New Order were not only one of the best bands of the 1980s, they were also one of the most prolific. The first half of the decade was especially busy for the Manchester band, when they released four albums in six years, not to mention a dozen or so non-LP singles and contributions to soundtracks. New Order were also rapidly evolving during these years, transforming from a band trying to escape in the shadow of their former band Joy Division into pop innovators who meshed traditional rock elements with electronic instrumentation like few others.
The last of that prolific run was 1986’s Brotherhood, which includes one of their best and most popular singles ever, “Bizarre Love Triangle,” but is also unusual in their catalog as they split their rock and synthpop elements of the band onto different sides of the album. Brotherhood is the latest New Order album to receive the Definitive Edition treatment, and the box set includes a new 2024 remaster of the original album on vinyl, a double CD featuring remixes, songs from their soundtrack to Beth B’s film Salvation, and nine previously unreleased tracks including demos recorded in Japan. There’s also two DVDs featuring live performances from the era, music videos, documentaries and more.
New Order drummer Stephen Morris, who is married to the band’s keyboardist/guitarist Gillian Gilbert, has been instrumental in putting together these Definitive Edition sets, as well as working on new immersive Dolby Atmos mixes of the band’s music. For the occasion of this box set’s release we talked over Zoom. Stephen is an extremely affable person, easy with a laugh, and very honest when it comes to his own band and what they’ve done right — and wrong — over the years. Our 45-minute conversation covered a lot of ground, including his opinion on the original album (not his favorite), the difficulties of tracking down bonus material for the box set, the album’s single “Bizarre Love Triangle” and whether or not he came up with one of the song’s most memorable lines, lyric writing by committee, making music videos with directors who’d go on to be Oscar-winners, and more. He also touches on what may be next for the band.
Read our interview below.
So Brotherhood, this is New Order’s fourth definitive edition set, right?
[Laughs] It seems strange like that, saying your fourth definitive set. It’s like, well, how definitive is it? What was wrong with the other ones? It’s as definitive as we could make it today.
How involved are you in putting together these Definitive sets?
Quite a lot. Because a few years ago we did, I can’t remember what they were called. They weren’t called definitive. They were called something, back in, was it 2017? Collectors Editions? They were absolutely terrible, absolutely awful. I personally like a nice box, I do, of other people. I can’t quite see what people see in ours, but from that day forward, I decided I’d get involved and try and make them the sort of thing that, if I was a New Order fan, I’d quite like to buy. Just not for that much money. That’s a big thing. “How much?” Every year they get dearer and dearer. Just wait till the Amazon discount kicks in.
Those previous reissues, I thought the bonus tracks didn’t quite make sense for the records. I was like “why is this song a bonus track for this album?”
It was just awful. It was a total shit-show, completely. It was the same time as the financial crisis. Everything, studios went bust. They got the wrong tapes. The whole thing was a complete and utter mess, and so if you want something doing properly, you’re best doing it yourself.
Good advice.
It’s not just me. There’s lots of other people at Warner’s working on these. Also an uber-fan. It’s always good to have an uber-fan knocking about who can give you his or her opinion as to whether you’re right. You can never really tell. You might think “Oh, this sounds great” but they say, “It’s very common. Everybody’s got that one.” I’m open to ideas.
There were definitely some things on here that I’d never heard before. Some of the demos and instrumental versions. It’s nice set.
It was a bit difficult. Brotherhood has been, oddly, the most difficult to make, and it still carries on being the most difficult, and I’ll come to that in a bit, because on Low-Life, actually, and Power, Corruption & Lies, we have reel-to-reel demos, which are really good. They scrubbed up nicely, let’s say, but unfortunately, even though we had some reel-to-reel tapes, they’d been rather spoiled by exposure to the elements, let’s say. Which is weird, because an analog tape will usually play no matter what, but these were just completely ruined.
Did the tapes have to be “baked,” as they say?
Oh yeah, we’ve done all that, we do that as a matter of course, but these were completely beyond baking. They were unbakeable. It was like, we put it in and it just turned to dust before your very eyes. That was a bit of a blow, because it looked like there would be some good stuff there, but no one would ever get to hear it. Luckily there were some outtakes and stuff knocking about on a digital tape machine that I’d done at the time, so they had to stand in for the demos. It was just all we had, really.
Speaking of baking, in your 2020 memoir, Record Press Play, you called Brotherhood “an over-egged pudding.”
I did, yeah.
Do you still feel that way, or in re-listening to it, has your impression of the album changed?
No, it’s still too much eggs in that pudding. [Laughs] Yeah, our own fault. Technology, yet again. MIDI had just come out, and the stuff that we’d used to do everything up to that point — Power, Corruption & Lies, and Low-Life — was quite unsophisticated. It was just like, maybe you get a few chords in it, but that was it. But with this stuff, you could just put layers upon layers upon layers. Where do you stop? It’s even worse nowadays, when you’ve got a computer. It probably seems ridiculous. This thing only had actually eight tracks on, but you could pile loads of things on. We had too many ideas, which is one of the problems with producing yourself. I always like working with a producer because you really need someone to go, “Stop, we’ve got enough now,” but with Brotherhood, it just kind of went on and on and on, and we were doing it, because we started it, literally, not long after we’d finished Low-Life. We went to Japan and did “State of the Nation” and a version of “As It Is When It Was,” and just carried on writing. We were quite prolific at the time, as the demo tapes would be evidence, if we could get them to play. So yeah, I still think there’s too many layers on it. I think a bit of a production job, we ended up going to three different studios, which was a weird experience for us, but then it became the norm. Running out of time, going somewhere else, starting again, running out of time.
I’m going to assume most of that layering problem is dealing with Side 2, not Side 1.
Now, that’s a good question. Which one are you calling side two?
The synthy side.
The synthy side, yeah. Yeah. On the other side, Side 1, it’s all quite straightforward. I think that’s one of the problems with it, that we had this concept of having synthesizers here, guitars here. I always thought, and I still think, that New Order’s better moments are when you mix the two things up and you get something completely different, but for this particular endeavor, we were strictly delineated to the guitars on this side, synthesizers on that side, and never the twain shall meet.
Mostly.
Yes. Mostly, mostly.
Yeah. In addition to MIDI, am I right in that this album is the first use of sampling keyboards in New Order?
No, actually we started using sampling back in Joy Division with this little box of mine that I had that could sample a second, but the first time we used it properly was on Power, Corruption & Lies. I mean, that was only four seconds, but I suppose when you’re talking in terms of time, yes, new technology did allow for more on Brotherhood. We were using a better sampler. We would always upgrade, like you do, that dreadful thing. “Oh, they brought out a new one,” but it only happened every couple of years, not every three bloody months like it is today. “Oh, there’s another one out.” We were using sampling more for production, started using it like a tape machine, basically. This is where we began using it like that, for flying in guitarists and stuff. More layers. More layers.
Is there a specific layer that, if you could, you would take one thing off?
No. I have been listening to it this very day, and it isn’t actually a question of layers, even though I’ve been awful and saying it is, it’s that everything is kind of in one frequency. There’s a lot of things in a specific frequency range, the guitar and the bass, because Hooky’s playing the bass like a lead guitar, and Bernard was going through a strange sort of cheese grater guitar phase. The two sort of turn into a bit of a mush, which is, again, another thing for a producer. Maybe it wasn’t the parts, maybe it was just us being not very good producers. It’s hard producing yourself.
Right, and mixing, too, I’m sure, with all those layers.
Oh, that was another thing. Yes. This was the first record we did with an SSL. What do we call it? Automated mixing desk. Yeah, that was fun, figuring out how that works. Yeah, so we wasted a lot of time on that.
In Peter Hook’s New Order memoir, Substance, he credits you with the “Bizarre Love Triangle” lyric “I feel shot right through with the bolt of blue.” Is that how you remember it?
No. I wish I had. Maybe I did, and I was just so incredibly stoned at the time I don’t remember, but I’ve got to say, I have no recollection of it as a fact.
During that era, the lyrics were a little bit more of a group process than just Bernard writing everything, right?
Yes that’s true, we all contributed to the lyrics in the ’80s. For Brotherhood, we ended up in Amazon Studios in Liverpool. We were in one studio, and Echo & the Bunnymen were across the corridor in another studio, and they’d just come in and they’d be amazed at us going, “Moon, June. What could possibly rhyme with June that isn’t moon?” Ian McCulloch was like, “You write lyrics by committee?!?” I said, “Yeah, don’t you?” They were astounded and rather amused at our terrible scribblings. Yeah, but anything will do when you’re desperate, a literal bolt from the blue. “Bizarre Love Triangle” was one of our better efforts, I think. It was corporate lyric writing. Don’t do it when you’re drunk!
Was the “I think you are a pig, you should be in a zoo” line from “Every Little Counts” a drunk on the mic lyric?
Yeah. That was literally the one take, and that was it. Yeah, that was it. Yeah, what should we do? “Every second counts when I’m with you.” Someone said, “I think you’re a pig.” That was probably Gillian, I think, who came out with that one. “You should be in a zoo.” Right, “Go on Bernard. You sing that.” It’s just like, “What?” Yeah, yeah. We didn’t take it too seriously, as you can probably tell from that track,
What about “You caught me at a bad time, so why don’t you piss off?” from “Your Silent Face”? I always figured that was an ad lib.
Well no, actually. Believe it or not, we agonized over that line. It’s always the ones that have a kind of element of grandeur. Like “Your Silent Face.” It’s kind of, it’s beautiful, it’s rolling countryside. Well, how can we … We can’t, we can’t. We’ve got to show people that we’re not actually as pretentious as it sounds, so yeah, stick a jokey lyric in, and the same on “Every Little Counts.”
Back to “Bizarre Love Triangle,” one of New Order’s most classic singles and, I think, arguably your best video.
Michael Shamberg produced it. I thought it was great. “I want come back as a bug,” or, what’s it?
“I don’t believe in reincarnation because I refuse to come back as a bug or a rabbit.” The song stops cold and there’s this little dramatic interlude.
Yeah, that’s it, and then the guy says, “You’re a real ‘up’ person.” Of course, MTV was like “What’s this? You can’t put this on MTV. What’s this all about?” I think that’s great. It’s a bit different. No, I love that video. Was it Robert Longo?
Robert Longo co-directed with Gretchen…
Gretchen Bender. That’s right. Yeah. It was great, one of our better videos. Very American. I thought “Bizarre Love Triangle” was going to be absolutely massive. I mean, it was in America, but over here it was just like, “What are we doing wrong? It’s great.” No, they didn’t get it. I mean, but today you play it live and everyone goes crazy. I don’t know what happened then. It must been, the press must have had a downer on us or something, but thank heavens for America. It did well over there, and the video.
That smash cut interlude in the middle of the video — I’d never seen a video do that before. Did they film that specifically for the video?
Oh, yeah. Yeah. It was all intentional. The whole thing was intentional, and thought out, but we had nothing to do with it, which is probably why it’s so good. (Laughs). We just let Michael do whatever he wanted with whoever he wanted, and usually it was something unique. Hold hands up to say I couldn’t do, couldn’t have come up with that to save my life. None of us could, but yeah, brilliant.
You guys have had good luck with music video directors, really. You’ve had two that went on to win Best Director Academy Awards: Jonathan Demme directed “The Perfect Kiss” and Kathryn Bigelow made “Touched by the Hand of God.”
I like to think we gave them a status. Yeah. Dear old Jonathan Demme. Yeah. I mean, he was absolutely brilliant. He was a lovely person, and the version of “Bizarre Love Triangle” on the box ended up in Married to the Mob, which was one of his films, and that was another original tape that we couldn’t find. I’ve got it somewhere, the soundtrack of Married to the Mob, but God knows where it’s gone. Yeah, it was a difficult one to run down, that, but yeah, it was lovely.
He also used “Temptation,” the original version of Temptation, in Something Wild.
Yeah, yeah. Now, which did he do first? I can’t remember.
It’s Something Wild, then Married to the Mob, then Silence of the Lambs.
Yeah, that’s right. He did Something Wild, yeah, and then he insisted on something unique. Luckily, Stephen Hague had done this mix of “Bizarre Love Triangle,” because he thought we hadn’t done a good enough job on it. He did that remix, and we were kind of like, “Well what are we going to do with it?” Our manager Rob Gretton said, “We’ll just give it to Jonathan for his film,” so that’s kind of how it ended up there. We were puzzled at what we should be doing with it, but he was very happy with it.
What do you remember about shooting “The Touched by the Hand of God” video? [Stephen starts laughing before I finish the question]
That was hilarious. Absolutely hilarious. We’d obviously been to America quite a lot and seen a lot of MTV. We were upset MTV didn’t play “Bizarre Love Triangle,” but we used to watch it all the time in the hope that they would. But all we ever saw was Whitesnake and Poison and all these fluffy haired metal bands being slightly misogynist, so we thought, “Wouldn’t it be hilarious if we did a video like that? Then it’s bound to get on MTV, because it fits right in.” Kathryn, she was quite puzzled by the idea. It was like, “Well, I don’t really know how to do a heavy metal video.” We turned on MTV. “Have you not seen any of this? Just like this.” We did have a choreographer. We had a choreographer and a costume designer who came to the rehearsal room at Cheetham Hill, and made us dress up, and we all looked completely different, apart from Hooky who looked almost the same, apart from he had a wig on.
He had his own leather already.
It was weird, wearing that stuff. Then after that, when the video got shown on MTV, people thought that we were actually like that, looked like a hard rock band. They didn’t get that we were trying to send up the genre. There’s always somebody who won’t get the joke, but that was the idea. It was a hoot. I remember it was freezing cold when we shot it. Gillian in particular caught a chill.
Where was it shot?
I think it was Brixton Academy in London. As for the outside stuff, oh God. Bill Paxton. Yeah. He’s in it as well, isn’t he?
Oh, he is? How have I never noticed that before.
Yeah, he’s in it. He’s a little bit in the middle, a vignette in the middle where there’s a guy running down the freeway. Yeah. Bill Paxton. We launched his career! [Laughs]
Well, I would say James Cameron probably launched his career, but yeah, but he and Kathryn Bigelow were an item at the time anyway, so …
That’s right. Yeah. That’s how she got him to do it.
One more thing about “Every Second Counts,” the end of the song which is a famous, great joke, the needle scratching off the record. I read somewhere, maybe Peter Hook’s book, that for the lead-up to the very end, you were basically mashing down every single key on the Emulator synth…
Yeah, that’s right. Every note that it could play was being played all at the same time. That’s right, for as long as it could possibly go on for, which was, I suppose, infinity, but eventually you’d run out of patience, or we’d get kicked out of the studio. Yeah, that’s very true.
Was there ever any thought to doing cassette and CD versions of the needle-scratching-off-the-record joke?
Yes! I said we should. I said, “You should do a cassette version, and the end, just as the tape chewed up,” and the CD version should just go and stick and make that horrible digital noise, but there was no money in the budget for that, so we just stuck to the … Well, to be honest, it was the only sample we had, the needle scratch. We didn’t have the other ones at the time. Had we got them, we would’ve done it.
As you mentioned, in addition to Brotherhood, you had a whole bunch of other songs out at the same time, “State of the Nation” was a single and so was “Shellshock,” which was also on the Pretty in Pink soundtrack. Then there’s the Salvation soundtrack which has “Touched by the Hand of God” and some cool instrumentals, which are all included on this Definitive Edition. You guys were seriously cranking stuff out then.
Yeah, we were. We were like a little machine. We were just doing writing all the time. You’d go in the studio sort of twice a week, write, write songs. The Salvation stuff, like “Touched by the Hand of God,” that was literally just made up on the spot. The director, Beth B, was a friend, and Michael Shamberg hooked us up with her to do this soundtrack, and it was just, “You’ve got a week to do it.” “Oh, that’s going to be quite easy. Bit of soundtrack stuff, I’ve got a load of Emulator sounds that go, kind of a spooky noise. We can do all that.” Beth was quite happy, and then towards the end of the week, it was kind of like, “Well, I was really hoping you’d do a song. Could you?” “Yeah, we could do a song. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, when do you want it for?” This was Friday night, and she said, “Well, my plane goes on a Saturday evening, so sometime before then.”
Wow!
We stayed up all night and came up with “Touched by the Hand of God.” That was just literally, I think Hooky had the synth bass line, but that was all we had, and then we just made it up on the spot. Unfortunately, we’d been up all night doing it, and it sounded great, and she’s there going waiting for us to mix it, but we’re in this tiny little studio in Manchester, and the tape machine had had enough. It’d been overused and would no longer play at a constant speed, so when you were trying to do the mix, it’s going … I said, “Jesus, we’re never going to be able to do … ” Yeah. That’s just what you need. Really does your head in, stuff like that.
Right. I think that was how OMD wrote “If You Leave” as well, for Pretty in Pink. John Hughes needed a song for the end of the movie, and they wrote it in a day or something. It was their biggest hit.
Yeah, very true. It’s funny how you can do stuff like that. For some reason, personally, I think it’s easier doing stuff for a film, because with “Shellshock,” they sent us a sequence of the film to look at, and when you’re looking at something, you’re kind of like, you’ve got an idea and you’re trying to express what that idea is. When you’ve got nothing, it’s a bit of a pain trying to come up with it, so it seems to be easier coming up with stuff when you’ve got a picture to look at. Half the work’s done for you.
I heard a story, and I can’t remember where it was from, that New Order were the only band on the Pretty in Pink soundtrack that didn’t make any money off of their song. Am I right with that?
No. Well, probably at the time, yes.
There was some sort of issue, that you should have, but it ended up being way more expensive or something, and…
It’s a good story, so I’ll say that’s definitely true. It’ll go along with the “Blue Monday” ones. Did we make any money out of … I don’t know. Probably not, because we weren’t really… Actually, thinking about it, we must have done, because it was A&M put it out, the Pretty in Pink soundtrack, and they’ve kind of got a reputation for people who send you checks. I’ll have to look into this. Had it been solely Factory, I would say yes, you’re probably right, but because there some professional music biz types involved, they kind of, they don’t like not paying you, so I guess we would’ve got something. Maybe not as much as The Psychedelic Furs.
New Order had three songs in the movie too, right? The instrumental version of “Thieves Like Us,” and I want to say something else is in there.
Yeah, “Elegia,” “Thieves Like Us,” and “Shellshock.” The story with “Shellshock” is they sent us this bit of the movie where they wanted something, which was where she’s doing the sewing machine, making the dress, so we got the idea of the rim shot beat, because it sounded a bit like a sewing machine, and the rest of the song kind of grew out of that. Then they just put the song somewhere else, where you don’t get the thing about the sewing machine.
Geez.
You get used to things like that.
So you guys have two shows in Mexico this month, and the Cruel World festival in Los Angeles next year. Any other touring plans?
We’ve also got Australia. It’s five gigs, and then there’s two gigs in Japan, and then round it all off by playing Cruel World. That’s a curious tour for you.
Are there any songs that you wish would get back in the New Order live rotation that just don’t ever seem to make it in?
Oh, bloody hell. Yeah. I’ve got a list as long as my arm of songs that would be good to do live, but never get in. Let’s see, “Way of Life” would be a good one. We were only saying that this morning, me and Gillian. “Leave Me Alone,” off Power, Corruption & Lies. That would be a good one to do. The list is long. “Everything’s Gone Green.” Why do we never play that song? That’s a fun one. The number of times we get, “Why do you never play ‘Everything’s Gone Green,’ or ‘Thieves Like Us,’ for that matter?”
“Thieves Like Us” might be my favorite New Order song. But another I’d suggest would be “Face Up.”
You think “Face Up”? Okay. Yeah, that would be a good one as well. Yeah. I’ll put it on the desperate list that’ll never be looked at.
Ha, thanks. On a similar note, are there any songs that were just album cuts that you think should have been a single?
Album cuts that should have been a single? It’s strange. Not really, because we always had this thing that a single was a single and an album was an album. It was just kind of always … I know it’s a bit blinkered, but that’s kind of how we were. Bloody minded about stuff, that, if this is a single, like “Blue Monday,” it’s too long to go on the album anyway, but it’s never ever going to be on the album unless it’s an edit that someone sneaks on and doesn’t tell us about, which happened somewhere. No, no. Occasionally you’ll hear stuff. It’s weird because when I’ve been doing this Atmos mixing thing, which, Brotherhood is kind of like, I’m literally doing it. Oh, I’m doing it with Steve Wilson now, and listening back to Movement, I think there’s so many potential singles. I really, really like that record now, and I could never listen to it at the time. I think stuff like “Chosen Time” and a couple of tracks on it would’ve been great, but our heads were in such an awful place we couldn’t appreciate it, really.
Right. Yeah.
It’s been, yeah, a bit of a cathartic experience listening to it over and over again, but in a completely different … Where your head’s somewhere else, and yeah, it’s gone up in my New Order album rating, that one. It was always quite low in your top 10, because you say, oh, that’s the first thing you did, it’s awful, but it’s kind of neglected, I think. Sadly neglected.
Transitional record.
It is, it is, but there were some great ideas on it that I’d completely forgotten about that we just pushed to one side and never revisited, really, because we didn’t want to drag it all out again.
Are you guys going to do a Definitive Edition of Substance or going straight on to Technique?
Well, we’ve kind of done Substance last year, but it wasn’t kind of like a definitive one, because it was just a mid-price thing, keep it affordable, which was kind of in keeping with Substance. I think at some point we’re going to do something. It’s just an idea at the moment that kind of keeps bubbling up and never goes anywhere, of tying all the singles together. In other words, it’d be a much bigger Substance, but the trouble with it, when you start doing this, it’s kind of, “Yeah, we’ve done it all. It’s going to be 15 discs. Nobody will be able to afford that. Oh, that’s too big. Can we make it a bit smaller?” Yeah. It would be nice to do something to round off all the singles in some sort of way, in the same way that we’re doing the albums.
Two more questions and I’ll let you go. Last time I saw you was at Brooklyn’s Barclays Center with Pet Shop Boys which I thought was a fantastic double bill. How did you find that tour?
I absolutely loved it. It’s weird because it got delayed and all this, and then was sort of like, “Oh God, really nervous about it,” and then it was great. It was really good. It was a lot of fun. Pet Shop Boys liked it, we liked it. It’s kind of like, when you came to do it, there was no pressure at all and it was a great thing to do, and god knows we’ve tried to do some more, but the problem with when you’re getting two bands with all the stuff that gets attached to bands, schedules and the like, We’ve been close. We’ve been very, very close a couple of times, but it’s just not happened. It would be one thing that would be good. Nice to revisit, because it was so much fun.
You could just redo the 1987 tour with Echo & the Bunnymen and Gene Loves Jezebel.
Yes, but sober. No, that wouldn’t be any good. No, no, no.
OK last question. So your last record, Music Complete, turns 10 next year…
Oh, Jesus. We’d best do a box set. No, it doesn’t seem that long That’s gone quick, hasn’t it? Don’t really know what to say. I mean, that was kind of … It was difficult to write, but overall, it was an enjoyable thing to do and it turned out great, and I think it turned out so great, there’s kind of a fear of trying to do something else, in case it’s like you’ve set the bar a bit too high for yourself, and you’ve got to kind of just completely forget about that.
That was going to be my question. Has New Order been working on anything new?
We did a bit ago. I mean, the thing is, you would’ve thought with the COVID thing, with all that time on your hands, it would’ve been a good time to get creative, but I just found the opposite happened. Just because there was so much time, you just didn’t get anything done. We started doing a few things, but it kind of … It’s just sort of fizzled out, really, which is a shame, but sooner or later something will happen, I think. Tax bill, that’s usually a great source of inspiration,
Right. Yeah. It’s worked before.
Yeah, it’s worked before. Yeah. “Yeah, let’s open another nightclub.” Yeah. That’s why we were writing so many songs. We had to pay for the bloody Hacienda. It’s true.
Alright that’s it, thanks again.
My pleasure. See you soon.
“Sooner Than You Think,” hopefully, to quote one of your song titles.
“Sooner Than You Think,” adding that one to the list.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
—
Beyond “Blue Monday”: New Order’s Best Deep Cuts
