My first DJ gig was with Mani in Barcelona in late summer 2003. Up until then I’d thought DJs were a bunch of overpaid, overblown, egotistical twats. So why it took me so long to decide to have a crack at it, I’ll never know, because as soon as I became one . . . you know the rest.
Anyway, Mani had been let down by someone and suggested I have a go, and that was it. Barcelona Razzmatazz Club was the venue, with a three-night stay for two in a four-star hotel, plus 500 euros on offer. I was pretty skint and very tempted, and when Mani told me all I had to do was stand there, look pretty and tell people why New Order won’t gig, I said yes, never thinking for one minute this would cause as much trouble as it did, nailing the coffin lid down once and for all.
How could it, you say? Barney had been Djing off and on since 1990 and was always telling me, ‘It’s the best way to get pissed for nothing in the world. You should do it.’
I had never fancied it, but now needs must, so off I went. Great trip, great hotel, come the evening after dinner with Juan the owner and we were all very well refreshed and flying by the time we got to the club.
In the DJ booth our wives were dancing on podiums, which Imelda (Mani’s wife) kept falling off. Mani was DJing away with me just stood drinking and boogieing. Then I noticed him scratching away furiously at a record he had on the deck that didn’t seemed to be switched on. There was no sound. I tried to get his attention but he really was absorbed. Finally he turned round and as he did the other record stopped. So me and him were chatting away off our heads and the club was in complete silence.
Soon the Spanish got annoyed and we were victims of a rain of plastic bottles and glasses, some full, some empty. Without missing a beat, Mani reached down, took the record off the deck and flung it like a Frisbee at the crowd, then reached into his record box and threw another one, before finally deciding to play one.
Blimey, I thought, I could do that! and my DJ career was born.
We came down with a bump later that night when we got a call from our full-time nanny. Jessica was three, nearly four, at the time, and we were due to stay another day, but the nanny called from the hospital saying she wasn’t well.
She had a really sore neck, couldn’t turn, and when you put the light on it was blinding her. Of course we both thought ‘meningitis’, panicked and got the first available flight back – only to arrive home and find she was absolutely fine, nothing wrong with her at all, bloody kids.
Apart from that blip, though, DJing was great. Here was something I could do that was independent from the group that could earn me a bit of money. I liked it, too. I’ve met so many more people DJing than I ever did in a band, because the band sticks together, well protected and cut off from everyone; you act like a gang too, whereas when you’re DJing you’re alone, you have to mix. There’s a much nicer social aspect to it. All the DJs really support each other.
For the first year or so I’d be drinking and doing drugs as well, so I’d be absolutely blotto. It was great. I just didn’t care, really going for it and doing everything in my power to piss off the audience, playing some really mad stuff, really mixing it up. If anyone complained I’d tell them to fuck off. I can safely say I did not learn to DJ properly until after I got sober. I treated the audiences the same way as I treated everyone and everything – terribly.
The gigs started to come thick and fast, and I was soon getting the full beady-eye treatment off the lead singer, who seemed to be keeping an eye on everything I did. Pretty soon an edict was passed down from on high that when I was DJing I had to put a clause in my contract stipulating that the promoters were not allowed to use the New Order or Joy Division names to promote my shows.
It caused all kinds of headaches. A promoter wants as many people through the door as possible, and a lot of them simply ignored or ‘accidentally’ missed that particular clause in the contract. But if Barney got to see it then he’d be on the blower to Rebecca or Andy and in turn they’d have to give me grief about it. I had been in the bands for twenty-seven years and I was being told I could not use the name of the group to promote anything I did outside of it. Worse, I agreed. What a sap. Barney had me as well trained as Mrs Merton.
Either way, I was able to work the DJing around the recording sessions, and it certainly took the pressure off financially. It didn’t help with my drink and drug consumption though. You’re probably not supposed to get completely twatted before, during and after your DJ gigs, but I did, without fail. I was also drinking more at Real World, too, where I was abusive to pretty much anybody who happened to be within earshot.
I’d be going to bed pissed, wake up in the middle of the night unable to get back to sleep, so I’d sneak down to the kitchen and have a double vodka to knock me out again, and then in the morning I’d feel so rough, I’d go straight to the gym. When that didn’t work I’d snatch a glass of wine, just to make me feel better, classic hangover cure, more alcohol.
When I got home, I didn’t drink during the night because Becky would have noticed, so what I did was drink fairly normally in the evening and then get up and have a sneaky glass of wine in the morning, another at lunchtime and then, when I picked Jessica up from school, I’d nip into the Brasingamens on the way. Becky would say, ‘Isn’t it a bit early to go for Jess?’ and I’d go, ‘No, no, I’ll take the dog for a walk.’ The dog should have been fit as a fiddle, but, of course, I’d tie her up outside, have a massive glass of red wine and then go and pick Jess up, pissed, all over her with affection, taking the mick out of her and stuff. Fun Dad. (Sadly there were always a couple of other dads in there, too.)
I was refuelling the whole time, just topping up, and at Real World I was even worse than I was at home. Except, I was No Fun Hooky.
Things came to a sort of head one Friday night when I was talking to Andy Robinson about what was happening with the three tracks Bernard had written by himself. Once again exercising his world-famous tact, Andy said, ‘Well, to be honest, he doesn’t want you to play on them.’ And left it there.
‘Oh,’ I said. Barney had already left and as I drove home I started to dwell on what he’d said.
I had a DJ gig in Glasgow on the Sunday night so off I went to it still fuming. Got completely fucked at the gig. There was a big fight and the promoter kept saying sorry by chopping out more and more. I stayed up all night then went straight to the airport in the morning and then straight to the bar for the first of a series of double vodkas before the plane, then drank all the way home. I arrived home pissed and fuming and determined to have it out with him, and though Becky tried to stop me, I’m ashamed to say I drove to Bath – not my finest hour, this – arriving ready to knock Barney’s fucking block off.
He wasn’t there, thank God, or I’d probably be writing this from Strangeways. Instead it was Phil who got the brunt of my rage. I was ranting, saying why didn’t he save this kind of shit for his solo album? Who did he think he was, stopping the group from writing and then rolling in with new ideas of his own? He promised me it would never go back to how it was on Republic, blah, blah, blah.
Poor Phil could only think of one thing to do – get me another drink.
A huge glass of white wine. Time? One in the afternoon.
‘El Brimmo, Hooky, just how you like it,’ he said, trying bravely to calm me down. I finished the bottle. In the meantime, Barney arrived back and to his eternal credit met the situation head-on.
‘What’s going on here?’ he said.
Drunk and emotional, but thankfully no longer violent, I raged at him, ‘When we got back together, I swore I’d never let it get back to how it was on Republic, and so did you, but it’s happened again. You’ve fucking ring-fenced these three tracks. You don’t want me to play on them because you don’t want it to be New Order.’
‘Hooky,’ he said, ‘I never said that.’
I was like, ‘You what? Eh? Andy told me . . .’
‘I never said that to Andy,’ he said. ‘Of course you’re free to play on the tracks. When Andy gets here, we’ll sort it out.’
I proceeded to get even more pissed, and eventually passed out in my room at Real World.
When I woke up, Andy was sitting on the floor at the foot of my bed, waiting for me to surface. Don’t forget, Andy was my mate. I got him both his jobs. We’d roomed together, had a million and one adventures together, and I couldn’t for the life of me understand why he’d say that to me.
‘I don’t know why,’ he said, dead shamefaced. ‘It was just a feeling I got.’
In the end, I went, ‘Oh, fuck off, Andy.’
Now I wonder if he was doing the same thing at other times. Did Barney really turn down an offer for us to remix ‘Crazy’ by Gnarls Barkley? Paul Brown had arranged it, saying, ‘They want a New Order-y remix.’ According to Andy, Barney said, ‘Why would they want that? It’ll ruin it!’ and turned it down. He also turned down a Killers remix on our behalf as well, the ‘I’ve got soul but I’m not a soldier’ track, which I managed to bag separately for myself (that was a story in itself, too), but Barney went mad when he found out I’d done it alone, so Andy said. Did he also really turn down the chance to play with Ennio Morricone? Another of his heroes.
These were things that frustrated and infuriated me at the time. I thought Barney had no right to be making decisions on behalf of the whole group – especially when they were so short-sighted and shit.
I wonder now if any of these decisions had gained or lost something in translation. Andy had no agenda I can think of. It certainly wasn’t in his interests to drive a wedge between us. But, my God, he had an uncanny habit of doing it.
We moved to Olympic Studios in Barnes to mix some of the tracks, and I was drinking like a fish. A wine shop next to Olympic had a sampling hour, so of course I’d pop in, and the guy would go, ‘This is a Cabernet from South America and it’s a lovely little wine,’ and I’d say, ‘Put a bit more in, mate,’ and he’d go, ‘Well . . .’ And I’d say, ‘Come on, mate, put a bit more in,’ so he’d give me half a glass and I’d neck it and then say, ‘Go on, give us a bit more, I couldn’t really taste that,’ and he’s going, ‘No, no, this isn’t what wine tasting’s all about,’ but I’m going, ‘Come on, mate, fucking pack it in.’ In the end, he threw me out, so I’d go to the pub, where I’d buy two for myself and neck one at the bar before taking the order to the table.
All of which would mean that by the time I got back into the studio, I was absolutely steaming – poor old Jim Spencer, the enginneer, usually getting it in the neck again.
I was still drinking when me and Barney were invited to guest on Gwen Stefani’s Love.Angel.Music.Baby. album, on a track called ‘The Real Thing’. We’d been offered $20,000 each. Barney had one go at the backing vocals then declared that he wasn’t ‘feeling’ the track and refused to do any more. Meanwhile, I’d worked out a bunch of bass riffs for the whole song, and they sounded great. Sending them off, I was dead excited, only to be asked by the dreaded Mark (Spike) Stent, the producer, to come and have another go.
I turned up to be asked just to double-up the guitar riff they already had, finding all my ideas had been dumped. I tried it but it felt crap, was really annoyed and told him so, which must have got back to Gwen, who very magnanimously rang me to explain. I was so starstruck my annoyance completely disappeared; lovely lady.
Meanwhile, Paul Brown had brought in a load of dance mix albums to the studio and I responded to his generosity by slagging them all off. They were crap. He responded, ‘You do a better one, smartarse – a Haçienda one.’ I had never thought about it.
Putting the wheels in motion for that kept me busy. I set to work with my mate Phil Beckett, collating a wishlist of tunes for a three-CD set that Paul had arranged for me to release on New State Records.
Remember I said that me and Rob buying the Haçienda name in 1997 became a massive bone of contention with Barney, Steve and Gillian . . . Well, they never turned a hair when I was putting that album together, and I talked about it often in Olympic as we mixed, even discussing it in interviews we did together. Couldn’t have cared less, never said a word. Which is strange, isn’t it, considering they were apparently so cross with me for ‘stealing’ the name from under their noses?
Or am I being too suspicious? In his book, Barney accuses me of telling him about buying the name while we were recording in 2004, and refusing to reveal how much I had paid for it. That, I can assure you on my children’s lives, is not true. I think it’s just how he has chosen to justify his taking of the New Order name to you, the fans. I’d be happy to take a Jeremy Kyle lie-detector test on that one and you’re all invited. In fact, I may do that . . . my mate knows him.
Fact is, they weren’t interested in the club when it was open and losing money; they weren’t interested in the Haçienda mix-CD. They weren’t interested in the Haçienda name at all . . . not until things started getting really nasty.
The album sold well, something like 175,000 copies, which made me realise there was still an appetite for the Haç. Tony’s son, Oliver, had already staged a successful reunion club night at the Academy 1 (not a peep from Barney or Steve about that either), but when he made a hash of a second night, a New Year’s Eve extravaganza, me and my DJ agent, Paul Fletcher, had to step in to sort it out. From there, we started doing our own nights.
With the New Order album almost done, we started thinking about the cover. I say ‘we’ but I was way too pissed by then, so stayed out of the resulting fracas. We’d already had a massive row about the title: Barney had suggested sharing it with one of the songs on the album, him saying, ‘They did it all the time in the sixties.’ My answer to that being, ‘It was shit then an’ all.’ Very constructive, I know. I lost.
At the sleeve meeting I could see Peter Saville was getting a bit fed up of Barney calling the shots, and the last straw came when Barney picked a 1970s image by Eliot Elisofon of naked Tahitian girls bathing for the LP cover. You could see his thinking. She looked like the sort to lure sailors onto rocks.
Pete didn’t like it but Barney was insistent. Like I say, I was way too pissed to get involved. I was legless when we turned up for the meeting, couldn’t even focus, I did think it was corny, but Barney got his own way, which in my opinion infuriated Pete.
Now, this meeting would have taken place in mid-to-late 2004, over two years after we started recording, and a lot happened between that summit and the album coming out. One of them was that terrible tsunami in Indonesia on Boxing Day. Because of that, the record company got cold feet on Barney’s cover image, fearing a possible media backlash, and Alan Parkes from Warners had to go to Pete’s studio, pleading with him to do another sleeve.
Pete was insistent. ‘No, I don’t want to do one. I don’t want to do it,’ but Alan was just as persistent, until at last Pete got fed up and wrote ‘NO’ on a piece of paper, gave it to Alan and said, ‘There’s my answer,’ and Alan went, ‘That’ll do,’ and took it.
I like it. I think it’s one of his best sleeves.
The other thing to happen in between that meeting and the album being finished (we had one week left to go) was that I went into rehab.