Rob had been heartbroken by the end of New Order in 1990 and sad all the way through Republic, knowing it would be over in 1993 for good. For us to spend ages writing, then seven months in the studio, and come out to do a paltry thirteen live dates – and then break up – was like a dagger in his heart. The only thing he loved as much as New Order was the Haçienda, and he always felt that if we’d pushed our advantage on the back of Republic and rinsed the arse out of the album, then not only would we have been ‘as big as them Irish twats’, but we could have earned enough to buy the Haçienda building and keep the club in business and have financial security for the rest of our lives. He did actually get me, Steve and Gillian together for a meeting suggesting we employ a new singer and carry on as New Order without Barney.
‘No. It would not be New Order without Barney, no chance. He started it with me that night at the Lesser Free Trade Hall. No! That’s it,’ said I.
In my opinion, Steve and Gillian didn’t deserve it.
As it was, me and Rob were the only two representatives of the band still maintaining an interest in the club, so while I never saw or heard from the others, Rob and I stayed in close touch running the club together, with me at one point nearly giving up music and going full-time at the Haçienda.
Regarding the club his great mantra was, ‘If only New Order would tour. If New Order would tour then everything would be all right. I wouldn’t mind but Electronic owe me £75,000 and I can’t get that either.’ (Rob had managed Electronic since their inception and for the first single, before getting passed over for Marcus Russell.) This as we staggered from meeting to meeting – with the police, with the gangsters, with the bank managers, with prospective buyers, with the licensing committee.
Rob and I even went cap in hand to Barney, who was in London doing Electronic with Johnny Marr. We wanted money to rebuild the basement to turn it into a smaller club, but we were laughed at and told to ‘fuck off’. In no uncertain terms.
In the end it was left to me, and for over a year I paid £7,000 a month to keep the club open and pay its mortgage.
That same year, 1997, Becky and I got married, and I had to tell Rob I couldn’t afford to keep paying it any more. I was nearly skint. In the end it came down to either I had to stop putting money in, or Becky and I were going to lose our house.
Rob came to the wedding-night party. It was one of the wildest, greatest parties I’ve ever been to. We catered for seventy-five people and only two people ate. Paul Carroll, our Haçienda doorman, said to me, ‘As a present I’m going to bring all the booze for everyone.’ I was very flattered. Then early on in the evening I phoned him, worried about where the booze was, to be told, ‘I’ll be there as soon as I can. I’ve got Roger Cook and the Cook Report team camped on my drive. Don’t worry,’ he said, ‘the lads are coming round to shift them.’
A couple of hours later he turned up with a van full of every kind of booze. I didn’t ask.
Later Rob took me out in our garden, walking me round, begging me to keep pumping money into the Haçienda, which was dying on its arse. One expensive problem after another, drive-by shootings, disputes with the brewery, accountancy problems and so on and so on. All the gory details are in the Haçienda book, so read away. Becky had to come and rescue me. Later I caught Rob smoking coke ciggies with our gay friends, Steve and John, who were really upset when I told them it could kill him. I got Rob a taxi and sent him home.
In the end I had to go to the office to tell him I was pulling out.
He called me Judas. ‘It’s always you, isn’t it?’ he said, seemingly forgetting that I’d been the one who’d stayed loyal for the last six years, the only one who visited him when he was ill with his thyroid and heart problems later, while them lot had been off collecting tanks and annoying Johnny Marr.
Anyway, in June 1997, the club shut. In October that year we sold Dry 201 to Hale Leisure. Rob and I ended up buying the Haçienda name. Which, as we’re on the subject, is something that has caused untold amounts of bad feeling among my former bandmates. They even used it as the main reason why they re-formed New Order without me.
Here is the truth: having spent a decade or so, quite publicly, distancing themselves from the club, those three now claim I stole the name from under their noses, when in fact Rob bought it fair and square from a public auction at the liquidators, after the club had gone bankrupt. Also in the bidding were Cream nightclub and Gio-Goi. To be honest, I really wasn’t bothered at the time, but Rob begged me to lend him £5,000 to buy the names, which I did, and when he couldn’t repay me he gave me a 50 per cent share. That deal must be on a par with Jack and the Beanstalk, pay for it all but only get half.
And please don’t forget that Steve and Barney turned down the opportunity to own the other half-stake in 2010. If they’d taken up the offer, they would have owned 50 per cent of everything to do with the Haçienda, could have stopped me in my tracks, and they would have nothing to moan about.
Afterwards, Rebecca Boulton, their manager, told me they simply didn’t know what to do with it and that’s why they turned it down. Perhaps they think Rob should have given them a heads-up in 1997, but why he’d do that when they spent years denigrating and refusing to support the club when it was actually open is beyond me. They had made his life a misery for what they’d felt he’d done to them. Otherwise, it was another chapter of my life that was over.
Now, after the Haçienda shut, Rob called another meeting in the spring of 1998.
At this point I’d not seen anyone in New Order for a long time. No, I tell a lie. There was that time I’d bumped into Barney in Dry 201 and there was also a strange and awkward evening when a pissed Mrs Merton insisted I introduce her to Steve and Gillian, and we’d driven round to their house. That was the only interaction in over three years.
In the meantime, Barney, Steve and Gillian had had a nasty public falling-out. In interviews to promote the Other Two, Steve and Gillian claimed they’d written most of Republic. Barney was furious (even though they had; it had just been dumped by him). Steve even told me they’d seen Barney in Manchester and he’d crossed the road and run away rather than face them.
However, all this aside, Rob was at the end of his tether not knowing the status of the group. We’d been telling him for years, ‘There is no New Order,’ so maybe this was his last throw of the dice, a means of trying to pin us down to a decision once and for all or try to persuade us otherwise. ‘I keep getting these huge offers for you to play,’ he moaned.
It was difficult and very frustrating for him, I understood that, and maybe he just needed to hear it from the horse’s mouth again, perhaps to shake hands and walk away. I don’t know. Point is, the meeting was called and we all trundled along to the Haçienda to see what he had to say for himself.
Personally, I was enjoying my work with Monaco very much. It was creatively fulfilling and OK financially; me and Pottsy were getting along very well. We had toured and had a great time doing it; Becky was with me all the time and she got on great with him too. With the exception of the various shit flying around the Haçienda, my working life was in pretty good shape. I had no desire to get back with New Order at all. But at this meeting in spring 1998, the funniest thing happened. We all got on.
I mean, talk about time being a great healer, it was actually quite nice to see them all again.
So when Rob pushed his glasses up his nose and said something along the lines of, ‘Right, you lot, what are we doing? Is it over or what?’ it didn’t actually seem that weird for Barney to suggest maybe getting back together. He definitely seemed the most enthusiastic; maybe he was feeling guilty about putting an end to it in the first place.
I don’t know, maybe the sun was shining that day. Maybe Rob had put something in the tea. Perhaps I thought that the happiness I’d found elsewhere would somehow follow me to a revitalised New Order, but all of a sudden we were talking like we were going to be a unit again.
‘Let’s see how it goes,’ said Barney. ‘Let’s see if the magic is still there. Let’s do some gigs and if it goes well maybe we could record again?’
Fucking hell, Barney asking to do gigs? This was double weird. I wondered if he’d fallen out with Johnny. Was he skint? What on earth could have made Barney want to come back and, even stranger still, want to do gigs?
We all went off to think about it and later I sat with Pottsy talking about how bad it had been on Republic and what if it got back to that again? Pottsy simply said that I should go back and capitalise on the success we’d created; that I’d be crazy not to. I owed it to myself.
By now, we were used to the solo projects working alongside New Order and there was no doubt the extra money would be great. Me and Bex talked about it at length and she agreed it was the right thing to do. I was still apprehensive.
I wonder now if Pottsy had been dead set against me going back and asked me not to, what might have happened. I will never know. We all agreed to give it another go.
So, given the remit to look into live dates, Rob took the bit firmly between his teeth. Soon he was dangling various enticing pay packets in front of us. Did we want to do Glastonbury? Did we want to play Reading? A rejuvenated New Order was suddenly a big draw and Rob was talking about getting a quarter of a million quid just to play one gig at Reading Festival. Even split five ways that was a damn sight more than I was ever paid in Monaco.
I went to Pottsy for his opinion again. To be honest, I expected him to kick off, and was sort of hoping he would, then I might well have been tempted to plant my flag in Monaco for good. Instead, he was really encouraging, again. He knew the amount of money at stake and his philosophy still was that I should see some more return on the hard work of all those years.
‘You owe it to yourself and your family to go back, Hooky, you really do.’
At the same time, it was as though Barney was unveiling a new sunny-side-up personality. The man who used to hate touring – famously kicking the furniture backstage, shrieking, ‘I don’t want to be here, I don’t want to be here’ – was suggesting all kinds of new live arrangements. ‘We’ll do a new record and then we’ll tour here, tour there,’ he was saying. He must have been keen to get back together because he knew playing live would be a big carrot for me.
Before I knew it, we’d arranged the comeback gigs, the first one for Manchester’s Apollo.
And feck me if I wasn’t a member of New Order again.