FOUR FROM RETRO

Back in 2002, London Records released a 4-disc box-set featuring New Order.

The slight twist on this seemingly never-ending re-issuing and re-packaging of their work was that the discs were divided up into Pop, Fan, Club and Live and individually collated by Miranda Sawyer, John McGready, Mike Pickering and New Order/Bobby Gillespie respectively.

It was very well presented with a 72-page booklet packed with some great photos of the band, a number of which featured their late manager and mentor Rob Gretton, as well as some informative notes. Here's one from each disc and what it says about the song in the booklet:-

From Pop

mp3 : New Order - The Perfect Kiss

Bernard : Perfect Kiss was our follow up to Blue Monday. It was a 72 hour session. We were doing Brotherhood at that time, getting pretty off it in the studio. We had a flat in London and we had to finish Perfect Kiss because we had to tour Australia. We were running out of time, so we worked for 3 days without any sleep.Time started speeding up, all the staff were coming in during the day and it felt like they'd been in there for two hours and then they'd go. We finished it and left the studio in London and drove back to Manchester and then left the next morning for the tour.


Steve : We originally wanted to have Porky Pig saying 'That's all folks!!' at the end of it. But Warner Brothers wanted like a million dollars. So we used the pinball machine instead which doesn't have the same effect.  But It's still one of my favourites

From Fan

mp3 : New Order - Your Silent Face

Hooky : It's fantastic and minimal.  It's done like the old Joy Division stuff: the way the order is done, the chord structures. I remember we got the vocal line off a fucked-up riff that I played at a gig. And Bernard heard it and said, that riff's really good, you played it wrong but it sounds great. We'll use it as the vocal line for Your Silent Face


Bernard : One of my favourites because it's graceful and light. It was written at our rehearsal room and it came about very easily.  It's the hardest type of track to write because it's just a simple beautiful song. It's a nice way to bring people down, to play at the end of an encore.

From Club

mp3 : New Order - World In Motion (Subbuteo mix)

Bernard : The FA heard some music we did for a programme called Best and March and they heard that and liked it and asked us to do the World Cup music.  It's one of our few up songs.  It's quite stirring. Patriotic. It was supposed to stir the players to win. It was interesting seeing the players in the studio. John Barnes was the best rapper. Gazza'a rap was mad, because he's got such a strong Geordie accent.

From Live

mp3 : New Order - Everything's Gone Green (live -1983)

Recorded at the Tolworth Recreation Centre, London : 6th December 1983

Steve : That's the problem with a middling-size band. You either play too small venues and they're really packed, or you play too big venues and the place is half-full. So you have to play gymnasiums.


Hooky : The bloke who put us on, he and his partner were like the forerunners of all the raves, putting gigs on in weird places. They did thses mystery tours, where you paid the money and then got on a coach and it took you to the gig. One was a castle in Southern England, but it pissed down so we couldn't play cos it was open air and they had to send everybody back.


Bernard : I can't remember this gig. But Everything's Gone Green was our first venture into self-production. It was after Ian died, and we were very depressed because of Ian, staying up all night and not seeing daylight.  Martin (Hannett) by that time had seriously hit drugs, he was playing things over and over again. We were all doing each other's heads in. This was probably the first track we used electronic on. I found an old synthesizer with an oscillator and I wanted to sync it up with the drums. After about eight bars it would drop back out of time. Me and Hooky wanted the song to sound like how we played it live.


Hooky : That Tolworth gig was the one where the T-shirt tout guy tried to give u some money, because we didn't have any and he felt so guilty cos he was selling so many bootleg T-shirts. But we threw him out, becuase we were very anti-merchandise, being poncey and anti exploiting your image and all that crap. And then Bernard ran down the road after him going 'Come back, come back!! I'll have it.'

And that's yer lot for the first day of a new month