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 A DIRECT ORDER
When Joy Division Self-Destructed From The Demise Of Singer Ian Curtis, New Order Formed In Its Place, Becoming One Of The Most Influential Bands In Modern Rock. Just Ask Interpol. Or The Killers. Or The Faint. Better Yet, We Asked New Order Front Man Bernard Sumner, Who Was In Town For Coachella.
INSTINCT: Hey, Bernard! How’re you doing?
BERNARD SUMNER: I’m okay, thank you!
The new album Waiting For The Sirens’ Call seems to have more dance
songs than the last New Order album, Get Ready.
It was a twitchy one, Get Ready, because we’d not made music together for,
like, five years. We were like, We need to make a statement here and show that
the sound’s moved on a little bit. So, we made it pretty guitar-tastic. But then
when we went out and played live, we played the old dance tracks. The way
people responded to them, we felt that was an important side of New Order
that we shouldn’t ignore. The trouble is, it’s hard to write dance music. You’ve
got to invest a lot more time in it, because you’ve got to have the right sounds,
the right beats, the right mix.
Dance music is always changing, and it seems outdated a year later.
That’s right, yeah! And it’s a bit of a pain in the ass if you’re making an album.
It’s like, Shit, that’s a bit 2003 and a half, you know? [Laughs] And also, you’ve
got to have a kind of predictive quality when you’re writing a dance tune, as to
where it’s gonna go. And, unless you DJ or go out to a club every night, it’s a bit
hard to do.
“Jetstream” features Ana Matronic of Scissor Sisters on vocals.
We got a guy called Stuart Price in, who’s in Les Rythmes Digitales and is also
Madonna’s keyboard player. We got him to do some additional keyboards
and to do a mix of it. We said, “Well, we’ve not done a collaboration yet on this
album, and we can hear some female vocals on it.” He suggested Ana. We only
knew of her what we’d heard on the Scissor Sisters album. So we said, “Let’s
try her and see what she sounds like.” When I heard it, I was really blown away
with what she’d done. I think her voice blended really well on it.
Didn’t you and Peter Hook do a song for Gwen Stefani?
We guested on a track on her album. She wanted us to write her a track, but
we got the request the day we went in to start recording our album. So, the
timing was just really bad. Obviously, if we got a track that we felt was really
good, we’d have to put it on our album. And we didn’t want to give her a castoff
track. So, she sent over this track and asked, you know, “Would Hooky play
some bass on it,” and would I sing on it? So, that’s what happened. But really, in
an ideal situation, we would have liked to have written her a track.
Going back, you guys really deserve
credit for taking electronic dance
music from the gay clubs and
making it universally accepted. Did
you ever get labeled as being a “gay”
band early on?
Possibly, by some people. It’s true; it
did come out of the gay clubs. I’ve got
a friend who’s gay, and he ran a lot of
gay clubs in London. He ran Heaven
When Joy Division self-destructed from the demise
of singer Ian Curtis, New Order formed in its place,
becoming one of the most infl uential bands in modern
rock. Just ask Interpol. Or The Killers. Or The Faint.
Better yet, we asked New Order front man
Bernard Sumner, in town for Coachella
and did some other nights. And amongst all the clubs, he’d occasionally put
us on the guest list at his club—with a lot of free drink tickets! We’d never seen
anything like it. You know [as Joy Division], we were just four northern lads
from Manchester. This club was just playing the best music, and the sound
system in there was great. We heard this music and thought, Gosh, we could
do a track like this with our electronic instruments, and what’s more, play those
tracks live—no one’s doing it live! So I used to work with this guy who was a
scientist. I’d take in my synthesizers and drum machines and sequencers, and
say that I wanted this machine to talk to this machine and talk to this machine,
all in sync with each other. He’d design me a little circuit, and I’d go away and
build the circuit. Because of that, we were kind of ahead of the game. I mean,
there were people like Giorgio Moroder making dance tracks like that, but the
equipment that he used—we couldn’t possibly afford that. That music started
in gay clubs, but pretty soon every club was playing it.
What are your thoughts on the comparison between Interpol
and Joy Division?
I’ve not heard that fi rst album. I’ve only heard one track by Interpol, and I
didn’t think that particular track sounded like Joy Division. But, so many
journalists have said to me the same thing. To be fair, when we started out, we
were really infl uenced by Iggy Pop—The Idiot and Lust For Life —and Bowie’s
Low and Heroes. We’d play ‘em all the time, bring ’em into the rehearsal room.
You know, I mean, we were only 21! That’s the kind of music we wanted to
make. And every band—especially because you’re self-taught as a musician—
you need a starting point, really, somewhere to start from. But, I’m glad
that groups reference us. It’s very fl attering, because it means you left some
sort of mark.
Would Joy Division still be around if Ian were here today?
Well, no, I don’t think they would. I don’t think Ian was well enough to go on.
He had epilepsy really, really bad. I don’t think he could have carried on for
much longer—a couple of years, at most, if he’d have lived. I think he would
have stopped working as a musician and started writing books. He would have
become a writer, defi nitely. So, without Ian [in the band], I guess we’d have
been in the same situation, really.
Is it safe to assume New Order would have happened anyway?
Yeah, I think it is. But, I think in a bizarre way, it would have been more
diffi cult—because he was still around. Do you know what I mean?
Definitely. He was such an integral part of your group and your lives.
Yeah. He was. Yeah. —ROBBIE DAW
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