of an airport being sick trying to catch an Sam flight had all been for nothing. I felt like a bomb that was about to explode. "There was a strange tension within the group. I was off working with Stephen Hague, or writing in a room on my own. I'd be crawling up the walls, thinking. 'Why is no one coming in the room to see me?' And the others thought I was being some kind of megalomaniac. I wanted them to come in and hangout with me. But they thought I didn't want them in there. *There had been too much getting out of it, too much talking behind people's backs and not enough saying •to people's faces what you really thought and what the .problems were that had created such a vile situation.. "it was a chain that had to be broken " ' AFTER THE RECRIMINATIONS, SUPPRESSED RAGE AND thwarted ambition - silence. New Order headlined 1993's Reading Festival, after which performance they .put down their instruments, walked offstage and didn't speak to, or clap eyes on. /each other for almost half a decade. Not once. Well, there was that one time. It's apocryphal, of course, but local Manchester lore has it that, on one occasion, Stephen and Gillian caught sight of Bernard In a shop in town, only for the singer to blank the pair completely, then proceed to leave .the shop and hurriedly cross the street to avoid conversation with his ex-bandmates. v. " I heard that," he says, "but I honestly swear on my own life £ it isn't true. I would never do that. I just didn't see them. I must have been in a. • bloody daze or something." During this lay-off, none of them agreed with or denied reports that New Order had been permanently rent "asunder. Instead, they got on with their lives. Gillian and ^Stephen got married, had a daughter, released an album as The Other Two and wrote music for British and American TV. Peter Hook kept busy with Revenge (and, later. Monaco). And Bernard had Electronic (about'. which Sumner really honestly truly does say, "It was a. bit weird working with people as famous as Johnny [Marr] and Neil [Tennant]; a bit oppressive"). It was strange for all of them to hear each other on the radio, or see each other in print. According to Hook. *lt was like seeing your girlfriend out with another bloke." Then, in February, 1998. quite out of the blue, Sumner, Morris. Gilbert and Hook each received a fax; from Rob Gretton asking whether they'd be interest-, ed in doing a series of gigs. A meeting was arranged. "Was I nervous?" asks Gillian. "If you haven't seen each other for five years, you're going to be a bit nervous. It was like your first day at school. Worse." "Bernard turning up in the same top as me broke the I ice a bit," says Stephen of his birthday present from Gillian's parents. "I was scared." says Peter. "Really nervous." "It was bloody nerve-wracking for all of us. I'm sure," says Bernard. "To walk into a room and suddenly, after five years, you're there with the band, is a very, . very strange experience. "We had to see if there was still any bitterness. The first thing I said was. 'If anyone has any problems or anything they feel bitter about, let's get them on the

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table right now, let's get it out the way.' Hooky said he lent me a tenner in 1981 and I never paid him back. He's always been a mean bastard. "I think we were all genuinely glad to see each other. The break - and the fact that we didn't think we'd ever play together again - really did seem to have cured us. I said I wasn't bitter about anything. In fact, the main thought in my head was, 'What the fuck happened?' It's difficult to understand. I've gone into as much detail as I can with you about it all. but I still don't know what the fuck happened to cause us to break up like that* "He's making light of it there." says Hook when I repeat what Sumner had said. "I know what the fuss was about [ haven't forgotten. I remember exactly. There are still many things in New Order that people haven't got off their chest. We all know what happened - and it would make a cracking book. The best book you've ever read in your fucking life. Because nobody would believe the fucking pain and indignity and things that went on. "But," he adds, looking forward to a new order of New Order, "I think people have come to realise that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. To achieve what we've achieved without it appearing cheesy like Culture Club and The Human League and ABC, to still be credible when you've done nothing for five years, is the greatest con of all. The Sex Pistols? Bollocks to that. New Order have topped them all, mate. "U2 wouldn't exist without Joy Division. U2 became Joy Division. We put down the mantle, they picked it up. It's bloody lan's fault It's lucky Joy Division finished when they did, otherwise U2 would have been in our shadow. The Chemical Brothers? They might be good for a diversion, but they don't write songs. New Order songs live with people forever. 'Thieves Like Us', The Perfect Kiss', 'Blue Monday'... It's music for the soul." Morris and Gilbert are happy to be back with New Order. Sumner is delighted Hook is beside himself. "For Bernard to say what he said on Jo Whiley [Radio Ij the other week, it just amazed me. That he wants us to write, all four of us together. Fucking hell. It was wonderful. I'm overjoyed And if it works out. I'll be the fucking happiest man alive, but that's what you spent 10 years stopping us doing. He didn't like it. And he's had such a change of heart and it's wonderful I'm not knocking him. You're entitled to do whatever you want in this world - that's what freedom's about. And if you want to change your mind three years later, that's absolutely fine by me. I'm delighted to be here to reap the rewards of this change. Delighted. "We've all changed a lot as people. I certainly have. I've got a lot better as a person. I find that the most Important thing in the world these days is to be able to wake up m the morning, look at yourself in a mirror and think, 'Fuck, I'm looking forward to this day.' I haven't been like that for a very long time. I lived a lie. "Outside of New Order, there was a lot of pain," he says, and you may have read about his very public bust-up with Caroline "Mrs Merton" Aherne and subsequent 'marriage to interior designer. Rebecca Jones. "I'm delighted to be rid of it all. Now I know what it's like to be happy I will not put up with it again. Anybody who tries to make me unhappy, I will tell them to fuck off. I'm not going to do it. I'm sorry. I don't give a fuck. "I used to. I let things ride. If me and Bernard had had a fight in 1982. a real stand up and knock down fight, it probably would have been a whole lot better. Like the Happy Mondays used to do: they would have a fight and, when they'd come back, it would all be gone. We just kept it all pent up. all the time, right up to that time ;1 fucking walked out of that gig at Reading [in 1993J. I just went. That was it. And I still had the pent-up aggression and all the bitterness and anger in me. It took me five years to work it off. When I walked into that meeting, I didn't have it. "I didn't realise how bloody difficult it was for four people to write together. I used to think Barney was a

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c*** for not wanting to write with us. I appreciate it now, but then it was like, 'He's a twat. he's a bastard, he's a c***.' Now I think, 'You fucking dickhead. Oh. God. You made plenty of mistakes yourself.1 "I honestly don't know what's going to happen. It was nice getting back to New Order for the simple reason that I'd become used to making decisions, because decisions are the only things that let you move on-Getting back to New Order where no one makes a decision is quite refreshing. I'm like, 'Can't we decide something?' They're like. 'No, we'll come back next week and talk about it again.' 'Can't we decide any-' thing? Whether we like tea of coffee?1 And they're like, 'Calm, chill.' And I'm trying to make them decide something. That took me a while to realise: that's the way they do things. That came hard. I had to step back and think, 'Fucking chill out. They aren't like that. Pack it in.' I had to take a step back. Because it got to the point where it hurt me a little bit. I had to say to myself, 'Stop it. You're getting back to how you were before.: Enjoy it for what it is, not what you can make it."1 The differences between the individual versions of this story of human conflict and superhuman creativity have been quite revealing. Stephen and Gillian were methodical and painstaking. Bernard painted a series of colourful pictures. And Peter Hook was torrentially emotional. The brain, the heart and the soul of New Order? Maybe. *(don't think we've ever played better - ever - than we are doing now." he says. "You can see it in Bernard's race. I've never seen him happier, never. Not since we were 20 years old going to Pip's together. And that's won-! ferful. After all the grief we've had and all the problems, if New Order never did anything again, that's made me really happy. We came offstage at Reading [1998] and Barney said to me, 'Top bassplaying there.' He's never said anything like that in 20 years. That one compliment made the whole thing worth it. I felt like fucking crying. My DER ABOUT anything - the death of a close friend, the degeneration of personal relationships, drug and alcohol addiction; anything - just don't ask them about music. They don't want to know. They don't know what to say. They never have. "We've never talked about music in all the years we've been together." says Peter Hook. "Barney said to me, 'It's really weird, but I'll sit. there with Johnny fMarr] and talk about music for hours.' And I said, 'It's really weird, but I'll sit there with Pottsy [David Potts. Monaco singer] and talk about music for hours. But I wouldn't fucking do that with you.1 j And he said, 'Nan, I would- j n't do that with you, either."* j So let's ask the fans: what 1 is New Order's secret?. ."4 "Barney is very charismatic J in his own way," considers Tony Wilson. "He's different to lan. He's incredibly - rude word. I know - postmodern He knows that you know that he knows that you know he looks silly, and it doesn't matter. Although in rock history, the November 1989 Top Of DIG Pops [with appearances by The Stone Roses and Happy Mondays] is seen as the seminal moment, for everyone in Manchester it was Top Of Tfie Pops November 1988, when New Order did 'Fine Time' and but to me they're pure emotion. "You put on 'Ceremony' or 'Procession' or Temptation1 or 'Everything's Gone Green' today and they blow everything else away. Have you ever heard another record that sounds like 'Everything's Gone Green'? I haven't - before or since. It's otherness. A weird psychedelic otherness. It came out of nowhere. And this was only a year after Closer. Incredible.
Bernard wants us all to write together again. Wonderful. I'm overjoyed. - Peter Hook
God. after all this time. I'm like. 'I can play!' They're like. 'You knobhead, you've been playing for years.' And I'm like, 'Yeah, but Barney said it..1 It's like yer mam telling' /ou. 'That's a nice outfit you're going out in.' Really weird. Dne of the strangest moments of my life. "Have I always sought his approval? Obviously. He's like a big brother to me - because he is older. He pretends he's fucking younger, too. the bastard. "He's six weeks older than me." he says, leaning towards the tape recorder. "Let the world know it." our mouths dropped as Barney did Bez, Britain got its first taste of Acid House through Bernard. "One thing they never get credited for is that, as producers, they're phenomenal. I was turned onto the Roses by Hooky's version of 'Elephant Stone'. And Barney, with :Stuff like Section 25's 'Looking From A Hilltop', which is still sourced by all the great techno compilations in the world, the Mondays' 'Freaky Dancin" and Marcel King's 'Reach For Love', has produced some of the greatest fucking records of all time. "They're the same group, you know - Joy Division and New Order. Completely differ ent but exactly the same, lan would have sung 'Blue Monday', no question. The lyncs might have changed, but that was the direction he was moving in." "Too much dance music is functional. New Order's music has always hit me emotionally." says Primal Scream's Bobby Gillespie, who sings backing vocals on a Peel session version of "True Faith" to be aired at the end of the month. "Did you see them at Reading? Fucking amazing. People say "They're much more important than Kraftwerk. Th were instrumental in the Acid House thing. Weatherall is a huge New Order fan. Plus, they had the Hagienda, which is where Alan McGee first got into Acid House. "I don't think Screamadelica would have happened without New Order. I don't think our band would have happened without Joy Division/New Order. The only reason I'm a singer is because of Barney. [Scream guitarist] Throb's got a 'Heart And Soul' tattoo on his arm. "They could have been the biggest band in the world, but it was U2. But U2 don't mean anything. They might be multimillionaires but it doesn't mean anything because they don't make soulful music, New Order do. That's eternal music. "They never played the game like U2 and all those other bands from their generation. They just did what they wanted and made their own rules up. They're the one band who earned out the punk thing: having their own club, financing Factory, signing and developing young bands - all the things the punk bands said they'd do. New Order did. "New Order are out on their own." New Order's Recycle boxed set is due out this spring on London. The Other Two V Superhighways is related by London this month. Elect ronic's Twisted Tenderness is released by Parlophonc this spring. Monaco's second album will be released by Polydor this summer, after which New Order will begin recording their seventh LP