‘Dreams Never End’: 3.13
No escape for so few in fear . . .
The first bass riff after Ian’s death, and my first vocal line after ‘Novelty’. It never felt good doing them alone and I soon lost heart. Quite prophetic that it starts the album. The six-string Shergold bass guitar really comes into its own. On the record you can hear Martin struggling with my vocals, mixing a low take in with a high take. Recorded ‘as live’, the three of us play up a storm. Strangely, Martin didn’t completely deconstruct the drum kit on this song. He allowed us to play together and used the best take. He later overdubbed hi-hat, both closed and open. A classic ‘New Order’ rock tune. I remember our sound guy Ozzy once saying to me, ‘After that intro it was all downhill for you lot!’
‘Truth’: 4.37
The noise that surrounds me . . .
Our first drum-machine song on record. Very atmospheric. The ARP Omni strings are especially haunting. Barney also using the melodica to great effect. We had great sonic hopes for this song but the battle with Martin left it smack in the middle of the dispute. Reminiscent of Joy Division’s ‘Insight’. A chilling dystopian vision of . . . a new world order.
‘Senses’: 4.45
No reason ever was given . . .
The core of this song is the interplay between the three of us – it being all-important. Great use of the Joy Division-esque sliding of song parts over each other to create a new third part. Steve’s syndrums and Martin’s time modulation of the tom-toms give it a very modern feel. Martin’s least favourite song, he struggled to understand it. Also my first attempt at overdubbing bass, two of them playing different parts at the same time, four- and six-string.
‘Chosen Time/Death Rattle’: 4.07
Believe in me . . .
The laid-back vocal disguises this dark, brooding song. The six-string bass melodies are very strong. The first New Order track to have a separate bass synth line taken from an early acoustic bass part, with great guitar work by Barney. Steve’s syndrums sound fantastic and, together with the Powertran synthesiser, swamp the track at the end to great effect. Martin’s idea. A classic recording done live. Hardly any overdubs.
‘I.C.B.’: 4.33
Manna falls from heaven . . .
This track was started by Joy Division but never finished, and in my opinion sounds the most like JD. Martin’s electronic treatment of the tom-toms electrifies the track in a wonderfully modern way. Laid-back vocal by Barney again suggests a lack of confidence that would soon be rectified. Excellent build-ups with space sound syndrums suggesting Steve was a Clangers fan.
Interesting to hear me backing Barney with a low vocal.
‘The Him’: 5.29
Reborn so plain my eyes see . . .
I love this bassline. Bauhaus ripped it off for ‘Bela Lugosi’s Dead’ (I take it as a compliment, lads, don’t worry). Fantastic live, with a dark and magnificent false ending. Barney’s layering of the ARP Omni strings is very effective. My low vox backs him again at Martin’s insistence. When he sang this live the end refrain was particularly plaintive for our overworked singer: ‘I’m so tired, I’m so tired, I’m so fucking tired,’ he used to sing.
Collapsing without warning . . .
My favourite track on the album, with vocals written by Steve, who then didn’t have the confidence to sing it. Barney didn’t like it so it was given to me. Fantastic melodies and tom-tom riffs. I came up with the vocal end-piece, and Martin overdubbed Gillian reading ‘The Lord’s Prayer’. The syndrum end gives it an apocalyptic feel.
‘Denial/Little Dead’: 4.20
It comes and goes and it frightens me . . .
Another song with the interplay and drop-outs being very important. This track has the most overdubs, low bass keyboard, high strings, snare drum, toms etc. Later, live, Steve had two snare drums, one placed behind him, which when he hit it, on the rolls, was fantastic to witness. I was very impressed. The vocal sounds drunk, sadly.
One night, shortly before the album came out, I got a phone call off Rob. ‘You’ve got to go down to London!’
‘Eh?’
‘Pete Saville’s got a migraine. He can’t finish the sleeve. You go down and do it!’
‘Migraine?’
‘Get it finished, Hooky!’
Peter Saville was working at Dindisc Records, an offshoot of Virgin in London, for a very feisty young lady called Carol Wilson. I think the pressure of working for a normal record label was getting to him, and he started suffering from debilitating migraines under pressure. I was elected to be the cavalry. So, clutching my aspirins, I went down to mop his fevered brow.
Peter had been asked to do two covers, one for ‘Procession/Everything’s Gone Green’, our double-A-side single, and the LP Movement. Rob was desperate to get the records out, as they were our first, so was pushing Peter more than usual.
When I got there on the train he was not well at all, and I had to gently lead and cajole him to show me what he was working on. With his head in his hands he explained his ideas. Inspired by the Italian Futurist movement of 1909, he was exploring graphic images relating to the markers of modernity of the industrial city, machines, speed and flight. Futurism exalted the new and disruptive.
Blimey, I thought, it’s no wonder he’s got a bloody headache.
So I was presented with several books on arte meccanica (machine aesthetics). I stared blankly. An hour or so later, with Rob’s words ringing in my ears, I pointed out two designs, one for Movement saying, ‘Can’t you just replace the words on that one, Pete?’ and another nice strong design for the single. He said, ‘OK. Leave it with me. I feel a bit better now. I may change the colours.’
Later he took me for dinner to his private club, the Zanzibar (the forerunner of the Groucho Club in Soho, which will be getting its very own chapter later). There he regaled me with tales of his life in London, at one point saying, ‘Do you know how hard it is living in London, Hooky? I have to pay six hundred pounds for a pair of trousers!’
‘Fuckin’ hell, Pete, I’m only on thirty quid a week. How would I know?’
I was glad to get to Euston.
Thinking on, it must have been very difficult for Rob to juggle the finances. He was running a group, New Order, which had absolutely no income. We were touring but buying piles of equipment to replace what had been stolen in New York – all using Joy Division’s money. Rob had a great way of accounting. If anyone questioned it he would always say, ‘I have two pockets. The left one is the group’s and the right one is mine and I never get them mixed up!’ and patted them both for effect. Strangely, at the end of the night buying drinks etc. for everyone, he never seemed to keep a note of which pocket he was delving into. We were happy about that. It was mainly us he was buying drinks for, so as long as there was something in one of them, we never cared.
Having been released as New Order’s producer, Hannett’s woes increased when his objections to the Haçienda club fell on deaf ears. As a Factory director he had wanted to use profits on what he considered to be the most important aspect of the label, the music. He wanted a recording studio, or if not then at least a new Fairlight CMI Series II synthesiser, the same model used by Kate Bush, Jean Michel Jarre and Martin’s arch-rival, Trevor Horn.
Sure enough, shortly before the club was due to launch, Factory’s musical magician filed a lawsuit against the label he’d helped create, attempting to prevent the opening and claim more money from his stake in the company. It was the beginning of the end for his relationship with Factory . . .
Martin wanted Factory to buy a recording studio because he said that with one album it would have been paid for, and then all the rest of our records would be recorded for free. You know what? He was absolutely right. The most idiotic thing for a record company to do was to invest in a club. So many times afterwards, when the Haçienda was losing money hand over fist, Tony would sit there with his head in his hands, going, ‘Oh, we should have listened to Martin Hannett . . .’
What could Martin have done with a Fairlight? Could he have made his Hounds of Love or So? We’ll never find out. All we know is that Martin took the hump and the rest of the Factory board voted against him. They ostracised him. Ironically, exactly what ‘the others’ would do to me in 2011.
They voted him a total buyout of £25K, and stipulated that it included him giving up his album points on all recordings for all Factory acts including Joy Division and New Order, which over the years would have been worth millions – all for £25K.
In March the following year he issued a writ against Factory – they gave it its own catalogue number, taking the piss – but it didn’t do him any good. Poor old Martin just didn’t have the money to fight the case when it was referred to the High Court. He needed £8,000. His drug addiction came back to haunt him.
With hindsight, it was disgusting, highway robbery. We knew nothing about it and I never would have done if his girlfriend Suzanne hadn’t told me about it when it happened to me with New Order. No matter how we felt about Martin when we parted, we knew that without him we would never have achieved the lasting effect we’ve had, particularly with Joy Division. So to take those points off him and buy him out was merciless, especially when you consider that he was right. He didn’t say never open a club, he said don’t open it now. Do a studio first and then do a club. Probably the only sensible thing anyone ever associated with Factory suggested, and he was shouted down. Tony had it right. We should have listened to Martin.
My Equipment List
By this time I had replaced my stolen gear with a much better version of roughly the same set-up – as used by Martin Hannett when he was a bass player. For the more technically minded among you I was using a Yamaha BBI200S four-string and a Shergold six-string bass guitars, both fed into an Alembic stereo valve pre-amplifier, each channel with separate EQ, then mono-ed into a Roland Sip-301 pre-amplifier with two internal effects sends, one for the Electro-Harmonix Clone Theory pedal and the other for a Yamaha analogue delay unit. The Roland mono output was then bridged into a stereo Amcron DC300A solid-state stereo amplifier (1,200 watts per channel rms = LOUD) into two custom-built flight-cased cabinets each containing two fifteen-inch JBL 4560 1000-watt bass speakers . . .
It was awesome!
I was ecstatic. Thank you, Martin.
One other very important piece of equipment for any bass player is the strings he uses. I have used many different kinds in my time, with varying degrees of success, but settled very early on for Elite bass strings from the Bass Centre in London – my first and only sponsor, come to think of it. The strings are very bright and very strong, so very reliable. A normal bass guitar is tuned E A D G with string gauges 105, 80, 60, 45 on average. This wasn’t good enough for me! Again very early, I realised because I was playing mainly the high strings D G, I needed more low-end frequencies to make them sound fatter, so I started using 105 85 65, 65, which gave me problems because that last string would be stretched so tight to get the pitch, it was prone to snapping, and when it did snap it could cut your bloody head off. So I soon went down to 60s for the G string, which worked better with less snapping, and I still use them now. Really makes your fingers hard.
My record for breaking strings at a gig was three at once. I hit the guitar so hard it snapped three strings, the A D and G. That of course was in my younger, very punky days, when you played every gig as if your life depended on it. Heady days! These days I just stick to snapping one at a time.