Stephen Morris: Interview
In
one of your two autobiographies (‘Record Play Pause’ and ‘Fast Forward’), you write
about how you were keen on Hawkwind when you were young. And a lot of people I’ve
spoken to while doing this book have been saying that Hawkwind were quite
important to them growing up, when they were expanding their musical horizons.
Why was Hawkwind’s sound so exciting at that point in time?
That's a good question. The first Hawkwind
record I got was In Search of Space, and that was like a fantastic thing
- the sleeve opens out, it's great, and it had all weird noises on it. They
called it space rock at the time. But it was really when I went to see them
live, because on ‘In Search of Space’, it was still kind of the old Hawkwind
line-up at the time, and I had no idea who was in the bloody band. I knew [science
fiction author] Michael Moorcock had something to do with it. So that appealed
to the science fiction bit of me.
When I saw them live, I got a full
sonic psychedelic onslaught that was kind of punk before punk, very raw, and it
was great the way that they were using synths not with a keyboard, just as
noises, and how you never knew where one song started and another one began. It
was just one long jam.
It was kind of punk before punk, like Neu!,
who were also like, I thought, very punk, sounding like a record somebody's
made in the bedroom or something like that.
In the early
stages of Joy Division you were always open to experimenting with electronic
sounds and textures and you had a synth built out of a kit.
We were really, because Bernard [Sumner]
built that kit synth and I got a syndrum, I think I was labouring under the
delusion that it was like cheating - not being particularly interested in
learning about music, I thought if you got a synthesizer, it'd do it for itself.
Like a Teasmade, but making music.
And I did find out they were good at
making noises. When I first got a syndrum, I found I could just twiddle a few
knobs and get a wild and interesting sound out of it without knowing what the
hell I was doing. Helicopters! Machine guns! Lasers! Stuff like that which is a
bit more interesting in some respects than just hitting a drum. It was it was
that really that particularly drew me to it - without reading the manual,
twiddling a few knobs could get you something good.
How important was
Martin Hannett in creating this sound that was nothing like your live sound at
all - a kind of studio music.
Martin was very, very important to the
sound of Joy Division. But unfortunately, he wasn’t really the most
communicative of people – sometimes I wonder if he knew what the idea in his
head was, or whether he was actually just making it up and seeing what
happened.
He was very, very into technology. His
big thing that sort of impacted on me most was that he wanted a very particular
drum sound. Because he had all these boxes, the AMS delay line, and he wanted
to use these to process the drum sounds, and so what he wanted was no [sound] spill.
So the snare drum and bass drum were all recorded individually then he's messed
about with the sound. That was his thing.
But he wasn't the first person to be
doing it. It was kind of a bit of a thing in 1979 - that was because record
sounds are kind of cyclical and one person doesn't just get an idea in
isolation, they've all got it off somebody else. And and it was just recently I
was reading about Clem Burke doing ‘Heart of Glass’ with Blondie and he went
through exactly the same thing.
What Martin did with Joy Division was
he put it in a place that didn’t really exist anywhere, and it certainly didn’t
exist in our heads. We had an idea
about what it should sound like – we’d have done it more like The Stooges. But
Martin gave it an atmosphere, using the studio as an instrument and all these
effects and delay lines to process the drums. And we were keen to experiment
because we'd never really been in the studio for any length of time – we’d go
along with all those things because we’d never done it before. It was
interesting to learn.
At the start of
New Order, you had an opportunity for change, did the use of electronics offer
a way for the band to have this second creative existence?
It did. And again, that was through
Martin, because Martin's idea was to buy the [Boss] Dr. Rhythm DR-55 drum
machine. Martin said, “Get yourself a drum machine, I'm getting one so we'll
order two and we'll get it cheaper.” So that's how we got it. We liked
Kraftwerk and we liked Giorgio Moroder, that kind of metronomic, hypnotic
electro beat.
On its own, the drum machine didn't do
very much. But we got just got the [ARP] Quadra because we lost the [ARP] Omni
or it broke. And we saw the 'trigger out', 'trigger in' and just put a lead in
to see what happens. It went ‘dakka-dakka-dakka-dakka-dakka’ and we thought,
“This sounds brilliant! It sounds like Giorgio Moroder, let’s just do a track
just like this!”
It was a happy accident. There were
lots of happy accidents at the time because the gear was very, very limited in
what you could do with it. But it seemed magic.
It seems you had
to kind of change your playing styles around it a bit, change the drums and
bass because this was an additional rhythm and an additional baseline, so these
new sounds were occupying those roles now.
That's right. Hooky just went more
melodic, although he was already going that way. So he was playing more melodic
lines and I just like did four-on-the-floor things and simple stuff.
It's interesting
that the simple adoption of an another element created the whole sound of the
band in some ways.
We had to change, we were in a state
of not knowing what we were going to do next. And this thing just sort of
presented itself really. ‘Everything's Gone Green’ was an experiment, like ‘Temptation’
was an experiment, like ‘Blue Monday’ was an experiment. And that was really
the thing - get a new bit of gear, see how it works. Don't read the manual,
just write a song.
You seem to have
relied a lot on happy accidents…
Like the ‘Blue Monday’ top line
[programmed by Gillian Gilbert]. Because the synchronisation aspect of things
was pretty basic, if you got it a bit wrong, it sounded different. When we
heard it, we were like, “It’s wrong – but in a really good way.”
Was it unanimous
in the band that you would make this electronic step forward?
That's a good question. No, no, I
don't think it was unanimous. But it doesn't really matter, as long as the
stuff that you're doing is good. But we were carried along with the novelty of
it too. And it was exciting.
I mean, I grumbled, because it was
like, 'Well I'm supposed to be the drummer and I'm not doing too much drumming on
the records.' I think the high point of that for me, of my Luddite thing, was
when we got the [Oberheim] DMX drum machine . The Dr. Rhythm was OK, because I
quite liked the fact that it couldn't sound much like drums, I liked the Toytown
aspects of it. Those old drum machines, they've kind of got an atmosphere
that's very like 1950s records, there's
something nostalgic about them, they are trying to do something but not quite
succeeding, but at the same time it sounds something else. I mean the [Roland] 808
has become like a thing in itself. It actually sounds nothing like a bloody
drum kit, but it's become ubiquitous in modern electronic music just by having
that unique sound.
But when we got the DMX, which sounded
exactly like a drummer. I remember doing [1983 album] Power, Corruption and Lies
and thinking all the drums sound really good on this, but it's not me that's
doing them! I'd do like Simmons [electronic drumkit] overdubs and stuff like
that. So that really felt a bit like cheating.
When Gillian
[Gilbert] joined the band, how much did it change the musical dynamic?
It did change things a lot. I mean,
first of all, there was the writing thing. Because Joy Division just wrote in
one way - we just jammed. And what we did was Joy Division, the four people in
the room. And we got Gillian in on the basis that she wasn't an accomplished
musician, she could play guitar a little bit, which is how we were when we
started out.
But didn't we didn't explain that to
her at all, I think we just thought, “Well, yeah, she'll just know
automatically how to write songs because we started off like that.” But it
didn't work like that, because we'd got this way of working which we couldn't
really explain to ourselves to be honest, much less to somebody else. I think
everybody had different expectations of what she was going to do, but we never
said anything to each other about it.
So initially it was kind of like she
was an extra pair of hands for Bernard – “play some chords on the keyboard and
I'll do a bit of guitar”, or while he was doing the chords, she'd be trying to
figure out something on the guitar. So it was a bit like that. And the tape
machine just became like really, really important for writing stuff.
That was very
brave move on her part and to go into an already existing situation and be
determined to make a contribution.
You cannot underestimate the sudden
shock and the change that bringing a female into what was sort of an all-lads
club. It was difficult for her, she had to put up with the misogyny and all
that fucking male bullshit, but it was what she wanted to do. She was a fan. It
was a bit like Joy Division were her favourite band and suddenly we said, “Do
you want to play with us?” And she said “yeah”.
But do you think
it changed the way you made music because it was no longer just blokes?
Oh yeah, it did. It did. It did change
the way we made music. And then the other thing that happened was we didn't
have Martin [Hannett] anymore [as the band’s producer]. ‘Everything's Gone
Green’ was the turning point.
I mean, when we did [New Order’s 1981
debut album] Movement, that was really us carrying on [after former
singer Ian Curtis’s suicide], trying to write in the same way that we had with
Joy Division, which worked pretty well, considering looking back on it, you
think, “Oh God, that was a hard time.”
You then started
working with Arthur Baker [on 1983 single ‘Confusion’]. How did he change the
way you thought about what you could possibly achieve with music?
Yeah, that's a good one. Arthur. When
we did ‘Blue Monday’, we'd heard about Arthur Baker, we'd heard these early hip-hop
records: “Yeah, this is good. I wonder how you do something like this?” “Why
don't we work with Arthur Baker and find out?” So we just went we just went to
New York with absolutely no ideas.
We expected him to do something. And
he expected us to do something completely different. But it was very, very
interesting because Arthur Baker used the studio as a musical instrument, but
in a different way to Martin. He wasn't a musician, he'd let the engineer do stuff
and just base things on an 808 drum machine pattern. Whereas with Martin, it
was very laborious and drawn out and you didn't know what was happening.
We learned a lot, really, working with
Arthur – mainly that we should always have an idea. Because when we got to New
York, we had no idea. We got stuck in this rehearsal room and it was a struggle
to write something. And so Arthur was confronted with hours and hours of
rambling jams. He just went: “No, I can’t listen to that.”
Because Arthur was a DJ, he said: “I
just want that specific bit, just that
bit – just play those two bars over and over and over.” And that was how
‘Confusion’ started, really. We built it from just an 808 riff, which was
basically from Arthur’s file of 808 riffs.
When we were in the studio coming up
with shit, he was finishing up the record for [UK band] Freeez [‘A-E-I-O-U’].
So the two records, ‘A-E-I-O-U’ and ‘Confusion’, happened sort of pretty much
at the same time [in 1983].
When acid house
eventually came along, did you feel like you’d been proved right all along with
your belief in electronics and technology?
In some respects, yeah - I mean, acid house
was great! And I'm very grateful for it because we'd made the mistake of
investing in a nightclub [The Haçienda] and we'd lost a fortune because we had
this place, which was a vast, empty space and nobody liked clubs like that. But
suddenly acid house demanded vast empty spaces, and we'd got one.
There was this
massive outpouring of talent in Manchester that was nurtured by the Haçienda, even
in the pre-acid house days. You could argue that New Order were the patrons of
these young talents by providing an arena in which they could develop.
In retrospect, yes, I agree with you.
I agree that that is how it how it turned out and Tony Wilson would say, “Well,
that's praxis”, but at the time it was like, “They're not paying to get in!
We're losing money!”
How much was [New
Order’s 1988 album] ‘Technique’ an attempt to channel this energy of acid house
that was going at that moment?
Yeah, well, basically we'd gone to
Ibiza [to start recording the album] and we were immersed in it. I mean, the
thing about Technique is that it's not particularly acid house - our
attempt at doing an acid house track was [single] ‘Fine Time’. But it’s got the
same vibe, we were going to Amnesia [club in Ibiza] all the time, soaking up
the vibes, which kind of came out through the record.
Even though we didn't actually get a
great deal done in Ibiza, what we did get done had got some something about it
which does come out through the record. It's got that kind of effortless summer
holiday kind of feeling about it that you can't really pin down and you can't
just consciously decide to do something like that. I mean, you do you stuff
like that by trying to make a record in very strange circumstances when you're
sort of off your head 24 hours a day…
Another happy
accident, then?
Yeah. It was a happy accident.
One last
question. When you and Gillian recorded as The Other Two, did you feel that you
were now able to express certain things musically that you hadn't been able to
do within the confines of New Order?
Right, The Other Two. Well, it was a
very strange situation, The Other Two, because most people in a band, there's
always this longing for solo greatness. But me and Gillian never really had
much of a desire for that, but then Bernard's going off to do [side project] Electronic
with Johnny Marr, and Hooky's off doing [side project] Revenge with whoever.
And me and Gillian started writing stuff for television, which was something
we'd never done before, which is another whole bunch of technology that you've suddenly
you've got to figure out how to do it.
And so we've built a studio in the
loft of our house and just started writing stuff, which we'd never done before.
Before that it had got to be four people - everyone's got to be in the room.
Which is like one of the things that stemmed back to Joy Division – if you're
going to write a song, everybody's got to be in the room.
When we started off doing The Other
Two, it was very interesting, writing for television – writing to order, which
we'd never had to do before. The hard thing was when [Factory Records
executive] Alan Erasmus says, “Why don't you do an album?” And then
immediately, which is the mistake that we made, we thought that means we'll
have to turn all these ambient noodly things we’d done into songs and we'll
have to get someone singing. And in a way that kind of made things more
difficult.
If we just been a bit more organic
about it, it would have turned out completely different, but we kind of found ourselves
having to get a singer. We got Kim Wilde, who was great. But then Kim Wilde
turns up and Gillian sees someone singing and says, “Well I could do that.” “Right.
OK. You do it then.” And that was great. Gillian’s really good at singing.
Unfortunately, not in front of people. It's like she can sing in front of two
people, which makes doing gigs a bit awkward.
I can see that…
But it was good. And it was a kind of
continuation of the New Order thing of experimenting and doing something that
you wouldn't normally do. Because that's how you do something different. It's
like Bowie said, you do your best work when you're sort of just outside your
comfort zone and you've got to do it. Otherwise, you just keep doing the
same things over and over again.
Interview by
Matthew Collin for ‘Dream Machines’‘Dream Machines’, February 23, 2022.
Photo: Factory Records promotional photo, 1985.
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