To record our next album we went back to Britannia Row in London and the band division that had first arisen making Power, Corruption & Lies once more raised its ugly head. We were getting in from the studio at 1 a.m. and I was doing the big cartoon-yawn off-to-bed bit while they were all skinning up and firing up the toaster for a heavy session of dope, toast and 2001: A Space Odyssey or whatever.
In the morning, it was the same story. I’d go for a run or do weights (I’d brought my own with me) on the roof of the apartment while they slept in. Every day I’d be banging on their doors, ‘Come on, we said we were leaving at ten. Come on!’
I just couldn’t see the point of working all day and night and then coming back and staying up watching fucking stupid videos, Eraserhead and stuff like that, into the early hours. I’m sure they probably thought the combination of films and dope was very inspiring, but as far as I could see all it inspired them to do was hang around in bed until midday.
Besides, as someone who’s taken more than their fair share of drugs, I’ve never bought into all that about them being a creative tool. Not unless you think that spending all day under the duvet crying is especially creative.
Now don’t forget, I wasn’t forcing them; they would say to me as I went to bed, ‘Make sure you get us up for a ten o’clock start.’ In the end I was like, ‘Right, if you’re not ready I’m going without you.’ Mike Johnson, who was staying elsewhere, would already be at the studio, twiddling his knobs. So I’d be the first to arrive, wound up after another fruitless morning of trying to get my reluctant bandmates out of bed, not to mention the bloody manager, and I’d get on with stuff myself. Do overdubs, tidy stuff up.
This was a problem, not a huge problem yet, but it continued on Low-Life and then became a problem with rehearsals back in Manchester, where for me it was exacerbated by the pressures of my home life, what with my missus, Iris, constantly mithering me about the hours I kept. It was a situation that got even worse the following year, 1985, when my beautiful daughter, Heather, was born. You’re a new dad, you want to see your child; you don’t want to be needlessly stuck in the studio. I mean, our rehearsal room was next to a graveyard in Cheetham Hill; at night it was pitch-black, so it can’t have been any fun for Steve and Gillian to finish at one, two in the morning and then have to drive an hour home to Macclesfield every night, but it never stopped them.
I used to say to the rest of them, ‘Can’t we start at eleven and finish at six? Then we could do other stuff – I could see my kid, we could go out with mates, have dinner with the missus?’ Everybody would grudgingly agree it was a great idea. We might even stick to a schedule for a day or so – before slipping back. Iris would pick me up from the rehearsal room at seven in the evening and them lot would be looking at their watches and thinking, Oh, off already, are we? Them three didn’t seem to have a life outside the group. But I’d think, Well, yes. We agreed we’d finish on time, so fuck ya!
So they’d write without me. I’d come in the next day and find a new song on the table, get my bass out ready to play on it, and then watch the atmosphere darken, them obviously thinking but never saying, But this one sounds better electronic . . .
‘You know what our problem is?’ Barney used to say to me. ‘You’re a lark and I’m a nightingale.’
‘No,’ I’d say back, ‘you’re not a nightingale. You’re a twat who can’t get to work on time!’
It was him who had suggested the time in the first place but he was still always late. He said he was allergic to being on time. It had started to get worse around then and continued all the way through New Order, right up until we split in 2006. You’d arrange to rehearse at one for a couple of hours, tell your missus you’d be home about five, and Barney wouldn’t roll in until four.
I’d go, ‘What time do you call this?’
‘Oh,’ he’d say airily, ‘you’re such a clock-watcher, you are. I can’t do that. I’m too much of a free spirit.’
‘Be a free spirit on someone else’s time, you selfish bastard. At least you could have phoned?’
‘Oh, you’re a right bastard, Hooky. Always on my case.’
Meanwhile, back at Britannia Row, we settled into a nice routine, including a weekly Monday shopping trip for me, Steve and Gillian down the King’s Road, taking in all the wackier shops. We were getting fashion conscious and it was a lovely way to start the week. Barney never went . . . he was too scared of the moths escaping from his wallet. We were actually getting on and working together quite well.
I’d like to say that Gillian really came into her own on this record but, sadly, I can’t. In my opinion she didn’t add much musically, just taking Barney’s riffs off him as he wrote them for both keyboards and guitar. We still split the publishing equally, with neither me nor Barney wanting to confront that little problem . . . yet.
When we finished at Britannia Row and moved to Jam Studios things started to get really raucous. Jam Studios had a very good reputation and famously starred in the Rolling Stones film about the recording of ‘Sympathy for the Devil’.
We had only been there a few days when Kevin Millins decided to take me and Barney out on the town, where we promptly bumped into the studio manageress, Helga, who was of Scandinavian extraction and a huge presence in all ways – a no-nonsense lady who in my opinion would have been better off running a high-security prison than a recording studio. But here she was, and definitely the worse for wear, with the drink making her very smiley and friendly, if a little unsteady on her feet. Barney rushed to her rescue and, emulating his hero Terry-Thomas, said, ‘Come here, my lovely. I’ll look after you.’
And that was the last we saw of them. What is it? I thought, about the start of these album sessions that sends everyone mad?
Really that was just the beginning. During the next day or so, on answering a knock on the studio’s front door, I was confronted by Denise and Cheryl of a burgeoning Manchester girl band – one of those who never even got to the name stage – making a guest appearance.
‘Surprise!’ they shouted. ‘We missed you!’
They both jumped round my neck. These two were wild. They started the day by putting on faux-lesbian shows for roadies, sitting on either side of the hapless victim and kissing while groping his thighs, driving him mad. They then moved into the flat with us. I was sharing a room with Andy Robinson, then our keyboard roadie, so when we got back from the studio Cheryl and I would retire for a while, then she’d get up again and ended up sleeping on the floor in the single room with Denise and her beau, usually tickling their toes with a huge pink vibrator she’d brought with her. Her beau then took to hiding it under everyone’s pillows along with last night’s used johnnies. You’d go for a shit and reach for toilet paper only to find one hidden in the roll. He had some stamina, that lad. They were everywhere.
We used to go out a lot with Kevin Millins, who took us to the Kit Kat Club in Notting Hill and Taboo in Leicester Square, introducing us to Steve Strange, Leigh Bowery, Marc Almond and all that lot.
We also spent a lot of time with Rusty Egan, former Rich Kids drummer who ran and DJed at the Embassy Club, where we hung out with Richard Jobson from the Skids, Killing Joke and their roadies, as well as the Banshees and all their roadies.
I remember one night the girls dancing and ended up snogging outrageously lying in the middle of the dancefloor, while everyone stood around, shocked, with people going, ‘Oh my God, they’re with New Order. From Manchester! Look at them!’
The rest of them were mortified. Me and A. N. Other thought it was hilarious, even swapping the girls for snogging sessions by the toilets. Until someone overstepped the mark and that was the end of that. The girls hung round for quite a while though. I even took to leaving them in my flat while we went to the studio, wondering what they did all day.
We got the answer to that question years later when this guy started talking to Barney in a club about some hookers he’d met in London in 1984 who said they were living in New Order’s flat. Barney was shocked. The guy said they were touting for business in the street then taking the lucky punter upstairs before despatching them with a toss or a blow job. The guy said, ‘I went back a couple of times. They were wild!’ They certainly were, God bless them.
I wasn’t drinking much then. In fact, I used to drive us all around.
I was at my sober bad-boy worst at that point, and had about seven girls on the go at once. I got a call from one of them, saying she’d caught the clap off the bass player for a well-known, uncompromising indie band – a band that I’d annoyed at the Haçienda (what a way to get your own back!) – so I had to come clean to them all. Now, one of my girlfriends, Gill Smith, who wrote for Record Mirror, was also a dominatrix, and was not at all impressed. She ended up leaving me for Billy Mackenzie out of the Associates. He was a lovely man, who later killed himself, although she swore to me it wasn’t connected. Gill was always trying to get me into this sub-dom stuff. She’d go, ‘I’ll get me whip out,’ or, ‘Let me get my paddle and try it on you.’
I’d be, like, ‘You get your paddle out and it’s going straight through that window, love. Followed closely by you!’
I did like the fashion that went with the scene, but not that arse-slapping side of it. Poor old Gill, it was very frustrating for her. She was a dominatrix who wasn’t allowed to dominate. Still, she had other outlets for her interests. She used to model for Skin Two, the magazine version of a club we were introduced to, again by Kevin Millins. As a matter of fact, we’d been to the very first one in 1983, and what an eye-opener that had turned out to be. Barney and I had rocked up with Kevin in our leather jackets and motorbike boots but were underdressed compared to the leather and rubber gear on everyone else. There were guys with their arses hanging out; girls squeezed into rubber dresses with the boobs cut out. You name it. Clubbers were fucking each other in plain sight. At midnight they would put on Gregorian chants and the dominatrices would take to the stage and proceed to whip the fuck out of some ecstatic gimps while everyone stood around and watched as though they were enjoying highbrow performance art. It was great.
One night I nudged Barney and pointed. ‘You see him over there? Hiding in the corner. He’s a dead ringer for Pete Saville.’
Turned out it was Pete Saville, standing there all in black, with his polo-neck jumper on looking very intellectual, ever-present cigarette in hand, and when I crept up and surprised him, he was mortified that we’d caught him here, at this arse-slapping club.
‘I . . . I . . . I . . . just like the fashions!’ he stammered.
We laughed. ‘So do we!’ we chorused.
He didn’t stay embarrassed for long, though, and soon the whole lot of us were going back every week. At first, Steve and Gillian found the whole thing excruciating. Gillian even burst into tears when some guy licking a dominatrix’s boots stuck his hairy arse in her face. But they soon developed a taste for it, and with us all going it became a big thing back home. We’d ring Manchester and tell our mates, ‘Bloody hell, you should see this club. You get to see all these birds getting their arses smacked,’ and before you knew it, all the Manchester lot led by infamous Manchester promoter Alan Wise were coming down, just to get a look at the wild goings-on: ‘Rubbernecking’, you might say. Ha-ha.
In the end Skin Two had to put a block on people coming in unless they were very much dressed for the occasion, and our lot weren’t about to squeeze into rubber basques (apart from Rob, of course, who one night did just that, pouring himself into a black plastic dress of Gillian’s so as not to be refused entry), so that was the end of that.
Anyway, apart from the hours, and despite – or maybe because of – the debauchery in the flat and the nocturnal exploits, Low-Life was a good recording experience – one of the best, if not the best – and the finished product, which I think is probably my favourite of our New Order albums, speaks volumes about the group dynamic at the time. The combination of the sequencers and the rock side was perfectly balanced. We were very much together.
Just listen to the songs: ‘Love Vigilantes’, ‘The Perfect Kiss’, ‘This Time of Night’, ‘Sunrise’, ‘Sooner Than You Think’, ‘Sub-Culture’, ‘Face Up’ – they’re all real band songs. And apart from ‘Love Vigilantes’ we were still writing the lyrics by committee, the three of us with Rob chipping in. ‘Love Vigilantes’ Barney did alone. (This process didn’t change until Barney announced in 1987 that he now wanted to write all the lyrics and vocal lines by himself for Technique.) He did a great job and I was blown away when I heard it. A lyrical masterpiece that is still one of our most popular songs.
The album was recorded normally using a 24-track Studer tape machine and our own great collection of equipment, using pretty much the same stuff we used on Power, Corruption & Lies. The only big differences here were the adoption of MIDI technology and the use of SMPTE Timecode. Deep breath . . .
Geek Alert
SMPTE Time code and clock
The Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers devised SMPTE (the time code that bears their name) initially to synchronise soundtracks to films, so that separately recorded dialogue could be added (dubbed on) later.
It was discovered that SMPTE time code was also a useful way of synchronising not only live sequencers from a tape machine, but also one tape machine to another. Both machines carry a track of code, and a synchroniser box compares the time positions of the two codes. If the codes are not identical, a control signal is derived which changes the speed of the slave tape machine, forcing it to move back into sync with the master machine. In the case of the sequencer the synchroniser box reads the pre-recorded code off the master tape machine, then sends out a midi clock telling the sequencer/drum machine where to stop and start for overdubbing or replacing parts or sounds.
Initially, such SMPTE systems were very complicated and expensive, but now SMPTE systems are cheap enough to use in studio applications. The code is based on real time, measured in hours, minutes and seconds, with further subdivisions to accommodate individual frames of TV and film material. This is in direct contrast to MIDI Clock, which is a direct multiple of tempo. Because SMPTE is independent of tempo, a whole tape must be recorded or ‘striped’ with code before any recording or programming starts.
When using SMPTE to sync a MIDI sequencer to tape, the SMPTE code is normally recorded on the highest-numbered tape track, and the track output fed back into the converter box. Noise reduction should be avoided if possible, because it can introduce errors into the code. Because sequencers can’t read SMPTE directly, a conversion has to be done somewhere along the line, to generate a data format the sequencer can understand. This could involve a conversion to MIDI Time Code (MTC).
However, it is necessary to convert the SMPTE time information into musical tempo, by a dedicated SMPTE-to-MIDI sync box. The initial tempo of the piece of music and the SMPTE location of the song start, plus the degree and location of any subsequent tempo changes, are stored in the form of a ‘tempo map’, which must be created before the sequence can be sync’ed to tape.
The Roland SBX-80 was our synchroniser of choice.
The SBX-80 was a powerful link in syncing our drum machines and/or synthesisers to tape. To make the most of the SBX-80 you must use a Midi-clock-based drum machine and/or sequencer It is capable of performing a multitude of syncing tasks, but the best is enabling you to expand the number of tracks of your tape recorder: This is accomplished by syncing your midi-clock-controlled drum machines and sequencer/controlled synthesisers with the twenty-three tracks on the tape. If your drums and synthesisers are not on tape but are synced up and running live, you have a lot more tracks available for recording acoustic instruments or voices on the tape machine. This means you will have more control over the balance of all the parts when it comes to mix, also less tape wear on the sounds. It is also easier to add/change drum fills and synthesiser parts later It is a little risky, but worth the reward.
The SBX-80 can also generate midi-clock as well as the standard Roland sync (via five-pin DIN plug). The SBX-80 has a built in recorder that can read SMPTE and a quarter-note click and stores it as a song. Its display shows SMPTE in hours, minutes, seconds, frames and bits. It also shows measures, beats per measure and tempo. It is actually an SMPTE to beat-per-measure converter. The SBX-80 generates midi clock with ‘midi note pointer’ also.
The first step in recording is to decide on a tempo. You will not be able to change tempo once the SMPTE is recorded. If it ends up being incorrect the whole song may have to be re-recorded at the new tempo. You type the tempo in from the SBX-80’s numeric keyboard. Then connect the drum machine and/or sequencer up to the SBX-80’s clock outputs so that you can hear the patterns you have already programmed to be sure that your tempo selection is absolutely correct. You are now ready to begin recording.
MIDI Connection
Musical Instrument Digital Interface was invented in the early 1980s by two sound engineers, Dave Smith and Ikutaru Kakehashi.
Originally conceived as a way to pass digitally encoded information about a performance between different synthesisers, the protocol quickly expanded to include other music-related functions. Synchronisation was, and is, one of those functions. The MIDI 1.0 Spec includes several important messages that allow communication of synchronisation signals over a MIDI connection.
The main use in a studio format is connecting synthesisers and sound modules together. MIDI uses a sixteen-channel frame, so up to sixteen devices can be operated from one master keyboard. This is very useful in a studio format and once your equipment is connected together, in and out with the special MIDI leads, you have a fully integrated easily switchable system enabling you to change between different instruments easily and to experiment quickly, with many different sounds.
It also incorporates a MIDI Beat Clock, which was a system message in the original MIDI spec so that you could get your drum machine to play in time with your sequencer or arpeggiator. MIDI Beat Clock is meant to address the dimension of speed/tempo. The Beat Clock succeeds in doing that, to the point that if you change speed (tempo) in the master device, the slave devices will follow along in real time and play along at the new speed. But strictly speaking, Beat Clock only communicates speed. Beat Clock operates at twenty-four pulses per quarter-note (tied to musical tempo), but aside from having a first pulse and a last, it does not by itself include a stop or start message. Beat Clock is what we call a ‘dumb sync’.
Speed – Yes.
Transport and location – No.
The revolutionary aspect of SMPTE code enabled the recording artist to overdub the drum machines and sequencers to a tape machine at any time. In our recording of Power, Corruption & Lies, once the sequencers and drum machines were on tape and you had started adding the acoustic tracks and vocals, there was no efficient or easy way of re-recording, replacing or altering (for whatever reason) these recorded parts. Not a bad thing, I must admit, because musicians are prone to procrastination and now they had the freedom to change everything whenever they wanted.
Some cynical people might say that all this technology was invented by studio owners just to waste time and make them more money. That wasn’t true. But the by-product of having much more choice and flexibility in recording was that things started to take much longer to finish (remember this was way before computers in music came along – musicians say that computers were ‘definitely’ invented by studio owners to make more money).
We then decamped from Jam back to Britannia Row to mix, where we again reverted to the Transdynamic (see ebook of paperback edition for details) to enhance our sonic assault on your senses.
I actually kept a little diary here of how long it took us to mix the songs from start to finish, which makes very interesting reading.
On mixing ‘The Perfect Kiss’, we were told we had to do several versions. Rob wanted a dub (his constant mantra being ‘Dub it up’), a twelve-inch and a seven-inch version, the first time our single would be on the LP. The times they were a-changing. It took us nearly forty-eight hours to mix the three versions, one after the other. Me and Mike Johnson stayed awake the whole time. On the first evening Rob had come in with champagne to celebrate because it was the last track of the album. Then they all got pissed and passed out before going home to sleep, leaving me and Mike to it. They came back the next day and chipped in with a few suggestions then went back to sleep again. Mike and I laughed. We were very happy knowing that we’d made something very special together.
To record ‘Elegia’, our Ian Curtis tribute, we had taken advantage of an offer of free studio time at CTS Studios in Wembley. They offered a day, meaning ten hours, which we took to mean twenty-tour. We had cut/mastered many of our records there with a really wacky bloke called Melvin, who was quite old, and he was desperate to get us into the attached studio to impress the owners, his bosses. He was hoping we’d like the studio so much we’d come back for a proper session.
We spent the session whizzed off our tits on speed, and although he assumed it was going to take around eight hours, instead we spent ten just programming the sequencer, then putting the bass and guitar down and the drum effect overdubs, even at one point bringing Melvin’s nephews, who called in from school in the afternoon, onto the track and recording them saying their names, ‘Ben and Justin’, over and over again. (It was the working title for a while.)
It was a great day. Barney, released from the pressure of singing, was really relaxed. He wrote and played all the keyboards and layered them onto the track. We ended up recording an epic I7-minute, 32-second version of it.
The whole process, start to finish, took twenty-four hours. The next group were due in at ten the next morning and we left about 9.30 a.m. Melvin was ga-ga with lack of sleep. Rob was impressed. ‘Now that’s what I call value for money,’ he chuckled. ‘Free!’
I remember as we were leaving, clutching our finished tape of ‘Elegia’, Melvin said, ‘You will come back, won’t you, to use the studio properly?’
‘Yes, mate, no problem,’ we said, but we never did.
Salford Van Hire were right. You should never trust a musician.
Peter Saville was given the job of finding a sleeve and he racked his brains. Tom Atencio had been on at him since they met to ‘Pleeeezze, Peter, put their fucking faces on the cover!’ so I think the idea of doing it felt quite natural.
Pete concluded, ‘He was right. I felt it was time!’
But he spent so long deliberating that a panicked Tony Wilson and Rob Gretton made a special trip down to London to ask what was taking so long. As Pete explained his idea, Tony went silent, lost in thought, while Rob was open-mouthed in shock. Tony then decided it was a great idea too. Rob was still open-mouthed.
‘We won’t tell the band,’ said Pete. He then persuaded us to come down separately, for a promotional photoshoot to be used, he said, ‘after the record is released’.
He knew if we came together we would never take it seriously. Trevor Key took the photos using a completely new camera film called Polaroid roll. Pete stopped the individual session when he saw the shot he wanted to use. He then decided to treat the photos using a technique (no pun intended) called ‘New Computer Reprographics’, which allowed for the landscape-shape oblong/rectangle of the photograph to be treated and compressed into a square using a new computer called a Scitex machine and, in his words, ‘make you look weirder’.
Peter felt that Stephen Morris’s picture had turned out the strongest so decided to use it as his number one. But he also felt very strongly that if he featured anyone’s picture too much, either by putting it on the front or putting the title or song credits on it, it would be going against his feeling that everyone in the band was equal, i.e. there was no band leader.
To further compound this he decided to wrap the whole sleeve in tracing paper (stealing the idea from a volume on his bookshelf) and seal the package so it had to be torn to be opened.
He said, ‘I felt much better further obscuring your faces.’
Factory and Rob loved the sleeve. But when we finally caught up with him at the Cambridge Ball in 1985, me, Barney and Steve rounded on him as one, screaming, ‘You bastard! You lied to us.’
It is a great sleeve. Two great ideas, one to obscure our faces to intrigue people further and the other one (which Peter loved) was the idea of you having to destroy the tracing-paper cover to get to the record. Another bonus was many fans buying two copies, one to play and one to save unopened.