Featured Essay: Chosen Time: Life With New Order

by Louis Gilbert

Chapter 1 – Chosen Time

A Salford boy leans into a microphone, plunders his heart, and manages the words:

“I’ve never met anyone quite like you before.”

I agree.

I’ve never met anyone quite like them before.

I’m English garden cities and they’re industrial north. I’m polite and they’re Pernod-infused tales. I was born in the eighties; they were superstars in the eighties.

But then we all must start somewhere.

It’s 1993 and I’m nine years old. I possess an unfortunate bowl cut and wear an occasional plaster over one eye to make me look like a pirate or to correct a lazy eye, depending on the adult explaining it to me. I feel more lost at sea than king of it. Treasure for me is found in simple paper bags of weighted sweets rather than as a buccaneer. My greatest friend is a golden retriever first, then the flashing rainbow of the television, showing worlds known and unknown – sometimes at the same time.

My New Order story begins with Top of the Pops on a Thursday evening in April.

I’ve finished my dinner of fish in a bag, with the luxury of ketchup and frozen peas. Environmentally, it feels now like the beginnings of the plastic crisis. Why did the fish need to be in a bag? I nestle into the soft furs and turn to the radiant colours. One last show before bedtime, probably my favourite, and then it creates an opportunity.

A camera pans across a sun-swept beach full of golden yellow and bountiful blue. David Hasselhoff takes off his aviator shades in deference, and sun cream is applied to Blonde Woman 1. Hasselhoff, most famous for having a talking car as a friend, reprises his role as Mitch, the small-trunked, over-serious Navy SEAL-trained lifeguard protecting California’s beaches in Baywatch.

Suddenly a guitar slices through this sun-filled haze and is met by a man with a short back and sides haircut wearing sunglasses. A band plays on the beach, interrupting a game of volleyball. The drummer has to avoid being caught mid-game. The bass player’s posture curves into his instrument as if he’s playing his own song. The keyboard player fights a battle not to sink into the golden sand. Shots of a kayak gracefully fill the instrumental gaps.

As the song fades out, Hasselhoff offers sage advice to Blonde Woman 1. I hope it’s about UV protection or about obscure Manchester musician Vini Reilly’s early work. Either seems pertinent. The camera pulls back to reveal the full beach: the band in Manchester summer clothes of long shirts and trousers, the California crowd bikini-led. I enjoy the tension as the song ends.

This isn’t the moment where I fall in love with New Order. That came a year later with the reissue of “True Faith” appearing on a Now That’s What I Call Music compilation.

But I remember this performance. Its oddity stayed in my unconscious mind. The melancholic comfort of Bernard Sumner’s voice supported by Stephen Morris’s disco drums, Gillian Gilbert’s light but big synth chords, and Peter Hook’s dancing bass melody. I felt fortunate being with them for the first time.

They started in an ending. A figurehead, lead singer, lyric writer, and friend had gone, taking his own life through desperation and desolation. They’d been to the funeral. They’d said goodbye but hadn’t really felt it. That would take a lifetime to understand. That’s grief for you.

They sat around in mild conversation before attempting to step up.

It felt too much like Genesis for the drummer to replace Ian Curtis as singer. The bassist was too much of a big head to be the singer. So it fell to the quiet one. Bernard, or Barney. He had sat in recording studios inhaling knowledge about sequencers, sound design, and production. He’d never learnt to sing, not even a backing vocal credit to his name. He was the guitarist with the odd surname that changed on releases. He’d hidden in the shadows until now.

He could play a guitar in anger but couldn’t sing with the same fury despite the sorrow he felt for his lost friend. It had to be done separately for a while. This was the band’s new dynamic.

More changes would come. A keyboard and guitar player would arrive, sequencers would take hold, there’d be a fusion with New York’s dance scene, two breakups, the death of a manager, and the exit of a bass player. The band would remain within these transformations. All of that was a long way off.

Back in the rehearsal room, old songs tore apart in melancholy and pleas. There were three bar fires and names carved into the door. Now there was something new. Their first single, “Ceremony,” carried embers of their old friend. Their eulogy to him lived in avenues lined with trees – a suburban spring image from a band steeped in industrial grey bridges in winter. The music was the formality, and the music was the service. It wouldn’t be released until January 1981, but it helped them hold onto both their friend and themselves.

They practised just enough to play a set on July 29th 1980 as a three-piece at Manchester’s Beach Club. It had been a cold July with dull and wet weeks, the average temperature around 14 degrees. A Manchester summer at its finest.

They opened for old friends A Certain Ratio after The Names, a Belgian band they’d toured Europe with, pulled out. The Names had a single produced by Martin Hannett called “Night Shift,” echoing Joy Division’s baritone vocals and wire-snake guitars.

Without a band name, the “No Names” took to the stage in a packed-out venue eager to see what was next. It was instrumental only; Bernard wasn’t ready to sing. They received a positive review from New Music News, which described how “the intensity and novelty of the performance conspired to produce an overall effect rarely equalled.”

Dreams never end. They just change.

A recording of this gig exists on reel-to-reel tape alongside:

· Barney’s Holiday Riffs · S-on-S · Cries or Whispers · Practice Vocals

Who writes riffs on holidays? Where do you go on holiday as the guitarist in Joy Division?

“Cries or Whispers” would become “Cries and Whispers” on a reissue of the debut album. Even in demo form, it had electronic overtones with a swirling synth and Bernard beginning to master his vocal style. In debt to his friend Ian, but confidence was emerging. There was clear enunciation and a vocal melody that wouldn’t feel out of place on a Kraftwerk album.

A band name finally arrived through manager Rob Gretton, who read in the Guardian about “The People’s New Order of Kampuchea.” Other options included Khmer Rouge, The Sunshine Valley Band, and Black September. Thankfully, New Order was the right choice – short, snappy, and forward-seeking, just like the band.

Despite Nazi associations, they played support at another gig, one of the first under their new name, at Scamps Disco in Blackpool with Section 25. It was their third gig since Ian Curtis died.

“Ceremony” was introduced as the song “that knocked spots off us,” and that was felt in its resilient energy. The vocals weren’t fully settled, with Peter Hook bellowing over white-hot guitar, drums sticking to the walls, and the club floor sweating. Its embryonic form remained a war cry to the loss of a friend. The song ended with applause, and you could feel the band exhale.

It was a fresh beginning

Chapter 2 – Time’s Resilient Melt 

I’m looking at a picture of New Order as a thirty-eight-year-old. I’ve lost the patch but still wear glasses when I remember. The bowl cut has become a suitably floppy indie boy haircut, holding onto mid-twenties aspirations. I’m in my living room as the sun cuts through the day, defining light and shade in unequal measures.

The photo shows three-quarters of New Order, taken directly towards the stage. Bernard, the singer, is on the left, draped in white stage light. His shirt is firmly tucked in, his guitar cradled in his hands, held in frozen poise as he stares into us, the audience. There is no blur of motion here.

Behind him, I see Gillian’s fringe. She shares Bernard’s light but is hidden to his right, nearer the fire exit than the front of the stage. Her eyes are firmly focused on her fingers fretting the fifth and seventh frets, meticulous to the need of the song.

To Bernard’s left is Peter. His bass guitar hangs low, and he stares at the same fixed point as Bernard. His shirt is also resolutely tucked in behind his microphone.

The drums of Stephen peek out from behind, but we don’t see him. He’s a mechanical presence, heard in his choices rather than seen.

In front of them are a few bobbed heads of audience members staring up at these demigods. These living things have been turned into presences. The band look like a begrudging family photograph, all intense stares without smiles. It feels solemn and cold. Only the instruments, stage lights, amplifiers, and microphones allow me to see this photo without feeling awkwardly voyeuristic. I am visiting their lives as a tourist.

The photo was taken on 9 February 1981 at Heaven nightclub in Soho, London. The gig was meant to be a secret but did have a flyer with scant details. It would start at 9pm and finish at 3am. It was a rare headline slot for the band, playing after fellow Manchester bands Section 25 and Stockholm Monsters.

It was an isolated performance until March, when they went on tour around the country, playing Bedford, Brighton, Bristol, Nottingham, Birmingham, St Andrews University, Aberdeen, Edinburgh, Sheffield, and returning to London in May.

Outside, it was 9 degrees, and on television was the finale of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy TV series and the film Lawman. Bill Haley of ‘Rock Around the Clock’ fame died that day. He had sunk into alcoholism and was diagnosed with a brain tumour. Despite playing the Royal Variety Performance only three years before, Haley declined rapidly, living in a pool house estranged from his family, making late-night rambling calls to anyone who would listen. His death certificate gave natural causes, but it felt like more than that.

The photo was taken on a 35mm camera by a fan, Dec Hickey, who documented the band’s early gigs in his book From Heaven to Heaven: New Order Live The Early Years (1981–1984) at Close Quarters. The book is a fantastic document, incorporating set lists, ticket stubs, soundchecked songs, bootleg recordings, and the fan experience of following the band around the country.

The photo has a high level of ‘noise’—grain that adds atmosphere. Light comes from the stage and possibly a camera flash, reflecting on all surroundings, casting shadow and detail without discrimination. It transforms time.

It is a documentary photo, not innovative or staged like Anton Corbijn’s early Joy Division photos that built their narrative, nor like Kevin Cummins’ painterly style. Its appeal is in its truthful subtlety. There is no mystery. It allows us inside, revealing the vulnerability of the band and the fan looking on.

It has a quality of presence. The subjects are distracted and unaware. We are among the fans as we look onto them. There is an exchange that isn’t quite eye contact to eye contact, allowing a feeling of dissociation that works with the band’s early offerings.

The photo’s purpose isn’t beautification. It’s too early for that. It tells a reality I can now share. I was born over three years after it was taken. I have hindsight and knowledge. I know what comes next. I wonder what the story felt like at the time. The photo feels like independent journalism, creating a document rather than something more substantial.

It becomes a shortcut to presumed feelings: grief for what has happened, nervousness for what is to come. I place my empathy into the situation and feel the dissociation between those two polarities. Being present must have been difficult for them. This is their uncompleted, fragmentary biography.

The set list was only eight songs, ending after forty minutes. Fans described it as inducing ‘goose bumps all over’ and ‘extreme nervousness both from the band and the audience’ (Hickey, 2012). It was early days, and through this photo, I get to become part of it.

Chapter 3 – In a State of Encounter

The tempo lifts me high. It doesn’t deserve to belong in such a stationary position with such a defined pulse. I’m stuck waiting to cross the road. This might be one of the biggest dance singles ever, but there’s still an air of melancholy. Its electronic pulsations fragment, joined by Bernard’s detached, wistful whispers. “A heart grows cold” echoes over orange diamond lights refracted by the rain.

This song, Blue Monday, has signs, forms, actions, and objects. It is experience, creation, lyric, and construction. It has legacy and influence, a time zone, a beginning, middle, and end. By being a song, it connects to the world and creates its own.

It begins with that instant kick drum looping back on itself, opening the door to multiple sequences playing off each other, locked in a quantised hold. It invites us into human interaction. The first voice we hear is a choir holding one note in reverence. The opening lyric, “How does it feel when you treat me like you do?”, places responsibility on the listener. Is it an empathic question or rhetorical? I love the ambiguity. It asks me to relate in a concrete space.

In human confusion, a reality is born. The song is about the unsaid and its effects. A child’s words enter with, “And I still find it so hard to say what I need to say.” This breakup of communication makes the listener the holder of knowledge. It now requires participation in creating meaning. This is a form of living.

We recognise its form. It echoes the slick dancefloors New Order visited after their equipment was stolen on their first trip to New York, moving towards electronic creation rather than guitar, bass, and drums. Electronica’s regularity allows human expression in movement. This is the dual reality the song thrives in. DJ Erol Alkan would end his sets with it, leaving dancers on the ultimate high.

Another weight is Kraftwerk, the robots of post-war Germany who made man-machine music, rhythms to drive towards a better future. A pulse of hope, but with wistful glances from the autobahn. For me, their melodic thoughts are detectable in Blue Monday, with its sweeping strings and synthesised backing vocals. They glance over the song, adding a remote chill. There’s an inner conflict, the fragility most recognisable in humans.

The song exists in my headphones as I walk home from work. It weaves as I weave, pounds as I pound, and creates stops where I can’t stop. It doesn’t just belong to me. Would it be too easy to define it as a folk song for city living? An encounter imposed onto people. The skyscraper synthesizers are panned to create claustrophobia for the voice trying to navigate. This echoes my existence as a London commuter. It is an unforgiving song in a merciless location.

It is, of course, an anthem that could blast out of a soundsystem in a nightclub that loses more money than it attracts. Its tempo changes are sharp and straight compared to the angular shapes of the band’s earlier work. Its colours are different but remain nocturnal. The funk guitar and recurring bass riff spiral off, and the song must fade out to echo the unending feel of the night ahead. It feels like potential.

The song was made with sequencers and a homemade synthesiser by Bernard. It began as an experiment for a one-button encore, which became too fun to stop, ending with a new song.

The band, so pleased, insisted on playing it live on Top of the Pops. According to Stephen Morris, “everything went wrong”. They were introduced by the Easter Bunny, which didn’t help. At the back, Stephen and Gillian held model poses, heads bowed low, fingers sustaining synth chords. Stephen wore military regalia with a German army shirt. These were deliberate choices against Top of the Pops’ studio manipulation. Peter Hook hit an electronic drum while cradling his bass. Bernard glanced up, checking for the camera, then sang, hugging the microphone. The song’s parts tumbled and tripped over each other, sometimes out of tune. The bass was too loud, lacking cohesion. A vocal whoop was offered, and a stifled laugh closed the performance. Despite this, it reached number nine in the charts.

The song has lived in soft drink adverts, been remixed by Quincy Jones, and remains the biggest-selling 12-inch record of all time. But that doesn’t matter when it’s in my head. It becomes my measure and my stride.

Another Blue Monday of my own, over.

Chapter 4 – Ran Wild 

Walter Benjamin suggested in his definition of aura that “even the most perfect reproduction of a work of art is lacking in one element: its presence in time and space, its unique existence at the place where it happens to be.” Does this argue that art loses through iteration?

New Order are a band of loss. They are built from loss. They carry loss, with many key figures in their present becoming part of their history. They can never be the same band again.

A band, like humans, must reproduce to survive, which sounds counter-intuitive. Songs exist in the vacuum of recorded music where they take their finished form, presented as the clearest definition of intention.

But this avoids the spark of opportunity: the jam session that ran too long, demo iterations, recording with one producer then another, a twelve-inch remix, a radio edit, an album track, a live version, a live version where the sequencer breaks down, an acoustic radio session, a version in a different key to suit an ageing voice, or a version not played by original members. Here is loss that may not even be conscious.

New Order lose a lot. Grief becomes a ghost in their design. They lost their manager, Rob Gretton, in 1999, who had been there since the beginning, pestering Bernard Sumner in a phone box to let him be their manager in 1978. A heart attack took him away.

Louis Gilbert is a 41-year-old Londoner who has long admired the way Bernard Sumner can make melancholy sound like the way the sunshine bends. He writes songs with Apples and Apples, a band with his sister and one of his best friends from school. By day, Gilbert works as a caseworker supporting young people, which gives him a perspective that’s equal parts hopeful and world-weary. He supports Arsenal despite knowing better, and is the proud father of a seven-year-old son who is already better at FIFA than he is.