NEW ORDER
THE POWER AND THE GLORY
POWER, CORRUPTION & LIES MARKED THE MOMENT WHEN NEW ORDER FINALLY COMPLETED THE TRANSFORMATION FROM JOY DIVISION. IN THIS INTERVIEW FROM 2020, SYNTH-POP’S GOLDEN COUPLE, STEPHEN MORRIS AND GILLIAN GILBERT, TOGETHER FOR OVER 40 YEARS, TOLD CLASSIC POP THE TRUTH BEHIND THE LANDMARK ALBUM.
JOHN EARLS
New Order in 1983, at the dawn of their new reinvention
© Kevin Cummings
Lockdown has been the same for me and Gillian as it is for everybody else: it’s pretty boring. It’s a bit like being in prison. There y’go, there’s your headline – half of New Order are in prison together.” He’s a funny bugger, Stephen Morris. So is Gillian Gilbert. While singer Bernard Sumner and guitarist Peter Hook fought out an alpha male battle for decades until Hooky left/was fired, New Order’s drummer and keyboardist have quietly been one of the most joyful presences in music. They appear to be exactly as you’d hope: quietly hilarious, honest about career decisions that don’t make any sense even to the members of New Order. You’d call them “no nonsense”, but they’re both so subtly eccentric that on the sly they might be Britain’s answer to Sparks.
Stephen talks at 100mph, plainly delighted to still be in a pop band more than 40 years later, even though his insight and acuity with words would have doubtless made him flourish in his former career as a journalist. Gillian is more considered, pausing before delivering a succinct one-liner. They had the self-awareness of their quiet reputation to call their New Order splinter group The Other Two, but there are few sharper minds in pop. You don’t get to stay together as a couple for 40 years in music without knowing most of life’s secrets.
”TO ME, POWER, CORRUPTION & LIES IS THE START OF NEW ORDER. IT’S WHEN WE CAST OFF THE SHADOW OF JOY DIVISION.
STEPHEN MORRIS
That said, even Gillian and Stephen haven’t figured out a way to make lockdown life too enjoyable. In isolation, New Order managed to finish their first new single since their wonderful Music Complete album, the storming Be A Rebel. But it wasn’t exactly an easy process. “You can’t beat being in the same room,” Stephen explains. “We normally talk through decisions like, ‘How do we want the bass to sound here?’, but over Skype that’s painful. We’ve shown that making a single by remote control is doable because of modern technology, but that doesn’t mean it’s enjoyable.” Gillian reveals Be A Rebel is “really a leftover song”, written for Music Complete but which didn’t fit that album’s full-on pop style. Gillian and Stephen formed one isolation team to work on the song,
with Bernard, guitarist Phil Cunningham and bassist Tom Chapman the other half. “Bernard finished the main song, before me and Stephen mixed it,” says Gillian. “Mixing mainly involved putting more of Phil and Tom on...”