New Order: Returning To Australia 'Feels A Bit Like Unfinished Business'

One would think that interviewing a member of New Order while sick with COVID, sitting in the darkness with a headache would be a nightmare. Not so much with Stephen Morris.

A founding member of English post-punk band Joy Division and dance music pioneers New Order—the latter born from the disbandment of the former after the tragic passing of frontman Ian Curtis—Morris has received praise for his “machine-like” abilities as a drummer. But there was a moment when he didn’t play so well, and had COVID.

Revealing that he’d managed to avoid the virus until June 2023, when New Order were performing at Primavera Sound festival in Porto, Portugal, Morris recalls going “blind” during Age Of Consent and somehow powered through the rest of the set.

“My COVID story was that I managed to avoid it until we were playing a festival in Portugal when I suddenly realised I couldn’t play Age Of Consent, and you can’t stop!” Morris exclaimed, quickly humming the song’s robotic drumbeat.

“And then I went blind, and then, luckily, the power went off. I couldn’t see! Sure enough, it was COVID.

“It managed to strike me down on the second number, but the trooper that I am, I got to the end of the set. They gave me oxygen, so it was all right.”

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New Order’s last tour of Australia was hampered by COVID-19. The British act performed Down Under in March 2020 and were set to play a show at Melbourne’s Sidney Myer Music Bowl when it was announced that just two days after that gig took place, gatherings would come to an end and COVID-19 restrictions would be introduced.

While the band’s show at the Bowl went ahead, their show three nights later at the Forum was cancelled. That moment has stuck with Morris, who describes their impending return—five years later, almost exactly to the day—as “unfinished business.”

“It feels a bit like unfinished business, in a way, because, well, you can’t say it just happened like that,” Morris recalls of the introduction of COVID-19 lockdowns, with the band’s gig cancelled and the Melbourne Formula One Grand Prix affected in the same week. “You could see it was coming. But when it was like, ‘The world's closing tomorrow, better go home,’ it was very scary.”

Morris remembers landing at an airport in the Middle East for their stopover flight from Melbourne to the UK. Stretching his legs, he looked at the boards and saw all the flights going, “Cancelled, cancelled, cancelled, cancelled.” He wondered: how long would he and his bandmates be stuck in an airport away from home?

He adds, “It was a very scary time; it was very weird. We had one more gig in Melbourne to do, and basically, the day after we left, it was like the world stopped. It’s good to come back and pick up where we left off, maybe only not quite two years later. Three, four, five years later… quite a bit later. We’re just older, that’s all [laughs].”

During that tour, New Order were joined by special guests Confidence Man and Cut Copy. Elated by the mention of Confidence Man (“I’m so glad you mentioned them; they’re brilliant! I absolutely love them”), Morris enthusiastically tells the story of drinking with the Aussies in an underground, hip bar in Manchester.

“They’re one of the few bands I can actually say I’ve been out drinking with,” he laughs. “Don’t get the wrong idea; I don’t normally go out social drinking. As a rule, I avoid it like the plague. But we were in Manchester, and I asked my daughter, who’s a young person, where’s a good place to go for a drink? And they said, ‘Oh, go to The Laundrette!’

“I was looking for a bar, but it was just like a laundry, one of those pretend things where you have to knock on the door, and the washing machine opens, and you go up a staircase, and then you’re in a bar. It was fabulous! It was really weird, drinking strange cocktails and asking: ‘Should you be doing this before you got to do a gig and be a professional? Like, what am I doing?’ We had a right laugh, and I ended up with a small stuffed bird in my hair!”

New Order’s influence spans decades, and they have intergenerational appeal. Along with his bandmates Bernard Sumner (vocalist and guitarist), keyboardist Gillian Gilbert (who is also Morris’ wife), guitarist Phil Cunningham, and bassist Tom Chapman, Morris has been there as the likes of The Killers, Moby, and The xx have cited them as influences. Several tribute albums have been released honouring New Order’s storied discography.

While the band haven’t released a new album since 2015’s Music Complete, they’ve got the catalogue to back them as they continue to tour. Blue Monday. Ceremony. True Faith. Temptation. Thieves Like Us. The Perfect Kiss. Bizarre Love Triangle. Regret. They’re classics for a reason: because they’re well-written, clever, superbly mixed pop songs with undertones of post-punk and darker themes.

Those songs are so irresistible because they’re just so good. With their forward-thinking embrace of electronic music, impressive production, drum beats, electrifying bass and lead guitar riffs, and Sumner’s near-monotone vocal delivery, the world opened up for the Salford band, and rightly so. Their music continues to stand the test of time.

It’s little wonder why Confidence Man and Cut Copy are the perfect touring mates and why Nine Inch Nails wanted Morris and Gilbert to remix two tracks on Year Zero Remixed in 2007.

“That was a real shock, like, ‘Oh, Nine Inch Nails want you to do a remix.’ It’s like, ‘Me? What do I know? There’s surely some mistake,’” Morris reflects. “I do find it interesting because you learn a bit about how other people do songs; the Nine Inch Nails ones were really interesting. You appreciate it more than if you just hear it.”

When it comes to the magic of New Order—and to be honest, other bands of the era, like Pet Shop Boys, Bronski Beat, and Soft Cell—Morris cites the band’s willingness to experiment and look to the future as key features of their inimitable sound.

“I think there was a sense of experimentalism. You were doing something going into the future, and it was all shiny and new electronic music,” he shares.

“It’s not often that you hear something and think, ‘That’s very interesting.’ More often or not, you’re trawling through [records], but you do it on the internet… you’re just going through a browser. You wonder, ‘Is this the same song? Oh, this is another one that just sounds a bit like the other one.’ [Music has] kind of gotten a bit generic, which is one of the perils of electronic music.

“But back in the ‘80s, we all thought we were—even though we didn’t actually say—we [thought] we were pioneers; there was a bit of that spirit about it. And also, being young, you’re kind of like, ‘Hey, the future is going to be great!’ Whereas, when you get older, the future doesn't look that great. Yeah, you get miserable.”

Morris touches on another subject that gets him miserable: the idea of lifetime achievement awards.

Towards the end of 2024, New Order received the Icon Award at the Rolling Stone UK Awards. Morris loved receiving badges when he was a kid, but by the time he entered his teenage years, he didn’t see the point of participation prizes (“For example, I worked as hard as I could at getting myself thrown out of school!”). At this stage of his life, though, there’s something unpleasant about being honoured while the band’s career is still going strong.

He says, “It means people appreciate you, which is nice, but it’s kind of like, you know, what have you achieved? Yeah, I always thought of them [Lifetime Achievements] as trying to say, ‘Fuck off and die.’ It’s kind of like, here’s a Lifetime Achievement Award…”

He has no fondness for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, either. “I mean, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame – what is it? I mean, in my head, it’s kind of [supposed to be] like Valhalla. What’s exactly the go? It isn’t even a hall; it’s a gift shop! It’s a gift shop, as far as I can tell.”

But he’s not grumpy about returning to Australia or recently organising a box set collection for Brotherhood.

Admitting that he’s gained a new appreciation for the songs on the album, Morris shares, “It was never one of my favourite ones because it had some sort of weird concept which didn't make any sense and still doesn't make any sense to me [laughs].

“I guess two things happen when you re-evaluate your past: you realise how good the songs were, and then you realise how not very good you were at it, even though you thought you were a genius at recording and producing, and things have moved on,” Morris continues. Despite recognising that the group could have made changes to the album, he’s steadfast in being proud of the resulting album now.

“There’s a lot of things you could have done better,” Morris muses. “So, you sort of think, ‘Oh, could we fix that?’ No, you can't fix it. It is what it is. You’ve just got to live with the fact that you didn’t play very well at the time. It’s a moment in time caught forever; that’s what our manager used to say when we wanted to do it again. Some things you’ve just got to leave alone.”

New Order will return to Australia in March 2025. You can find tickets via the TEG Live website.

Presented by TEG Live and Double J