On 30 January 1991 the Haçienda closed its doors, some thought for good; in fact, some (mostly members of New Order) hoped for good. The escalation of violence in the club (even after winning a reprieve for the liquor licence against the police, orchestrated ably and expensively, by George Carman QC) was shocking and we had no option. Interestingly when Carman walked into our first meeting to discuss saving the Haçienda’s licence, the first thing he said was, ‘Gentlemen, shut that loudmouth up!’ referring to Tony. Greater Manchester Police had taken to referring to Tony as the Timothy Leary of ecstasy and Carman felt it was imperative he keep a low profile, or, as he said, simply . . . shut up.
Sadly, even after all that, we couldn’t guarantee anyone’s safety inside. It was heartbreaking and terrifying. The resulting fallout was even more bad news for New Order. Insanely, the club cost more to shut than to open and the resulting loss of £270,000 gave us no choice but to record a new album.
I should have been writing and playing on my solo stuff (what would later become Monaco) yet here we were at another emergency meeting being told again that a) Factory was in dire financial trouble, and b) so was the Haçienda.
At that meeting, we were presented with an ultimatum: either New Order do a new record or both Factory and the Haçienda would go to the wall. Of course, nobody wanted either of those two things to happen. If Factory went belly up we’d lose all the money owed to us by the label, which by that time, thanks to the success of Substance and Technique, was quite a substantial sum. When it came to the Haçienda we had even more at stake. Back in 1982 the group had been persuaded to sign the aforementioned ‘personal guarantees’ for the bank, the building lessees and the brewery, which made us liable for all the debts, separately and individually.
Rob – who’d signed one too, bless him – had spent years trying to get us out of them, to no avail.
The album has to be made, we were told over and over again, sometimes hysterically: ‘If you don’t, we’ll all lose everything!’
As I said earlier, none of us wanted to come back and be New Order again, especially under these circumstances – Barney in particular was completely against the idea.
However, plans were made to convene and start writing in August. This time the writing would be done for the first time at ‘The Farm’, Steve and Gillian’s house. Cheetham Hill was history. We were all in south Manchester now so it made no sense to venture north any more. I was in Withington, Barney was in Handforth and the other two were in Rainow, Macclesfield. We had become ‘soft southern Jessies!’ as predicted by Rob Gretton, who saw Chorlton still as deepest, darkest north Manchester. I wondered whether it would change the music. Would we lose our edge?
I think I can safely say, without fear of contradiction, that none of us were looking forward to it at all. So maybe that would give us the edge back.
In among all this madness, Martin Hannett died; on 18 April 1991, to be exact. He died of heart failure at home. He had been clean-ish for over four years and was moving house. A very stressful time, as we know, so be warned.
It was Martin who designed my wonderful bass set-up that I was still using (albeit now for Revenge), the Alembic, Amcron, and Gauss system that I used for nigh-on twenty years until it got old and unreliable. I would struggle to replace it. Martin was at least partly responsible for the magic in Joy Division, and wholly responsible for the strange, alien sounds of Unknown Pleasures and Closer, the foundations on which Factory and New Order had been built. He put all of that into the label, but got hardly anything at all out of it.
Of course, there was a huge turnout – and a huge Factory turnout too – at the funeral, and I remember there being a lot of animosity flying around for what the label had done to him. They’d done what the other members of New Order would do to me years later, exclude me, which is the worst kind of bullying. In my case I can afford to fight them, but Martin could never get the money.
There were loads of musicians at the funeral, ranging from the Stone Roses to Stockholm Monsters, and he got a great send-off, about a thousand people. One of those absent, however, was the New Order frontman. Section 25’s Larry Cassidy approached me afterwards. ‘Hooky, where’s Barney?’
‘Oh,’ I said, ‘Barney doesn’t like funerals.’
‘Hooky,’ growled Larry, ‘tell him, no one likes funerals. You come out of respect.’ Meanwhile, Alan Wise did a wonderful eulogy at the graveside and the honour of being the first person to throw a flower in his grave went to Hannett’s son James, who, on dropping the flower, said loudly, ‘Goodbye, Daddy.’
There was a collective wail from most of the audience followed by many, many tears.
I often wonder what would have happened if Martin had got his wish and Factory had bought a studio instead of a nightclub? Who knows? We were such a bunch of fuckheads it probably wouldn’t have made a blind bit of difference. He also missed the chance to see Factory go bankrupt, which would happen the following year.
Plenty of reasons were bandied around for Factory going bump: this year the spending by the label had been unbelievable, including the costs of the Happy Mondays’ Yes Please! (£350,000), Revenge’s One True Passion (£250,000) and Cath Carroll’s band Miaow (£150,000). And, of course, the buildings. This year the Haçienda made a loss of £481,912 (the very thing that Martin had predicted and opposed so vehemently that his whole relationship with Factory broke down). Dry 201 had a £575,478 total cost and was yet to make any profit over running costs and, last but not least, the Charles Street offices cost £750,000, a whopping 50 per cent over budget, the best overspend yet. (Insanely, they had been bidding against me, pushing the price for a nearly derelict building sky-high. I wanted it as a new site for Suite 16, hopefully bringing the studio at last to Manchester. Thank God I didn’t get it.) All this, along with the mortgage (or rather the fucked-up bridging loan) we ended up with on the Haçienda building of over a million pounds meant the whole organisation was on very slippery ground. An incoming ‘worldwide recession’, now running at an interest rate of 23 per cent – that same recession bringing a 25 per cent (at least) reduction in all assets – added to the woes.
Total results: Against, a Factory debt of £2,557,390 (without including all the other debts accrued over years of trading, e.g. unpaid band royalties); For, their only asset, a new New Order LP (as yet unwritten).
We became their only hope. The pressure was unbearable.
Meanwhile, the Haçienda re-opened on 10 May with our new improved door force courtesy of Top Guard Security, fifty men and twelve dogs. The night ended in a riot after a mob of Cheetham Hill gangsters stormed the door at midnight. I was so upset. Even Manchester itself seemed to be against us now.
I had a lot of time off this year and looking at the live dates I wonder what the hell I was up to? Mainly recording and rehearsing with Revenge and swanning round London, I suppose, where me and Jane seemed to be spending most of our time in Groucho’s.
Groucho’s had been opened in Dean Street, Soho, the bohemian heart of London, on 5 May 1985 by Anthony Mackintosh, who previously had run a members’ club called the Zanzibar in Covent Garden. Peter Saville had been a member there and moved to Groucho’s as soon as it opened, along with his new partner Brett Wickens. He put New Order up collectively at a membership meeting and we got, amazingly, ‘no black balls’, he said.
We had been members since 1985 and in the later years had taken to spending more and more time there. Whenever we were in London we would go and it was so expensive, Rob loved it. We were the first ‘pop group’ or musician members in the club, which had been opened to cater for those working in the publishing industry; for a while we made a hell of a contrast to the ordinary members.
The bar was run on an honour system. You would just tell the waiter whose name it was under: Rob Gretton, etc. This was, of course, open to abuse and as we invited more of our, shall we say, naughtier friends to join us as guests, a lot of drinks would be mistakenly put on other people’s bills. Oops.
Rob soon cottoned on to this and insisted we used our own names when we were there on non-New Order business. Sometimes, at the end of the night, you’d be too pissed or whatever and forget to pay and you’d get a postal bill for hundreds of pounds for drinks you couldn’t for the life of you remember buying. ‘Eight Gin Fizzes!’ I’d demand of Jane. ‘Who the fuck do we know who drinks Gin Fizzes?’ Over the years the place got wilder and wilder as more and more musicians joined. Then came the chefs. Then came the comedians, and they were the worst of the lot, the members becoming a very mixed bunch of reprobates.
The scene soon got druggier and druggier and the basement toilets became the place to meet. Sometimes you didn’t need to buy any, you’d just watch a certain member as they nipped to the toilet (very surreptitiously, as it was still frowned upon) to rack them out, follow them down, wait until they came out and, as they went back upstairs to tip off their mates about the buffet downstairs, you’d nip in, do the lot then go back wired and as innocent as you could, and watch the recriminations. It was called ‘doing a Groucho’, as in ‘I’ve just done a Groucho on them’.
The club became wilder and wilder as the 1980s wore on, culminating in all-night poker parties with people losing thousands. In the early 1990s they added rooms upstairs, which were very small but meant you didn’t even have to leave the building for days, getting wrecked then sleeping it off, eating in the restaurant and doing it all again. Groucho’s became a bit of a black hole that once you entered you had trouble leaving. Peter Saville used to come into the restaurant every evening just as they were closing at midnight and demand to be fed, which drove the staff wild. ‘Just a rare piece of tuna and some vegetables.’ They had a pianist in the bar, which led to some of the most bizarre house bands imaginable made up of assorted rockers, comedians, media whores, politicians, trust-fund darlings, you name it . . . mostly led by Keith Allen.
In the early days of our membership I remember going in, Jane in tow, and after signing in I held the door for a very upper-class lady closely followed by her drunken husband. On seeing me at the door, with shorts, tattoos and desert boots, he bellowed, ‘Oh my God, Natasha, they’re letting people like him in now!’
We laughed. The times they certainly were a-changing.
Once I got a phone call at my hotel from the receptionist at the Groucho asking me to come and get my ‘lead singer’. It seems Barney had been in the night before and after partying collapsed on the banquette and was snoring and drooling away. One of the staff had heard I was in this particular hotel and presumed we were together. I took great delight in telling them I no longer had anything to do with him and they should phone Barney’s Electronic representatives, quoting ‘dickhead removal department’.
The adventures here were legion and one in particular stands out: me, Keith, Pet Shop Boys, assorted comedians, Alex James, assorted chefs and drug dealers were partying away in the small upstairs bar (which did become the haven for the heavily addicted) when some very big men came in with their hands in their jackets and started surveying the room. Everyone froze. Having taken a good look around, the heavies left, but it wasn’t like they were leaving for good, more like they were biding their time.
‘Police raid!’ came the call.
Oh my God, it was pandemonium, everyone running, screaming and piling into the toilet almost as one, alternately trying to do it all or flush it away.
Literally we were all shaking in our seats waiting for the bust, when in walked Bill Clinton and bloody Bono grinning from ear to ear. It was the ex-president’s security men casing the joint for terrorists.
We gave them loads. ‘Watch this,’ said Keith, and went up to Bill and asked him if he would sign a napkin as a souvenir, which Clinton duly did with a flourish. Keith then opened the napkin and shoved it in his face; he had already written on it and now the napkin read: ‘I love Osama Bin Laden, signed Bill Clinton’.
Bill’s face fell and as his security detail closed in Keith legged it, taking great delight in showing everyone in the club, telling them, ‘What a bastard that Clinton is. Look at that.’
One night I had got there very refreshed, to find Alex James talking to some older members. We were great friends by then so I thought, my treat, chopped out a hedge for him and then went to get him, grabbing him roughly by the arm. I could hardly speak, ‘A-Alex, there’s . . . there’s s-summat . . . for you, th-th-there.’
‘Later, Hooky,’ he said.
Later? I thought. What! and walked off, only to reappear seconds later, mithering, ‘A-Alex, over th-there, over th-there . . .’ gesturing.
He then grabbed me and said, ‘Fookin’ hell, Hooky, these are my grandparents. Go away!’ Oops.
Years later, we would witness Stephen Fry’s fall from grace and Robbie Williams’s downfall too. The boy who once cadged a menthol cigarette off me (and worried he might get in trouble for it) at Top of the Pops had now graduated to bigger and not better things, as he stumbled round the club in a daze trying to find the toilet and then being unable to open the door without help from my wife Becky. She drew the line at unbuttoning his flies, she said.
Last Groucho anecdote, promise. Me, my best mate Ken Niblock and Pottsy had been at it all night in one of the rooms after playing pool with Stephen Fry, and as bad luck would have it I had to leave early for a train home. As we checked out at the front desk, dark glasses on, sweating profusely, the receptionist said to us, ‘Did you have anything from the minibar?’
Ken, quick as a flash, goes, ‘Everything!’ Then to me, ‘Don’t worry, I’ll get it, Hooky,’ then nearly falling over in shock when presented with the bill for £480 (this was in 1988). He nearly sobered up. The summer flew by.
In August I drove up to Rainow, Macclesfield, to Stephen and Gillian’s home and rehearsal studio ‘a bag of nerves’, my heart in my mouth, for today was the day we would begin writing our new LP, the one being forced upon us by all at Factory and even our own manager.
We were to begin the writing without Barney, who was too busy with Electronic, saying, ‘You get some stuff going and I’ll come later. You do the music and I’ll just do the vocals.’ This was great news and would give us the chance to shine. Writing this now, I can’t believe I trusted that statement. We were idiots.
However, when I arrived at their place, the Farm, it was to a completely different Steve and Gillian; they seemed confident and relaxed, bullish even. This was definitely their heyday – they came up with some good stuff during these sessions. Why? I reckon because Barney wasn’t there with his sharpened elbows shoving everybody out of the way, and us three actually rubbed along together pretty well. We became like friends again instead of some dysfunctional family dragged together at every special occasion or crisis. I marvelled at Gillian’s new-found self-confidence. I wondered whether it was artificial or their The Other Two work?
At the time, I must admit, I thought their music was rubbish, much too soft for my taste. On reflection it was a particular brand of New Order-tinged electro-pop that was OK, and Gillian’s vocals were rather sweet. I did suspect Steve was mainly responsible for all the music, keyboards and programming etc., but their warm welcome made me feel quite optimistic about the future.
Though you might find this difficult to believe, I’m actually really accommodating when it comes to writing and recording. For me, making a record in a group is a team sport, which is where me and Barney differ. With him, it’s all about the song, not about the people, he gets blinkers on and runs away, not caring about anyone or anything: ‘Let me try another keyboard line.’ ‘Let me try a new bassline.’ ‘You don’t mind if I put a low bass on this, do you, Hooky?’ He becomes a total control freak and hopefully one day he’ll look at his own back catalogue and work out that his best material has all been collaborative.
Anyway, we settled in and began working quite well, jamming and then elaborating on the ideas. On a couple of occasions when I tried to balance ‘the other one’ with alcohol, unsuccessfully I might add, I couldn’t drive home and was actually welcomed into the family home and spent the night. I felt honoured.
Me, Steve and Gillian were getting on the best I had known in ten years and my efforts, be it advice on the music or playing bass and basslines, felt welcomed. This was wonderful after the torment I’d felt on ‘True Faith’ and ‘World in Motion’. I was starting to get a good feeling about this and was quite enjoying this enforced session.
The writing progressed and after a while we had eight pretty good ideas to present to Barney. The planning for the actual recording was a little strained. I was informed that Mike Johnson would no longer be used and a producer was being sought. This I felt was very bad news.
We had produced great music over the years, and the formula (and the angst) of me and Mike producing, with them four – Barney, Steve, Gillian and Rob – executive-producing, had brought fantastic, internationally renowned results. I thought if we changed it we were tempting fate; even Technique, our most strained outing yet, had been a great success.
But the others, buoyed by the success of ‘True Faith’ and ‘World in Motion’ uppermost in their minds, outvoted me and Rob.
We would have a producer . . . who? We tried Brian Eno – the first of several unsuccessful approaches we made throughout our career – but he was booked up for two years in advance. As a consolation prize he sent us a set of four Korg Kaoss pads, which we threw in a corner of our rehearsal room. In the end we started off with a Belgian guy called Pascal Gabriel, who was very nice and easy to work with, certainly not as pushy as Stephen Hague from a writing point of view. We were working well at the Farm on one particular track, which would later become ‘Regret’. Then Barney turned up, added some great guitar and, hey presto, we not only had the best track on the album, but the one I consider to be the last true New Order track. Why? Because it was a genuine collaboration – in my opinion, the last we would ever do. Barney’s input turned it into the wonderful tune it is today. But he didn’t like Pascal and afterwards we were informed he did not want to work with him on the LP. There were a few other names in the hat: John Cale, Trevor Horn . . . Stephen Hague. Uh oh.