By Lawrence Ferber
MIAMI BEACH – The 2005 Winter Music Conference has kicked off with a bang. The energetic opening night party, at the massive art deco theater-turned-super club Mansion, is populated by a mix of industry pros, including openly gay electronica-rocker/remixer/DJ Richard Morel and typical young Miami-types. Yet they're not just celebrating the conference's commencement – this is also a launch for "Waiting For the Sirens' Call" (Warner Brothers), the highly anticipated new album by New Order, the Manchester new wave pop legends revered for immortal dance tracks like "Blue Monday," "Bizarre Love Triangle," "True Faith," and "Crystal." Adding to the upbeat vibe, New Order's gregarious bassist, Peter "Hooky" Hook, is enthusiastically working the turntables. He's been DJing for almost a year.
"I'm on the independent freak show scene and I go around with [Happy Mondays'] Shaun Ryder and Bez. People can come and ogle the almost-living legends," Hook notes. "Manny of Primal Scream turned me on to DJing. He said it's a great way of being paid to get pissed (Britspeak for drunk). So I tried that a couple of times but I felt such a jerk standing there, pissed, while somebody else put the records on that I actually got involved in it and now I actually work on it. Because [New Order] doesn't gig a lot it's nice to do because you move people and get to meet people."
In making their eighth all-new studio album, "Waiting for the Sirens' Call," the band – Hook, vocalist/guitarist Bernard Sumner, drummer Stephen Morris and guitarist Phil Cunningham – collaborated with a handful of new people including Scissor Sisters' Ana Matronic, who provides vocals on the irresistibly catchy "Jetstream," producers Stephen Street (Morrissey, Stephen Duffy), Stuart Price (Madonna), and John Leckie (Pink Floyd). Morel, under his "Pink Noise" banner, has remixed the album's pulsating first single, "Krafty," which features oodles of Hook's plucky bass styling. The album's eleven tracks (twelve including the bonus Mac Quayle mix of "Guilt is a Useless Emotion") run from punky ("Working Overtime") to electro-propelled ("Morning Night and Day" "Dracula's Castle"), and every one is quintessential New Order.
"You know how the CD player reads out the time? The time is 56:02," Hook asks. "That's what the album gives people. 56:02 minutes of New Order's life, just for us to share a moment together. A bit of diversion from the cruelties and horribleness of life. Optimism, a bit of getting off your head, living in another world for 56:02."
WORLD IN MOTION
New Order's life in this world began with a death. Sumner, Hook, and Morris first joined forces in a melancholy post-punk group, Warsaw, in 1977. In 1978, to avoid confusion with another group called Warsaw Pakt, the band changed its name to Joy Division. Joy Division's troubled yet enormously talented frontsman, Ian Curtis, whose most famous and enduring composition remains the driving "Love Will Tear Us Apart," hung himself in 1980, just days before their first American tour.
Less than a year later the remaining trio gathered themselves together, enlisted keyboardist Gillian Gilbert, and formed New Order. By 1983 the quartet struck gold with the single "Blue Monday," which rules dance floors worldwide (in endless remixes) to this day. New Order's relationship with dance floors wasn't just musical: in 1982 they opened (with Factory Records' president Tony Wilson) what would become a Manchester legend – The Hacienda. This nightclub, although a financial sinkhole for most of its existence, provided a performance space for many Factory label bands, fueled the acid house "Madchester" scene of the 90s, and helped elevate the DJ to superstar. Around 1991 The Hacienda also launched a legendary Manchester queer party, "Flesh."
"It was one of the first big gay nights in Manchester," Hook recalls. "The thing that was hilarious was we could never get a late license for The Hacienda [to stay open after-hours]. No matter how hard we tried the licensing committee would never give us a late license. So Paul Cons, he was in charge of the gay section of Hacienda, came up with 'Flesh' nights and we applied for a late license like we did for every [specialty] night and we got it! It turned out half the licensing committee was gay – and the reason we got the first f—ing late license! Hilarious!"
The Hacienda, which was demolished in 1997, wasn't New Order's first delve into queer clubbing, however. While teenagers, Hook and Sumner would frequent a gay bar located within Manchester's homo Mecca, Canal Street. "The only place we could get a drink when we were 14, 15, was at a place called the Union," Hook reminisces. "The pub at the end, by the bridge. That was the first place we went in to drink because the attitude was much different than straight places. I would much rather go out to the gay places. In my mind when you go to a gay club there's always people who look after you. Much friendlier. And I find gays a lot more reliable than your straight friends, to be honest. Yet I was always annoyed that I didn't get hit on! A lot of my wife's friends are gay; she's a real fag hag. But nobody loves me!"
While New Order's hits continued throughout the late 80s and 90s (including an England World Cup football anthem, "World in Motion," probably the band's strangest high point), the band members spent time apart to work on other collaborations. Hook formed Revenge and, later, Monaco with vocalist David Potts (who isn't gay although "I haven't seen him in four years so he might have gone gay in the meantime. I know these things can happen overnight, can't they?"). Morris and Gilbert formed The Other Two. And Sumner formed alt-pop dream team Electronic with ex-Smiths guitarist Johnny Marr and the Pet Shop Boys' Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe.
"Bernard didn't know the Pet Shop Boys were gay until I told him!" Hook laughs. "That's how stupid he is! I'm joking, I'm joking. Neil was such a great guy, he's like the granddad you always wanted to have."
Aside from a "Best Of" featuring re-recorded hits, and a song ("Brutal") on The Beach soundtrack, New Order took almost a decade off between 1993's "Republic" and 2001's "Get Ready." "Get Ready" was something of a rebirth – a very pregnant Gilbert departed the ranks, replaced by Cunningham – and the band wasn't sure how the public would respond to their new dynamic. "When we started "Get Ready" we didn't know how the hell we were going to come back," Hook admits, "and I think we were sort of trepidatious and apprehensive. But once we did "Get Ready" and realized everybody sort of welcomed us back to their bosom, it was easier."
Making "Waiting For The Sirens' Call," "we felt much more able to be ourselves as in New Order-y," he continues. "We approached this album not lighthearted, because it's still very difficult to make an album, you're staring at a blank piece of paper or recording tape and it certainly hasn't come easier. But we approached it much more able to be ourselves, really."
CALL TIME
And work with some new folks. Yet Ana Matronic's involvement with "Jetstream" didn't occur until after the track was recorded, Hook reveals. "We had the track, which Bernard began because he wanted to do some purely sequenced numbers," Hook recalls. "We finished it to the best of our ability and were happy with it. But Paul Brown, our A&R man at Warner, who's been a real help to us, felt there was something missing. So he asked if he could get [producer] Stuart Price and Ana Matronic involved, which he did and Ana did a great job. I'm a great critic of anybody else to work with New Order. I'm the first to slag them off. Like I'm not a great fan of Stuart's production because it's too soft in my mind, he didn't get New Order. But I thought Ana did, which I was really happy about. She gave it a really good bent, added depth, and sang a great duet with Bernard."
As for Morel's remix of "Krafty," Hook enthuses "it's f—ing mega!" The remix will be released May 3 on the "Krafty" CD single. You'll likely also hear the remix – and other New Order rarities – if you catch DJ Hooky in action. "I play Morel's mixes of our stuff," he says. "Silly as it sounds, I went through a phase of not playing New Order because I'm IN New Order. But people come to see you because they want to hear New Order. [Producer/DJ] Arthur Baker said to me, 'F–k it man, give 'em what they want. You've earned it, f—ing play it.' So I did, I started playing offbeat mixes I have of 'Blue Monday' and some rare stuff, tracks that didn't come out or remixes that weren't released by the label for one reason or another."
As for the future, New Order will play some US live dates this spring. Another album could hit in 2006 – seven tracks left over from Sirens' Call are lying in wait. Plus good news for hardcore New Order fans who can't catch DJ Hooky's gigs: some of those admittedly queer rare mixes might end up in your MP3/CD player. "I may do a DJ CD of stuff I like," he says. "Like a wonderful mix Malcolm McLaren did of 'Love Will Tear Us Apart' with 'Love Will Keep Us Together' by The Captain and Tennille."
Crystal Clear: New Order/Joy Division Fun Facts!
– 2004 Grammy nominees, The Killers, culled their name from a fictitious band – made up of four skinny teens – in New Order's 2001 "Crystal" video. Quips Hook: "Personally I thought The Killers did a great job stealing that off the video!"
– Speaking of "Crystal"'s skinny teens, they were so into pretending to be a band that they actually tried to form one following the shoot. "None of them could actually play," Hook notes, amused.
– Hook's signature plucky bass playing style has often been imitated/emulated, most recently a bass solo on the wonderful pop ditty "2 Fragen" by Germany's Klee. Does he mind? "It doesn't really bother me," he responds. "It's a compliment without a shadow of a doubt. But I got annoyed with the bass player of the Cure because I felt that was too close."
– Hook and Sumner first met Ana Matronic in the flesh at February's 2005 Brit Awards (the UK's Grammies) – they presented Scissor Sisters with the Best International Group award. Ana will also hang/perform with NO in the "Jetstream" video and on "Top of the Pops."
– Rather controversially, Joy Division named itself after a group of women forced to pleasure Nazis in Karol Cetinsky's lurid WWII novel, "House of Dolls."
– New Order/Joy Division's early watersheds – both high and low – are dramatized in the 2002 film, "24 Hour Party People." "I think it was a very lighthearted look at the hell we've been through," Hook says of the film. "There's a few harrowing moments in it, like the death of Ian Curtis. I don't think any of us have been presented with that [before]. We were only twenty-three when it happened and it happened somewhere else if you know what I mean. You knew the aftermath but didn't see it, so to see that [depicted onscreen], all four of us found very unsettling to say the least."
– Acclaimed rock group photo/videographer Anton Corbijn will direct Remote Control, a new Joy Division biopic. "We met with him last week," Hook shares, "and it's amazing how passionate and serious he is with it. If you live with Ian every day as I do, mentally he never left, so it was quite strange to talk about him in the depth we did with Anton."
