Stephen Morris On New Order's "Traumatic" Beginnings

When asked for his thoughts on New Order celebrating 35 years as a band, drummer Stephen Morris sounds surprised. "Is it? I wonder if somebody's gonna bake a cake or something. D'you know, you're probably right. You are right, yes; it is 35 years, I seen it on Twitter." What an amazing achievement! "Ah, that's one way of puttin' it. Um, shockin' is another way," he counters in that delightful sing-songy Macclesfield accent. "We've been doin' this for 35 years. Crikey!"

On what sort of lifespan New Order foresaw when they formed, Morris offers, "When we started - well, it was a bit awkward in the '80s [laughs], we didn't really know if we were gonna get anywhere 'cause we'd just been Joy Division and that ended quite badly so, yeah! It was a bit traumatic gettin' going." Would he say they continued playing music together as a way of coping with the tragic loss of Joy Division lead singer, Ian Curtis? "Yeah, yeah," he allows, "that was it, really; we'd done it and it was what we loved doin' and, yeah! That was really why you were doin' it, you weren't doin' it for a career - god knows, no - and you weren't doin' it expectin' to be doin' it in 35 years time, either. Oh! That's awful. Yeah, it was just, um: writing music is just a great outlet. It's very, um, oh, what's the word? I can't remember what the word is..." Therapeutic? "Therapeutic! That's the word I'm looking for... Drumming's very therapeutic. I find if you're having a bad day you can just go in and hit things and come out feeling refreshed." 

"We didn't really know if we were gonna get anywhere 'cause we'd just been Joy Division and that ended quite badly."

For VIVID, New Order will play a couple of their own shows plus two dates with the Australian Chamber Orchestra. "The guy who's doin' all the orchestrations is Joe Duddell, who did all the string arranging on Music Complete," Morris explains, "so he kind of knows the songs pretty well." On playing with ACO, Morris jests, "I'm sure they can keep in time with us, they're professional people!" We discuss percussion sight reading and how there's often a long time between beats for orchestral percussionists. "Oh, can you imagine what that's like, right? Having to count, right? Eight hundred bars and hit beat three. If you got it wrong they'd all look at you! You'd have to sit there for the rest of the gig with everybody glarin' at ya." On sight reading, Morris praises, "And being able to read music off a piece of paper and get it right! Because every time I've tried to do it, it sounded nothing like it's supposed to do so, yeah! It makes me really jealous when people can do that, because I have to practice an awful lot to be any good [laughs]."

Morris is particularly looking forward to gracing Sydney Opera House's stage. "It's an icon of style and stuff, and ending up playing there is - yeah! It's gonna be exciting." New Order recently played London's Royal Albert Hall and Morris recalls a previous New Order gig at this grand venue “back in the ‘80s”. "Unfortunately Gillian [Gilbert, New Order keyboardist/Morris's wife]'s got very bad memories of it, 'cause she fell down the stairs and broke 'er ankle. Yeah, the basement of the Albert Hall. I spent eight hours there." Did the medics have to bring a stretcher down? "Ambulance," he laughs. "You try gettin' an ambulance at one o'clock in the morning on a Friday night in London!"

Extended mixes of all 11 tracks from New Order's tenth album, Music Complete, the band's first album of new material in a decade, were released earlier this year as a separate set, titled Complete Music. "When we did this record that we've just done, all the songs ended up being really, really, really long and then we spent ages in the studio making them sort of quite short, like, six minutes. And then someone came up with the bright idea of, 'Why don't you do an extended version?'... We got somebody else to make 'em longer," he chuckles, "that's the ridiculous thing about it."

While pondering the content of VIVID'S onsite exhibitions, Morris reveals his kids 'borrow' his rave-era T-shirts ("They just like the colours"). So has Morris explained to his children what he would've been up to while wearing said threads? "Not in great detail, no," he admits. "I thought it would be best sort of just like, 'Yeah, it was just a night out'. Yeah, leave it at that." But surely the internet can educate them on the goings on inside The Hacienda in its hey-day? "Oh, yeah. I think they've probably got a pretty good idea," Morris concurs, "but the idea of your parents doin' it is just..." 

When asked whether he thinks there will be an array of OG smiley face T-shirts on display in Sydney Opera House's foyer, Morris asserts, "I'm sure there will be, yeah." The drummer will have to steal them back off his kids, though. "That probably wouldn't be a problem," Morris predicts. "It's just [a matter of] goin' into the room where they sleep. I'm sure they're in there somewhere."