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.
Knowing very little about a band only adds to the allure.
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.
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 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.
The worst words I could ever hear as a bass player was, 'Can you play the root notes?'
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.
To me, New Order split up when Bernard and I stopped writing together. We started Joy Division together; we started New Order together.
Actually when we stopped New Order I was busier than ever. The only gaps have been while we've been writing.
I'm one of those old cynics that thinks, whoever you vote for, the government always gets in.
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.
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 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.
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!
'Movement' sounded like Joy Division, but 'Power, Corruption & Lies' is the first New Order record.
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.
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 reason Joy Division and New Order are as influential and successful as they are is because of the unique playing of all the individuals.
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.
Most people have just heard Joy Division on record. And Joy Division on record was completely different than it was live.
