Michael Butterworth - The Blue Monday Diaries: In the Studio with New Order

Plexus, London

For Sara

Blue Monday 12, Factory Records (FACT73), 1983. Design: Peter Saville and Brett Wickens.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

N ew Orders management, Rebecca Boulton, who provided sage guidance. The individual members of New Order who read the manuscript; these thanks go especially to Stephen Morris for his useful suggestions throughout and for taking the trouble to answer my numerous questions. Blue Monday and Power, Corruption & Lies engineer Michael Johnson for his help and especially for his assistance reconstructing the Brit Row mixing sessions. I was unable to attend these.

Stephen Boyce-Buckley for his sympathetic and detailed reviews of Blue Monday and Power, Corruption & Lies, for help with my descriptions of the music. Bob Dickinsons illuminating memoir, interviewing Hooky and P.J. Proby at Suite 16 for Granada Reports. Grateful thanks also to David Wilkinson for his contribution, Blue Monday: A Fact Sheet ().

My friend and business partner in Savoy Books, David Britton, for his loyal help and support. My agent Genevive Carden for her patience and resolve in seeing this book published. Stephen Manford for his encouragement in the initial stages of writing this book and for reading it afterwards; his sage advice and suggestions. John Coulthart for reading the manuscript, and for his erudite and expert advice. My editors at Plexus, Sandra Wake and Laura Coulman, whose guidance has been invaluable.

Lastly and definitely not least, for my wife Sara Inkster who got me writing again and who gave her loving support.

If errors or inaccuracies exist in my book they are my own solely.

I would also like to express my gratitude to Peter Saville, Alice Cowling, Susie Stubbs, Jon Savage, Professor Tim OBrien, Greg Wilson and the people behind the New Order Gigography and waterrat.com websites. My apologies for anyone I have overlooked.

Books I have referred to include:

The Process: A Novel, Brion Gysin, Doubleday (1969)

Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West, Dee Brown, Holt, Rinehart & Winston (1970)

An Ideal for Living: A History of Joy Division, Mark Johnson, Proteus Books (1984) Lord Horror, David Britton, Savoy Books (1989)

The Great White Wonders: A History of Rock Bootlegs, Clinton Heylin, Viking (1994) Factory: The Story of a Record Label, Mick Middles, Virgin Books (2002); first published as From Joy Division to New Order: The True Story of Anthony H. Wilson and Factory Records, Virgin Books (1996)

Bernard Sumner: Confusion: Joy Division, Electronic and New Order Versus the World, David Nolan, Independent Music Press (2007)

Joy Division Piece by Piece: Writing About Joy Division 1977-2007, Paul Morley, Plexus Books (2008)

The Haienda: How Not to Run a Club, Peter Hook, Simon & Schuster (2009)

Tony Wilson: Youre Entitled to an Opinion, David Nolan, John Blake Publishing Ltd (2010)

Shadowplayers: The Rise and Fall of Factory Records, James Nice, Aurum Press Ltd (2011)

Unknown Pleasures: Inside Joy Division, Peter Hook, Simon & Schuster (2012)

Bernard Sumner: Chapter and Verse: New Order, Joy Division and Me, Bernard Sumner, Bantam Press (2014)

Poor but Sexy: Culture Clashes in Europe East and West, Agata Pyzik, Zero Books (2014)

The author and editors would like to thank the following agencies and individuals for supplying pictures: Sheila Rock/REX Shutterstock; Peter Saville and Brett Wickens/Factory Records; Qwest Records; Peter Saville and Brett Wickens/Factory Records; Kevin Cummins/Getty Images; Kevin Cummins/Getty Images; Kevin Cummins/Getty Images; Kevin Cummins/Getty Images; Chameleon/Britton; Philomena Winstanley.

THE PLAYERS

Gillian Gilbert keyboards, synthesisers and guitars

Peter Hook bass and vocals

Stephen Morris drums, electronic drums, keyboards and synthesisers

Bernard Sumner vocals, guitars, keyboards and synthesisers

Rob Gretton (RIP, 15 January 195315 May 1999)

manager Joy Division/New Order, 197899

Blue Monday 12, Quincy Jones and John Potoker remix, Qwest Records, 1988.

CONTENTS

Power, Corruption & Lies, Factory Records (FACT75), 1983. Design: Peter Saville and Brett Wickens.

FOREWORD

T his book is a memoir of hanging out with New Order at Britannia Row studio while they were recording Power, Corruption & Lies and Blue Monday. The band was looking for a new musical direction after the tragic death of Ian Curtis, the singer who fronted them while they were still known as Joy Division. Although it was not evident to anyone at the time, the songs recorded at these sessions proved to be their defining moment. What I learned there about Blue Monday and what I have learned since form equally strong vectors in my book.

As much as it is these things, it is also a contextual story. It tells, through my personal family connections and through Savoy Books, the publishing house I run in Manchester with my business partner David Britton, how I came to be aware of the nascent Factory Records and early Joy Division; how, by a fortunate fluke, I happened to hear their music playing through my neighbours floor from the room above me, where a film of their work was being made; how curiosity the need to learn more set me on this trail; and how events eventually lead to me becoming a fly on the wall at Britannia Row.

The book is in three main parts. The contextual background is told at the front of the book in my introduction. It is a tale of two cities, drawing material from two influential cultural entities that existed side by side in Manchester during the 1970s, 80s and 90s Factory Records/Joy Division/New Order, with its highly visible ripples spreading across the globe, of which I was an observer; and my company Savoy Books/Records, a much less visible cultural presence in Manchester that Tony Wilson respectfully mentioned in his introductory addresses to delegates for In the City, the international music symposium he founded with his partner Yvette Livesey.