Chapter and Verse - New Order, Joy Division and Me

by Bernard Sumner

  Feeling slightly nervous, I sent the song over to Iggy to see what he thought. He came back pretty much immediately and said, ‘Sure, I can sing that, Ber-nard; the key’s kinda sweet.’ I thought, Yeah, it is fucking sweet because I wrote it with you in mind! I was thrilled that he’d agreed to do it. In addition, on the night, Philip would join us on stage too to play the piano on it: an amazing experience that drew together different aspects of and influences from my musical past.

  The rehearsals were almost as magical as the concert itself. Finding myself sitting on a sofa next to Iggy Pop watching Patti Smith singing a beautiful version of ‘Perfect Day’ while Philip Glass looked on was pretty mind-blowing, it must be said. Rehearsal time was at a premium, however. When we – Tom, Phil and me – first arrived, Philip had come over and said, ‘We’ve given you guys four songs, as you’ve travelled by far the furthest of any of the acts,’ which was very fair of him, but we only had twenty minutes’ rehearsal. We’d rehearsed ‘Saint Anthony’ at my house with Mike and an English quartet before we left and it had sounded great but, even so, rehearsal time was pretty tight. We had another rehearsal at Carnegie Hall itself, before which we received a call to say we had seven minutes – enough for about a song and a half – which sounded pretty daunting. As it turned out, we did have a decent rehearsal and, when the time came for the show itself, everything went like clockwork.

  We did ‘Saint Anthony’ first, then Iggy came on to sing ‘California Grass’. When he walked out, it was like having a sun joining us on stage, this huge smile and warm presence, a jerking, twisting dynamo of enormous, room-filling charisma – and of course that voice, sounding like it was coming up from the gates of hell. I think he actually sang an octave lower than the one I couldn’t reach: it was like his voice was coming from under the ground.

  We finished up where we came in at the start of this chapter, with him joining us on ‘Transmission’ and ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’. There are some moments in life when everything seems joyfully complete and you look around and think, I could die right now and that would be just fine. This was one of them.

  But that would have brought the whole story to an end, when the story is far from over. There’s still much to be done, and New Order continues to go from strength to strength: we’re playing concerts in parts of the world we’ve never explored before, our live reputation just keeps on getting better and the invitations for gigs and festivals continue to roll in. I think we’re a better live band now than we’ve ever been. Our live set-up is technically fantastic, with visuals playing on a screen behind us, and our set list is a really good mix of the hits people want to hear, a few tracks that people wouldn’t necessarily expect us to play live and reinventions of some of the standards in order to keep things fresh.

  My favourite song to play live is ‘Temptation’. It’s one of New Order’s oldest songs, dating back to 1981, yet over the years it’s evolved and developed on stage into the stomping, thunderous nine-minute behemoth we play today as the climax of our live set.

  We recorded it in London at a studio near the Post Office Tower on a day when it was snowing heavily. While I was recording the vocal Rob snuck into the studio and stuck a snowball down the back of my shirt. You can hear that on the long version of the song: all the whooping and shouting is the result of Rob’s handful of snow going down my back, which is a wonderful memory to hear on the record but, even so, I think ‘Temptation’ is a much more powerful song live than it ever could be in the studio. It’s neither our most famous song nor our most commercially successful, yet it draws people in and has become the pinnacle of the entire set. There’s something about the repetition and the emotion it involves, the simplicity of the structure and the words that make ‘Temptation’ a very spiritual song for me. I don’t think I can explain why, there’s just a tangible sense when I’m singing it that makes it feel to me like a prayer. It’s transcendent, exultant and seems to draw the crowd and the band together like no other song. ‘Temptation’ is one song that I never, ever tire of playing because of that, and also because it unfolds a little like a film; there are shifting scenes within the song that carry the crowd with them.

  I love playing ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’, too. In fact, I can’t think of a song that I don’t like playing live, even ones I’ve played hundreds of times. We mix the set up and throw in a few unexpected songs from left field, but obviously there are people coming to a New Order gig expecting and wanting to hear certain songs and we have to play them or people will be disappointed. I conducted a phone interview with a Peruvian journalist recently with the promoter also on the line acting as interpreter. The journalist asked something about ‘Blue Monday’ but it was a bad line and when I asked the promoter to repeat it he replied, ‘He said that if you don’t play “Blue Monday” in Lima they’ll lynch you.’

  As I write, we’re working on new material and the mood in the camp is buoyant. New Order continues to evolve. First Phil a decade ago and, most recently, Tom have come in and are both great presences on and off the stage. Tom has filled a difficult position in the New Order narrative and he’s making a great contribution to the live shows – the fans have really taken to him too – which I hope will continue in the recording studio. In addition, Gillian’s keyboard playing has progressed greatly since we began playing live again; she’s just getting better and better. I think she’s become much more confident in herself as a live performer since her sabbatical and grows in stature with each tour.

  The cast is in place, the mix is right, the chemistry is right. Playing live has been a real pleasure since we did those two gigs for Michael in 2011, and I can honestly say this has been the most enjoyable period in which to be a member of New Order.

  Away from the group, I’m in a good place too. I’m happy, lucky and content and, as a band, we’ve found a sensible balance between touring and life at home. I’m also fortunate to have a particular interest away from music which this balance allows me to pursue. I find the sea very calming and love the way it appears to be alive. I remember clearly the first time I ever saw the sea, on holiday in Rhyl one summer when I was a very young child. I was running up a sand dune, wondering what was on the other side, reached the top and found myself looking down at this vast expanse of water that stretched all the way to the horizon. I was smitten. My life had been defined by narrow boundaries and the streets of Lower Broughton. Yet, here, I felt as if the shackles were being cast off, and the uninterrupted horizon made it feel as if I could see for ever. As the sunlight sparkled on the surface in millions of ever-shifting shards I felt an immediate kinship that has stayed with me to this day. I even remember standing there with this vast, rippling, twinkling expanse in front of me and saying out loud to myself, ‘My sea!’

  When I take time away from music I like to have something to occupy my mind, something that doesn’t involve playing or programming or writing lyrics, something that allows that part of my brain to rest and recharge. I find being on a boat perfect in that respect: it’s a million miles from studios, dressing rooms and being on stage in front of all those people, it keeps my brain and my hands occupied and it’s something I love doing very much. When sailing, you harness nature – the wind, the tides and the currents – to take you from place to place. You have to respect the weather and the sea: you’re in their realm, right at the heart of nature, and they’re completely in charge. I enjoy the planning, the navigating, the course-plotting and the monitoring of weather charts, but most of all I enjoy sitting at night on my boat beneath a clear sky untainted by light pollution, lying on my back, perhaps with a little drink in my hand, listening to some music or the faint ripple of the waves against the hull, looking up and seeing this vast canopy of thousands and thousands of stars.

  I’ve sailed frequently along the west coast of Scotland, which when the weather is in your favour is a stunning and wild place to sail. I once sailed from the small island of Canna, south-west of the Isle of Skye, to Barra in the Western Isles
, and we had to leave early. My son Dylan had begrudgingly agreed to get up and help me raise the anchor but, after that, he was ‘going back to bed’. This left me sailing the 47-foot yacht on my own while the wind was blowing up.

  About an hour later we reached the western tip of the island and, with everyone else down below still asleep, there was a sudden almighty double crunch from below, as if I’d hit a rock. I looked around me, but the sea was rough and I couldn’t see anything. I checked my charts and there didn’t seem to be anything on the sea bed that would present a problem. I pulled the boards up to look down into the hull and they were dry. I figured that if I went back to Canna there was nothing there – no facilities, no divers to inspect the hull – so I called the coastguard on the radio, told him what had happened and he confirmed that there were no rocks or wrecks in my position. I decided to continue to Barra, pulling the boards up every ten minutes to make sure we weren’t taking on water, and the coastguard asked me to radio him again when I approached the island, which was now about thirty miles away. Everyone was up by now and I must admit it was a little disconcerting, but we took on no water and things seemed fine.

  I called the coastguard again as we approached Barra, and he said that another sailor had contacted him to say he’d passed through the area where we’d had our collision and seen several sharks close to the surface. When we moored I found a diver, asked him to go down and check the hull and, sure enough, there was the imprint of a large shark with gill marks in the slime on the bottom. It was probably a basking shark, which can grow up to thirty feet in length and weigh up to four tons. The boat was OK, but I needed a wee dram after that particular trip. For one thing, I’ve met enough sharks in the music business over the years: I didn’t need them turning up under my boat.

  I sailed across the Atlantic a couple of years ago, a journey of three thousand miles down the coast of Africa and then west across the Atlantic to the Caribbean. It was incredible. It took us three weeks and was like being on another planet the entire time we were out of sight of land. When you’re that far out at sea and there’s nothing around you in every direction but the horizon, it’s an extraordinary feeling, one that helps you see your own life from a distance and gain a sense of what it means, as well as giving you an appreciation of just how huge the world really is.

  I’m lucky enough to have seen a good deal of that world. I’ve travelled to many continents and seen many fantastic places and met countless amazing people, most of whom have been fans of the bands I’ve played in and the music I’ve made. Maybe all bands think this way, but I think New Order fans are special. They feel a spiritual connection to the band or, more specifically, to the music we make. Many of them have grown up with the music of New Order: I often hear the phrase, ‘Your music has been the soundtrack to my life.’ Well, it’s been the soundtrack to my life too. It’s helped to define me as much as it’s helped to define you. If you’re feeling down, music can be a great healer, and if you’re feeling up it helps to keep you there. The best music will form a tangible bond with the listener, conveying the emotions felt by the composer that compelled them to write it in the first place. A piece of music is a composer speaking straight to you, from their heart to yours, and it’s a fabulous, vital thing. I have a real sense of how that has happened for our fans, because it’s happened to me too with the music I love.

  New Order fans range across a whole spectrum of demographics. Every gig is different. We played T in the Park in Scotland a year or so ago, and it was like playing to an army that was about to storm a citadel. Our shows today can range from seeing loads of teenage girls at the front to an older crowd of rock fans or more of a dance crowd: because our music encompasses different styles, it has a wide appeal, which earns us a wide and varied following.

  It’s a dog-dead cliché but, without the audience being so passionate about our music, I wouldn’t be sitting here writing this book now. I think I can speak for the whole band here in saying how incredibly grateful we are for the loyalty our fans have shown us over the years we’ve been together. It’s truly touching.

  Things are better than they have been for a very long time and I have to say I enjoy the whole experience much more now I realize that the only thing to fear about being on stage is falling off it. I’m enjoying my life and my work more than ever before. I’m looking after myself better, I’ve given up getting fucked up all the time and, as Jimmy Cliff sang, I can see clearly now the rain has gone.

  Shit does happen in life, but you can get over it. Don’t let it defeat you.

  And, with that, I think we’ll leave my story there.

  With my mother, Jimmy and grandmother on a beach in North Wales, some time in the 1960s.

  My first boat. Actually I still wear that exact same outfit for sailing.

  Donkey riding with my grandfather. ‘Keep still and don’t complain.’

  On holiday with my grandmother.

  Happy days in Alfred Street.

  On the beach in Nassau with my son James.

  Lower Broughton. Amazing to think there was once a busy, thriving, happy community here. (Adventure playground on the left.)

  The end of Alfred Street today. Urban regeneration, eh?

  Joy Division, with Mark Reeder (seated, in suit) and some extraordinary wallpaper in Berlin. January 1st 1980, Kant Kino.

  Rehearsing at TJ Davidson’s.

  Ian in Berlin.

  Rob Gretton, always head and shoulders above the rest.

  Steve, in camera.

  Talk of the devil.

  Me and Hooky, clearly enjoying ourselves.

  Rob feels the weight of responsibility. (Can’t get this bloody shirt off!)

  Gillian in Ibiza.

  You know you’ve made it when you share a billing with the Prince Albert Angling Society.

  The Haçienda. A club, a legend, a money pit and, for a while, a way of life.

  Madonna’s first UK appearance, at the Haçienda in 1984. Check out the crowd – Mancunians don’t impress easily.

  Keith Allen and John Barnes singing for England.

  My original choice of outfit for the ‘World In Motion’ video. Can’t believe it was vetoed.

  Tony Wilson and Martin Hannett in the studio, with Alan Erasmus (rear, left).

  Arthur Baker: genius, legend and friend.

  Rob towards the end of his unfairly short life.

  Our one-time American manager, Tom Atencio. What a nice guy!

  That’s libel, surely!

  Alan Erasmus, the ‘quiet man’ of Factory (actually he can’t stop talking).

  Saint Anthony of Manchester.

  Two great friends, influences and co-conspirators in New York: Michael Shamberg (left) and the late Frank Callari.

  Rebecca Boulton and Andy Robinson, who somehow keep this show on the road.

  The incomparable Mr Alan Wise.

  Terry Mason, always a fish out of water.

  Herman the German (left, and he’s actually Spanish) safe from Bez, for once.

  Rob and Peter Saville.

  The glamorous world of touring.

  With Johnny Marr and friends. Celebrating the completion of one of our Electronic albums.

  Mark Reeder, once Factory’s man in Berlin, now label owner and, it seems, head of the Chinese Communist Party.

  ‘Did I lock the back door …?’

  The semi-reluctant vocalist learning his craft.

  Who’s this fresh-faced youngster?

  Off duty in Turkey.

  Sarah.

  Without whom …

  Bad Lieutenant, in straitjacket and handcuffs.

  It’s a nightmare when you break down in a tunnel and have to walk out to get a mobile signal.

  New Order: onwards and upwards.

  With Iggy at Carnegie Hall in 2014. Thank you, Mr Glass!

  Postscript

  Yes, we were hedonists; yes, we got drunk; and yes, we were off our faces a lot of the time. Big deal, yeah yeah, blah-de-blah, so what?
That’s almost a conformist attitude for a musician. It’s not the main theme of this book, as that story has been told by others many times before.