NEW ORDER DANCING TO AN EERIE BEAT

Where does one begin to unravel the enigma of New Order?

The group shuns most of the music industry’s promotional machinery—heck,I consider myself a fan, and until recently even I would have had a hard time picking this band out of a police line-up—yet their records invariably top the British indie charts. Over here, New Order recprds are staples of the import trade, despite the almost complete lack of promotional push and their willfully anonymous packaging (their last few releases don’t even feature the band’s name on the cover, much less the usual liner note fodder).

Then there’s the group’s new-found reputation as dance club favorites, which, while not undeserved, was certainly unexpected. New Order is somewhat lacking, you see, in funk: in the rapper’s chestbeating confidence, the sexuality of a Rick James or a Prince, the suave soul of an ABC, the “glamour” of a Duran Duran, or the willingness to conform to formula that makes so many of their English synth-based contemporaries so interchangeably danceable. There’s something tentative— almost fragile—about their music; melancholy keyboards and wisps of introspective vocals seem strangely out of place in the seeand-be-seen world of your usual new wave disco.

What New Order does have is rhythm. Or rhythms. Lots of them. Whole bunches of them in every song. Drums, too. Lots of drums. Real drums and drum machine drums and digital drums and digital sequencers all doing rhythm things and lots of echos making everything else bounce around (in rhythm, of course). If you didn’t know better, you might mistake their latest single, “Confusion”—recorded in New York with electro-disco producer Arthur Baker— for “Planet Rock” or “Pack Jam” or something like that. I mean, it sure doesn’t sound like the band that used to be Joy Div...

Oops.

Oh, well, I suppose there’s no avoiding it. No matter how much I’d like to treat New Order as an entity unto itself, without dredging up the past, the past rears up all the same. Unfortunately—and at the risk of adding to the smokescreen of legend and mythology that have grown up around the band—it seems that to make any sense of New Order one must first deal with the specter of Joy Division.

"I find the popularity thing a bit hard to relate to. A lot of the people you meet seem to be...idiots. It's unbelievable!" -Peter Hook

Joy Division, to many people, did for the last few years of regression and depression what the Beach Boys did for the pre-War ’60s, Pink Floyd did for the summer of psychedelia, and the Doors did a bit later as the candy-colored world of the ’60s crumbled into paranoia: they captured an essential vibration of their time and froze it on vinyl. Unknown Pleasures, the funereal Closer, the achingly beautiful “Atmostpheres” 12” and the sublime sweep of “Love Will Tear Us Apart” seem to crystalize feelings of loss and despair, uncertainty and heartache with unsentimental honesty and unflinching accuracy. It almost hurts to hear it.

Like Brian Wilson, Syd Barrett and Jim Morrison, Joy Division vocalist Ian Curtis ultimately became a victim of his creative demons—in this case dying by his own hand on the eve of what would have been the band’s first American tour. Unlike his predecessors, however, most of Curtis’s recognition has come after the fact, which has made it easier for his faults and virtues to be distorted and romanticized by sincere fans and sensation-mongers alike. To the former, Curtis’s suicide was proof that he had lived out his lyrics—that he meant it, and wasn’t just adopting a pose for the sake of Art. To the latter, his death probably seemed a natural culmination of the masochistic/voyeuristic tendencies in rock that Iggy Pop has become infamous for.

Clouding the issues even more is the fact that Joy Division spawned a host of imitators and thus came to define a genre (not bad for a band that had released only two LPs and a handful of other tracks by the time of their singer’s death). Since then, any band trafficking in mood and melancholy has faced accusations of sounding “as dreary as Joy Division”—more often than not being a case where the sins of the sons are visited upon the father.

In the meantime, guitarist Bernard Sumner (nee Albrecht), bassist Peter Hook, and drummer Stephen Morris became New Order—playing infrequently and avoiding the press (who were drawn to them by the smell of Romantic Tragedy) while they strove to find an identity without Curtis. Their first single (the moving “Ceremony”/ “In A Lonely Place”) was rightfully acclaimed while showing no great stylistic change, having been unrecorded JD material.

With the release of the album Movement, New Order came into their own. With Morris’s girlfriend Gillian Gilbert on keyboards, they had constructed (the word seems to fit) an album of hypnotic, interlocking sequencer phrases that seemed to encage Sumners’s struggling vocals. Now, another strong album (Power, Corruption And Lies) and several exploratory singles later they are a new band—warmer, a little sleeker, and a lot more confident, looking for the perfect beat and not making any big deal out of it.

That’s my job.

Making my job easier is the fact that they have recently begun to do interviews, which is not something they’ve ever made a habit of. Even now they seem none too keen on the idea, and when I first meet spokesman Hook (he got the short straw, most likely) in the rather oppressive heat of Detroit’s St. Andrew’s Hall, I half expect my opening “Why now” to be countered with one of Power, Corruption And Lies’ pithier lines: “You caught me at a bad time, so why don’t you piss off.”

TURN TO PAGE 64

NEW ORDER

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 36

“Uhhh, I dunno,” is the actual reply, “it seemed like a good time to try it—maybe— and then we’ll decide if it’s the right policy.” Not one to mince words (much less bandy about them), the pony-tailed Hook is cautious but cooperative without exactly getting chatty. In keeping with the band’s apparent unconcern for publicity, interviews— in the New Order Hierarchy—seem to rate no more energy that they would put into, say, videos.

“We’ve never done a video.”

Well, then some band that looks and sounds exactly like New Order has pulled a remarkable fast one on the folks at MTV.

“No, we did one English Top Of The Pops, and our manager’s been sending that out to various people, so the only thing I can presume is that they’re using that. As far as I know.”

Are you at all interested in doing a studio video?

“Uhhh, not personally, no. I’m a bit too busy to get involved with something like that.”

So what are you busy with at the moment—besides the tour?

“Well,” Hook replies, with a gesture that says that’s enough, “the tour...”

Your previous visits here have been short at best. How many have there been?

“This is the fourth time. The first time we came we did Boston, Trenton...I can’t remember the rest. We played as a threepiece.”

That sounds pretty low-key.

“Well, it was, at the time, because it was only three months after Ian died, so we were kind of treading our way, if you will. The idea was to support Factory labelmates A Certain Ratio on their tour of America. A lot of people over here billed it as Joy Division, which didn’t help, especially as ACR had to go on last.” Laughs. “It was a bit tricky.”

Was there ever any question of not continuing on as a three-piece?

“You mean was there any question of stopping? I can’t honestly remember. It seemed perfectly natural for me to carry on, in one way or another.”

I mention that New Order and Joy Division both seemed.to be draped in mystique, which made them appear other-worldly and inaccessible.

“It depends what you mean by ‘mystique.’”

As an example I point to their stark and often foreboding record jackets, and their lack of any information about the group.

“Well, that’s ’cause people are used to all the album covers having... (gestures) essays on them. If most album covers didn’t have a lot of shit on ’em, nobody’d notice ours— nobody’d say we were mysterious. It’s just personally I don’t find the need to express myself on LP covers—it’s just something that’s pretty far down the list, if you like. I’m one of the people that doesn’t like to talk about myself that much... (laughs)... unless it’s in the right company!”

What about the quasi-mythological nonsense (for lack of a better word) that others have attached to the band, legends both with and without any real basis. It’s rare to ever see the band’s perspective on what they do in print.

“You think the band’s perspective is important?”

Well, it would seem like a good way to squash some misconceptions once and for all.

“It doesn’t interest me. It’s much more interesting if people make up their own mind. They’d probably be most upset if I told them what they thought Whs most important was meaningless drivel. I’m quite content to have them labor under any apprehensions or misapprehensions they may have.

“And,” he added, “they can let me do the same.”

Regardless of what the public was thinking about them, the combined effect of Curtis’s suicide and the near-simultaneous release of Closer and “Love Will Tear Us Apart” (voted in New Musical Express’s Reader’s Poll as Best Album and Best Single of 1980, respectively) ensured that they did have everyone’s attention. I ask Hook if he felt an element of sympathy or just plain curiosity in this posthumous popularity.

“I wouldn’t be able to tell you that anyway, would I?” he chuckles. “I mean obviously I’d like to think that the music’s got something to it, and from what I listen to, 1 think it does sound that way. So like the ghoulishness that’s associated with Ian’s suicide or whatever—I mean if the music didn’t shine, it would just disappear anyway. Because the music, in my opinion, is excellent, it stands up by itself.”

This is true. What’s more,whether in their short-lived punk period (as Warsaw, in which they did their earliest recordings) or their polished modern electro-dance state, they have always had an edge to their music that has set them apart. They always seem to almost have some out-of-reach truth within their grasp, and at their best the emotional resonance they give off is nothing short of stunning. And as radical as their change in sound has been, there does seem to be a continuity to it all.

“I’d like to think so. In most of the Joy Division stuff there was a pretty apparent electronic influence. It’s not as if we’ve changed completely—it’s just that we’ve kinda moved the slant around.”

Their more recent material, I note, seems based on looser structures than previous work, of which the best example is the almost majestic “Atmospheres.”

‘“Atmospheres’ was done a long, long time ago—it was done long before Unknown Pleasures...no, it was done just after Unknown Pleasures, it was when we did “Transmission.” It still had an element of being rather punky.

“I know what you mean—it’s like the drums were important but not that important, whereas now it’s just a different style. I mean, ‘Atmospheres’ is a great song—even I think it’s a classic, it’s our best song.”

Do you ever feel the temptation to reach back and do songs like that live?

“Sometimes,” is the reply, “but it wouldn’t be the same. It’s like your first ‘jump’— there’s nothing like the first time you’d play ‘Atmospheres.’ In a way it’d seem a bit hollow to do. It’s like a cover version—it’s not your song ’cause he’s not there.”

Since “he” keeps cropping up here, I mention to Hook that—in retrospect—Ian Curtis’s lyrics seem to be one long cry of anguish or alienation, which gives some of their old material the pallor of a suicide note set to music. Was there ever any sense, I ask, of these being anything more than just lyrics or words—was there ever any sense of how fragile Curtis condition was?

“It’s just like reading a book,” he replies after a moment’s reflection, “you draw your own.. .plot, if you like. I never saw it myself, and I knew him.” Hook gives an uncomfortable shrug.

“That’s life. If I’d have had hindsight then, he probably wouldn’t be dead, would he?”

Steering the conversation to a topic slightly less unpleasant, I ask how he feels about the band’s popularity, and the almost fanatical cultdom that has grown up around New Order.

“I find the popularity thing a bit hard to really relate to—I don’t really understand the things that come with it. It sort of fascinates me—it really does—especially in England. It’s just most disconcerting to be unable to walk around before you play.

“I still don’t consider it to be important. • It’s like if we thought being successful was important, we’d have done a helluva lot of other things a long time ago. We’d be doing a helluva lot of other things now that we don’t do. A lot of people still think we cut off our noses to spite our faces, like we don’t have a record company in America, we’re just distributed by Rough Trade. I don’t understand it all, but it’s nice, because we haven’t had to sell our asses to do it, which is something I wouldn’t do anyway.”

If you could do what you do without anyone knowing who did it, would you take that route instead?

“Uhhhh, I think I probably would. It’s like I was listening to some American actor on the telly who was saying that it’s interesting for about two weeks, having people recognize him, and I can agree with him.” Laughing, “Maybe even less than that! It’s a definite pain in the ass. It’s just a lot of the people you meet seem to be...idiots. It’s unbelievable!”

On the other hand, a lot of people—idiots and otherwise—seem to feel that New Order can do no wrong—that they’re in a class that somehow defies comparison with mere bands. What about the effect this kind of thinking has on New Order?

“We still can’t put out a shit record. I mean every track that we do is very good, I think it’s a great song, every song we play. If it was like Metal Machine Music and thousands of people bought it I might think that way, but so far I’m quite happy. I don’t really understand it—the success thing. All I do is just play. It’s nice that people like it. That’s about all I can say.”

So, in the end, it appears.that New Order are every bit as bemused by their unflagging popularity as anyone else, and perhaps this is all for the best. All things considered, one of their charms is that they always seem to be reaching for something just out of their grasp. Like it or not, I can’t help but feel that if they ever got to the point where the answer^ all came easy for them, they would suddenly become a much less interesting band.

And after all, a little “Confusion” never hurt anybody. ^