Manc Holiday Weekend

It wasn’t quite Robbie leaving Take That, but stiff drinks were required by a good few New Order fans when it was announced in 2011 that Peter Hook and his low-slung bass had acrimoniously departed the camp.

Accusation and counter-accusation followed, with both sides publically blaming the other for the falling out. Five-years on it remains a right old Mancunian mess with Hooky taking his spat with Barney, Gillian and Stephen to the High Court.

“I’ll have ‘em any where, any time, I’m not scared of them,” Hook told yours truly. “I’m taking legal action against them because of their excluding of me and the business antics they’ve done to seize the New Order name. I think it’s despicable, I think it’s cowardly, I think it’s wrong and I will fight them to prove that.”

Not wanting to add further fuel to the legal fire, his former friends issued a (for the time being) final statement last November, which read: “Obviously the band are disappointed that Peter is pursuing this claim in this particular way. The reports so far take a number of things out of context. Peter still, for instance, receives his full share of all back catalogue royalties. This dispute relates only to the share of income he takes from our work without him since 2011. Not much more we can say as nothing has been decided by the Court on the facts other than he has a right to proceed with the claim, so this matter is still in play. We’re getting on with life and concentrating on touring and promoting our new album.”

That album is Music Complete, the extremely long overdue follow-up to 2005’s Waiting For The Sirens’ Call, which despite/because of (we’ll let you decide) Hooky’s absence is a gilt-edged classic. A throwback to their Haçienda floor-filling days of yore, it’s a source of both pride and relief to Gillian Gilbert.

“We felt very under pressure to come up with something not just good, but outstanding,” the super-friendly 53-year-old admits. “When we reformed in 2011, we purposefully kept it small at first because of the two new guys in the line-up. We weren’t sure how interested people would be after such a long break, but the crowds gradually got bigger, as did the gigs. “Then we got a bit bored of playing the same material and started doing remixes. That turned into the writing of new songs, which we wanted to fit in with the likes of ‘Blue Monday’, ‘Age Of Consent’ and the other dancey, upbeat songs in the set. Personally, because I’ve got kids and didn’t want to go into a studio for months and months on end, I wasn’t keen on doing an album but technology’s moved on. We’ve all got our own little studios where we can work on ideas and then play them to everybody else. Bernie did all of his vocals on his own with a really good engineer we have. It was a painless way to make a record.”

Whilst New Order have tended in the past to be quite self-sufficient, Music Complete boasts an impressive roll-call of guests.

“The first person we asked was Elly Jackson who’d done a few support gigs with us as La Roux,” Gillian enthuses. “I thought she was amazing. Next was Iggy Pop. Stephen and Bern had met him years ago in New York, and then we all met him in 2014 when he did the John Peel Interview on the music industry for BBC Radio 6. He was so on the money with what he said. Iggy’s got this ‘wild man of rock’ persona but is actually a pussycat. Bernie wanted something a bit different for ‘Stray Dog’, so he wrote a poem that was emailed over to Miami for Iggy to recite. He did it perfectly in just two takes.”

Barney’s duet partner on ‘Superheated’ is Brandon Flowers who recently joined New Order for the live premiere of the song in Las Vegas’ ritzy Cosmopolitan @ the Chelsea venue.

“As you probably know, The Killers named themselves after the fictional band in our ‘Crystal’ video,” Gillian beams. “We bumped into him years ago when they were playing on a really little stage at Glastonbury. I’m rubbish at being able to tell who’s going to be big or not, but he just oozed charisma.”

It must be nice when the music you made in Manchester resonates 5,061 miles away in the Nevada desert.

“I know, it’s so strange. He was in awe of us and we were in awe of him! It used to be that you automatically hated anyone who was over 30, but there does seem to be this respect between generations that didn’t exist in the ‘70s. Younger people can access your music on the internet. Age doesn’t really matter; especially when they look at younger pictures of you. You had the haircuts 20 years before them, so you get their respect.”

It’s handy being in a band where the blokes still have most their hair. Barney with a comb-over just wouldn’t be the same.

“It’s all plugs and weaves,” she laughs. “That’s your exclusive; ‘New Order in hair transplant shocker!’”

Making Gillian & Co. even more down with the kids is the fact that Shawn Levy personally picked Low-Life’s ‘Elegia’ for the Stranger Things soundtrack.

“People keep tweeting that to me, but I haven’t seen it yet because we’ve got the worst internet in the world where we live. We all came together in the village to see if we can get broadband. We’ve only got another ten people to go…”

Do Stephen and Gillian still have tanks in the garden?

“We’ve still got an Abbot Self-Propelled Gun, yes,” she laughs again. “The kids and their friends used to love them when they were young; ours was definitely the most popular house to play in.”

Gillian didn’t always have the enthusiasm for band life that she does now.

“God, I hated it when the kids were small and I was touring with New Order. The record company and management were like, ‘Take ‘em with you’ but I couldn’t think of a worse environment for them to be in.

Unfortunately, things happened whereby I couldn’t carry on. Something bad happened, and something good came out of it because I had a big break. It’s only when we got back together in 2011 that I realised how much I love being in New Order.”

That ‘something bad’ was Gillian and Stephen’s daughter, Grace, being diagnosed with a spinal condition, transverse myelitis. Not too long after that, Gillian found out that she had breast cancer, but has been in the clear now for nearly a decade.

It’s been a summer of firsts for New Order with a sellout in Manhattan’s Radio City Music Hall where Frank Sinatra and Sammy Davis Jr. used to do their things, and an Australian Chamber Orchestra-assisted gig in Sydney Opera House.

“The vibe in New York was great, although it’s the worst place I’ve ever known for people on their phones and iPads,” she rues. “Everybody in the front-row was tap, tap tapping away which is very distracting. Come on people, live in the moment! The US tour was great because we had this really cool girl called Whitney Fierce and Derek Carter, who’s just this big jolly bloke, on DJ duties.

“The Sydney gig was amazing too, but a bit nerve-wracking because we were playing with proper musicians. We were like, ‘We’re going to be found out here!’ They got all our music in advance, and Joe Duddell did the string arrangements for us.”

Also a regular James and Elbow collaborator, Duddell last year re-worked the version of New Order’s ‘Your Silent Face’, which soundtracks Mike Garry’s ‘Ode To Anthony H. Wilson’ poem. Gillian, Stephen and Barney get to appear in the accompanying video, as do the likes of Iggy Pop, Rowetta, Richard Madley, John Cooper Clark, Julie ‘Haley from Corrie’ Hesmondhalgh, Paul Morley, Shaun Ryder, Steve Coogan, Miranda Sawyer, Christopher Eccleston, Peter Saville and Peter Glass.

“I must admit, I didn’t like it at first but when they added the music and the visuals it made sense to me,” Gillian reflects. “We all did our pieces separately, which is a shame because you can only imagine the party you’d have if all those people were in the same room together!” I’m getting a hangover just thinking about it. Asked for her favourite Tony Wilson memory, Gillian immediately shoots back: “The time I took my Mum and Dad, who were David Essex fans, to the Haçienda when it first opened. Tony walked in and Mum, who’d never met him before, said: ‘I can understand why people don’t like you.’ Everybody just burst out laughing. She didn’t mean it like that, of course!”

Factory Records may sadly be no more, but New Order’s indie credentials remain impeccable with Music Complete and its sister Complete Music remix album being released through Mute.

“It really is a similar vibe to Factory,” Gillian concludes. “The guy in charge, Daniel Miller, is really into his music. I was starstruck thinking, ‘This is the bloke who wrote and recorded ‘Warm Leatherette’!’ We had an album launch in Berlin, which Daniel and an old friend of ours, Arthur Baker, played at. We’re sticking to the rule we made when we got back together, which is, ‘Let’s have fun with it!’”