8. New Order - Everything's Gone Green (Factory)

 

Number one for three weeks from 10^th October 1981

Note – this was technically a double A-side with “Procession”, but the NME chart only listed “Everything’s Gone Green”, so that’s what we’ll be focussing on.

So, there was this thing called punk rock, and that was very important… and also this band from Manchester who emerged from punk rock, but were financed by a newsreader, and overcame tragedy when… and you probably know this already… but... oh fuck it.

It’s unprofessional of me not to begin this entry with the backstory of New Order. The problem is it would feel either cliche-ridden or strange to bother. Who is reading this right now who doesn’t know their story, or about Ian Curtis’s suicide, or the legend of Factory records? Even the most poorly programmed AI bot in the world could spew that stuff back at you to perfection.

If I had something new to add to the thousands of pieces of work out there (not least a whole motion picture) I could try, but by this point my angle remains as typical and as factual as any Wikipedia entry. So you’ll hopefully forgive me for not starting right at the beginning, for not mentioning Warsaw, The Sex Pistols, Tony Wilson doing regional news on the television, or any of that hoopla. There are ways out of this jammy fix, admittedly; if I wanted this entry to be both original and clickbait friendly I could claim that it was all over-puffed and silly and everyone involved should be regarded as a footnote in any story about British independent music, especially while Toyah Willcox had records out at the same time and was higher up in the actual proper grown-up charts, but I’m not here to play those games.

Except… what can get overlooked in the aftermath of Joy Division is how confused New Order initially seemed. Their debut single “Ceremony” was a recording of an unreleased Joy Division song issued after Curtis’s death, and sounds exactly as you would expect – a continuation of the story rather than any kind of new project. If other groups had been faced with a similar situation, it could also have acted as a full stop, a short tribute before everyone agreed that nothing would ever be the same again and all went their separate ways. That would have provided a way out which would have denied New Order years of trauma at live shows as punters cried out for Joy Division songs which were too painful for the band to perform.

It was not to be, though. “Everything’s Gone Green” – named after a flippant, stoned remark in a recording studio – followed and sounds like the first true New Order single, the one where they’ve found a voice which isn’t purely an imitation of Ian Curtis’s, and yet it’s a strange, uncomfortable hybrid, at moments sounding like a rough 1977 Giorgio Moroder demo of a remix of an unfinished Joy Division song.

In the jokey IPC comics I was bought as a child, the future of all factories and technology was usually portrayed in slightly overblown and monstrous ways, often featuring giant metallic robotic crab shaped machines who tinned food, built cars or even operated on people. The people in these comic strips would generally be cowed by the shiny beast, quivering in corners, stammering or insisting that it was out of control and everyone concerned should step away from it. In “Everything’s Gone Green”, New Order are those visitors to an evil genius’s factory, backed into a corner, surrendering nervously to the electronics but not surfing their waves entirely successfully. The pulsing nature of this single seems like an unnatural fit at certain moments; they sound swamped in places, and in others just a fraction of a beat behind the mechanical precision. The ending is the most revealing aspect; the machines get the last word via some polite digital burbling, not the group.

It’s a fascinating transitional record, one where traces of both the Joy Division old and the new order can be heard simultaneously, but one I almost never play nor feel relieved to return to. Not that everyone necessarily agrees with me; it regularly scores highly on critics lists of classic New Order songs, and it managed two brief and modest weeks inside the official Top 40, peaking at number 38 (Toyah, if you must know, reached number 4). At the time, it may have sounded like sacrilege to some listeners who wanted the group to forever be in thrall to Ian Curtis’s ideas (in much the same way that there’s a cadre of Pink Floyd fans who would rather the group had gone on sounding slightly like Syd Barrett) but it seemed to be exciting to others, a sign that there was life beyond the old.

Back then it would probably have been easy to get into a froth about “Everything’s Gone Green”, to imagine the group’s world beyond its unsteady foundations, but in retrospect it feels like an odd version of New Order, a strange AI re-imagination of a synthesised Joy Division where all the members have six fingers and faces with glazed opal eyes that droop slightly on their right hand sides. It’s intriguing, like a foreign train being unexpectedly held at a tiny unheard of new town halfway towards your final exotic destination, but not a patch on the places you’ll eventually journey to.

Trivia

The confusion about whether or not this was a double A-side - and if not, what the A-side was - seems to have followed through not just to the NME but also Factory Records, who included "Procession" on the B-sides disc of the "Substance" compilation and clearly designated it as such. To make matters more eggy, the French issue of the single also has "Everything's Gone Green" marked as an A-side.

Away from the Number One spot

Toyah occupies the number two spot for one week with “Thunder In The Mountains”. Toyah’s presence in the indie charts has become somewhat overlooked over the years. To most people she’s probably regarded as a regular Smash Hits cover star with an image which felt like a glossy family-friendly approximation of punk, but Safari Records were a “proper” indie label upon which she had most of her hits. Her success can be seen as a clear signal that independent labels now had a significant clout, but look closely enough and it’s clear that there’s low budget sleight of hand going on too; for instance, she’s being pulled by a pony in the “Thunder In The Mountains” video because nobody could afford a proper horse and carriage. 

The import of Laurie Anderson’s “Oh Superman” also begins to make some serious headway up to number 8 only to plummet again as soon as it received a proper gold-plated release treatment from Warner Brothers. Clearly not everybody was content to risk a pony ride into the mainstream.

Hazel O’Connor also hangs around mid-table with a largely forgotten and inexplicable Casio VL-tone backed cover of The Stranglers “Hanging Around”. As that band’s career was in the doldrums at this point and nobody was yet nostalgic for prime punk hits, only she could possibly give us the reasons for re-recording it, but they surely weren’t commercial. As it stood, the single stalled at number 45 in the national charts.

Nico also emerges with “Saēta / Vegas” on Flicknife Records, while Annie Anxiety climbs to number 9 with “Barbed Wire Halo”, but both their achievements pale into insignificance against the mighty Fureys, who enter the charts at number 24 and ultimately peak outside the top ten at number 12 with “When You Were Sweet Sixteen” on the Ritz label. While I doubt many copies of this were sold in branches of Rough Trade or Volume, hence its low indie chart placement, proper Top 40 success was theirs for the taking.

This means they share the chart with our old friends Discharge, higher up at number 5 with “Never Again”. Their sound on this is machine-gun metallic, appearing like the prototype for everything thrash and hardcore that eventually emerged later in the decade.

The official charts for these weeks can be found on the UKMix forums. 

Number One In The Official Charts

Adam & The Ants - "Prince Charming" (CBS)
Dave Stewart and Barbara Gaskin - "It's My Party" (Stiff/ Broken)