0:05

Two of the most influential bands

0:07

in music history. They existed

0:09

as a dynamic entity, you know, a

0:12

little bit like atoms bouncing around off

0:14

one another. And it worked. One

0:18

incredible tale. We've got a

0:20

producer in them and a producer active

0:22

as a referee. We probably needed one

0:24

at that stage. There comes a point

0:26

where you don't want to destroy yourself because

0:28

of the band. I'm

0:32

Elizabeth Olker. This is Transmissions,

0:34

the definitive story of Joy

0:36

Division and New Order. Coming

0:45

up on episode six, it's

0:47

sun, sea and tranquility.

0:54

I was reading an article about

0:56

a recording studio in the hills

0:58

in Ibiza. And I thought that

1:00

it would be a good way for us to get away,

1:03

just to be together, focus on each other, if

1:05

you like. As New Order decamps

1:07

the luscious setting of the ballerics to

1:10

create a new record in peace.

1:13

As everyone knows, one of the key ingredients

1:16

to making a successful pop record is a

1:19

swimming pool. What could possibly

1:21

go wrong? Happy Mondays turned up

1:24

and then the ecstasy turned

1:26

up. We all start just taking ease

1:29

and obviously we wanted to go to the

1:31

birthplace of that. I can't remember

1:33

what year it was. What year was it? Then

1:36

we discovered the clubs. I mean, people do

1:38

it all the time now, but going out to the

1:40

half twelve the next day in a

1:42

dark and dingy club and then coming back

1:44

to the studio and then sort of trying

1:46

to work during the day. We

1:48

wrote off eleven escorts when I took

1:51

the eleventh in to the guy, the

1:53

Spanish guy. I said, can I

1:55

have another one? And he said, Peter, there are no

1:57

more. No

2:00

more. You've killed all my cars.

2:10

In any long-running band, there are

2:12

highs and there are lows. Times

2:14

where everything is ticking along happily

2:17

and times where the strain can be felt. There

2:19

were periods where you get on and you wouldn't

2:21

get on. Depends what mood, songs

2:23

and in. I think we got on most

2:25

of the time, but we had our moments.

2:28

What you tend to do with a band

2:30

then in life itself, the bad things that

2:32

happen, you tend to just throw them out

2:34

of the garbage and just forget about them.

2:37

And you tend to remember the good things

2:39

and forget the bad things. But the problem

2:41

with the good times is they're often followed

2:43

in rapid succession by the bad. And especially

2:46

when recreational substances are involved. We'd

2:49

actually started to get an immense amount

2:51

of trouble in London and

2:54

we were in all sorts

2:56

of messes. And we

2:58

were really burning the candle at both ends.

3:02

This was around the time when the band

3:04

began knocking about with comedian and actor Keith

3:06

Allen. Bernard and Hooky used to

3:08

come down to London. Well, I'd

3:10

be in London and I was a go-to person for,

3:13

you know, drugs, basically. Not

3:15

that I was a drug dealer or anything like that, but

3:18

if they were just getting on it in town, I would

3:20

be someone that they could trust, could phone up and say,

3:22

you've got any gear? You've got any gear? And,

3:25

yeah, and we became drinking buddies.

3:28

London was a never-ending party.

3:31

And so, in the spirit of putting

3:33

distance between New Order and the Devil

3:35

of Temptation, it was suggested

3:37

that the next album should be recorded elsewhere.

3:40

Right, OK, we've got to find a studio to

3:42

do this record, but we don't want to do

3:44

it in London. We're sick of London. Let's go

3:46

somewhere else. Let's find somewhere... Yeah,

3:49

a nice residential studio. So

3:51

the band split into two exploratory camps.

3:53

In one of these camps, there was

3:55

myself and Rob, our manager, who was

3:57

now substantially on the mound. he was

3:59

getting it kind of all right. And

4:02

we were dispatched to Bath, and

4:06

Peter Gabriel, he was just finishing off his studio

4:08

there, it was a place called Real World. And

4:11

we went to this place, and

4:13

it was brilliant, absolutely brilliant, lovely

4:15

place, countryside, everything. So

4:17

that was camp number one. Camp

4:20

number two was Hocky

4:22

and Terry Mason, a road manager, toll

4:25

manager, I can't remember what he'd been

4:27

promoted to at the time. Who

4:30

were dispatched to investigate

4:33

this little studio in

4:35

Ibiza? Peter

4:37

Hook. I flew over, I'd had

4:39

a night when I flew, I'd

4:42

been up all night and went to the airport, and then

4:44

we flew to Ibiza, and I remember my head nearly exploded

4:47

when I was landing because my sinuses were so screwed.

4:50

We didn't bode well, but when we got there, the

4:52

villa that the studio was in

4:55

was wonderful. It was wonderful, it

4:57

was in the hills, it was a beautiful day, gorgeous

5:00

views, it was wonderful. Bernard

5:02

Somner. Well, I remember Peter

5:04

Hook and Terry Mason, our roadie going

5:07

over to check it out,

5:09

and me, Steve and Gilliam

5:11

at rehearsal rooms, and Hooky called on the

5:13

phone in the studio and said, there's good

5:16

news and bad news. I said, okay, what is

5:18

it? And he went, well, the

5:20

bad news is the studio's shit. I said,

5:23

well, that's pretty bad news. He said, well, the good

5:25

news is they've got a 24-hour bar with

5:28

a bartender. And

5:39

so the band found themselves with a tricky decision on

5:41

their hands. And me and Rob was just

5:43

like, hey, you're fucking

5:45

Peter Gabriel's studio. It's brilliant, it's

5:48

got everything, it's got cottages, it's

5:50

got all this MIDI gear, it's

5:52

got fair lights, it's

5:55

just down the road. And

5:57

it's not got a

5:59

swimming pool, though, has it? it, fucking

6:01

placing Ibiza, swimming

6:03

pool. Right, okay, can't

6:05

argue with that. And so we

6:07

didn't even toss a coin. Decision

6:11

made, the band enlisted their long time engineer

6:13

Mike Johnson to make sure that everything was

6:15

in place for the recording. Do you want

6:17

to do the next record? We're going to

6:20

Ibiza. Yes please.

6:23

And so off they went, the

6:25

whole motley crew of them, to

6:27

blissful isolation. Gillian

6:29

Gilbert. Turn

6:33

up, there's not a proper road to

6:35

the studio, it's just like a track

6:37

with loads of rocks, no

6:39

signposts or anything. There's

6:41

a lot of bugs crawling everywhere,

6:43

lizards, thick 70s shag

6:46

pile carpets. But he did have

6:48

a bar which we discovered on

6:50

the first night. And

6:52

they had a bartender called Herman the

6:54

German, but he wasn't German, he was

6:56

Spanish, so his name rhymed with German.

6:59

Herman would make you cocktails by the pool

7:01

any time you wanted, so he

7:03

had hedonism run out yet again. And

7:05

the barman couldn't speak English, but he

7:07

knew ecstasy, you know, and he had

7:10

a bag of pills. He

7:12

said, do you want any wine or, oh, we'll have some

7:14

rosé. 16 bottles of rosé later, that

7:18

was on the first night. Stephen

7:20

was trying to scratch on a record player.

7:23

Meanwhile, the intrepid amongst them set out

7:26

to discover the local scene. We got

7:28

there the first night, we

7:30

were starting in the morning. I said to Mike Johnson,

7:32

I said, because we got a higher car, I said,

7:34

come on, let's have a drive into San Antonio, I've

7:36

heard it's wild. And when

7:39

we just got to the outskirts of San Antonio,

7:41

as we were driving down the road, it was

7:43

pretty quiet because it was late

7:45

May. There was a body

7:47

in the road, this person, this bloke, lay

7:50

full length in the middle of the road. And I

7:52

said, is he dead? And

7:55

we just got out and he was just off his head. So

7:57

we had to pick him up and move him to the side.

8:00

and get back in the car and I said to Mike, I

8:02

said, is that a good omen or

8:05

a bad omen? And

8:07

as it turned out, it was a bad omen. Because within

8:09

a matter of weeks, it was us that were laying in the

8:11

middle of the road with people moving us out of the way.

8:16

The plan for a focused few weeks' recording

8:18

was looking less and less likely by the

8:20

sun-drenched day and any notion

8:22

of productivity was about to be blown to

8:24

smithereens. While

8:31

we were there in Ibiza, we had no

8:33

idea a thing called Acid House was happening. It's

8:36

happening down the road. It

8:40

was serendipity. Acid House, born in

8:43

the nightclubs of Chicago but

8:45

imported somehow to Europe, where

8:49

it was spreading like wildfire. And out

8:51

of this new music, a very healthy

8:53

club scene had sprouted up on Ibiza.

8:57

New Order found it almost instantly. We

9:00

would start off the evening, see Ibiza

9:02

Town, go round the bars there and

9:04

get pretty laced there, and

9:06

then go to Amnesia till that would close at

9:08

like 10 in the morning. Then

9:10

we'd go to, I think it was

9:12

a club called Manhattan for some strange

9:14

reason, in San Antonio. And we'd

9:16

stay there till about 12 o'clock. And

9:19

then we'd get back to the

9:21

studio to Mosquito-ridden rooms. Everything

9:24

was painted white. It'd be bright sunlight. It'd

9:26

be boiling hot. There was no air conditioning.

9:29

And it did zzzzzz. Even

9:32

though, oh, God, I feel terrible. I feel

9:34

terrible. So we'd crash out till about 4

9:36

o'clock and then try and write in

9:38

the studio, completely

9:41

coming down, you know, and

9:43

depressed. Yeah,

9:45

it was rather difficult. Those

9:48

hangovers led to a certain culture of

9:50

passing the baton when it came to

9:52

studio duties. Yeah.

10:00

ended up at opposite ends really and

10:02

everybody who wanted to sunbathe

10:04

were out sunbathing and then if you

10:06

wanted to go to a club so

10:08

we never actually met many times in

10:11

the recording studio it was just like

10:13

oh will you get on with your bit?

10:15

A lot of drumming got done as you would imagine

10:17

because it's like every morning was you've done the drums

10:20

on that one yet I can't really do anything to

10:22

live done the drums you just sort them out and

10:24

you know I'll be in town and I'm going

10:26

out tonight to Amnesia. Recording

10:30

engineer Mike Johnson. I

10:32

used to usually fall asleep when I went clubbing with

10:34

New Order because I didn't do anything to keep me

10:36

awake so I'd be sat in a corner having worked

10:38

all day and I'd nod off. Suffice

10:41

to say the band were quickly distracted

10:43

from the task at hand by the

10:45

glimmering nightlife of Ibiza. Mind

10:47

you those early days would soon look productive

10:50

compared to what came next. It

10:52

was a right mess and then as

10:54

if it wasn't bad enough us being there

10:56

and making a mess of it we decided

10:58

to invite the happy Mondays and

11:01

the happy Mondays came off and they

11:03

just disintegrated. I can't believe

11:05

they're blaming me for that. Enter

11:12

famed maraca manipulator Bez because why

11:14

not bring out factory label mates

11:16

and notorious party hounds the happy

11:19

Mondays. They were very happy when

11:21

they got there they decided to

11:23

finance the trip by

11:25

selling speed because we'd told them about

11:27

this clubbing these nights and this ecstasy

11:29

and all this lot and wow the

11:31

vibe amazing in which it was and

11:34

they decided to use the

11:36

speed and nobody would buy it because

11:38

they thought it was barbaric compared to

11:41

ecstasy. Yeah

11:43

it went right downhill after that we wrote

11:45

off another five cars Bez

11:47

ended up turning a few over breaking

11:49

his arm. Bez's own recollections

11:51

of this whole adventure are

11:54

a little hazier. We obviously went

11:56

out there because we spoke to a people

11:58

in all the dates. and

12:00

all that at this time. I can't remember

12:02

if it was the second or the third time I've

12:04

been there. I

12:07

just can't remember, you know what I

12:09

mean? I got burned into every car

12:11

as well, which was pretty handy.

12:13

He died in his car in his day and I'm

12:16

sure I probably smashed it up as well. It's

12:18

not all totally lost to the fog

12:20

of time, though. One of the memories I

12:23

do remember was coming on one night driving

12:25

home. I was having to go at two

12:27

miles an hour because I'd burned it with

12:29

the passenger door open and the car being

12:31

sick all the way home. It took

12:34

about three hours to get home because

12:36

Bernie was saying, fucking that help. The

12:45

party was never ending and not

12:47

much in the way of work

12:49

was getting done. The session had

12:51

spiralled into a reality TV show

12:53

but with no camera. The

12:56

rock gods living it up on the remote

12:58

island with a revolving cat of guest stars.

13:01

What happened was that we would go

13:03

into San Antonio and we'd get talking

13:05

because we were off our heads on

13:07

ecstasy to all these 1830s

13:10

holiday people and

13:12

then we actually arranged, my

13:15

God, this is just unbelievable. We

13:17

actually arranged for them to bring

13:19

the coach on an outing

13:21

to the studio. So the 1830s

13:23

used to come and spend the

13:25

afternoon with us every couple of

13:27

days. What had been planned as

13:29

a four week recording trip soon

13:32

descended into a lost summer, the

13:34

torn off calendar pages piling up on the

13:36

studio floor. So how much

13:39

actually got done? What

13:41

got done? Well you don't

13:43

get a tan like this for nothing. I

13:46

had a great tan. Oh my God. I remember

13:49

when my daughter flew over and I went to

13:51

pick her up at the airport

13:53

and she didn't recognise me I was that dark.

13:57

There'd just been sunbathing shedded all

13:59

day. Yeah we did fuck

14:01

all. Alright, before we disappear too deep

14:03

into the fuck all version of events,

14:06

let the record show there are conflicting

14:08

accounts. Mike Johnson. It's a

14:10

bit of a myth that we didn't get anything done at all

14:13

apart from one high house. I mean that's a load of rubbish

14:15

we did quite a bit. I mean there is a video of

14:18

Bernard overdubbing acoustic guitar on a song

14:20

so we must have had

14:22

a song to overdub to. Gillian Gilbert

14:24

remembers the moments of real inspiration. When

14:48

we were in a B3 it was like, oh

14:50

Gillian can you just come up with intro to

14:52

like Dream Attack? I can't think

14:55

of anything to do but I'm just going out. So

14:58

it's like yeah I'll do that and then on

15:01

Dream Attack we said

15:03

let's try and do like Hotel California, The

15:05

Eagles, you know the engine where it goes

15:08

on and on and I'm like

15:10

yeah that's a great idea so I just went on

15:12

and on. God

15:33

knows how long for and then Barney

15:35

came back in and said whose idea

15:38

was that? To do that outro for

15:40

like six minutes and he was like

15:42

well it was your idea actually. No

15:45

I don't think so. Stephen

15:47

Morris managed to keep himself busy too. We

15:50

got into Max it's like our first

15:52

Mackin' Tosh record and

15:54

I was like discovering the possibilities of

15:57

sound editing on the computer and like.

15:59

mess around with drums till the cows

16:01

come home. It's brilliant, oh he's happy.

16:04

So New Order wouldn't emerge from

16:07

Ibiza completely empty-handed. Literally

16:09

at the end of the 14 or whatever

16:11

weeks it was, we

16:14

came back with like one

16:16

half-track which was fine time. As

16:22

Barney had been particularly inspired by a

16:24

night at Amnesia, and when

16:26

we came in at five o'clock in the morning he went

16:28

and woke Mike Johnson up and programmed

16:30

for like a whole day getting fine

16:32

time together. I mean we got fine

16:34

time out of that experience. I remember

16:36

just listening to all the records, was

16:38

hearing there, rather than listening to individual

16:40

pieces of music because some of it

16:42

wasn't great what they were playing but

16:44

it was a kind of frantic vibe.

16:47

If you took the whole music of

16:49

the evening and put it in a

16:51

pot, the collective vibe of it would

16:53

have been frantic. So I

16:55

wrote to find time with this frantic

16:57

vibe in mind so I'm putting a

17:00

really frantic beat, really frantic bassline. So

17:32

that's something isn't it? A nice

17:34

souvenir from the White Isle. As

17:37

Tony Wilson rightly said, when

17:39

we'd been there for I think we were supposed

17:41

to be there for four weeks and we'd been

17:43

there for 14 weeks or something, I

17:46

took him to the airport and he went through

17:48

immigration, you know security to get on the

17:50

plane and then he came out he went

17:52

oh hooky, hooky. He shouted me

17:54

over to the security and I went what's the

17:56

matter and he went this is

17:59

the most expensive holiday. you've ever had. Bye.

18:03

And I thought, oh. And

18:05

he was probably right. You know, we'd actually

18:07

spent a lot of money making our records,

18:09

but we surpassed ourselves with

18:12

technique. Ultimately, all holidays

18:14

do have to end.

18:16

A new order were being beckoned back

18:18

to the real world, quite literally. Having

18:25

got as far as we could and overstayed our

18:27

welcome with the traffic police of the Isle

18:29

of the Beefer, it was decided that we'd go

18:31

somewhere and do a bit of work and wear

18:34

better than the place where we should have

18:36

gone in the first place. But real world, where

18:38

we sort of took all the stuff

18:40

that we'd done in the beefer and kind of turned

18:43

it into a record. So it was back to plan

18:45

A. Peter Gabriel's much more

18:47

sedate studio in Bath. And then we

18:49

looked at what we'd done when we

18:51

got to real world and

18:53

kind of cracked it, really, because we'd not

18:55

written nowhere near enough. So we just got

18:57

really stuck in. Like I said, come downs

18:59

often follow a high. And it's

19:01

fair to say the one after Ibiza lingered.

19:04

I mean, I came back from Ibiza. I

19:07

have to say, a different person,

19:09

you know? It was illuminating in many,

19:11

many ways. Unfortunately for the group, it

19:13

was tragic. And we

19:15

ended up falling out greatly over

19:18

it and ended

19:20

up straight into the most

19:23

expensive studio in Europe, Peter

19:27

Gabriel's, to repair the damage,

19:29

which took us quite a while. Evidently,

19:32

after months of time wasting poolside,

19:34

the atmosphere was fraught. I

19:37

have to say, and I don't know, maybe the

19:39

others won't agree, but we weren't getting on that

19:41

well. The records sort of

19:43

survived despite the feeling between the members

19:45

of the group. But at

19:48

the end of it, we had

19:50

a fantastic record. And

19:52

of course, there is a reading that says you

19:54

never would have gotten a record that sounds like

19:56

technique if you'd gone straight to Bath. It

20:02

would probably have a little bit of a

20:04

folk jazz error about it. It wouldn't have

20:06

been the same record. The

20:09

thing about technique is it's not really got

20:12

any hit singles on it, but

20:14

it kind of clings together as a

20:16

cohesive whole. It's an album

20:18

that's got a vibe and that

20:20

feeling is opening the curtains in

20:23

the morning and just going, wow,

20:26

that's amazing. What a great view. That's

20:30

the sort of thing that we got in

20:32

Ibiza that you wouldn't have got anywhere else. There's

20:35

an old argument where Tony used to

20:38

say, yeah, factory that technique

20:40

record cost a blooming fortune. You

20:42

know, it was your fault

20:44

and all this luck. But then our manager used

20:46

to say, well, as long

20:48

as it was a good record and it sold it like,

20:51

it doesn't really matter, does it? And

20:53

make no mistake, technique is

20:55

a brilliant record. I

21:00

am wearing the technique cover album on

21:02

a t-shirt. That's probably a bootleg. I

21:04

don't know if it's an official merch

21:06

piece. I don't think so. For

21:09

Megan Louise of the band Desire, it's the

21:11

high points of New Order's whole discography. I

21:13

listened to it again on the flight here

21:15

today and I was trying to find a

21:18

favorite song and they're all, it's a perfect

21:20

album. You know, if I had to choose

21:22

one, maybe Round and Round is the one

21:24

I'd go to right now because of my

21:26

mood, but just everything is incredible.

21:33

The percussions, the drum machine,

21:35

the sequencing, it's so busy,

21:37

sounds so simple, but like when you really

21:39

start listening to all the different tones, all

21:42

the different elements, it's incredible

21:44

that that came from someone's mind. You know,

21:46

that's what fascinates me. And like

21:48

even the fade outs, you know, you'll hear Bernard just

21:50

like the voice, you know,

21:52

at the end I'm just like, wow, it's

21:54

completely brilliant. For all the influence

21:57

of club music on the songwriting,

24:00

It was fucking chaos, man, it was

24:02

fantastic. All

24:11

I can say is it was a very wild party, and

24:14

I'm trying to think of a detail that I can tell

24:16

you, but I can't really. It

24:19

was that wild. And

24:21

there was the acts involved at one point. The

24:24

acts, that was a bit disturbing. And

24:28

anyway, this was a brand new studio. When it

24:30

got to the end of all these notes from

24:32

Manchester, got on the coach, and it was a

24:35

big 70-seater coach, and the studio

24:37

manager was like, so relieved,

24:39

so relieved. And then they all got on the

24:41

coach, and the driver turned the key. It once

24:43

started, left the lights on, the battery had gone

24:46

flat, so they all got off the coach. Came

24:48

back in the studio, and the party started again.

24:51

He nearly had a heart attack. And

24:53

they still talk about it, so this day,

24:55

the good people of that, it

24:58

was a free bar, champagne, but

25:00

yeah, you know, carnage, people wrecked

25:02

a toilet. It was, yeah,

25:06

the best party I've ever been to.

25:08

Very probably, yeah, very probably. The thing

25:10

about New Order was, they'd always been

25:12

fond of a party. And crucially, Britain

25:14

in the late 80s was

25:16

just about ready to catch up

25:18

with their mentality. Music journalist, Charlie

25:20

Gunn. My

25:27

stepdad said he didn't know how to

25:29

dance until he heard New Order, and

25:32

he used to just actually have to figure it

25:34

out in the room, and he's listening to this

25:36

music, just sort of throwing himself against other people,

25:39

like, is this dancing? I'm

25:41

not quite sure, but I'm going to give it a good go

25:43

anyway. Novelist Andrew O'Hagan.

25:47

Working-class guys in the North did not dance. You

25:50

know, if they danced, they kind of pogod. They

25:52

sort of moshpitted before moshpits, but even a thing.

25:54

They kind of growled at each other and pushed

25:56

each other about on the dance floor, and that

25:58

was called dancing. If you wanted to dance with

26:00

a girl in those days, you'd have to go

26:02

to some naff to school where

26:04

girls dance around their handbags. But

26:06

New Otter and bands in their

26:08

camp, of which there were too

26:10

few, suddenly freed all these working

26:13

class guys up, freed their limbs

26:15

actually from their bodies, freed their

26:17

hands from the, you know, rests.

26:19

I mean, there was a sudden

26:21

sense of a permission that had

26:23

been given for really self-restricting, quite

26:25

repressed, working class guys to sort

26:27

of shake it a bit and

26:29

to forget the industrial decline for

26:31

a minute and just get boogeying.

27:04

New Otter had been born at the start

27:06

of the decade. They'd endured

27:08

all the bleakness of Thatcher's Britain

27:11

and had resolutely pursued something celebratory.

27:13

There was such an important band

27:15

because for people at that time,

27:17

there was just young people particularly,

27:20

there was just very little to

27:22

feel optimistic about. It was really

27:24

dark times in Britain. You

27:26

know, the effects of Thatcher's government by

27:29

the mid-80s were just

27:31

really being felt in such

27:33

a huge, huge way. Communities

27:35

had been destroyed. There was

27:37

mass unemployment. But New

27:39

Otter were a band that

27:41

gave people who

27:43

had never really danced before a

27:45

reason to get together and kind

27:47

of celebrate and have a good

27:50

time. Factory Records resident

27:52

designer Peter Savile had been noticing

27:54

a cultural shift brewing all around

27:56

him at this time. Everywhere

27:58

he looked, there was a... success. There

28:09

was a vast amount of credit and

28:11

people being encouraged to spend money that

28:13

they didn't have on things that they

28:16

didn't need. And I wasn't

28:18

learning anything in

28:20

this sort of wave of new

28:22

production. It was all relatively predictable

28:24

to me. So I

28:26

found myself looking at antiquity and

28:29

in a window on Pimlico Road one

28:31

afternoon I saw this remarkable cherub or

28:33

puto as the dealer referred to it.

28:36

It was a dealer in

28:38

garden antiquities. I just liked it.

28:43

Peter Savile had been exploring a

28:46

new psychedelic photography process with his

28:48

collaborator Trevor Key. And

28:50

he thought an old ornamental garden

28:52

statue might prove an interesting subject.

28:55

I saw this figure which was made out of

28:57

lead. So it

28:59

had a sort of semi-reflective surface

29:01

to it. So we rented

29:04

it for a week. It was very expensive.

29:06

I think it was £5,000. And

29:09

we photographed it in every possible way

29:11

we could photograph it and

29:13

then put it through a new

29:15

complex series of

29:17

lighting. And it was fun. I

29:20

mean the closest reference

29:22

I can think to it is as Richard

29:25

Avedon's colour solarisations of the Beatles

29:27

from the late sixties. There was

29:29

definitely this sort of technicolour

29:32

hallucinogenic kind of feel about

29:34

it. This psychedelic

29:37

image struck Peter as being

29:39

very now. It

29:41

was somehow decadent and

29:43

excessive. So simultaneously New

29:45

Order were in Ibiza recording

29:47

technique. I

29:50

believe there was some ecstasy around.

29:52

So I was exploring

29:55

a sort of neo-sixties psychedelia

29:57

because it felt right.

30:00

It was very hedonistic, the late 80s. It

30:03

was really the kind of night before

30:05

the morning after. The recession was gonna

30:07

be the morning after and this sort

30:09

of psychedelic antiquity just seemed to mean

30:11

something to me. But I didn't know

30:13

about the ex, I mean, I knew

30:15

ecstasy was around but I hadn't taken

30:17

it and I had no idea that

30:20

New Order were gonna return with

30:22

music kind of infused with it.

30:24

It was just another example of

30:27

synchronicity, the perfect image

30:29

to adorn the front cover of

30:31

New Order's hedonistic, sun-soaked new album.

30:34

Clearly, something was in the air. ["The

30:37

New Order"] When

30:52

Technique was released in January of 1989, it

30:56

arrived slap-bang in the middle of the

30:58

two-year period known as the UK's second

31:00

summer of love, an

31:02

explosion of techno and acid house

31:04

and ecstasy that took the country

31:07

by storm and turned music culture

31:09

on its head. At

31:11

the centre of it all, the Hacienda,

31:14

set to finally fulfil its

31:16

prophetic potential after floundering for

31:18

years. Coming back from Ibiza,

31:21

oh my God, what we'd left

31:23

in Ibiza was in

31:27

Manchester. It was, wow,

31:30

there were great times. It was

31:32

bonkers, absolutely bonkers. Next time

31:35

on Transmissions, Vindication. We

31:37

were right there as

31:40

it transformed. Before you know it,

31:42

it really transformed faster than you

31:44

can imagine. Came, went back

31:46

home, come back six months later and

31:49

it's like an explosion, just unbelievable. But

31:51

even as the tides of fortune are

31:54

turning, tensions inside the band

31:56

reach boiling points. There was no triumphant

31:58

moment. The vibe was awful, I think

32:01

we can safely say we hated each

32:03

other's guts. And all things point towards

32:05

the inevitable. I don't know if things

32:07

had changed, I think, because we've

32:10

been doing it for such a long time. It

32:12

wasn't an adventure anymore. Is New Order's

32:14

story over already? It wasn't really like

32:17

all we could do with a break,

32:19

because nobody would really say that. It's

32:21

a New Order thing nobody would actually

32:23

say. I'm fucking sick to death, is

32:25

you? I can't stand

32:27

to be in the same room as you for another

32:29

minute. That's next time

32:32

on Transmissions. Transmissions,

32:35

the definitive story of Joy Division and

32:37

New Order, is a cop and nuzzle

32:39

production. It's presented by me,

32:41

Elizabeth Holker. Our series

32:44

producer is Frank Palmer. If

32:50

you've enjoyed this episode, please give us a

32:52

rating or review wherever you listen to your

32:54

podcasts.