New Order Interview: STEPHEN MORRIS

Rip It Up, Issue 94, 1 May 1985, Page 18

New Order Interview: STEPHEN MORRIS

George Kay

When the phone rang in Stephen Morris’s flat in Manchester he wasn’t reading Nietschze or brushing up on Conrad or even listening to the bleak landscapes of Bartok: “Hang on a minute, The Sullivans have just finished, I’ll turn the telly down.” Silence, then a dog yaps. The Sullivans, the Australian soap opera? “Yeah, that’s right, we get ’em all over ’ere. It’s summat to do while you’re packin’. ” Communion Morris, drummer and co-keyboard/sequencer operator for New Order, sounds like a friendly, talkative John Cooper Clarke, and more than willing enough to spend nearly an hour on the phone the day before he's scheduled to start a hectic five week world tour. “Not the healthiest way, but the only economically viable way to see the world." The New Order tour includes one date in Auckland, merely a token appearance considering the bands popularity here. Why are they so big in New Zealand?

“I don’t know, but we keep receiving all these gold discs from New Zealand. Maybe we're big with sheep or something. I know we've a big following, that’s why we're coming back. I’ve spent a lot of time in New Zealand. I lost me passport the last time, so I ended up spending an extra two days in Auckland."

The word is that the band are Manchester United supporters. “No, not me, that's everybody else. Rob Gretton (manager) put me off football for life, he’s a City supporter. I can’t see what people see in it. The roadies, who are into United, are always arguing with Rob, so football creates more problems than it’s worth. I try to keep out of it in case I say something as a joke and cause a political controversy.” Why doesn’t the band do more press? "There seems to be this thing that we don't do interviews, but we do, whenever we can, unless the people wanting the interview come on too strong like 'you must do this or your career will be in tatters.’ So then we’ll say ‘sod off, mate.’ We don’t particularly like doing them, because with people asking the same questions you can be a little less than enthusiastic, although we try to be accomodating.” In the background the dog goes mad. “Yes, we’ve got a dog. It’s just run outside to at-

tack somebody. It’s alright, it's only a Yorkshire terrier. Oh dear, family.” Old Testament Enough small talk, here’s some history. In the middle of 1977, “a young quartet formed as Warsaw, a spiteful punk group with obvious pretentions ... By mid-78 their motivation, direction, inspiration had sharpened considerably." (NME Book of Modern Music) In other words, Warsaw had become Joy Division. Some transformation ... "At the time we were a bit outside what was going on in Manchester, we weren't part of the Buzzcocks scene and all that and so we had trouble getting gigs. It was our decision as we didnt want to be part of it, but people thought we were a bit snotty. We practised a lot. “We decided at the time to get a gig in London, but there was a new group around called Warsaw Pakt and we were told that we’d never get a gig in London with a name like Warsaw. So, rather naively and not taking into account that the person who told us that was actually Warsaw Pakt’s manager, we changed our name.” Songs like ‘Transmission; ‘Atmosphere’ and the Unknown Pleasures album represent the cream of the Joy Division period: Peter Hook (bass), Barney Albrecht (guitar), lan Curtis (vocals) and Morris created the songs, Martin Hammet produced the sound:

“After we’d changed our name to Joy Division, we played a few gigs. Tony Wilson saw us and he was starting up Factory at the time and he wanted us to be on it. Martin was one of the four partners who started Factory, so we met him through that.

“He taught us about the things you could do in the studio. He was just like a mad doctor as he tried out loads of things in the studio and he would show you all these little boxes you’d never seen before. It was educational in a way and he could put his own imprint on what you were doing. You would envisage a song sounding a certain way, but he would put another perspective on it. Sometimes you’d like it, sometimes you wouldn’t. Interesting, because we’d never realised before what you could do with a few knobs.” Was his production what the band wanted? “It must’ve been at the time, we can’t do anything about it now. He was good and we liked what he did and his style of production had an impact at the time, it became in vogue and he was in demand.”

From ‘Blue Monday’ on, the band have produced themselves (except for the one-off with Arthur Baker, ‘Confusion; but more of that later): “’Blue Monday’ and Power, Corruption and Lies were done at the same time: We’d learned all the technological stuff through working with Martin, but four people producing themselves could either mean arguments or compromise. For-

tunately we get on quite well and we compromised. “You start off with an idea of how the songs ought to sound. We’ve lost Martin’s viewpoint but now we’ve total control so that the songs sound exactly the way you wanted them to sound when you wrote them.”

lan Curtis’s sad suicide is well enough documented without dwelling on it here. In Joy Division, he was the lyricist, the voice; what was his influence back then on the band?

"Us three would be jamming away making a load of noise and lan would say that’s a good riff, we’ll work on that one’ and he’d have some lyrics and we’d put them on top and we’d have a song pretty quickly. That was the first thing that we missed. We’d all get involved in playing and we wouldn't listen to what we’re playing, but he would listen and tell us whether it was any good or not. "Once that’s removed, it leaves a bit of a gap but we soon got over it. We just had to change the way we wrote songs and take that into account. lan was just a regular bloke really, just like anybody else. But it was easier to write songs back then than it was initially with New Order, it was like starting over in that respect. lan was like the quality control department. Obviously he was a lot more than that but that was his role in the songs at the time.” From Depression to Religion Joy Division became avatars, their name and music carried instant clout in its depressive weightiness; pain is art, art was Joy Division, an equation that elevated the band into the ranks of the untouchable. New Order have inherited that burden of responsibility, do they feel it? “I can’t really believe it. We don’t feel responsible, you’re responsible to yourself to carry on doing what you’ve been doing and hope it’s as good and people like it. The people can’t dictate to you what you should do, all they can do is judge what you’ve done.” People relate to the depression in your music, do you see that in Joy Division and New Order? “(Laughs) I don’t actually. A while ago we were always being accused of being doomy. I’ve never considered our music as depressing. We’ve done some sad songs, but not depressing, I hope. I think that depression is something to be avoided at all costs. You’ve got to be sad sometimes, otherwise you’d never be happy.” The pleasure-pain principle? "Exactly, maybe that’s what we’re trying to do. We don’t want to do the same thing over and over again if the people don’t like the next thing then too bad. You can’t expect anybody to like everything you do.” Why has Joy Division/New Order had such an influence on music and attitudes? “I don’t know. I try not to think about it. It’s

difficult to understand why we’ve been so popular and why people buy our records. When we started we had the attitude that we didn’t want to get involved in advertising or any of the peripheral nonsense that’s associated with the packaging and selling of an artist. “We’d just rather sit around and write tunes than be on the cover of glossy magazines. The music is the main thing and so people that buy our records buy them for the music, not because they like the cut of our jib. We’re just normal people really, that happen to be in a group.” Is that why the band is still with Factory? “Yeah, plus there's no reason for us to go anywhere else. We’re happy with the relationship we’ve got with Factory and we like what they do. We’ve been made other offers but we don’t bother really. Every so often you get a tide of people ringing you up offering to sign you for bags of money, but it’s not worth it.” Transition A year elapsea oetween Joy Division and New Order, a year when the band’s resolve was put to the test. Did they feel like giving up? "No, never, because we enjoy doing it. We just wrote songs like we always did, hanging around in the rehearsal room.” The name change to New Order always struck me as being too self-important, as if the band wanted to continue the crusade of Joy Division in a self-conscious sense. But Morris’s dry Mancunian earthbound wit and natural humility finally demolish that fantasy. So what about the name? “Were not that good at names are we? We wanted to carry on, but not as Joy Divsion be- <• cause we’re not Joy Division any more. So we hummed and haahed as long as long as we possibly and Rob (manager) came in and said You’ve got a gig on Friday, what are you going to be called.' And we went down to the pub and decided on New Order. When it for the first time written down it appeared a bit alien, but after a bit it became familiar. It’s only a name." And there were personnel and musical changes Gillian Gilbert came in on keyboards: “We've known her since we were in Joy Division. She used to be in a band that practised two doors down from us and we just asked her if she wanted to join. We didn’t know what we wanted but we knew what we didn’t want and that was a new singer and we didn’t want someone who was a mega-musician. Gillian was just right because she was just like us and she didn’t have any great musical pretentions. She’s developed as part of us.” If the Joy Division sound was to be identified as two ingredients, then Peter Hook’s bass lines and lan Curtis’s vocals would have to take priority. Guitarist Barney Albrecht became New Ord-

er’s singer. “Everybody in the band had a go at singing, but it just seemed logical and right for Barney to be the singer. I think he found it a bit difficult at first.” Albrecht’s frail vocals contrast with the band’s aggression. Is that deliberate? “No, none of it’s deliberate, it just happens, it’s just how it turns out at the end of the day. We don’t sit and plan what we’re going to do because if you do that too much you just get lost. It’s very easy to disappear up your own arsehole by thinking too much.” New Order’s first single, ‘Ceremony’, was a Joy Division song not only in period, but in style and approach. Movement was listless, it took the animated funk of 'Blue Monday’ to truly break with the past: "We’ve always liked that sort of music. We’d been using a sequencer and a drum machine for a while, it was a really old-fashioned thing, something Barney had made out of a kit, and it was always breaking down. So we went out and bought some new hi-tech stuff, but we didn’t know how to work it, so we wrote ‘Blue Monday’ as a way to find out how all this stuff worked. Fortunately a lot of dance records at the time used the same equipment and it sounded like them. “We listened to a lot of funk records and I like black music, especially soul, as there’s too much funk these days with just a drum macine riff going over and over again.” And funk is Arthur Baker’s cure; the New York producer who did ‘Confusion’. Funk was Baker's forte. "We liked what he did and a friend of ours in New York knew him and played him some tapes from Power, Corruption and Lies and he liked what we were doing. So we went into the studio and the result was ‘Confusion’. It was a change to work with a producer again, but ‘Confusuon’ was all we wrote with him, although he half-wrote Thieves Like Us’ as he came up with a 12-bar riff, but we didn’t finish the song until we were back in England.” These aforementioned songs only mark time, they hardly take pride of place in the New Order repetoire. “That’s a matter of opinion really (mock offence). Everybody didn’t know what to expect working with Arthur, because there was a bit of culture shock as he worked in a different way to us. We went into one studio and did loads of demo things and he didn’t like them and then we went into another studio and did the same. "Everybody was getting fed up with it because it was the middle of winter in New York and it was freezing cold and we were stuck in the studio for days on end. Although we didn’t enjoy it at the time, looking back we can see that we learned a lot from it, more than is actually visible on record or whatever. An example is the way we do

'Confusion' live, as opposed to the record, as there’s a lot of difference between the two. “I still quite like 'Confusion' and Thieves Like Us'. It’s really weird, because there’s people who think ‘Confusion’ is great but everything else we’ve put out is utter rubbish. And then there’s people like yourself.” New Testament So what has made Joy Division and New Order so revered? Well, there’s a pile of great singles and two great albums ( Unknown Pleasures and Power Corruption and Lies) that occupy the hallowed ground between hard-wrought credibility and deserved commercial recognition. Despite, or because, of the their no-compromise vision of integrity, New Order, like the Fall, have seldom failed to disappoint a loyal, hard-headed public wary of the old sellout record business pressures. And then there’s the Joy Division/New Order sense of pathos and mystery, qualities enhanced by some very effective record sleeve designs, sleeves, though, that are irritatingly uninformative. How come? "I’m glad you asked me that question, because wait until you see the new album, it’s got photographs on it. And in a few years people will ask us why we put photographs on it.” Why have you put photographs on it? "Well, the people who designed it said it would

be dead simple and really quick if we put photos on the sleeve, but it seems to have taken us as long as the last one.” But why the reluctance to have band photos and info on past sleeves? “We’re not trying to sell ourselves, we’re trying to present the music for people to listen to and we try to present it in something that looks simple and pretty, not in something that’s glamorous or over-the-top. The music is what people are buying, so we don’t want to detract from it, but at the same time we want our records to look nice.” And so to the new album: "It’s nearly six months old, but it’s the old sleeve problem, it should be out at the beginning of May. It’s called Low Life and a single, The Perfect Kiss’, should be out at the same time. Both of these things have been recorded since January, but we’ve been waiting for this beautiful sleeve. Every time we do an album it seems to take longer and longer to get the cover done.” So what’s the album like? “It’s varied. There’s a film music type instrumental on it, there’s some guitary songs, rocky songs, synthesiser songs, a fair crosssection. It has as many different things that you can fit on an album and still make sense. I know you’re gonna ask me (I wasn’t) what the difference is between this album and the last one. I’d say that Low Life sounds slightly more polished as we’re more experienced at production. But it’s not overblown, or I hope it’s not.” As a finale, let’s get irreverent. What about a Stephen Morris Joy Division/New Order choice of greatest songs? “That’s a hard one. I always liked These Days’, 'Age Of Consent’ and 'The Village! ‘Dead Souls’ is good, I heard that the other day. It’s difficult because I don’t play our records at home, I only hear them when I go out. And it’s weird because when I head ‘Dead Souls’ I thought it was somebody else as I didn’t recognise it at first.” What about the obvious ones like Transmission’ and ‘Atmosphere? "You tend to go off them because you hear them so much. I do like ‘Transmission’ and ‘Disorder’ was a good one.” You haven’t mentioned Closer. "No I haven’t, have I? ‘Heart and Soul’ and ‘lsolation’ if I have to.” How do you regard that album now? “It’s very sad really. As I said, I don’t play our records, certainly not Joy Division records, and you don’t hear Closer much. It’s too depressing.” And ‘Blue Monday? "No, the other side, The Beach’ and ‘Dreams Never End' from Movement. It’s very difficult to pick these because it’s not the sort of thing I’ve had to do before. It’s very embarrassing.”