New Order Quotes
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I really don't like it when members of bands slag each other off in the press. If you've got a problem, you should sort it out without going public.
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I think the most important thing about what musicians do is the music. You can be as big an arsehole as you want but if you're not making good music, you won't get away with it.
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You used to defend your musical values to the hilt, but now if something isn't working, you just hop to another band. My youngest daughter went from Justin Bieber to the Jonas Brothers to Joy Division in the space of a few months!
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I knew from working with New Order that I enjoyed working with Phil Cunningham.
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Yeah, I still feel as if I have things to do really. I'm not ready to stop.
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When digital recording came in about '84, everything started to follow into digital. Now, you've got the best recording media in the world, but it's not very pleasing to the ear.
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Bernard insisted on having ‘just one more go’, and in doing so used up mine and Steve’s tracks, wiping them, so by the time Martin finally threw up his hands and told us to fuck off, Barney’s was the only vocal left on tape. Which is pretty much how he became our singer.
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Music used to be a more personal thing, and it defined who you were. Now it's like wallpaper.
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I watched John Frusciante of the Red Hot Chili Peppers play it acoustically at their gig at the MEN Arena. I think I can safely say that, of the 19,000 people there, 18,950 didn’t know what it was—but I did, and it brought a tear to my eye, definitely. Monster bass line. A bass line that every bass player dreams of and I got it, so thank you.
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As you get older, you kind of take a more sober view of life.
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I'm surprised how many people are into vinyl.
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In 1983, before computers came along, it wasn't easy to do electronic basslines and rhythms.
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This really was the start of a period where me, Barney and Steve would all be meeting bands and getting into producing them. Barney did Section 25, Happy Mondays. Steve and Gillian produced Thick Pigeon (who, incidentally, were Stanton Miranda, Michael Shamberg’s girlfriend, and Carter Burwell, who later made his name scoring films for the Coen Brothers).
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Now, this meeting would have taken place in mid-to-late 2004, over two years after we started recording, and a lot happened between that summit and the album coming out. One of them was that terrible tsunami in Indonesia on Boxing Day. Because of that, the record company got cold feet on Barney’s cover image, fearing a possible media backlash, and Alan Parkes from Warners had to go to Pete’s studio, pleading with him to do another sleeve. Pete was insistent. ‘No, I don’t want to do one. I don’t want to do it,’ but Alan was just as persistent, until at last Pete got fed up and wrote ‘NO’ on a piece of paper, gave it to Alan and said, ‘There’s my answer,’ and Alan went, ‘That’ll do,’ and took it. I like it. I think it’s one of his best sleeves.
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In the Seventies, album artwork became really beautiful items. The whole process of doing an album sleeve, it became a very artistic thing.
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Blue Monday's distinctive intro was written on an Oberheim DMX drum machine.
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I think that you have to bear in mind that music is about escape, and it's not unreasonable to think the music business would be based around escapism.
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Rob fought this so hard. He hired a musicologist in England to analyse the song. It turns out that musicologists use a scale of twelve notes and if eight of those notes are present in both songs, then the accused, us, is deemed guilty. Which we were. Rob wouldn’t have it, so he then got an American musicologist to analyse it. He said the same. We lost again. John Denver got his per cent cut and a writer’s credit. Warners wanted to take it off the album on any subsequent pressings, but we said no. I still don’t hear it now. Denver died in 1997, shortly after it was eventually settled. God, imagine if we did that with all the tunes that sound like us? We’d make a fortune. Humh . . . there’s a thought.
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I remember feeling as though I’d been sitting in a darkened room all of my life—comfortable and warm and safe and quiet—then all of a sudden someone had kicked the door in, and it had burst open to let in an intense bright light and this even more intense noise, showing me another world, another life, a way out. I was immediately no longer comfortable and safe, but that didn’t matter because it felt great. I felt alive.
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“Atmosphere" is a massive song. A lot of people say it's their favorite Joy Division song, but it's not mine; it reminds me too much of Ian, like it's his death march or something, and it figures that it's one of the most popular songs to play at funerals: Robbie Williams has got "Angels" for weddings and we've got "Atmosphere" for funerals.
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If someone throws you in a pool and you can't swim, you're going to struggle.
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I first read about hypnotism at school, and I used to do tricks like getting a really skinny guy to arm wrestle the local bully.
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I remember that Martin Hannett once had an idea of making a record and burying it in his garden so that one day someone would dig it up, like a time capsule.
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When I joined New Order, I was made to feel equal to everyone else in the band so I didn't feel like an outsider. I was treated equally, I was paid equally, and my opinion was sought after.