Background information Origin Salford, Greater Manchester & Macclesfield, Cheshire, England Genre(s) Post-punk
New Wave
Alternative dance
House
Techno Years active 1980–
On Hiatus: 1993-1998 Label(s) Factory (1981–1992)
Warner (1998–) and Warner subsidaries London (1993–2007), Reprise and QWest Associated
acts Joy Division
Electronic
Monaco
Revenge
The Other Two Members Bernard Sumner
Stephen Morris
Phil Cunningham Former members Gillian Gilbert (1981-2000)
Peter Hook (1980-2007)

New Order are an English rock group formed in 1980 from the remaining members of Joy Division—Bernard Sumner (vocals, guitars, synthesizers), Peter Hook (bass, electronic drums), and Stephen Morris (drums, synthesizers). The demise of Joy Division was a result of the suicide of singer Ian Curtis. The three-person New Order were soon joined by Gillian Gilbert (synthesizers, guitars).

New Order melded post-punk and electronic dance, and became one of the most critically acclaimed bands of the 1980s. Though the band were shadowed by the legacy of Joy Division in their first years, their immersion in the New York City dance scene of the early 1980s introduced them to dance music. The band's 1983 hit "Blue Monday", saw them fully embrace dance music and synthesized instruments, and has been described as the best-selling 12" single of all time. New Order were the flagship band for Factory Records, and their minimalist album sleeves and non-image reflected the label's aesthetic. The band has often been acclaimed by fans, critics and other musicians as a highly influential force in the alternative rock and dance music scenes over the past 25 years.

New Order were on hiatus between 1993 and 1998, during which time the members participated in various side-projects. The band reconvened in 1998, and in 2001 released Get Ready, their first album in eight years. In 2005, Phil Cunningham (guitars, synthesizers) replaced Gilbert, who had left the group due to family commitments. In 2007, Peter Hook claimed that he and Sumner had no further plans to work together, and this was confirmed in an announcement by Sumner and Morris on the 20th July 2007.[1]

Contents 1 History 1.1 Origins 1.2 Power, Corruption & Lies 1.3 Low-Life, Brotherhood, and Substance 1.4 Technique 1.5 Republic and band hiatus 1.6 Get Ready 1.7 Waiting for the Sirens' Call and Singles 1.8 Hook's departure 2 Aesthetics 2.1 Album covers 2.2 Song titles 2.3 Singles 3 Honours and recognition 4 Discography 5 Media 6 See also 7 References 8 Notes 9 External links 9.1 Official websites 9.2 Semi-official websites 9.3 Fansites 9.4 Resources

History

Origins

Between 1976 and 1980, Ian Curtis, Peter Hook, Stephen Morris, and Bernard Sumner were members of the post-punk band Joy Division, often featuring heavy production input from producer Martin Hannett. Curtis committed suicide on the eve of their American tour, and prior to release of the band's second album, Closer, on 18 May 1980. The rest of the band decided soon after Curtis's death that they would carry on. Hook told Mojo in 1994, "The first meeting we all had, which was the Sunday night [Curtis committed suicide], we agreed that. We didn't sit there crying. We didn't cry at his funeral. It came out an anger at the start. We were absolutely devastated: not only had we lost someone we considered our friend, we'd lost the group. Our life basically."

The members of Joy Division had agreed before Curtis's death not to continue under the Joy Division name should any one member leave the band. Rob Gretton, the band's manager for over twenty years, is credited for having found the name "New Order" in an article in The Guardian entitled "The People's New Order of Kampuchea". The band adopted this name, despite its previous use for ex-Stooge Ron Asheton's band The New Order. Yet the link with Joy Division made it hard for critics to ignore the fascistic undertones the name carried with it, the term "New Order" being featured in Hitler's Mein Kampf as "the new order of the Third Reich." The band publicly rejected any claims that the name had anything to do with fascist or Nazi sympathies, with Sumner later saying, "We really, really thought it didn't have any connotations, and we thought that it was a neutral name, it didn't mean much . . ." The band rehearsed with each member taking turns on vocals. Sumner ultimately took the role, as the guitar was an easier instrument to play while singing. Wanting to complete the line-up with someone they knew well whose musical skill and style was compatible with their own, New Order invited Morris' girlfriend, Gillian Gilbert from Macclesfield, to join the band during the early part of October 1980, as keyboardist and guitarist. Gilbert's membership was suggested by Gretton.

Their initial release as New Order was the single "Ceremony", backed with "In A Lonely Place". These two songs were written in the weeks before Curtis took his own life. With the release of Movement in November 1981, New Order initially started on a similar route as their previous incarnation, performing dark, melodic songs, albeit with an increased use of synthesizers. The band viewed the period as a low point, as they were still reeling from Curtis' death. Hook commented that the only positive thing to come out of the Movement sessions was that producer Martin Hannett had showed the band how to use a mixing board, which allowed them to produce records by themselves from then on.

A change in musical direction was brought about when New Order visited New York City in 1981. The band immersed themselves in the New York dance scene and were introduced to postdisco, Latin freestyle, and electro. Additionally, the band had taken to listening to Italian disco to cheer themselves up, while Morris taught himself drum programming. The singles that followed, "Everything's Gone Green" and "Temptation", indicated the change in direction toward dance music.

The Haçienda, Factory Records' own nightclub (largely funded by New Order), opened in May 1982 and was even issued a Factory catalogue number: FAC51. This was the UK's first ever superclub. Its opening was marked by a near-23 minute instrumental piece of Steve Morris' making, 'Video 586'; released as a single 15 years later. Peter Hook was later to admit to grievance when he thought New Order 'had gone and done a single' without him.

Power, Corruption & Lies

Power, Corruption & Lies was released March, 1983, a synthesizer-based outing and a dramatic change in sound from Joy Division and the preceding album. Starting from what earlier singles had hinted, this was where the band had found their footing, mixing early techno music with their earlier guitar-based sound, heavily inspired by acts like Kraftwerk and Giorgio Moroder. Even farther in this direction was the electronically sequenced, Falklands-themed, four-on-the-floor single "Blue Monday", which became the best-selling 12-inch single of all time. The 12-inch "Blue Monday" single sleeve was so elaborate, resembling a large 5¼" floppy disk, that the band and Factory themselves were said [2] to lose from 2p to £1 on each copy sold. However, later presses became less elaborate, and the band reaped large profits from the sales of the single. The American edition of Power Corruption & Lies, released later, featured "Blue Monday" and its B-side "The Beach" as extra tracks.

The hip hop-tinged single "Confusion" (released in 1983 and co-produced by Arthur Baker) firmly established the group as a dance music force, inspiring many musicians in subsequent years. It was a crossover success on the club scene, and set a precedent for remixes of rock or pop songs which has now become a key part of music marketing. Still, the group did not pigeonhole themselves as a dance act. Instead they pursued two simultaneous and sometimes overlapping styles, one guitar- and rock-based and one dance music-oriented. In 1984 they followed the largely synthesized single "Thieves Like Us" with the heavy guitar-drum-bass rumble of "Murder", a not-too-distant cousin of "Ecstasy" from the Power, Corruption & Lies album.

Low-Life, Brotherhood, and Substance

The Low-Life album (1985) refined and sometimes mixed the two styles, brandishing "The Perfect Kiss" (the video for which was filmed by Jonathan Demme) and "Sub-culture". In February 1986, the soundtrack album to Pretty in Pink featuring "Shellshock" was released on A&M Records. The instrumental version of "Thieves Like Us" appeared in the film but did not make the soundtrack. Also, the instrumental "Elegia" is in the film and not on the soundtrack.

Brotherhood (1986) divided the two approaches onto separate album sides. The album notably featured "Bizarre Love Triangle" and "Angel Dust" (available elsewhere under the guise of "Evil Dust"), a track which marries a synth break beat with Low-Life era guitar effects. "Brotherhood" also featured "All Day Long", a tale of child abuse. In addition, the album also included "Every Little Counts," in which Sumner dissolves into laughter after having sung the line "I think you are a pig, you should be in a zoo", affording the track successor-status to 1983's "Your Silent Face".

While New Order toured North America with friends Echo & The Bunnymen, the summer of 1987 saw the release of the compilation Substance that featured the new single "True Faith". Substance was an important album in terms of collecting the group's singles (in the 12" format) onto CD for the first time and featured two new versions of "Temptation" and "Confusion", respectively entitled "Temptation '87" and "Confusion '87". A second disc featured several of the B-sides from the singles on the first disc as well as additional A-sides "Procession" and "Murder" and another new song "1963". The album's main single "True Faith", with its surreal video, became a hit on MTV and the band's first American top 40 hit. The song's B-side "1963" (originally planned on being the A-side until the group's label convinced them to release "True Faith" instead) would later be released as a single in its own right several years later.

Technique

By this time, the group was heavily influenced by the Balearic house sounds of Ibiza and the acid house tunes making their way into the Haçienda. Technique was released in February 1989. The album debuted at number one in the UK and contained a mix of the acid house influence (as on "Fine Time", the opening track) and a more traditional guitar-bass-drums sound on others (such as the single "Run"). The album is a blend of occasionally upbeat, accessible music coupled with blunt, poignant lyrics inspired by Sumner's failed marriage.

Several tracks on this album have attained seminal status for example "Vanishing Point" which was used as the theme tune to the BBC1 TV series "Making Out" - for which the band also composed additional incidental music.

New Order recorded the official song of the England national football team's 1990 World Cup campaign, "World in Motion," under the ad-hoc band name EnglandNewOrder. The song, co-written with comedian Keith Allen, was a number one UK hit, and the now-famous John Barnes rap was also recorded by Paul Gascoigne and Peter Beardsley. These versions have not been made available for release.

At around the same time, Bernard Sumner teamed up with fellow Mancunian Johnny Marr for the Electronic project (also enlisting the help of Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe of the Pet Shop Boys), while Peter Hook in retaliation started a project called Revenge, each of them leaving New Order but continuing to make New Order-style recordings.

Unusually for such a major group, New Order never had a formal contract with their label Factory Records. (This was in fact the label's standard practice until the mid-1980s. According to Factory's co-founder Tony Wilson, "All our bands are free to fuck off whenever they please", a pledge he made by writing it in his own blood). Because of this, the group (rather than Factory Records) legally owned all their own recorded material. This has often been cited, not least by Wilson himself, as the main reason London Records' offer to buy the ailing label in 1992 fell through.

Republic and band hiatus

Republic, released around the world in 1993, was the band's first album release since parting company with the now defunct Factory Records. It featured an ultimately polished, inoffensive sound, but with a sombre edge. The release spawned the singles "Regret" (their highest charting single in the US), "Ruined in a Day", "World" and "Spooky". Following the release of Republic, the band put New Order on hold, whilst each member continued on with their own side-projects: Sumner once again teamed up with Johnny Marr in Electronic for Raise the Pressure. Karl Bartos (formerly of Kraftwerk) also assisted with this record. Sumner also collaborated with the Chemical Brothers on a track from their album Surrender, "Out Of Control"; Hook formed the band Monaco with former Revenge member David Potts; and Morris and Gilbert formed the aptly named The Other Two.

In 1994, a second singles collection was released, entitled The Best of New Order. It featured all of the band's singles since Substance as well as a few extra tracks: "Vanishing Point" (from 1989's Technique), "The Perfect Kiss", "Thieves Like Us", "Shellshock", and remixed versions of "True Faith", "Bizarre Love Triangle", and "1963". The remixes of "True Faith" and "1963" were released as singles to promote the album. In the US, the tracklisting was altered to set it apart from Substance as well as the UK release of The Best of New Order which had been available months prior. This collection was followed by a remix album, The Rest of New Order, featuring a selection of old remixes and newly-commissioned mixes of classic New Order tracks. Some versions contained an extra disc/cassette comprised entirely of remixes of "Blue Monday". "Blue Monday" was again trotted out as a single for a third time in order to promote the collection.

The group reconvened in 1998 at the suggestion of Rob Gretton. The group had not seen each other in nearly five years. Sumner said "we decided before we agreed to doing any gig, to have a meeting, and if anyone had any grudges to bear, to iron them out." By the second meeting everyone agreed to continue playing, scheduling their reunion gig for the Phoenix Festival that same year. In addition to rarer songs, New Order also decided to begin playing Joy Division songs again. Since then, Joy Division songs have appeared regularly in New Order's setlists. When the Phoenix Festival was cancelled due to low ticket sales, New Order instead played the second night of that year's Reading Festival.

Get Ready

Their 2001 release Get Ready largely departed from their more electronic style and focused on the guitar. According to Sumner, "Get Ready was guitar-heavy simply because we felt that we'd left that instrument alone for a long time." Longtime fan Billy Corgan of The Smashing Pumpkins performed guitar and vocals on the track "Turn My Way", and in 2001 toured with the band deputising for Gillian. Primal Scream's Bobby Gillespie provided vocals on the track "Rock the Shack". Singles from the album included "Crystal", "60 Miles an Hour" and "Someone Like You".

In 2002, Q magazine featured New Order on their list of the "50 Bands To See Before You Die", although this was as part of a sub-list of "5 Bands That Could Go Either Way". Both New Order and Joy Division were portrayed in the Michael Winterbottom film 24 Hour Party People, which depicts the rise and fall of Factory Records as seen through the eyes of label founder Tony Wilson. Cameos by Wilson himself, along with Mark E. Smith of The Fall and former members of The Stone Roses and Inspiral Carpets, lend a degree of legitimacy to the proceedings. The film touches on some of Factory's other artists, including Happy Mondays and The Durutti Column. The soundtrack features a collaboration between New Order and the Chemical Brothers entitled "Here To Stay", which was released as a single. The DVD release of the single contains scenes taken from the film.

Waiting for the Sirens' Call and Singles

The band released a new album on March 27 2005, entitled Waiting for the Sirens' Call, their first with new member Phil Cunningham. Cunningham replaced Gilbert (now married to Morris) so she could look after her children. Singles from this album were "Krafty", "Jetstream" (which features guest vocals by Ana Matronic from the Scissor Sisters), and the title track. According to Peter Hook, the band wrote and recorded enough material during the sessions for this album to release a follow-up in the near future. As 2006 drew to a close, no new album had been released. At the 2005 NME awards, New Order received the award for 'Godlike Geniuses' (for lifetime achievement). Previous winners include Ozzy Osbourne, The Clash, and the Happy Mondays.

In the fall of 2005, the group released another greatest hits compilation, in the form of Singles. The two-disc release was an updated version of the Substance collection and contained every single released from their 1981 debut all the way through to the title track to Waiting for the Sirens' Call. However, unlike Substance, which focused almost exclusively on the 12" versions of the group's singles, Singles collected the 7" versions, many of which (like Temptation and Confusion) had never been released on CD. The album was accompanied by a two-disc DVD set, entitled 'Item', that collected the extended UK version of NewOrderStory with a DVD of all New Order music videos as well as two newly commissioned videos for Temptation '87 and Ceremony.

Hook's departure

In 2006, the band played several one-off live dates as well as short tours in the UK and Brazil. At the end a show in Buenos Aires in November 2006, Peter Hook suggested that the band would stop touring. Rumors spread that the band was breaking up, but in January of 2007 Stephen Morris denied the rumors, commenting, "It's the first I've heard of it." Morris added they were working on a new album as well as preparing for the release of Control, the upcoming Ian Curtis biopic.

However, in early May 2007, bassist Peter Hook was interviewed by British radio station XFM — originally to talk about his contribution to the debut album of former Jane's Addiction singer Perry Farrell's new band Satellite Party — and when asked "Is New Order over now?" replied "Yeah, me and Bernard [Sumner] aren't working together." The interviewer appeared unconvinced because, as he said, the band had split up and reunited numerous times before. Hook promptly added that "Bernard went off for a break with Electronic, but it was different then." The interviewer flipped that the band would be working together again shortly anyways, to which Hook, sounding somewhat desperate, replied "No-one believes me... it's like The Boy Who Cried Wolf!" Hook further commented on the band's breakup on his MySpace page: "I'm relieved... Really hated carryin' on as normal with an awful secret, so let's move on, shall we?"

Further complicating the news, NewOrderOnline, a website with support from New Order management, reported that, according to "a source close to the band", "the news about the split is false... New Order still exists despite what (Hook) said [...] Peter Hook can leave the band, but this doesn't mean the end of New Order." Hook mocked the "source close to the band" in a blog entry he made after returning from Cannes, where the group attended the premiere of the Ian Curtis biopic Control, writing "Well, who could be closer to the band than me! I love these unnamed sources, or shall we call them cowards, eh?" Hook also reiterated that New Order had split in various interviews. However on July 20, 2007, Morris and Sumner released a further statement claiming that New Order would continue without Hook, expressing their stance on the on-off break-up situation. The statement ran "After 30 years in a band together we are very disappointed that Hooky has decided to go to the press and announce unilaterally that New Order have split up. We would have hoped that he could have approached us personally first. He does not speak for all the band, therefore we can only assume he no longer wants to be a part of New Order."

NME.Com reported on 31st July 2007 that Peter Hook had posted a message on his MySpace blog, claiming he would take steps to prevent Morris and Sumner continuing as New Order, writing "This group [New Order] has split up! You are no more New Order than I am! You may have two thirds, but don't assume you have the rights to do anything 'New Order-ey', because you don't. I've still got a third! But I'm open to negotiation."

Aesthetics

Both New Order and Joy Division were among the most successful artists on the Factory Records label, run by Granada television personality Tony Wilson, and partnered with Factory in the financing of the Manchester club The Haçienda. The band rarely gave interviews in the '80s, later ascribing this to not wanting to discuss Curtis. This, along with the Peter Saville sleeve designs and the tendency to give short performances with no encores, gave New Order a reputation as standoffish. The band became more open in the '90s, for example the aforementioned NewOrderStory (and in particular the long UK version) featured extensive personal interviews.

Their music has trodden the line between the rock and dance genres, which can be seen on signature tracks such as "True Faith" and "Temptation". This synthesis laid down the groundwork for dance/rock groups of today. The group's album art earned them the status of icons in the alternative community, and have shown considerable longevity. "Does the Catholic Church pour its wine into mouldy earthenware pots? I think not...", Tony Wilson has offered.

They have heavily influenced techno, and were themselves influenced by the likes of Kraftwerk, Cabaret Voltaire and Giorgio Moroder, and they have also significantly influenced electro, freestyle and house. Bassist Peter Hook contributed to New Order's sound by developing an idiosyncratic bass guitar technique. He often used the bass as a lead instrument, playing melodies on the high strings with a signature heavy chorus effect, leaving the "actual" basslines to keyboards or sequencers. This has often been the defining characteristic of the New Order sound.

Drummer Stephen Morris regularly played a mixture of acoustic and electronic drums, and in many cases played along seamlessly with sequenced parts. All the band members could and did switch instruments throughout gigs, as evidenced on Jonathan Demme's video for "The Perfect Kiss" and the fairly common Taras Shevchenko and Pumped Full of Drugs concert videos. In particular, every member could be seen playing keyboards at times. Taras Shevchenko is notable for the fact all four members of the group have left the stage before the final song ("Temptation") comes to an end.

Album covers

New Order albums, and Factory Records products in general, frequently bore the minimalist packaging of Peter Saville. The group's record sleeves bucked the 1980s trend by rarely showing the band members (the Low-Life album was the exception) or even providing basic information such as the band name or the title of the release. Song names were often hidden within the shrink wrapped package, either on the disc itself (such as the "Blue Monday" single) or on an inconspicuous part of an inner sleeve ("The Perfect Kiss" single), or a cryptic colour code invented by Saville (Power Corruption & Lies). Saville said his intention was to sell the band as a "mass-produced secret" of sorts, and that the minimalist style was enough to allow fans to identify the band's products without explicit labelling.

Song titles

Many New Order song titles have nothing to do with the song. In some cases songs with normal titles appear to have had their titles swapped to other songs. For example, the phrase "This Time of Night" appears in the song "As It Is When It Was" on Brotherhood but is the title of a song on Low-Life. Also, the track "Chemical" from the 1993 album Republic featured the word Brotherhood, which was the name of the 1986 album. Other song titles were taken from the titles of old movies ("Thieves Like Us," "Cries and Whispers," etc.) For a full list see New Order tracks which include the title in the lyrics.

Singles

New Order released many singles for songs not included on albums. Singles were released in many formats and often with varying track lists and exclusive artwork. According to Tony Wilson, Factory intentionally released other singles, LPs and compilations in non-UK markets to increase their collectibility. Indeed, the complete New Order discography is far too sprawling for most fans to collect in its entirety, and the compilations released by Factory and other labels are notoriously incomplete. In the late 90s, London Records spoke of releasing a Depeche Mode-esque singles retrospective for New Order, complete with original packaging and track lists. In fact, the project was at times named Cardboard and Plastic and Recycle, with t-shirts for the latter appearing at the infrequent New Order gigs. Eventually, the financial aspects caused the project to devolve into the Retro box set (2003), which featured many tracks that were readily available elsewhere. The single-disc International compilation (2003) similarly omits the classic, out of print recordings in favour of updating the conventional (The Best of) New Order (1995) and Substance (1987). At least one single, "Run 2" (1989), may never be reissued; it was the subject of legal action from John Denver, who argued that the song's wordless guitar break was based on his own song "Leaving on a Jet Plane". An out-of-court settlement ensured that the song would never be re-released in its original form. Denver is now co-credited as a writer of the song on the "Singles" compilation.

Singles often feature remixes. The number of remixes were few at first but increased a great deal with increased popularity of dance music during the release of 1993's Republic. New Order remixes tend to have one or more of these characteristics:

• Dub Versions: Inspired by the dub musical genre, these have titles related to the original track (e.g., "The Beach," a lyric in "Blue Monday," is a dub version of that song; "Bizarre Dub Triangle" is the dub version of "Bizarre Love Triangle", "Dub Vulture" for "Subculture", etc.). Dubs were often solitary B-sides on the Factory original 12-inch singles, and were often recognizable rearrangements of the title tracks with few, if any, added parts.
• Edits: These were shortened versions of other mixes, often meant for distribution on a 7 inch record.
• Extended Versions: These preserve much of the original track but add extended intros, outros and instrumental parts (e.g., "Round and Round 12" Version", "True Faith (Shep Pettibone Mix)").
• Instrumentals: The title track minus vocals (e.g., "Fine Line", "Vanishing Point Instrumental"). An interesting twist on this is the "Confusion (A Capella Mix)" which has a sole vocal track.
• Re-recordings: Later takes of the title track (e.g., "Ceremony" on the white and blue 12-inch and on Substance, "Shame of the Nation").
• Live Versions: Live recordings (e.g., "The Perfect Kiss (Video Version)", the 60 Miles An Hour Tour Disc).

Honours and recognition

• BRIT Awards for Best Music Video, 1988 (for True Faith)
• Mercury Music Prize shortlist, 1993 (for Republic)
• NME Godlike Genius Award, 2005
• UK Music Hall of Fame Inductee, 2005 (Joy Division/New Order)
• Grammy Award nomination , Best Dance Recording for 'Guilt is a Useless Emotion' from album Waiting for the Sirens' Call, 2005
• Ivor Novello Award for Outstanding Song Collection, 2006

Discography

For details on New Order releases, see New Order discography. Below is given the list of original studio albums.

• Movement (1981)
• Power, Corruption & Lies (1983)
• Low-Life (1985)
• Brotherhood (1986)
• Technique (1989)
• Republic (1993)
• Get Ready (2001)
• Waiting for the Sirens' Call (2005)

Media