Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
There are so many bootlegged Joy Division/Martin Hannett tapes, a lot of really bad bootlegs on the Internet.
I'm not a good flyer. Because I do it so much, I think the odds of something going wrong are not in my favour.
There are keyboard terrorists everywhere who hide behind a veil of anonymity to pursue their vicious slanders.
Once you made that decision to split New Order up, you were like, 'Woo-hoo! I better get out there and get a job.'
The interesting thing is that New Order finished on an okay note. It was only after we split that things got worse.
I have a hard time getting my head around the idea of playing 'The Perfect Kiss' in my 50s. I can't quite get there.
Any coalition, especially where one party is more powerful than the other, it's always bound to have a pecking order.
One of the great things about education is that it should stop you making mistakes - and I have made a lot of mistakes.
Most people have just heard Joy Division on record. And Joy Division on record was completely different than it was live.
Music was such an important part of everyone's life in the '60s and '70s, but everywhere you played, the music was dreadful.
I prefer it when I can intimidate the audience rather than the audience intimidate me. I've been lucky in my career to have both.
When I started DJing years ago, I took great delight in annoying the audience. Playing Johnny Cash in the middle of a banging night.
To me, New Order split up when Bernard and I stopped writing together. We started Joy Division together; we started New Order together.
There are lots of Joy Division songs that are so powerful when played live, some of which we did either never play or played very rarely.
To be in one band that changed the world musically is pretty good, but to be in two bands that changed the world musically, that's amazing.
The reason Joy Division and New Order are as influential and successful as they are is because of the unique playing of all the individuals.
The rise of the iPod meant that digital music became the norm, It's sad, but you can still find the real stuff out there if you look for it!
You look at 30 Seconds to Mars, and you don't think, 'Ooh, I bet they're angry.' No one really does anger these days. I suppose it's a turn-off.
My mother used to always say to me, 'Do naught, get naught.' It's an adage that I hold by. If you don't do anything, you can't really expect anything.
I think that you have to bear in mind that music is about escape, and it's not unreasonable to think the music business would be based around escapism.
America stopped making vinyl and phased out the single but Germany held out and refused. Warner's never phased out vinyl in Germany. Now America imports it!
But then I quite enjoy when something goes wrong, because when I watch DJs that take it very seriously, it's nice when you make a mistake and laugh about it.
Bass players are always the underdogs of the band, but I made sure that I was never viewed as one. I went out of my way to steal as much limelight as I could.
I am always working on new material with my production partner Phil Murphy in our guise as Man Ray; we do a lot of soundtrack work & some great collaborations.
I read one too many books about Joy Division by people who weren't there, and they always seem to dwell on the dark, the intense, the miserable image of Joy Division.
The scary thing is when I did my set in Texas everyone was excited. The show was great. I was done and the next DJ put something on vinyl and the difference! The quality!!
I think the most important thing about what musicians do is the music. You can be as big an arsehole as you want but if you're not making good music, you won't get away with it.
We don't to be some kind of rock supergroup for the sake of being a supergroup. You want to change things and say something fresh and new so you appeal to people as a new group.
When digital recording came in about '84, everything started to follow into digital. Now, you've got the best recording media in the world, but it's not very pleasing to the ear.
I look back on Joy Division very fondly indeed. I know that, of course, the band came to a tragic end, but that does not change the fact that Joy Division was a great band to be a part of.
I was reading an article about Kings of Leon's bass player, who said that he was directly influenced by Joy Division and by me. I was like, 'Woah!' It surprised me. It's a great compliment.
Great music seems to come from a lot of angst, and that angst is from great musicians getting together with intense chemistry. When that chemistry isn't there, people tend not to write great music.
I've been very grateful and humbled by the fact that young people really dig Joy Division's music. It's a great testament to the chemistry and the songwriting prowess between the four original members.
When you balance it against New Order, New Order don't work or tour relentlessly. We definitely work in our own way and sometimes it's a bit too slow for me, so I like to plan ahead and fill my time up.
I suppose in the end it's almost too easy to look back and say what you should have done, how you might have changed things. What's harder - what's much, much harder - is to accept what you actually did do.
I've watched so-called 'New Order' playing in Auckland, and Tom Chapman is miming along to my bass on tape... He's got his fingers on the low, and you can hear my high bass in the background. So he's miming.
The thing with Joy Division's music is that each member was playing like a separate line. We hardly ever played together; we all played separately. But when you put it together, it was like the ingredients in a cake.
I don't pretend to be Joy Division or New Order. What I do is very straight forward: it's an interpretation and a celebration of the music, with different people. Everyone looks at it and knows exactly what I'm doing.
They amaze me most of those remixes. Some of them are crap. But every time I complain, someone comes up and says they are for a different market that you don't understand. Some of the New Order ones are really great, though.
We've had a problem finding a vocalist. We have not been lucky yet to find the one. I think the problem is that the three of us have such a pedigree of vocalist, that if we come out with someone that's not good we'll obviously be slated!
There are so little outtakes from the Joy Division era. We didn't have much money. You couldn't be very generous in recording, so we were very thrifty in how we recorded. Everything was very, very well looked after financially because we just couldn't afford it.
I must confess that over my career, I've actually downplayed the importance of DJs. It's such a different art form. Then all of a sudden you try it, and you think, 'Good God, these guys do work.' I used to be very cynical and very blase about it. I can only apologize.
When you've travelled for 34 years as a musician, you do all the culture stuff when you're young and full of energy. In the middle stage, you indulge too much and are scared of daylight. Then, in the final stage, you've seen it all, so you tend to take things a lot easier.
It was nice doing my own Joy Division book to be able to put forward the fact that Ian was actually quite a nice guy and very hardworking, ambitious and loyal. But the thing was, he was battling such a dreadful illness in an era when they really didn't know how to treat it.
It's quite ironic I suppose, it's that thing about being in a group when you all start out as friends and then invariably end up hating each other. So I just thought they needed telling really, in case they were labouring under the apprehension that they were still friends.
I don't find imitating other people's music easy at all. I remember being fifth in line for a Rolling Stones tour, early '90s, when Bill Wyman left, and I was hoping against hope that I wouldn't get the call to audition. I wouldn't be able to play a Stones song if you put a gun to my head.
Originally, I didn't play any New Order when I deejayed. I suppose it comes from being a little embarrassed or humble or whatever. But people were coming to see me because of New Order, so in the end, I had to realize that if they were using my name on the poster, then maybe I should play some of the music.
In the late '70s, the conditions that bands had to endure were, shall we say, not as civilized as they are today. People were a lot more aggressive back then. So there was definitely a lot of suffering for your art. But I would argue that was a good thing. Generally, people make better music when they suffer.
For the first 18 months of Joy Division, we used our jobs to fund the band. We'd all chip in three, five quid to go and do a gig. But it was worth it. It was amazing we could afford to feed ourselves. But we were so creatively and artistically satisfied. You can't explain that to somebody who's never been there.