New Order > Low-life [Collector's Edition] > Fact 100 Low-life < Peter Saville

Release date

29 September 2008

Tracklisting

Low-life:

01 Love Vigilantes
02 The Perfect Kiss
03 This Time of Night
04 Sunrise
05 Elegia
06 Sooner Than You Think
07 Sub-Culture
08 Face Up

Low-Life bonus disc:

01 The Perfect Kiss (12" Version)
02 Sub-Culture (12" Version)
03 Shellshock (John Robie Remix) (12" Version)
04 Shame of the Nation
05 Elegia
06 Let's Go
07 Salvation Theme
08 Dub Vulture

CD description [via Amazon.co.uk]

With Low-life, New Order truly hit their stride with their highly individual combination of infectious rhythms, inventive composition and performances full of conviction. The vulnerable lyrics and earnest delivery of Bernard Sumner are in top form; his voice is at last a completely developed instrument, clear and comfortable as it wraps itself around such memorable tracks as the opening Love Vigilantes, a solid, purely guitar-driven narrative. Following immediately and in sharp contrast is Low-life's biggest success, The Perfect Kiss, a sequencer-fueled dance classic which boasts what is undoubtedly pop music's only frog sample solo. Sunrise has an epic feel, filled with driving leads and Sumner's signature scratchy, frenetic rhythm playing. The album takes a serene turn on Elegia, a beautiful, airy composition of echoey guitar lines and swirling synth textures.

Liner notes

In 1986, New Order's Shellshock appeared on the soundtrack of John Hughes' teen romance flick Pretty In Pink. "Barney and Hooky thought it was a girl's film, but I think it did a lot of good in America," says Gillian Gilbert. "And I liked it because that song's when the band started using my riffs more. When you start off being an apprentice, hearing those bars on Shellshock made me feel I was where I wanted to be at last. We went to the premiere at Mann's Chinese Theatre in Hollywood and of course, no-one knew who we were at all. We sauntered up the red carpet and no one even looked up. That was what was weird. That's what was a bit New Order-y about it."

New Order-y? Care to elaborate, Gillian?

"The opposite of normal," she laughs. "A bit weird, but listenable. Just different."

Different, it was. In early 1985, New Order had left Rough Trade's US operation to sign with Qwest, the label being run by American production and soundtrack nabob Quincy Jones. Significantly, their debut album for their new home - labelmates included Frank Sinatra, George Benson and family gospel singers The Winans - would be the first to feature a band member's picture. Low-Life would also include massive tunes to equal the crowd-pleasers of 1983's Power, Corruption & Lies, and for the first time, singles. Jonathan Demme even directed a video for The Perfect Kiss in the band's Cheetham Hill rehearsal room.

"Low-Life was the going-to-be-big-in-America record," says Stephen Morris. "This was when we really got introduced to the music biz. Later, too much touring was done, but you could see the point of it, because you were going down really well in America, the records were doing well - we'd compromised and done a seven-inch version of The Perfect Kiss! And we were having a fucking great time. So we were prepared to give a little bit."

As would be expected of New Order, it was only to be a partial coming-out. Peter Saville's sleeve came wrapped in a layer of squint-your-eyes-and-keep-your-distance translucent tracing paper, and the cover star was not logical choice Bernard Sumner, but Stephen himself. The image, taken on a Polaroid slide, captured him looking somewhat perplexed. This was a feeling soon to translate to certain onlookers, not least the Japanese fans that followed Stephen around Tokyo believing him to be New Order's vocalist. "There's been Stalinist revision since," deadpans Stephen, "Go on Amazon and Bernard's on the cover. If I see them in record shops I always change them back"

For the listener too, Low-Life was an equivocal experience. The "weird band who played commercial music" had made one of their most stimulating and dramatic albums, full of fabulous highs and mordant depths. The Perfect Kiss may, as rumour insists, have been a vignette about AIDS, but it sounded desperate to live. There are also hints at psychological fracture (Sub-Culture) and the destructive consequences of tour weariness (Sooner Than You Think). But all comes wrapped in a musical package of such ravishing appeal that Low-Life cannot help but sound upbeat.

The first song recorded for the album was the beatless, future-Ennio Morricone instrumental Elegia, originally intended to be a freebie with style monthly I-D magazine. Recorded at soundtrack studio CTS in Wembley straight after an aftershow party at London's electro sinkhole Heaven, its lengthy, simple sequencer riff amounted to an anti-matter Blue Monday (it's full seventeen and a half minute glory, previously only available on a bonus CD with limited quantities of the Retro box set, can be enjoyed on this edition of Low-Life's bonus disc). Stephen remembers an all-night session to record it, and an unexpected creative opportunity offered by the engineer's two sons, which may serve to illuminate the band's unconstrained methods of working.

"The next morning his two lads turn up on the way to school to get their dinner money," he recalls, "and Bernard's idea was, 'get them in the room, talking!' So we said, go in and just talk, and they say 'what shall we say?' Say your names. So they did 'My name's Justin', 'My name's Ben', 'My name's Justin', 'My name's Ben'... Elegia was actually called that originally. They were on it for a bit, but not for long they're actually still there if you listen to the long version."

Work on the album continued at Jam studios in Finsbury Park, New Order's studio of choice Britannia Row having been rendered unsuitable by a re-fit. Gillian remembers a relaxed all-night approach to recording that was conducive to creativity; "We used to start off during the day," she recalls. "You'd have your tea and then before you knew it the cleaners were there at five in the morning." Taking four weeks to record and two weeks to mix, Hooky commented at the time, "Power, Corruption & Lies was recorded in a digital studio but we found the sound was too clean. Low-Life was recorded with antiquated equipment because we wanted the dirtiness back, particularly on the lower, bassier levels."

Opening track Love Vigilantes is notable for being one of the few straightforward narrative songs in the New Order canon. Written in one day and featuring a melodica line inspired by the 1970's one hit wonder Walkin' With Mr Bloe, debate has raged since over whether its protagonist is alive or not. "I sometimes used to go on the minibus with the road crew," recalls Bernard, "and one of the roadies, an Irish lad, had this country music tape, with all these corny country songs on it with funny lyrics. I just thought, I have to write a song like that. It was supposed to be dead serious, actually, a redneck song. Was he dead? I'm not saying, you can interpret it in your own way. That's the question it leaves you with. Is he a ghost?"

The rest of the group don't know either. " The interesting thing about New Order is that we never talked about music," recalls Hooky. "We used to just do it, we'd never talk about it to each other. Quite odd really, maybe it was telepathy! On Low-Life, I remember being really happy when we were doing Sunrise. I though, 'fuck, why can't we write all the songs like Sunrise?'"

Sunrise is the fierce rocker of the album, with a gold standard Hook bassline and lyrics that seemingly curse God for his failure to speak to his creations. Contrastingly, the highly energetic closer Face Up depicts rage followed by a kind of resigned compassion.

"If you're in a relationship where everything's really nice and truly loving, you can get tickley feet," muses Bernard. "And after a bit for no reason at all, anger wells up inside you and you have the biggest fucking argument ever. And afterwards you think, how did that happen? Why were we arguing? I've got this belief in life that we exist in a state of dualism. I don't think we can exist in just one state. We need that anger to realise what it is to feel love."

There were, you suspect, opportunities to put this hypothesis into practice when Low-Life was released on May 25 1985. The extent of the pressure on our heroes can be gauged from their workload around that time. After finishing mixing at Britannia Row, they had to drive back to Manchester and then go on tour to Hong Kong, Australia and New Zealand the following day.

"We were doing three versions of The Perfect Kiss," remembers Hooky. "'Rob had said, 'Go and fuckin' finish it! We're going to Australia and it has to be finished before you go' but for some strange, insane reason he thought he'd got a load of champagne in. Me and Mike (Johnson, engineer) stayed up for 49 1/2 hours. Then the next morning when we'd okay'd it all, I had to get in the car and drive 'em all back to Manchester, and then we were on tour for six weeks. Hell. A good job we were young."

Bernard recalls a colourful interlude during the tour when they spent five days in pre-Olympic openness China after a concert at Hong Kong's Canton Club. The party drove into the interior with government translators and went to a restaurant where the menu was kept in bamboo cages and the toilet was a hole in the ground in the kitchen. As a result, they all got a strange Asian flu so virulent that Slim the roadie's fillings fell out. Of course, their next engagement was a show in Tokyo that was due to be filmed. It would be commercially released by Factory's video division Ikon in August 1986.

"We should have been hospitalised," says Bernard. "You felt like you'd been punched in the face by Mike Tyson. At the concert there was oxygen backstage, injections and stuff and that was why it was called Pumped Full Of Drugs."

Fortunately, things were looking more promising in the western hemisphere; in America, The Perfect Kiss had broken the Hot 100. Rob Gretton would tell an anecdote of the period about how he'd met Michael Jackson, and the then-megastar had known who he was. Compared to the concert halls they were used to in Britain, they were also playing bigger and better venues. "Loads of kids used to come in America," remembers Gillian. "You were playing in the daylight to crowds of girls and boys. You'd look out and think blooming heck. You could walk around and mingle as well."

Yet even here, contrary New Order weren't entirely happy. Stephen wincingly recalls a world of meet and greets, handshaking and having to listen to Low-Life in a big room full of US record industry movers and shakers, with a giant poster of the sleeve bearing his face on the wall (there was humour too; he recalls Rob asking the man who produced Michael Jackson's Thriller, "'Eh Quincy, have you got any dope?! Got any grass?' He didn't.") Gillian agrees the bargain may have been more Faustian than it first appeared. "On Factory you didn't get anybody, you just got Tony coming in saying 'oh yes, lovely! Sounds wonderful!' We picked the singles, Peter Saville did the sleeve but this was like entering another world."

There was evidence that the band's public perception was shifting as well. Though the group were masters of the civil but unrevealing press interview, one of their more eventful magazine pieces appeared in Smash Hits around this time. It featured a photograph of a gaggle of fans clutching the shorts that Bernard was wearing on another picture on the same page. More seriously, Rob Gretton, New Order's manager and fifth member, was soon to suffer a breakdown.

"The thing is with the 'crack America' thing you have to go and do an awful lot of gigs," says Stephen. "And that wasn't a great experience. I'm sure it weaned Bernard off gigs forever. Hooky liked them. I didn't mind. But it was just too much. And there was too much partying."

Though the decision to include The Perfect kiss and Sub-culture on Low-Life may have contributed to both singles failing to enter the UK top 40, in March 1986 the band were back in the British singles chart with Shellshock. The song was co-written and produced by Arthur Baker's associate John Robie, who Hooky says introduced Bernard to the concept of singing in key. "He said to him, 'this song is in the wrong key for you, you should change it so it keys in with your voice'. Before he was straining, I thought he had a lot of passion in his voice because it sounded like he was sort of desperate. I thought we lost our angst after that."

Listeners to Brotherhood, Low-Life's follow-up, would probably beg to differ, preferring to fall back on Gillian's definition of 'New Order-y'. It was still the opposite of normal, still weird, and still listenable. And even for New Order, different.

Ian Harrison

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Tracklisting as per Rhino publicity