New Order began 1984 on a high, with the success of ‘Blue Monday’ and the release of ‘Thieves Like Us’ in April. Behind the scenes, Factory Records resolved a legal dispute with Martin Hannett who, having stepped down as director the previous June, accepted a one-off payment of £25,000; Factory, meanwhile, enjoyed the reflected glory of an episode of The Tube, which was broadcast from the Haçienda in January.
The ‘Thieves Like Us’ graffiti may well have been spotted by Arthur Baker in New York. But it was actually a 1937 novel by Edward Anderson and later, in 1974, was made into a film by Robert Altman. On record, of course, we remained a perfect cerebral proposition, beloved of intellectuals everywhere. In real life, however, we continued to lay waste to that image wherever we went.
I was very happy with this recording, thinking ‘Thieves Like Us’ a far superior song to ‘Blue Monday’. Electing to record again in Britannia Row with Mike Johnson as engineer, we finished this session quickly, in four days. Barney and Steve had programmed a keyboard and drum masterpiece, and the bass guitar riff came with a little help from Hot Chocolate’s ‘Emma’. Lyrically it was very evocative, a real love song, and the words flowed easily too. The B-side was ‘Lonesome Tonight’, our homage to Elvis.
Barney had been obsessed with a ‘live’ recording he had where Elvis is obviously totally pissed and just cannot stop laughing to sing, ‘Are you lonesome tonight.’ He keeps messing up the song and it is very funny. Barney suggested one night we jam it on stage, saying, ‘It’s easy, just C and F!’ This was the result, a glorious tune even though it’s nothing like Elvis’s, given away in true New Order fashion as a B-side. The dropdown is wonderful and I must admit the awful noise at the end was inspired by my cold, which was dreadful at the time. When Barney heard me hawking up the phlegm into a handkerchief he suggested we put it on the end because the contrast between something so beautiful and something so awful might be interesting. He was absolutely right.
Pete Saville’s cover design was based on a metaphysical painting, The Evil Genius of a King (1914–15) by Giorgio de Chirico. The numbers around the central image had been taken from an eighteenth-century board game for which the rules had long been lost. It turned out to be called ‘The Jew’s Game’. Peter’s numbers were completely random and every effort was made to exclude numbers that could in any way relate to the record. Peter and Trevor Keys (the photographer) hoped that some arcane or sinister message would be read into them, which of course is exactly what the music press did.
We were still gigging everywhere we could in England and outside, and embarked on our first German tour, putting the lessons we had learned in America to good use, like in Dusseldorf, where we met a couple of lovely girls after the first gig. At first it seemed we were doomed to remain friends with them. They didn’t speak much English but were very cute and we retired to a room for a goodnight drink. I was happily chatting (as best I could) on the bed with mine, and A. N. Other was at the foot of the bed with his. I was resigning myself to an early night alone when he suddenly announces loudly he’s going for a piss in the en-suite. I did have a feeling it was some kind of signal, but wasn’t sure, so the remaining three of us carried on in our broken English when all of a sudden the toilet door burst open and a totally nude man jumped over our heads with gay abandon, landing on the poor girl sitting on the floor. I grabbed my shocked belle and we retreated into the toilet, where after an uncomfortable coupling on the tiles, we lay on the floor waiting for the grunting next door to stop. Afterwards I took the girls out and they went home. Trouble was, they were none too happy when we decided to, shall we say, ‘move on’.
New Order’s next gig was in Frankfurt, and the girls turned up at soundcheck. It was nice to see them, but my mate would have nothing to do with them, blanking them completely. It was quite embarrassing and his girlie was getting really upset. I made my apologies and got ready for the gig.
So, later, there we were, playing our little hearts out on stage, Barney as detached as ever, and me keeping my watchful eye out on the crowd, when suddenly I spied the same two girls marching through the audience and right to the lip at the front of the stage.
Uh-oh. They were holding out a piece of paper. Barney, oblivious as ever, was off in his own little world of Pernod-induced self-medication.
The fact that they were being ignored only made them angrier, and they started shouting and gesticulating. The whole sorry scene was beginning to seriously cramp my style.
I ambled over, grabbed the note, and said, ‘Please stop, we’re trying to play a concert here.’ Which, having delivered their missive, is exactly what they did.
At the end of the gig I unfolded the note. It read, ‘You two are a pair of English bastards.’
I couldn’t disagree with that. They were exactly right. Thing is, we were a right ‘love ’em and leave ’em’ lot. Our roadies were very much in the habit of passing themselves off as members of the band. The amount of times I’d discover some girl trying to kick in a hotel room door, screaming, ‘You’re a bastard, Barry Summer!’ or just standing there, clutching their empty purse and bawling their eyes out. I quickly lost count of the occasions I had to give one of their cast-offs, or cast-outs, money for a taxi home. I never got it back.
Best one was the time in America in some hotel when I could hear one of the roadies through the wall, singing an a cappella ‘Blue Monday’.
‘How does it feel . . .’
‘What was that all about?’ I asked him the next day at breakfast.
‘Oh, bloody hell,’ he said shamefaced, ‘I got her stripped off on the bed and was just about to dive in when she put her hands between her legs, clamped ’em tight shut and said she wouldn’t until I sang to her. In the end I had to.’
How does it feel indeed!
On this particular German tour we were being supported by Shark Vegas, whose manager was a bit older than us (a totally ancient thirty-five or something) and utterly gorgeous. One night after dinner in Berlin she stood and said, ‘Right, I’m going home now. Peter, you will be coming with me.’
I went, ‘You what?’ and nearly choked on my sauerkraut.
‘Come with me, Peter, come on . . . schnell, schnell!’
So I did, and it was great.
The morning after, I said, ‘Er, shall we go and get some breakfast, then?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘You will go now,’ and she threw me out. Unceremoniously, just like that. She gave me the address of the hotel and sent me off in a taxi. Fair enough, I suppose. If you dish it out you have to be prepared to take it in return. At least I knew how Barry’s girls felt. A little dirty and used, as you asked.
So it was a pretty good tour. Or rather, it was great until our esteemed lead singer decided to start throwing his weight around – the continuation of a worrying new trend.
One of the things I always felt about Barney: if he’s in a strop, everyone knows about it, and they all get it in the neck. Put it this way, as my dad used to say, ‘If I’m suffering you’re all suffering.’ So when Barney was unhappy, we all had to be unhappy. I’d known him longer than most; after all, we’d started the band together, so in those days if he tried it on with me, I’d tell him to fuck off. But that didn’t stop me suffering indirectly. When he was pissed off – which, as New Order went on, was most of the time – it was like a huge black cloud that followed him into the room, and whether you were the target for his ire didn’t matter; it settled over everyone, and you just had to put up with it, same as everybody else. I’ve met lead singers that were stroppier than Barney – Ian McCulloch, John Lydon and Billy Corgan to name a few – but it didn’t make it any easier to put up with.
One particular night in Copenhagen he had a right cob on. He was knackered, which was fair enough; after all, he was our frontman and, as we all know, it’s a tough job being frontman, because they keep telling you so. The problem is when you start taking out your exhaustion on other people – and of course he was a dab hand at that. He can be a vindictive so-and-so, can Barry Summer.
The long and the short of it was that in Copenhagen he stormed off at the end, no thought of an encore. He was gone, leaving Rob worried there’d be another riot if we didn’t go back on. The minutes ticked by until we formulated a plan to go out and play the song, only with Slim on vocals, and we managed to pull it off, and because he’d gone, everyone relaxed.
Even so, we’d got a taste of what it was like when Barney pulled a strop, and it was something that was to become more and more common as the band went on.
Fortunately, the black cloud that followed him into rooms also followed him out again, and another thing that started around that time was people cheering and the party starting as soon as they heard the news that Barney had left.
He’d leave and we’d go, ‘Hurrah!’ and reach for the champagne and Twiglets.
But sometimes he’d come back in. ‘Forgot me jacket . . .’
Freeze frame. The room held its breath in case he decided to stay.
He’d leave again.
‘Hurrah!’
Poor old Barney has no idea how many rooms full of people have celebrated his departure over the years.