The story of New Order

Out of the ashes

New Order grew out of a tragedy. Bernard Sumner, Peter Hook and Stephen Morris had spent three years in Joy Division, the Manchester post punk band fronted by Ian Curtis. On the eighteenth of May 1980, the day before Joy Division were due to fly out for their first American tour, Curtis took his own life at his home in Macclesfield. He was twenty three. Long before that, the four of them had agreed that if anyone left or died, the others would stop using the name. So the three survivors kept that promise. They would carry on playing together, but Joy Division was finished, and whatever came next would need a new name and a new voice.[1] [2] [3]

That summer the trio began writing and demoing. Tony Wilson, who ran their label Factory Records, suggested a singer called Kevin Hewick, and they recorded a song with him, but it went no further. On the twenty ninth of July 1980 the still unnamed band played its first show at Manchester's Beach Club. Their manager Rob Gretton is credited with finding a name in a newspaper headline about the New Order of Kampuchean Rebels. They shortened it to New Order, and insisted it had nothing to do with fascism. On a short American tour that autumn, Sumner, Hook and Morris all took turns singing lead.[1] [2]

In the end Bernard Sumner became the singer, though he found it close to impossible to sing while playing guitar and keyboards at the same time. The band wanted a fourth member they already knew and trusted. Gretton suggested Gillian Gilbert, Stephen Morris's girlfriend, who had once stood in on guitar at a Joy Division gig. She was studying graphic design at Stockport College when they asked, and was nervous about telling her parents. She could not really play keyboards yet, so she borrowed her sister's little Bontempi organ and learned the songs. Her first gig came on the twenty fifth of October 1980, at the Squat in Manchester.[1] [2] [3] [4]

New Order's first single, Ceremony, came out in January 1981, backed with In a Lonely Place. Both songs had been written by Joy Division in the weeks before Curtis died, and the band had to piece the lyrics together from rehearsal tapes, which Morris later called one of the most painful things they ever did. The debut album Movement followed in November 1981, produced again by Martin Hannett. The sessions were tense. Hannett was struggling with drink and drugs and in a legal fight with Factory. Parts of the album were recorded in London while the Brixton riots raged outside the studio. It reached only number thirty, and critics were lukewarm.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

New York nights and the Hacienda

Something changed in 1981. On trips to New York the band discovered the city's clubs, with their electro, freestyle and post disco sounds. Back home, partly to cheer themselves up, they listened to Italian disco and Giorgio Moroder, and Morris taught himself to program drum machines. You can hear the shift on the single Everything's Gone Green. It was the last track Hannett produced for them. According to Sumner, Hannett walked out halfway through the mix because he and Hook asked him to turn the drums up. From then on New Order produced themselves, using what Hannett had taught them about the mixing desk.[1] [2] [3]

Their first self produced single was Temptation, released in May 1982. It started life as an instrumental, and Sumner made up the words live on stage, night after night, keeping the lines he liked. He recorded the final vocal in London. At one point Hook and Gretton shoved a snowball down his shirt, and his startled yelp is still there at the start of the twelve inch version. Temptation was bright and danceable, a world away from Joy Division's gloom. It reached number twenty nine and topped the independent chart. Critics now count it among the best things they ever did.[1] [2]

On the twenty first of May 1982, Factory opened its own nightclub in an old yacht builder's warehouse on Whitworth Street West in Manchester. It was called the Hacienda, and in true Factory style it got a catalogue number, FAC fifty one. The idea was Rob Gretton's, inspired by New York clubs, and much of the money came from New Order. Hook recalled that about a hundred thousand pounds of the band's earnings went in while they were living on twenty pounds a week. The designer Ben Kelly gave it an industrial look with hazard stripes on the pillars.[1] [2] [3]

The opening night was not a triumph. The comedian Bernard Manning was booked to perform, told the crowd it was one of the worst venues he had ever played, went down badly and handed his fee back. For years the club was often half empty. New Order marked the opening with a twenty three minute instrumental, later released as Video 5 8 6, with rhythms that would soon turn up in something much bigger. Among the club's early bookings were the Smiths, and in January 1984 a young Madonna played her first ever British show there, for a television broadcast.[1] [2]

Blue Monday

Blue Monday was written in the band's rehearsal room in Cheetham Hill, Manchester. It was built from machines. The bassline came from a Moog Source driven by a sequencer Sumner had built himself, the beat from an Oberheim drum machine, and the choir sounds were sampled from Kraftwerk's song Uranium on a new Emulator sampler. MIDI did not exist yet, so an engineer designed a circuit to keep everything in sync. Gillian Gilbert wrote the sequence out by hand on a long roll of paper and accidentally added an extra rest. It threw the pattern slightly out of step, and the band liked it so much they kept it.[1]

The influences were a mix of disco and electronics. Sumner pointed to Klein and MBO's Dirty Talk and Sylvester's You Make Me Feel Mighty Real. Hook said they took parts from a Donna Summer song and cited Kraftwerk, Moroder and Sparks. Blue Monday came out on the seventh of March 1983 as a twelve inch single, and it was not on the album that followed. On Top of the Pops at the end of March the band insisted on playing live, and the synthesisers went haywire. Morris later said it sounded awful. Even so the song climbed to number nine on the second of its runs up the chart that year.[1]

Peter Saville's sleeve for Blue Monday was made to look like a computer floppy disk, die cut, with a silver inner sleeve. There was no band name or title in plain English, only a code of coloured blocks that could be decoded with a key printed on the back of the next album. The single stayed on the British independent chart for a hundred and eighty six weeks. With about 1.16 million copies sold in Britain across its versions, it is known as the best selling twelve inch single ever. Yet it never got an official gold disc, because Factory was not a member of the British record industry association.[1] [2]

The album Power, Corruption and Lies arrived on the second of May 1983. It mixed their guitar sound with sequencers, and Rolling Stone called it a declaration of independence from their past. Saville's cover put a still life of roses by the French painter Henri Fantin Latour against his colour code. At first the National Gallery was reluctant. Tony Wilson rang the director and asked who owned the painting. Told that it belonged to the people of Britain, he replied that the people wanted it, and permission was granted. The cover later appeared on a Royal Mail stamp and entered the collection of the Museum of Modern Art.[1] [2]

Later in 1983 the band went back to New York to work with the producer and DJ Arthur Baker, known for his electro records with Afrika Bambaataa. The result was Confusion, a single co written with Baker, whose video showed the band live alongside scenes from the Fun House club. It was seen at first as a letdown after Blue Monday, but it reached number five on Billboard's dance club chart. In 1984 came Thieves Like Us, named after a Robert Altman film, and the harder, guitar driven Murder. By now New Order had a habit of leaving their best songs off their albums.[1] [2] [3] [4]

From Low Life to Substance

Low Life, released in May 1985, is often called the moment New Order finished turning from a post punk band into a dance rock band. It was also the only New Order sleeve to show the members' faces, in grainy instant photos by Peter Saville. On the CD, Morris was on the front and fans could choose which member showed through. The single The Perfect Kiss was written, recorded and mixed without sleep before a tour of Australia. The director Jonathan Demme filmed the band playing it live in their rehearsal room for an eleven minute video, which Billboard later called their most arresting visual ever.[1] [2] [3]

In 1986 Hollywood came calling. The film Pretty in Pink used Shellshock on its soundtrack, and instrumental versions of Thieves Like Us and Elegia played in the movie. That summer New Order headlined the Festival of the Tenth Summer at Manchester's G Mex, with the Smiths and the Fall on the bill. The fourth album, Brotherhood, followed in September 1986, split roughly into a rock side and an electronic side. Morris later admitted the idea did not quite work. But it contained Bizarre Love Triangle, which became a hit in Australia and a club favourite in America, and which Billboard later called a synth pop masterpiece.[1] [2] [3] [4]

In August 1987 came Substance, a double collection of their twelve inch singles and B sides, several of which had never been on an album. It sold over a million copies and became their most popular record. It also carried a new single recorded with the American producer Stephen Hague. True Faith went to number four in Britain and became their first American top forty hit. Hague persuaded Sumner to change a line about everyone taking drugs, fearing radio would not play it. Its strange video by the French choreographer Philippe Decoufle, with dancers slapping each other in time to the beat, won British video of the year.[1] [2]

The B side of True Faith was 1963, which the band had originally wanted as the A side. Hague once described it as the only song about domestic violence you could dance to. In December 1987 came Touched by the Hand of God, named after Diego Maradona's handball goal against England at the 1986 World Cup. Its video was directed by Kathryn Bigelow, years before her Oscar, and spoofed the glam metal bands the group had seen all over MTV on tour. The band mimed in long wigs and leather, and the actor Bill Paxton appeared in a love scene.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Ibiza, acid house and the World Cup

By 1986 the Hacienda had started playing house music, with DJs like Mike Pickering and Graeme Park on its Friday night called Nude. It went from losing money to being full almost every night. In 1988 an acid house night called Hot helped launch what became known as Madchester. There was a dark side. Ecstasy replaced alcohol, so the bar made little money, and dealers and gangs moved in. On the fourteenth of July 1989 a sixteen year old girl, Clare Leighton, collapsed and died at the club after taking an ecstasy tablet. It was reported as Britain's first ecstasy related death, and police pressure on the club grew.[1] [2]

New Order made their fifth album partly in Ibiza, at Hook's urging, after years in what he called dark and horrible London studios. They spent about four months on the island, soaking up the Balearic clubs, and by Sumner's estimate left with the album only about twenty per cent finished. They completed it at Peter Gabriel's Real World studios in Wiltshire. Technique came out on the thirtieth of January 1989 and went straight to number one in Britain, their first chart topping album. Hook joked that making it was an epic power struggle between the sequencers and him, because he still wanted them to be a rock band.[1] [2]

The first single, Fine Time, was written after a night at the Amnesia club in Ibiza. Its title came from Morris, who had scribbled the words as a reminder to pay a parking fine after his car was towed. Round and Round was chosen as the next single by Tony Wilson, against the band's wishes, and Sumner later admitted that the growing tension with Wilson found its way into the song. Another track, Run, landed them in court. John Denver's publishers claimed its guitar break echoed Leaving on a Jet Plane. The case was settled, and the song is now credited to both New Order and Denver.[1] [2] [3] [4]

In 1990 the Football Association asked Factory for a World Cup song. The result was World in Motion, credited to EnglandNewOrder. The comedian Keith Allen helped with the words, and the working title E for England was vetoed when officials realised it sounded like a nod to ecstasy. Six England players came to the studio, and after a kind of rap audition John Barnes won the verse that everyone still knows. The single reached number one in June 1990 and stayed there for two weeks, the only British number one New Order ever had. It was also their last release on Factory.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Around this time the members began working apart. Sumner, frustrated that the others were not keen on his ideas for more synth programming, teamed up with former Smiths guitarist Johnny Marr as Electronic. Their first single, Getting Away with It, sold around three hundred and fifty thousand copies, and their debut album sold over a million. Hook formed a harder rock band called Revenge. Morris and Gilbert began writing television music together and became the Other Two. Sumner later said that there were things he could not do in New Order without upsetting the others.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Factory falls

1991 brought loss to the Factory family. Martin Hannett, the producer who had shaped Joy Division and New Order's first steps, died on the eighteenth of April 1991 of heart failure, aged forty two, after years of heavy alcohol and heroin use. By 1992 Factory itself was in deep trouble. Happy Mondays were making an expensive album in Barbados, and New Order reportedly spent four hundred thousand pounds recording their comeback. Hook later said they only made the album to save the Hacienda, and that members who had guaranteed loans for Factory and the club could have been ruined if they did not.[1] [2] [3]

The sessions for Republic were miserable. Hook said he and Sumner had reached the point where they hated each other, and that everyone was taking various substances. When Factory tried to sell itself to London Records, the deal collapsed over a strange detail. Factory had never signed proper contracts with New Order, so the band, not the label, owned their recordings. Tony Wilson admitted this was the main reason the rescue failed. Factory declared bankruptcy in November 1992. Gillian Gilbert remembered meeting record company boards in London, and one room bursting out laughing when she said her ambition was writing for New Order.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Republic came out in May 1993 on London Records and went to number one in Britain. Its lead single Regret reached number four at home and number twenty eight in America, the band's highest ever placing on the Billboard Hot 100. For Top of the Pops they filmed Regret on the set of Baywatch in California, surrounded by lifeguards and bikinis, with David Hasselhoff making a cameo. Behind the fun, tensions were rising. After a show at the Reading Festival in August 1993, New Order simply stopped. There was no announcement. Sumner later said they walked off stage and did not talk to one another for five years.[1] [2] [3] [4]

The break years kept everyone busy. Hook formed Monaco with David Potts, and their single What Do You Want from Me became a club and alternative radio hit in 1997. In 1994 he married the comedian Caroline Aherne. The marriage ended in 1997, and after her death in 2016 he said it had been turbulent and violent. Sumner made more Electronic records, with Kraftwerk's Karl Bartos joining in. Morris and Gilbert released an album as the Other Two in 1993 and married in 1994. Compilations kept the name alive, and Blue Monday was reissued in a new remix for the third time.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

Meanwhile the Hacienda was slowly dying. There were shootings in and around the club, and in 1991 it closed for a spell before reopening with tighter security. Hook once spent a night on the door and counted four fights, a gun pulled and two bar staff assaulted in a couple of hours. The club lost its licence in June 1997 and held its last night on the twenty eighth of June. Hook later estimated it had lost up to eighteen million pounds. Tony Wilson liked to say that some people make money and some make history. The building was demolished in 2002 and replaced by flats.[1] [2] [3]

Getting ready again

In 1998 Rob Gretton suggested the band meet again, nearly five years after they had last been together. Sumner said they agreed to air any grudges before booking a single gig. By the second meeting everyone was in. Their comeback was meant to be the Phoenix Festival, but it was cancelled over poor ticket sales, so they played the last night of the Reading Festival instead, and started playing Joy Division songs again. Keith Allen joined them for World in Motion. Then, on the fifteenth of May 1999, Gretton died of a heart attack at forty six. The next album would be dedicated to him.[1] [2] [3] [4]

That album was Get Ready, released in August 2001, a deliberately guitar heavy record after years of synthesisers. Billy Corgan of the Smashing Pumpkins sang on Turn My Way and toured with them for a while, and Primal Scream's Bobby Gillespie sang on Rock the Shack. The single Crystal went to number eight. Sumner had first given the song away to another artist, until the DJ Pete Tong called it their best single since Blue Monday. Its video showed a young band called the Killers miming to the song. A real American group liked that fake name so much they took it.[1] [2] [3]

There was a painful reason for a change in the line up. Early in 2001, as the album was being finished, Gilbert and Morris's baby daughter Grace fell seriously ill with a rare neurological condition that left her paralysed from the waist down. Gilbert decided she could not tour. Morris offered to stay home instead, but she reasoned it would be easier to replace her than the drummer. Phil Cunningham, formerly of the Macclesfield band Marion, stepped in on keyboards and guitar, and became a full member for the 2005 album. Gilbert said she was taken straight off the band's fax list.[1] [2] [3] [4]

In 2002 the film 24 Hour Party People told the story of Factory Records, with Steve Coogan as Tony Wilson and John Simm as Bernard Sumner. New Order gave it a new single, Here to Stay, produced by the Chemical Brothers. In March 2005 came Waiting for the Sirens' Call, with Ana Matronic of Scissor Sisters guesting on Jetstream. The band and Joy Division shared the NME's Godlike Genius award that year, and a track from the album was nominated for a Grammy. Then, on the tenth of August 2007, Tony Wilson died of a heart attack at fifty seven, while being treated for kidney cancer.[1] [2] [3] [4]

By then the band was already falling apart. After a show in Buenos Aires in November 2006, Hook suggested they stop touring. In May 2007 he went on the radio station Xfm to talk about another project and said that he and Bernard were no longer working together. The others were stunned. Sumner said Hook had announced a split without even discussing it with the band, and that he had no right to. A source close to the band insisted New Order still existed. Sumner later compared the band to a football team with two strikers, where one would not pass the ball.[1] [2] [3] [4]

New Order without Hooky

For a while New Order went quiet. Sumner and Cunningham formed Bad Lieutenant with Jake Evans, releasing the album Never Cry Another Tear in 2009, with Morris on drums for some tracks and live shows. Gilbert faced her own fight. In 2007 she was diagnosed with breast cancer, and she made a full recovery. Hook, meanwhile, formed Peter Hook and the Light in 2010, and began touring whole Joy Division albums, starting with Unknown Pleasures on the thirtieth anniversary of Ian Curtis's death. Sumner said the band only found out from the press, and that it pushed them to wonder why they were holding back.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

In 2011 the band were asked to play two benefit concerts for Michael Shamberg, the film producer behind many of their videos, who had been seriously ill for years. Hook was not part of it. Instead Gillian Gilbert came back after a ten year break, and Tom Chapman, the bassist from Bad Lieutenant, took Hook's place. The shows took place at the Ancienne Belgique in Brussels on the seventeenth of October and at the Bataclan in Paris the next night. Gilbert said it would have been nice to be asked back, but nobody asked, so she joined anyway. Offers poured in from around the world.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

The new five piece toured almost nonstop. In August 2012 they played Hyde Park with Blur and the Specials to celebrate the end of the London Olympics. Hook was scathing. He claimed Chapman was miming to bass parts Hook himself had recorded, and the band denied it. In January 2013 they released Lost Sirens, songs left over from the Waiting for the Sirens' Call sessions, delayed, Gilbert said, by copyright rows behind the scenes. In 2014 they signed to Mute Records. Their tenth album, Music Complete, arrived in September 2015 with guests including Iggy Pop, Brandon Flowers and La Roux's Elly Jackson.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

Music Complete was their first album without Hook and their first as a five piece. It marked a return to electronics, reached number two in Britain and number thirty four in America, and got some of their best reviews in decades. Rolling Stone argued that losing Hook freed them to make their most varied work in years. The Guardian called it the freshest thing they had done in ages. Sumner said he used a Moog that had last been dusted off for Blue Monday. The album was recorded, like every New Order record since 2001, at Morris and Gilbert's home studio near Macclesfield.[1] [2] [3]

The feud went to court. In November 2015 Hook sued Sumner, Morris and Gilbert in the High Court. The three had set up a new company in 2011 and licensed the New Order name to it, and Hook said they did it behind his back. The company had earned about 7.8 million pounds in four years, while he received 1.25 per cent of the band's income. His lawyer compared it to George and Ringo quietly taking Paul's share of the Beatles. The band said they had treated him fairly. A judge let the case proceed but urged a deal, and on the twentieth of September 2017 a full and final settlement was announced.[1] [2] [3]

Decades on

In July 2017 New Order played the Manchester International Festival with the artist Liam Gillick and a twelve piece synthesiser orchestra, a show later released as a live album and filmed for the documentary New Order Decades. They toured the Americas in 2018 and Europe in 2019. A co headlining tour with the Pet Shop Boys, called Unity, was delayed by the pandemic and finally ran across North America in autumn 2022. In September 2020 they released Be a Rebel, their first new song in five years. As of 2026, Music Complete remains their most recent studio album.[1] [2] [3]

From 2023 to 2025 the band toured North America, Europe, Japan and Australia, headlining festivals such as South by Southwest and Primavera Sound. At a show in Osaka in February 2025 they played State of the Nation live for the first time since 1987. They also began a series of Definitive box sets, restoring each Factory era album with demos, concerts and books, and in December 2025 the bonus discs became available on CD for the first time. Morris told Rolling Stone that Technique was next in line for the treatment.[1] [2] [3] [4]

In 2026 the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame named Joy Division and New Order as a single inductee in its class of 2026, alongside Oasis, Phil Collins and Iron Maiden. Curtis, Sumner, Hook, Morris and Gilbert were named as the inducted members, with the ceremony set for the fourteenth of November 2026 in Los Angeles. Hook said he would attend, but told Rolling Stone he would not stand with his former bandmates, after what he felt they had done to him and his family. Morris, for his part, called Hook quite an angry person, and said of reconciliation that he did not know, although life was too short.[1] [2] [3] [4]

On the twenty ninth of June 2026 New Order announced that Stephen Morris and Gillian Gilbert would not tour for the foreseeable future, for personal health reasons. It left Sumner as the only original member on stage, alongside Cunningham and Chapman, for a show at Primavera in Santiago, Chile, in November. Morris told Rolling Stone he was sorry, and that it was better to be upfront than to cancel gigs from a hospital. He said he still sees Bernard, Phil and Tom, and that they are all mates. Hook, typically, called it quite rich that Sumner would play as New Order on his own.[1] [2] [3] [4]

New Order's influence runs through decades of dance and rock. Blue Monday shaped Detroit techno and the Pet Shop Boys, Kylie Minogue mashed it up with Can't Get You Out of My Head at the Brit Awards, and Rihanna built Shut Up and Drive on its riff, earning the band a writing credit. The Killers took their name from a New Order video. Critics call them the first alternative dance band, the group that proved a rock band could live on the dancefloor. As the Human League's Phil Oakey put it, if you want to make a lot of money out of pop, be number three a lot, like New Order did.[1] [2] [3]

The people around New Order

Bernard Sumner and Peter Hook. They were childhood friends from Salford who went to the same Sex Pistols gig in 1976 and were inspired to start a band. For decades Hook's high melodic bass and Sumner's voice and electronics defined the sound. But Sumner called it an argument stroke argument, and by 2007 they were no longer speaking. Lawsuits followed, and as of 2026 they remain estranged.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Stephen Morris and Gillian Gilbert. Gilbert was Morris's girlfriend when Rob Gretton suggested she join in 1980. They got engaged in 1993, married in 1994 and have two daughters. They work together as the Other Two and run the home studio near Macclesfield where New Order records. In 2026 both stepped back from touring for health reasons.[1] [2] [3] [4]

New Order and Rob Gretton. Gretton managed Joy Division and New Order for over twenty years, found the band's name, and dreamed up the Hacienda. He sometimes sang backing vocals and helped choose titles. Gilbert credited him with making her feel like an equal. It was Gretton who brought them back together in 1998, and he died of a heart attack the following year, aged forty six.[1] [2] [3]

New Order and Tony Wilson. The Granada television presenter ran Factory Records and gave the band total freedom and no contracts. Relations soured in the late eighties, and Sumner admitted the tension fed into Round and Round. Factory's collapse in 1992 ended their label partnership, but Wilson remained a Manchester legend until his death in 2007. Even his coffin got a Factory number, FAC five hundred and one.[1] [2] [3]

New Order and Martin Hannett. Hannett produced Joy Division's albums and New Order's first records, including Movement. By then he was fighting Factory in court and struggling with drink and drugs. The relationship broke when he walked out mid mix over the drum volume on Everything's Gone Green. The band went on to produce themselves. Hannett died in 1991, aged forty two.[1] [2] [3]

New Order and Peter Saville. Saville designed almost every New Order sleeve, from the floppy disk of Blue Monday to the roses of Power, Corruption and Lies. His covers rarely showed the band or even their name, selling them, as he put it, as a mass produced secret. He often sent artwork straight to the printer without the band or label seeing it first.[1] [2] [3]

Bernard Sumner and Johnny Marr. Sumner first heard the Smiths through a studio wall in 1982, and later found Marr for a session by looking under G for guitarist in the Yellow Pages. After the Smiths split, they formed Electronic, with Pet Shop Boys and Kraftwerk's Karl Bartos helping out. Marr says they finish each other's sentences, and calls the friendship more important than the music.[1] [2]

New Order and Arthur Baker. The New York electro producer co wrote Confusion with the band in 1983, and helped on Thieves Like Us during the same sessions. He appears in the Confusion video working the decks. The partnership lasted, with Baker remixing 1963 as a single in 1995 and producing a B side for Crystal in 2001.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

New Order and Stephen Hague. The American producer brought New Order a new pop polish. He co wrote and co produced True Faith in 1987, produced World in Motion, and was chosen for the album Republic, co writing Regret, their biggest American hit. He also talked Sumner out of a drug line that would have kept True Faith off the radio.[1] [2] [3] [4]

New Order and The Killers. The Killers named themselves after the fictional band in New Order's Crystal video, and borrowed its stage set for their own Somebody Told Me video. Brandon Flowers sang Crystal with New Order at T in the Park in 2005 and later, Sumner joined the Killers on stage, and Flowers sang on Music Complete.[1] [2] [3]

Peter Hook and Caroline Aherne. Hook married the comedian Caroline Aherne, star of The Fast Show and The Royle Family, in 1994, during New Order's break. They split in 1997. After her death in 2016, Hook said the marriage had been turbulent and violent, and described her once trying to stab him with a kitchen knife.[1]

New Order and Michael Shamberg. Shamberg ran Factory's New York office and produced many of the band's videos, bringing in directors like Kathryn Bigelow and Philippe Decoufle. When he fell seriously ill, New Order reformed in 2011 to play two benefit concerts for his care, the shows that restarted the band without Peter Hook.[1] [2] [3]

Rare facts about New Order

• Gillian Gilbert learned New Order's songs on her sister's toy Bontempi organ. She joined as a guitarist who could barely play keyboards. She borrowed her sister's little Bontempi and taught herself every song the band had already written.[1]
• Parts of Movement were recorded while the Brixton riots raged outside the studio. Gilbert remembered the band on the second floor, hearing and watching the rioting through the windows while they worked on the debut album in 1981.[1]
• The Movement track ICB stands for Ian Curtis Buried. Peter Hook confirmed the meaning of the initials in a 2013 interview. It is one of the few direct references to Curtis on the album.[1]
• The startled yelp on the twelve inch of Temptation is Sumner reacting to a snowball down his shirt. Peter Hook and manager Rob Gretton shoved the snowball down Sumner's back while he was recording. The band kept the yelp on the record.[1]
• Stephen Morris secretly hated the snare drum on Temptation for about twenty years. He disliked how it was panned to one side but kept quiet, finally confessing to the band nearly two decades after the single came out.[1]
• The title Everything's Gone Green came from how the light looked to Morris during a break. Sunlight bouncing off the swimming baths opposite the studio gave the room an aquamarine haze. Morris said everything had gone green, and Sumner said that would be the title.[1]
• For decades, two New Order B sides were sold under each other's names. Cries and Whispers and Mesh were swapped on the Everything's Gone Green sleeve and again on Substance. Morris noted it was mislabelled in 1987 and nobody noticed.[1] [2]
• The band learned their first sampler by recording farts and sneezes. They bought an early Emulator for Blue Monday, practised on bodily noises, and ended up sampling choir sounds from Kraftwerk's Uranium.[1]
• Blue Monday was never awarded an official gold disc in Britain. Despite selling over a million copies in the UK, it was ineligible because Factory Records was not a member of the British Phonographic Industry.[1]
• Quincy Jones remixed Blue Monday in 1988. Jones owned Qwest Records, New Order's American label. His Blue Monday 1988 reached number three in Britain and topped the American dance chart.[1]
• New Order have a songwriting credit on a Rihanna hit. Rihanna's 2007 song Shut Up and Drive interpolated the riff of Blue Monday, so all four members were credited as co writers.[1]
• Peter Saville's design fee for the Blue Monday sleeve was 538 pounds and 20 pence. The artwork was so late that Saville sent it straight to the printer, and neither the band nor the label saw it before it was made.[1]
• The Power, Corruption and Lies cover now belongs to the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The sleeve, built around Fantin Latour's painting of roses, joined MoMA's collection in 2014. In 2010 it had also appeared on a Royal Mail stamp.[1]
• The Hacienda's cedilla was chosen because it made the letters look like the number fifty one. The club's Factory catalogue number was FAC fifty one. The name itself came from a Situationist slogan, The Hacienda Must Be Built.[1] [2]
• The Hacienda's basement bar was named after a Soviet spy. It was called the Gay Traitor, after the art historian Anthony Blunt. Another bar was named after his fellow spy Kim Philby.[1]
• Madonna's first British performance was at the Hacienda in January 1984. She sang Holiday for a live broadcast of Channel 4's The Tube. Norman Cook, later Fatboy Slim, said she mesmerised the crowd.[1] [2]
• Low Life is the only New Order album with the band's faces on the cover. Saville took instant photos of each member. On the CD, Morris is on the front, but fans can swap which member shows through the sleeve.[1]
• The frog noises on The Perfect Kiss were Stephen Morris's work. Gilbert recalled the band playing with their new Emulator. Morris added the frogs, and later they put sheep on Fine Time.[1] [2]
• The Perfect Kiss single and its video have mirror image catalogue numbers. The record was FAC one two three, and Jonathan Demme's video was FAC three two one.[1]
• The title Thieves Like Us was suggested by the New York DJ Jellybean Benitez. The song, co written with Arthur Baker, takes its name from a 1974 Robert Altman film.[1]
• The skipping record ending of Every Little Counts was a nod to the Beatles. Morris compared the ending on Brotherhood to A Day in the Life, and joked the cassette version should have sounded like the tape being chewed up.[1]
• Factory made thirty footballs to promote Touched by the Hand of God. The song's title referred to Maradona's handball goal against England, so the label printed it on a small run of footballs.[1]
• Fine Time ends with a bleating sheep. The band said the sheep was a joke about acid house fans following the flock. Sumner also joked his first vocal take sounded constipated.[1]
• World in Motion opens with a specially re recorded line from the 1966 World Cup final. The commentator Kenneth Wolstenholme recorded his famous they think it's all over line again for the band, rather than using the original tape.[1]
• John Barnes won his World in Motion rap in an audition against his teammates. Peter Beardsley, Paul Gascoigne, Steve McMahon and Des Walker all tried it. Chris Waddle never got his turn because Barnes had already won.[1] [2]
• A plan to have David Beckham rap on World in Motion in 2002 was vetoed. The song was reissued for the 2002 World Cup with Beckham lined up for the rap, but the Football Association blocked the idea.[1]
• Regret was filmed for Top of the Pops on the set of Baywatch. The band chose the most unlikely Los Angeles location they could think of after several drinks. Bikini clad extras and a cameo from David Hasselhoff followed.[1] [2]
• Crystal was nearly given away to another artist. Sumner handed it to a German label act, Corvin Dalek, until DJ Pete Tong called it the best New Order single since Blue Monday.[1]
• Stephen Morris keeps a full size Dalek in his rehearsal room. Sumner calls it the sixth member of New Order. Morris, a Doctor Who fan, also owns military vehicles, including a Ferret armoured car and several tanks.[1]
• Peter Hook's high bass style began because his first amplifier was so bad. Bought from his old art teacher for ten pounds, it only let the high notes cut through Sumner's loud guitar, so Hook played up the neck.[1]
• Peter Hook owns the Hacienda name and trademark. When developers built flats on the old club site, they licensed the Hacienda name from him. He also had bass guitars made with fretboards from the club's dance floor.[1] [2]
• Bernard Sumner once worked as an animator on children's cartoons. Before music took over, he painted and traced animation cels at Cosgrove Hall Productions in Manchester. He has also used the surnames Dicken and Albrecht.[1]
• Sumner found Johnny Marr for a 1980s session in the Yellow Pages. Needing a guitarist for a Mike Pickering record he was producing, Sumner looked under G for guitarist, and Marr's name was first.[1]
• In early shows, the band sometimes walked off stage before Temptation had finished. The sequencers and drum machines were left to play the song out on their own.[1]
• Peter Hook's son Jack has played bass for the Smashing Pumpkins since 2015. That is the band led by Billy Corgan, who sang on Get Ready and toured with New Order in 2001.[1] [2]
• Tony Wilson's coffin was given a Factory catalogue number. It was FAC five hundred and one. His headstone was designed by Peter Saville and the Hacienda's designer Ben Kelly.[1] [2]

Disputed stories

These stories are told often but the accounts don't agree. Here are the versions and who says what.