A Ballad with New Order

"Procession moves on, the shouting is over,
Praise to the glory of loved ones now gone."
Joy Division "The Eternal"

Joy Division: three punks around a poet. A meeting with Tony Wilson and Peter Saville’s Factory Records that would turn them into contemporary art icons. The electronic arrangements imposed by a sound engineer against the band’s own will and tastes would, however, seal their success. The singer's frequent epileptic fits that created a sort of mysterious aura around the band, followed by his suicide a few days prior to their first US tour. A band that would then decide to resurrect themselves, in time.

New Order: three punks who reinvented themselves as singers. The guitarist chosen from a close relation, and the role of keys fulfilled by the drummer’s girlfriend. The return of electronics stamped firmly on “Blue Monday”, one of their greatest dance hits. A band that would be witnessed at New York’s Paradise Garage and with Arthur Baker at the Fun House, at the beginning of the ’80s. Then with an ecstasy-booming Ibiza, coinciding with the accidental death of Velvet’s Nico. Then as the bosses of The Haçienda, the Manchester-based club that introduced acid house to England and Laurent Garnier to techno. A band that composed the English football team’s anthem and shot the music video alongside the players. A ruined band, and yet one that sold out stadiums. A band whose bassist unceremoniously cleared off, before going back on stage with a new band to play “his” old songs. The same bassist who decided to auction his own memorabilia, while each member of the group published their own autobiographies...

New Order, the band that turned attitude and aesthetics into an art of attraction.

The band that has never done anything quite like the others.

The band that you always find in unexpected contexts...

Welcome to New Order’s home, by the fireplace, the guitar in one hand to find the right three chords, the pen in the other to write the lyrics that just flow through the mind. Starry-eyed girl lyrics, love songs, timeless ballads to be sung with friends at night.

And this was New Order’s revenge on Joy Division. The band members’ answer to a gone-too-soon Ian Curtis. A way to tell him that they could still make it.

Him, the charismatic leader, the poet who made them discover Bowie and wrote lyrics that would take twenty years for them to understand. He had to know surely, that these intoxicated punks would get there at any cost. This is why they have never been so sincere as in the melancholy of ballads, when slowness gave them time to strip down.

Joy Division is not dead, long live New Order!