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| From | "Stewart Mason" <craigtorso@verizon.net> |
| Subject | Re: Control |
| Date | Thu, 01 Nov 2007 00:09:10 -0400 |
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----- Original Message -----
From: <jim@groovedisques.com>
> Stewart wrote:
>> I guess I'm just puzzled about this whole theory that they
>> couldn't play, because Stephen Morris was one of the few
>> great drummers of his time and place...
>
> Stewart, did you ever see Morris play live? I saw him once with New
> Order, around 1985. Let me say first that I like the drum parts in
> both Joy Division songs and a good deal of New Order songs. I've
> seen video of Stephen Morris playing drums, so it's not like he's
> incapable of playing, but when I saw him with New Order, he DIDN'T
> really play, and there was no sign that he could play. Granted, this
> was one show I witnessed. There was a sequencer or whatever playing
> all the drum parts. He would occasionally "keep time" on the hi-hat
> and double the pre-recorded snare. However, there were long
> stretches in which he didn't even sit behind his drums. Frequently
> he had to get up from his kit, stand behind the woman playing Miss
> Huntenpeck synth parts, and literally place her index fingers on the
> 3 notes she needed to play for each song. So I was left wondering
> what this guy actually played on record and what was constructed for
> his parts through overdubs and Martin Hannett wizard!
Yes, but that was in 1985, when New Order were at the height of their
fascination with sequencers. (They've said repeatedly that their
inspiration for writing "Blue Monday" was that they wanted to write a
song where they could press a couple of buttons and then leave the
stage and the entire song would play without them: the recurring bass
riff and Sumner's vocals are the only "live" elements of the song.)
While naturally I did not ever see Joy Division live myself -- besides
their never making a US tour, there was the small fact that I was 10
when Ian killed himself -- I have seen video of live JD performances
and heard several of the live performances like those that accompany
the new Rhino reissues and those on STILL. We didn't see CONTROL in
Toronto, but we did see a band-authorized biography called simply JOY
DIVISION that included huge amounts of live footage, in which Morris
is definitely playing, and playing well. In fact, the most impressive
part of the entire movie is two early live TV performances. (Tony
Wilson, remember, had his own show on Granada TV at the same time
Factory was active, and he was shameless about the cross-promotion.)
Both performances are of the same song, "Transmission," but it cuts
from the first, in early 1978, to the second, about four months later,
halfway through, and the difference is astonishing: in the intervening
months, all of the band had improved greatly, but Stephen in
particular is just attacking his kit.
My understanding is that although they started playing around with
drum machines as accents almost from the beginning in the studio, the
basic drum tracks on all the Joy Division records were all Stephen,
and they didn't start using drum machines on stage until around the
time of "Blue Monday."
S
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