new order, reordered

Despite having turned 40, Bernard Sumner still looks bafflingly boyish. Kitted-out in a close-cropped haircut, baggy T-shirt, jeans and chunky-soled canvas sneakers, he bounds into the bar of Manchester’s Midland Hotel with surprising enthusiasm. Surprising because, as the frontman with New Order, he was always renowned as the most reticent of interviewees. As he smiles and shakes hands, he has the air of a changed man about him. His partner in Electronic, ex-Smiths guitarist Johnny Marr— who at just 32 looks the older of the two — arrives early to Sumner’s late. Immediately he lives up to his reputation and is soon settling down to relaxed chit-chat.

Together, Sumner and Marr represent a fusion of two of the most influential and creative bands of the 1980s. As the musical foil to the lyrical musings of Morrissey, Marr created some of the most memorable guitar songs of that period. Since parting company in 1987, Morrissey has failed to scale the same artistic heights. And, many would argue, so has Marr. Sumner, meanwhile, spent most of the ’80s and part of the ’90s fronting New Order, a band which — unlike The Smiths, who under the influence of Morrissey took a defiant stance against the dancefloor — embraced the influences of hip-hop, New York’s gay club scene and house music, revealing the exhilerating possibilities of an open-minded approach to pop’s eclectic pantheon. New Order’s artistic and commercial peak came in 1989 with the album Technique, their first number one. At the close of that same year, Electronic released their first single, ‘Getting Away With It’, a collaboration with Neil Tennant of the Pet Shop Boys.

“You’ve got to remember I became a lyricist by default when Ian died. Before that point I never had a single dream or desire to become a singer or lyricist. Never!” Bernard Sumner

Unlike Marr, whose split from The Smiths was clearcut, unequivocal and very public, the situation with New Order — in keeping with much of the band’s career — remains uncertain, open-ended, unresolved. A recent interview with Sumner saw The Independent On Sunday describe the band as ‘now defunct’. Sumner offers a subtle variation on that statement. “The truth is that I didn’t say New Order were defunct, the journalist has made his own mind up about that. The situation with New Order is that we don’t have any plans to record together or play any gigs together, but we haven’t broken up. So,” laughs the singer mischievously, “make your own mind up about it.”

Marr, always eager to add some clarity to the cryptic mutterings of Sumner, adds his own slant on the lack of closure to the New Order story: “A band splitting up is a great thing to write about and a great thing to read about, but it’s not necessarily a great thing to be involved with. Events get carried away with themselves and before you know it there’s a lot of bad feeling and a lot of that is caused by outside influences.”

Different angles, different explanations, but the conclusion is the same: the past weighs heavily on the shoulders of both Marr and Sumner. They have a lot to live down, a lot to live up to. In the early days of Electronic they attempted to purge their music of anything that smacked of their previous exploits. That was before they became at ease with their history. Both, after all, are well versed in dealing with their very public pasts. When The Smiths dissolved, Marr’s response was to dive into a number of collaborations — with The Pretenders, The The, Kirsty MacColl and many others — gaining a reputation as a guitar for hire. “The period between The Smiths and Electronic was a matter of being phoned up by people who I really admire and being asked to make records,” he explains.

This time it’s Sumner’s turn to dig beneath the surface of his partner’s words. “After you’ve been in the confines of a band for a while like both of us had, you want to break the mould. As soon as you get out you do everything you couldn’t do within the group. So Johnny played with a load of different people because he couldn’t with The Smiths. I did a lot of remix work. It’s like with the first Electronic album [released June ‘91]: we put our photographs on the album cover because you couldn’t do that [before]. It was a phase we went through. But now Electronic is the main thing for us.”

For Sumner, of course, his whole career as a singer has been a case of shaking off and living up to the past. When Joy Division singer Ian Curtis committed suicide in May 1980 it left Sumner, the band’s guitarist, not only personally distraught but professionally cast adrift. After deciding to continue as a band and adopting the name New Order on the suggestion of their manager Rob Gretton, someone had to take over as singer. Sumner, a man who maintains that he had never written so much as a childhood poem beforehand, got the short straw: “You’ve got to remember I became a lyricist by default when Ian died. Before that point I never had a single dream or desire to become a singer or lyricist. Never!”

“The two of us expect a lot of ourselves and we just cut out the outside world while we were making the album.” Johnny Marr

Sumner’s lyrics have always been a matter of much scrunity, whether it be to ridicule them — lines like, “I would like a place I can call my own / Have a conversation on the telephone” from New Order’s sublime ‘Regret’ have provoked scorn from detractors — or to celebrate their quite touching ambiquity or autobiographical honesty. But Sumner maintains a quite workmanlike approach to the craft — lyrics, he explains, are written after hearing the finished music, and fitted in accordingly.

“Generally I don’t think, ‘Right, I’m going to write a song about this’. I listen to the music and I’ll see what it suggests to me. And lines or pictures — I’ve always thought in pictures — will pop into my head. If it’s a picture I’ll describe the scene.” Sumner is surprisingly self-critical of the results of this process. “Some of the changes in direction in my lyrics aren’t always welcome, sometimes I get it wrong,” he says, “but I write a lot of lyrics through a kind of subconcious flow.”

Still, despite this playing down of his lyrics — he says he finds it difficult to talk about them — last year Sumner was picked as a songwriter worthy of study by the psychologist Oliver James. In a BBC 2 programme, James sought to assess how the anti-depressant wonder drug Prozac affected creativity. Sumner was one of several participants, from artists to writers, who were put under the spotlight. Consequently the BBC cameras showed Sumner both at work in the studio putting together the new Electronic album as well as relaxing with his girlfriend and family.

“This quy from the BBC came to me and said, ‘Would you like to take Prozac? We’re doing an investigation into its effects on creativity.’ His theory was based on the idea that creative people were creative because basically they were fucked-up in some way, and he wanted to test out his theory, ie, you get all these people who are somehow fucked-up — and he obviously thought I was fucked-up in some way — you give them Prozac, they stop being fucked-up, does their creativity dry up? Which is very interesting.”

And? “I’m not fucked-up, I’m like everybody else; I have my up days and my down days. I found taking Prozac very interesting ‘cos it filtered out all the lows. I didn’t find that it affected my creativity in any way at all.”

Both Sumner and Marr were unhappy with the programme’s conclusions — Sumner was described as being depressed and suffering from ‘hyper-critical voices’. But the subject of Prozac does have relevance to the new Sumner, a man for many years renowned for his passionate embracing of Manchester’s nightlife and drug culture. These days he says he goes jogging every day — “It sharpens the mind” — and is cutting down on alcohol after stomach problems aggravated by an excessive intake of Pernod and orange (although he adds with a smile that he’s cured the ailment, so he can now get back on the Pernods). These lifestyle changes, partly the actions of a man coming to terms with his age, have a direct relevance to how Electronic make their music.

“It used to be a party ethic, now it’s a work ethic. We’d stay up all night and party and that’s how we’d come up with songs,” explains Sumner, describing a way of working which stretches back to both New Order and Joy Division. “But we’ve done that, and this is more challenging and more rewarding because you’re in the driving seat!”

Adds Marr: “It wasn’t that we weren’t getting results that way, we just wanted to do something different.”

In the past, most of Sumner’s lyrics were written under the influence of one stimulant or another, aiding the “flow of conciousness”. So how does the all-new Mr (nearly) Clean write his lyrics? “What do I do now? I sit in a fuckin’ room and beat my brains out,” laughs Sumner.

It doesn’t show. The new Electronic album, Raise The Pressure, is a finely-polished, well-balanced pop album, which, despite both Marr and Sumner’s claims to the contrary, has clear referance points to their work with The Smiths and New Order, particularly the latter. Their obvious desire to break from their musical pasts is wholly understandable, yet their inability to do so is not altogether a cause for concern. Raise The Pressure may bear some of the hallmarks of their ‘80s incarnations, but it sounds well-placed for the current pop climate, with its sparkling combination of guitar-pop and electronic house-inflected dance. Two years in the making, it is quite obviously a record constructed by perfectionists.

“All Bernard and I have cared about over the last few years is Electronic and our families, and the balance has shifted towards Electronic,” explains Marr. “That’s been our life. The two of us expect a lot of ourselves and we just cut out the outside world while we were making the album.”

“Ian Curtis turned me on to Kraftwerk in 1977 and when he did I thought it was the most fantastic thing I’d ever heard.” Bernard Sumner

Recorded in a studio in Johnny Marr’s old house — he moved his family into a new house because “it was easier to move my family out than to move Electronic. It just really suited us” — Marr explains that “we kind of designed the record.” Part of that design involved bringing ex-Kraftwerk stalwart Karl Bartos into the creative equation. He co-wrote some of the tracks and assisted with production. For Sumner, working with Bartos was another direct link to his musical past, taking him back nearly 20 years. “Ian Curtis turned me on to Kraftwerk and when he did I thought it was the most fantastic thing I’d ever heard. You’ve got to remember it was 1977 and everything was punk. Ian played me Trans Europe Express, which was like the total opposite, black and white.”

On the few occasions when Marr and Sumner emerged from the self-imposed isolation of their home-studio, they took Bartos on visits to ‘Flesh’ at the Haçienda, the pinnacle of gay clubbing in Manchester — “Which was interesting,” smiles Marr. All part of the Electronic masterplan, a plan which saw them whittle down 40 pieces of music to 16 songs, 13 of which appear on the new LP. The managing director of their label Parlophone claimed recently: “They don’t need our help to make an album, although we had to put a marker down otherwise they might have gone on forever refining it.” Fair comment?

“That’s bullshit that,” smirks Sumner. “No-one put down any markers.” “What, someone from the record company said that?” laughs Marr incredulously. “Neither of us have ever dealt with A&R people in our lives,” asserts Sumner.

The pair say they have total freedom to get on with making records as and when they want. And despite moving from the fiercely Mancunian and fiercely independent Factory for their first album to the London-based major Parlophone (part of EMI) for their second, nothing much has changed. “For us the situation is no different than when we were on Factory,” says Sumner. “During the whole two years we never saw anyone from Parlophone. In fact, I don’t think we’re actually signed to any record label. We’re signed to our production company which then licences product to Parlophone.”

“‘We finance everything ourselves because we want to keep control of everything,” adds Marr. “We take care of the sleeves, we just deliver the whole thing to Parlophone and they sell it.”

This desire to maintain their independence is closely guarded, and is reflected in their continued strong links to Manchester, despite both having good reason to have broken their connections with the city. Originally from Ardwick, Marr saw his childhood haunts demolished to make way for new developments when his family was shipped off to Wythenshawe. Sumner’s Salford childhood was disrupted in a similar way, and the dislocation felt following the flattening of the terraced street he grew up in still surfaces today, the song ‘Second Nature’ on the new LP being an autobiographical appraisal of that early experience.

“We’ve got an office in London [they are managed by Marcus Russell, Marr’s manager since 1988 and now also looking after Oasis] but we hardly ever go there,” says Marr. After touring the world with both of their previous bands, it seems that Electronic are happiest when back home. And as with New Order, whose unconventional approach to promotion surely stopped them becoming U2-style huge, it could prove an obstacle to Electronic’s progress. Despite claiming that they will be playing live to promote Raise The Pressure, long tours are out of the question, says Sumner. “I don’t want to do 28 dates in America and end up in Kansas on a Sunday night, pulling my hair out and wanting to be in Manchester.”

Cash 4 Questions with Barney By David Quantick

© 1999 Q

He is half of Electronic, a quarter of New Order and isn’t he a naughty fellow! You blamed him for Keith Allen and asked him about as many drugs as there are drugs. In return, he denied ever having "touched himself". Meet the people Bernard Sumner.

Bernard Sumner is looking rather well. In rude health, even. This may be because Bernard Sumner has stopped eating pasties, but it’s more likely because the night before Manchester United won a football match against some Germans.

In a West London hotel, the only non-purple star called Barney lounges on a well-stuffed sofa nursing a half-bottle of Chardonnay. In spite of his numerous 43 years -20 of them spent as a member of Joy Division, New Order, Electronic, and, if you want to be pedantic, Englandneworder, the short-lived rock/footie conglomeration that brought you the rapping of John Barnes - he appears younger than he has any right to.

Moreover - bucking his Mr Miseryguts reputation - Summer appears delighted to answer even the readers’ ugliest questions. Some of his replies maybe tongue-in-cheek, and some are, frankly, lies. He may, charmingly, have faith in the beauty of moustaches, he may be eerily loath to reveal the secret of his morphing surname, but the former Bernard Dicken is proving an amenable chap. Just don’t call him Warsaw, that’s all.

Q opens the ceremonial geography project folder of questions, Sumner sips his Chardonnay and off we go.

Words David Quantick

Is True Faith about ecstasy? Trisha Farmer. Hull No. It’s about drug dependency. I don’t touch smack but when I wrote that song I tried to imagine what it’s like to be a smackhead and nothing else matters to you except that day’s hit. There’s a line in the song, “When I was a very young boy, very young boys played with me/Now we’ve grown up together, they’re afraid of what they see." The original was, “Now they’re taking drugs with me,” but Stephen Hague our producer made us change it because he said it wouldn’t be a hit if we kept that line in. He was right. It was a very big hit, but we chickened out. I change it back sometimes live.

Given your chemically excessive past, what is your parental advice to your kids concerning drugs? Anthony Clifford, Taunton Don’t go anywhere near heroin or crack or acid. Taking ecstasy’s like Russian roulette, except you've got 99,000 bullets that are empty and one that’s loaded. I don’t know anyone who’s taken cocaine where it hasn’t become a friend for life. Although you can say the same for cigarettes. I don’t smoke marijuana, but if you’re going to take a drug, that’s the best one. It’s not as bad for you as alcohol and it makes people mellow and friendly, Unfortunately, it just makes me go to sleep.

Do you still have a receiver in your head? Noel Edmunds, via e-mail I think I know what this is about. I think I came out in an interview with some bullshit answer to a question about howl wrote music. I said that I had a television aerial in my head and it picked ideas out ofthe ether and I used to work at night when everyone was asleep. Maybe I did write in a different way in those days. I think now I’ve not got that many problems in my life, I want to write songs about the ones I have got, rather than that kind of... dreamscape. I used to be pretty sort of dreamy and go off on one. I still can do it. I sat in my room for twelve hours just not watching television or anything, just thinking.

What made you piss yourself on Every Little Counts? Jamie BIundell, Rednal The words were so bad, basically (“I think you are a pig/You should be in a zoo”). We kept it on because it was better than the original lyric.

What’s your excuse for having a moustache when you were Warsaw? Ursula Stevenson, Reading It’s a popular misconception that we were called Warsaw. We were never called Warsaw. At our first concert we changed it to Joy Division (He is reminded of the question) The moustach? I’d forgotten all about that. In those days moustaches were really big. The thing I was embarrassed about was it was a bumlluff moustache that didn’t quite join in the middle. Bit like Noel’s eyebrows. No, the opposite of Noel’s eyebrows. It looked like I had Noel’s eyebrows on my lip. I’ll stand by my moustache. If you look at most pop stars, you’ll find some kind of styling error in their past history.

When joy Division started, why did you keep changing your surname, from Dicken to Albrecht to Sumner? Dove Clarke, Salford Family reasons. I’d rather not go into it.

Ian Curtis, 1999 - what would he be up to? Matt Palmer, Worcestershire It’s hard to imagine because Ian was very ill. I can’t imagine him in the ‘90s. He once threatened to go off and leave the group and buy a corner shop in Bournemouth. It was an off-licence that sold books as well, I think that was his idea. These mad, completely illogical thoughts used to come into his head from time to time. So maybe eventually he would have done that. I think he would have been a writer, because he was always reading books and he was always writing anyway. Or maybe he would have retired a millionaire by now, who knows? Silly sod.

Is it true that Touched By The Hand Of God is about whacking off Aidan Vaziri, San Francisco (Long pause followed by wide-eyed response) What’s whacking off mean? (It is explained to him) I would not write a song about masturbating, No, it’s not, most definitely isn’t. And I've never done that in my life ever. Ever. Do people really do that? Masturbate? Do you masturbate? I’ve never done it ever in my life. I’ve certainly never written a song about it. (Confidentially) It’s about bestiality, actually.

Do you regret doing that Prozac documentary? Wasn’t it a rather strange thing to do? Damon Williams, Bromley I regret it but not bitterly. It was interesting tak-ing Prozac because I don’t really suffer from depression but I can be a melancholic sort of person. It was interesting being a different person for seven months. It really agreed with me. I still think it’s a very, very interesting drug. I found when I took it if I had problems, then instead of me crumbling before my problems, I would deal with the problems.

Quote a lyric from the second Electronic album that isn’t from the single, Forbidden City. William Haas, Winchester Um... I honestly can’t be bothered. You tell me. What a trainspotter. All right, here’s one: “Misguided youth/You mix some juice with alcohol." It’s from Liquor.

Finish the sentence, in less than 10 words, “Manchester is great because..." Carl Hedges, Liverpool We’ve got the best football team, we've got the best bands, we’ve got the best gang violence scene anywhere in Britain, It’s always sunny there, it never rains...

You and Michael jackson are the only pop stars who whoop. Discuss. Heather Thompson, London NB Ha ha ha! Well, I get excited. Whoopings a primeval expression of enjoyment, and sometimes if I’m getting into a vocal take, I just get into it. If I’m at a club, I like whistling... I was at a club in Bath and this girl got a bouncer over to stop me (demonstrates incredibly powerful, piercing whistle). I don’t get excited very often but when I do, I get really excited. I’ll stop doing it now, I’ll get self-conscious about it.

When did you last touch Pernod? Steve Heath, Keighley Um... Well, Pernod’s been replaced by Absinthe. There’s this whole ritual where you bake some up on a spoon, a bit like freebasing. That stuff’s like rocket fuel, I had a couple of nights with Alex James out of Blur, a couple of disastrous nights drinking Absinthe, and I don’t even remember drinking it.

Have you ever been down to your last dollar and how did you cope? Adrian Gibbon, Bassetbury Balloons Party Shop, High Wycombe It was on New Order’s first US tour and I didn’t really get the idea of tipping - I’m a bit of a tight bastard and I find the whole idea of tipping abhorrent. We bought a beer in a club and it was 75 cents, So I thought, well, you’ve got to tip here or they'll go fucking mad. I only had a dollar, I didn’t have any more money so I him the dollar and said, Keep the change, and he went, "You fucking Manc bastard," and threw the 25 cents at me.

Do you own a Sainsbury’s reward card? Jill Cash, Amersham I do, but it’s mysteriously gone missing. I probably left it in the toilet somewhere. I keep losing odd credit cards,,, It didn’t have many points on it because I cashed it. I have a special platinum reward card. You get more points than other people, being a celebrity and that.

I saw you purchase a tuna sandwich from Spinks in Wilmslow. It was a cold day - why didn’t you buy a pasty like me? Were you trying to be hard? Andy Parr, Maclesfield Ha ha ha! I’m trying to lose a bit of weight, that’s why! Tuna's much more healthy for you and I'm trying to go on a health kick. I can’t eat pasties any more without affecting my, ah, already fragile waistline.

What’s the most unusual place you’ve had sex? Polly Winterton, London W12 I couldn’t possibly tell you without offending someone. Um... ah... I might get in trouble. I'm trying to think of which particular unusual place out of all the unusual places...

Don’t you feel ashamed for having started Keith Allen out in his pop career? K Allen (thankfully no relation), Bromley Heh heh heh! K. Allen? Um... em... I think Keith’s made a wonderful contribution to pop. I think the Fat Les records are some of the all-time classic songs that’ll go down as... ‘90's classics. I’m very proud of Keith’s contribution to pop music and I’m sure that every time there’s some kind of football event to cash in on... er! help to promote I’m sure Keith’ll be there with one of his wonderful renditions.

What’s your best Shaun Ryder story? Jane Smith, Liverpool Which one? I’ve got about three. He went out in his car to score and he crashed into a vicar in a Lada. He had 500 quid in his pocket and he said to the vicar, "Look, mate, your car’s not worth 500 quid, I’ll give you this ifyou don’t call the cops." He was a vicar and he wouldn’t take it, so Shaun said, "Well, fuck off then," and got in his car and drove off. About ten minutes later, the police knocked at his house and he said, how did you find me so quick? And they just showed him his number plate. He’d left his number plate at the scene of the crime. What else? There’s a few disgusting ones...

Did you really do a version of Blue Monday for a Sunkist ad? If so, how did the lyrics go? Peter Rees, Shrewsbury (Recites) "How does it feel/When you’re drinking in the sun? Something something something/Sunkist is the one/How does it feel/When you’re drinking in the sun/All you’ve got to believe/Is Sunkist is the one" I didn’t write them. We got offered £100,000 to do it. I kept laughing when I was singing it, so Hooky (Peter Hook, New Order bassist) got a piece card and wrote “£100,000” on it, held it up, and I sang it perfectly. But then Rob Gretton (New Order’s late manager) turned up and put the kibosh on it. There’s a remix of Blue Monday by Steve “Silk” Hurley and it’s got the Sunkist lyrics on it.

People who bought the Electronic album probably see it as a substitute for New Order, and primarily use Electronic to fill the gap until the next New Order album What do you think of that? Nicklas Mandahl Enevaldsen, Denmark Well... very pleased. Fucking hell, what do you expect me to say? Um... Thank God not everybody’s like that.

Former Factory Records boss Tony Wilson comes to you with a sure-fire business proposition that “just can’t fail”. What do you do? Kevin Leslie, Oldham Ha ha! Ha ha! Piss myself laughing. In fact that’s what happened when we were recording Every Little Counts... Tony came in with a sure-fire business proposition.

Does Steven (Morris, New Order drummer) let you play with his tank? Lee Hollows, Birmingham I’ve sat in his tank, yeah. Steve’s got a tank that he has permanently pointed at my house. Me and Steve play with it and we’re in training for Kosovo. When the troops go in, we hope be in the vanguard of operations. We’re keeping the gun well-oiled and we’re going to shove it right up Slobodan’s arse. In fact, someone up the road from Steve’s had the same tank, and they’ve got a slight design fault which means that you’re driving along and swerve, it’s uncontrollable, and this guy’s tank did this and decapitated his wife. It was because it was on the news and there was a picture of Steve’s tank - we were “Steve’s crashed the tank and Gillian’s been decapitated”. So I don’t think I’ll be going in it again.

What’s your favorite memory of Rob Gretton? Ruth Quest, Gloucester (long pause) um.,. Rob used to say to everyone, “What are you doing?” nothing, Rob, nothing: “What should you be doing? Skin up!” I’ll remember those words.