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Back in our dressing room with its torn-up seats and wire coat hangers we called them a bunch of bastards who’d forgotten their roots. We were like, “Lobster Thermidor? What the fuck is lobster Thermidor?” I thought they were a local band.
It might seem strange now, but at the time they were the middle-class arty types and we were the working-class yobbos. I mean, they had a new bass player, Steve Garvey, who used to change his strings every night. Every night? I changed mine when I broke one, and in between times I boiled them in vinegar to get the finger fat off.
A lesson there: never have a support band who are at the top of their game. As New Order we had OutKast supporting us once. Big mistake that was.
I was living with Iris and she’d get upset because I’d still be in bed when she left for work. She hated it so much she used to deliberately miss the bus so I’d have to get out of bed and drive her into the Co-Op in town.
We were the band and we were snuggled up in bed at night while our crew was living the rock-’n’-roll lifestyle. What a swizz. Me, Steve and Bernard were dead jealous.
just a general worsening of his condition, or the fact that he was spending more time with the band and was less able to hide it, Ian began having more seizures, often during the gigs themselves. Rob used to have mega fights with lighting men at the venues, telling them not to flash the lights; the flashing would always set Ian off. But the lighting men must have either thought, Fuck off, y’Manc bastard, telling me what to do, or got carried away, or forgot, because they’d start a light going off on the snare, then on the sides. We’d notice but too late: by then Ian would have stopped singing
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Ian had excellent microphone craft—you only have to look at the pictures to see how natural he was on the microphone—and of course he had the dance as well. Mesmerizing. Trouble was, it would set him off. He’d work himself up into a frenzy and go. It was like he couldn’t help himself, and we’d end up having to carry him off the stage.
me wondering about my arm sticking out of the bed like that—and this is the funny thing, because ever since that night I’ve always had to sleep with one arm hanging out of the bed.
“Twinny,” I said, “he can’t understand you, y’daft bastard. He’s a Belgian. You’ll have to speak French to him.” Twinny looked at me, nodded, and went to the guy, “Oi, you. Fucky offy.”
“Atmosphere” is a massive song. A lot of people say it’s their favorite Joy Division song, but it’s not mine; it reminds me too much of Ian, like it’s his death march or something, and it figures that it’s one of the most popular songs to play at funerals:
The run was 1,578 copies; I found out years later that 1578 was also the last date the French beat the English in a war.
But Christ, if he’d written that song about me I’d have been heartbroken. I’m not sure who it was written about. I never asked. But whoever it was deserves all of his money just for that.
The upshot being that by the time we reached Bournemouth we were shattered—especially Ian. Most of the seizures he had occurred toward the end of gigs but this one was near the beginning of the show, which we had to stop. It lasted about an hour and a half, with me and Rob taking turns holding him down in the dressing room; once again with me holding his tongue in his mouth to stop him from swallowing it. Christ, it was scary.
You take a guy who’s just had an epileptic fit to the ER and the nurse looks at you like you’ve just dropped in from Venus.
“What the fuck are you doing in here?” I said. “He’s possessed by the devil, that twat.” “Get up, you soft bastard,” I said, dragging him out. “Stop fucking around. Go and see him. He’s back to normal now.” Whatever “normal” was.
doing. I look back and keep seeing where we should have stopped. It’s the part of doing this book that’s the hardest. Writing it all down, I can pinpoint the moments where we should have said “enough is enough”—because now they seem so obvious. But at the time he just carried on and so did we. Selfishness, stupidity, willful ignorance, and a refusal to accept what was going on right in front of our noses—we were all guilty of it, even Ian. Because this was what we’d worked and waited for.
I wish sometimes I could tell the younger me, “Slow down, mate, what’s the big hurry? You’ve got another thirty or forty years of this,” knowing that the twenty-two-year-old me would curl his lip and tell the old me to fuck off, because when you’re twenty-two it feels like if you don’t seize the moment then it’ll be gone in a puff of smoke.
We were like, “Fuck off, twatto,” finishing our drinks. Only to discover the following morning that the stupid twat had let all four tires down on the car. I was like, “What you do that for?” “You burnt my fucking shirt.” “But you’ve japed yourself. You have to travel in that car as well, you stupid twat.”
We’d been threatened with the jape to end them all. All week they’d been leading up to this. What would they have come up with? What horrors lay in store for us?
They put some talcum powder on the snare drum.
We covered them in egg then scarpered back to the Cortina, busting a gut with laughter—only to find a couple of coppers standing there.
“You do realize that’s vandalism?” Then, for some reason, Dave Pils went, “Is this ’cause I’m black?” Which was funny, because he isn’t black. “But you’re not black, Dave.” “It’s ’cause my girlfriend’s black.” Jasmine was black—he was right about that. “Dave . . .” “It is, isn’t it, you racist bastard?” “Dave.”
We didn’t like that—we were animal lovers—but I wasn’t going to argue. The idea of the Buzzcocks unaware that their bus had been overrun with mice was somehow just as funny as them finding out.
“Oh,” he said, “I used to love speaking French. Really good at it, I was.” He never spoke a word of French the whole trip. Not even in the petrol station, the bit he had been practicing: “Fill her up, mate” was all that came out.
And this is one of my lasting impressions of Ian—an image I have in my head of him, like the image of him chasing the drum down the motorway or pissing in the ashtray. It’s of Ian, who liked to read Burroughs and Kafka and discuss art with Annik, asking this French guy where all the girls were. “Girls,” he was saying. “Where are all the girls?” Holding his arms to his chest and waving them up and down like a pair of jiggly boobs. “Where are all the girls?”
Absolutely cracking. A fucking great set list, that one. I wouldn’t put “Disorder” after “Glass,” mind you; I’d change that bit round. But that’s a great set list. Maybe it’s a bit up and down, though, come to think of it . . . so maybe it’s not that great a set list. Great songs, though.
One thing that punk taught you was to be challenging—always try to break the rules, to forge your own way. Being on Factory reinforced those ideals. It was like, whatever the game was we weren’t going to play it. Whatever was expected of us we did the opposite.
When he did New Order in America, he was with us for four days, pissed as a fart, having a great time; when we were all sat on the grass outside the gig on the afternoon of his last day he went, “Oh, I’m sure there’s something I’ve forgotten. What have I forgotten?” Then the color drained out of his face and he went, “Oh my God, I’ve forgotten to take any pictures.”
He’d been there for four days and did the shoot as the car was waiting to take him to the airport. Class. And this is the thing—they were brilliant. The guy is either a fucking genius or somebody up there likes him, without a shadow of a doubt.
Doing the soundtrack was the last nail in the coffin for New Order. I realized after that me and Barney were poles apart, too far apart, and no one seemed able to bring us back together. I thought our management was useless and Steve seemed lost. It was awful. The music was great, though. Typical: you’re always better when you’re full of anger. One thing I was happy about was that Natalie Curtis was included in the publishing for the songs. The credits are “Curtis-Hook-Morris-Sumner.”
Being Belgian she seemed impossibly exotic. She was strong, independent, very into her music, intelligent, and pretty into the bargain. But none of that could make up for the fact that she was a royal pain in the arse on that tour. She didn’t like us being at all laddish and was always pulling us up on our manners. God help you if you farted in the minibus or something. She disapproved of us chatting up girls and generally being dirty bastards, and didn’t like our bad language. She was a right mother hen, in other words, clucking round us all the time.
Was he more himself when he was with Annik, or more himself when he was pissing about with us? There’s the eternal question. All I can remember is that with her he became a bit . . . Well, Barney probably put it best when he said “poncey.” With us: chasing groupies and pissing in ashtrays and looking at turds in toilets. With her: talking about Burroughs and Dostoyevsky. The perfect friend or partner for Ian would have combined all those things, but if that person exists they were nowhere near our social scene, so he had to be the chameleon, moving from one to another.
the promoter announced that we weren’t allowed to check in until after one a.m. Huh? What kind of hotel can’t you check into until one o’clock in the morning?
Then all of a sudden Annik sat bolt upright and went, “I know what ziss is—eet’s a brothel.”
But she was really kicking off about it, shouting at Rob and calling him immoral or something, which was the wrong thing to say because Rob squared up to her, pushed his glasses up his nose, and said, “I’m immoral? I’m immoral? I’m not the one fucking a married man with a kid.” Which wasn’t strictly speaking true, of course. Ian’s medication meant that fucking anybody was out of the question; and, like I say, it’s public knowledge that he and Annik never—what’s a nice way of saying it?—consummated their relationship. Even so, what Rob said was close enough to the bone to shut Annik up and she
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(Come to think of it, I’ll have it to suggest that to Becky for our house.)
(but I won’t suggest that).
To paraphrase Hunter S. Thompson, we were at the promoter’s house when the drugs began to take hold.
It was the beginning of a very long night. Stuck alone with Steve, who had reached a kind of zoned-out, off-in-another-world stage of this trip, I’d nod off and every time I woke up he’d be staring intently at me and I’d go, “Fuck off, Steve. Stop staring.” He was still spaced out the next morning. Much to our relief he was okay to play, but he didn’t speak—not a word for three days—which was quite weird. We’d be in the bus and you’d look and Steve would be staring at you. Then the next time you looked he’d be staring at Barney and it would be Barney’s turn to feel uncomfortable. Thank God
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Maryland Chicken, which tasted like they hated making it. One of the Cabs had this amazing-smelling curry.
We’d play and be brilliant and really click as musicians, then come offstage and immediately resume our former positions at one another’s throats.
Now, because I was completely off my tits, I said, “I can’t play that shit.” But I didn’t mean, like, “shit,” like the music was shit. I meant shit, as in “that shit,” meaning the bass, which was the normal, low-end, chord-following rumble, which is just not what I do; I don’t play bass like that. I can’t play bass like that.
couldn’t bear to have someone else playing his bass lines, apparently. Yeah, me, I know. . . .
Until one day I started getting PRS royalties on a weird song that I’d never heard of and didn’t remember playing on and it was a Killing Joke song. They’d used me on one of their albums, the cheeky buggers.
I ended up rewiring the cab and managed to get through the gig. Fuck me, that was traumatic. Not quite as traumatic as what happened next, though, because it was around this time that Ian started cutting himself up.
But, actually, no. I didn’t know. Of course—you know what I’m going to say. We brushed off the fact that he’d added self-harming to the list.
Because that’s the thing, and I can’t say it enough: nobody wanted the group—the whole group—to do well more than Ian did. So he lied. Either to us, or to himself, or both. He lied when he said that it was no big deal to get pissed and start carving away at yourself with a knife.
Being at your most vulnerable, just flipping out like that, with some of the audience laughing, some scared, some cheering, some thinking you’re a freak. It must have been horrible. But we’d stop him from swallowing his tongue and he’d get up, tell
One of Tony’s favorite sayings was: “Always keep your bands poor. That way they make great music.” He may well have been right. There’s nothing like sudden fame and wealth to turn a band’s heads. But just every now and then it would have been nice to have tested his theory instead of being forced to prove it. It made us a better band, though. I mean, Rob, you’d have to say, was very good at keeping you grounded, making sure your feet stayed firmly on the ground. His thing was: just get on with it, play live and record.
He may well have been a genius, Martin, but that didn’t stop him from being a right twat sometimes.
