Artwork by me: @iamkikin
In 1980, Joy Division was on the verge of embarking on their first tour in the United States when fate intervened. Ian Curtis, their vocalist who had battled numerous epileptic seizures and severe depression, tragically ended his life by hanging himself while 'The Idiot' by Iggy Pop played softly in the background. Bernard Sumner, Peter Hook, and Stephen Morris (the remaining members of the band) were left in a state of shock. Rumors circulated that Bono from U2 had offered to step in as a replacement for Ian, but the band unanimously felt that Ian was irreplaceable no one could fill his shoes.
“I think there was a fear that if we didn’t do something quickly everything would fade away. Which wasn’t true. It was an excuse - how we coped with grief. But I must admit it worked.” Peter Hook, Record Collector (Nov. 2020) Interviewer: Dave Simpson.
New Order emerged from the ashes of their former band. They chose not to continue as Joy Division, unwilling to carry the ghost of Ian and the weight it bore. Initially, everyone took on the role of vocalist. And to fill the musical void, they recruited Gillian Gilbert on keyboards and guitar. Gillian had previously performed in a show with Joy Division, filling in for Curtis on guitar when he was injured.
Part of what drove New Order was their punk-inspired aversion to the trappings of rock stardom. They avoided self-promotion, rarely granted interviews, refused to perform old band songs live, and never did encores.
“We believed that after forty minutes or so of our music people wanted something else, so we’d play for about that long and then bugger off. It never crossed our mind that not everyone thought the same way, we thought we were doing people a favour.” Bernard Sumner, Chapter and Verse… (2014) Author: Bernard Sumner
The first single released by Factory Records for New Order included unreleased tracks from Joy Division, more specifically “Ceremony” and “In a Lonely Place”. Crafting new material without Ian Curtis proved to be challenging. Their debut album, "Movement," produced by Martin Hannett, leaned more towards continuity than innovation.
After playing shows in New York in 1980 and 1981 and being influenced by the city's nightlife, especially venues like Danceteria and The Peppermint Lounge, the band realized their potential to make people dance. They invested in the Haçienda club in Manchester.
It was then that their music took a different direction, becoming more electronic and kinetic, something not far from where Joy Division might have evolved, considering Ian Curtis's fascination with early 1970s German rhythmic bands, especially Kraftwerk.
The shift began with the purchase of new equipment, such as a Boss DR-55 drum machine and a self-assembled Transcendent 2000 synthesizer. Their initial experiment in the dance world was "Everything's Gone Green."
Pushing forward with their experimentation, "Temptation" was inspired by Giorgio Moroder's work on Sparks' "Number 1 Song in Heaven." The single, released in May 1982, marked a perfect fusion of the band's past and future.
"It was really when Joy Division fans didn't like what we were doing, like with 'Everything's Gone Green' and 'Temptation' that we knew we'd hit on something." Stephen Morris, NME, (Sep 2020) Interviewer: Andrew Trendell
In October 1982, New Order relocated to London to produce their first album, "Power, Corruption & Lies," at Pink Floyd’s Britannia Row Studio. This move marked a fresh start, with the band taking on the role of producers.
However, most of their time in the studio was spent working very hard on being genuinely lazy. The initial idea behind "Blue Monday" was to provide a definitive response to their no-encore policy. To quell potential disruptions. Why not have a song that played automatically?
"Just imagine, if we connected them all together.Walk on. Press a button. Leave the gear to play a song all on its own.While we piss off back to the booze in the dressing room and chortle to ourselves. An invisible band! It'd be a laugh, and we liked nothing better than a good laugh. We'd be doing an encore and not doing one at the same time." Stephen Morris, FAST FORWARD Volume II 2020 Author: Stephen Morris
Elements of "Blue Monday" emerged from their first experiment with the Oberheim DMX drum machine, the entirely electronic instrumental track of twenty minutes called "Video 5-8-6" programmed in early 1982.
Enjoying the full force of the DMX's punch, Morris would craft the iconic rhythm of 'Blue Monday' by mimicking the sharply punctuated beats present in Giorgio Moroder's production of Donna Summer's 'Our Love'.
One of the other toys they had recently acquired was the E-mu Emulator 1. Although hardly affordable for most other synth-punks, with Factory footing the bill of several thousand pounds, New Order had access to one of the earliest commercial samplers, capable of recording up to four seconds of sound through the attached keyboard.
"Within a few minutes, we'd sampled our first fart. Had you been there, I'm sure you'd have done the same. In laddish glee, we fell about laughing hysterically. Samples of the inevitable puerile swearing phrases like Fk off" and 'You twat' soon followed. The Emulator was a winner on so many levels. It opened up a world of creative possibilities. Gillian was not too impressed." Stephen Morris, FAST FORWARD Volume II (2020) Author: Stephen Morris
The Emulator would be used to sample thunder, as well as the ghostly choir taken from Kraftwerk's "Uranium."
With a synthesized Moog bassline written with Sylvester's club classic "You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)" in mind.
“Blue Monday was influenced by Sylvester, by Kraftwerk. I remember Ian, even in the days of Joy Division used to bring Kraftwerk records to rehearsals … So the synthesiser influence came from that really, I guess it came from Ian, maybe he knew and maybe he was showing us the way.” Bernard Sumner, New Order Story (1993)
Peter Hook was determined not to be left out, as he had been on "Video 586" after recently watching Sergio Leone's Western "A Fistful of Dollars" on television. He added his own twist in the style of Ennio Morricone.
All those pieces, inspirations, and coincidences ended up forming a memorable classic. "Blue Monday" was released as a single in March 1983, two months before the album "Power, Corruption & Lies." New Order refused to shorten their track for radio play, limiting its daytime exposure. Nevertheless, their single entered the UK Singles Chart at number 37 and was gaining popularity.
Ironically, the song that was theoretically meant to be the response to not doing encores and would play automatically ended up being a challenging song to perform live.
"We'd spent a lot of time getting it perfect in the studio, but then we went to Australia and had to figure out how the fuck we were going to play it in front of paying customers. Bernard swore blind it was impossible, which kind of spurs you on a little bit. That was actually harder than recording it, figuring out how to play it live. That was where the acid wore off." Stephen Morris, Uncut Magazine (Dec 2008) Interviewer: Stephen Dalton
Evidence of this was their appearance on Top of the Pops. Given the song's popularity, the BBC wanted New Order to appear to promote it. After negotiations, they agreed to perform only if they could do it live, which was eventually accepted. The performance was chaotic and sounded bad due to the lack of studio preparation. Despite this, the band interpreted their mishap as a statement of punk chaos.
"Blue Monday" remained on the UK charts for eight months after its release, and continued to intermittently re-enter in the years that followed. Its popularity endured thanks to its success at Mediterranean island parties like Ibiza, where it became a dance floor anthem. The 12-inch vinyl with its iconic cover art continued to be purchased by young British tourists who came back home nostalgic and wanted to hear the song again, making it the best-selling 12-inch single of all time, although this claim was never officially verified by the British Phonographic Industry due to the independence of Factory Records label.
Another great story behind this iconic song is that of its cover art. Peter Saville, who in 1978 met Tony Wilson, owner of Factory Records, at a Patti Smith concert, had become the graphic designer for Factory Records' album covers, including the iconic cover of Joy Division's "Unknown Pleasures." He was tasked with creating the cover for "Blue Monday." When he visited the band at their rehearsal studio, he was fascinated by the equipment they used to create their sounds.
“I picked up this fascinating thing off the table,” Peter Saville said to MOJO Magazine in 2005 according to Radio X (2024) Martin O’Gorman
Steve Morris said It’s a floppy disk, haven’t you ever seen one?
This is how a floppy disk looked like back in those days.
“I asked him if I could have it and drove back to London listening to Blue Monday on a cassette but staring at this floppy disk. I knew there was an intrinsic link between the disk and their new direction.
“By the time I got to the end of the M1 I knew the cover of Blue Monday would be a floppy disk.”
However, the color blocks on the album covers are no coincidence. Everything was planned by Saville, they have a meaning behind them, a puzzle.
He wanted the design of Blue Monday to be linked to the cover of the accompanying album, Power, Corruption & Lies. The LP cover featured a classical painting: "A Basket of Roses" by Henri Fantin-Latour from 1890.
Saville broke down the individual colors the artist used to create the artwork; from this, he created a "color wheel" that appears on the back cover of the album.
Which turns out to mean be a wheel for deciphering a code.
So, by examining the combination of colors on each block on the front and back of the Blue Monday sleeve, I got this:
I also tried it so on the cover of “Power, Corruption and Lies”, this is what I got:
Such mischief came at a cost: different colors, along with the fancy punched holes in the single sleeve, also incurred expenses. Due to a label mix-up and the expense of the sleeve design, they lost money on each copy sold, which supposedly turned the best-selling 12-inch single of all time into quite a funny story.
"It lost 10p on every copy, because there were three different holes on it, stamped out by three different machines. It cost a mint. And what Steven Morris always loves about it is, it was not the bits you bought on “Blue Monday” that costs money, it was the bits you didn't get: the holes." Peter Hook, Uncut Magazine (Dec 2008) Interviewer: Stephen Dalton
The truth is much more boring than that. After receiving the bill for the first pressing of "Blue Monday," they realized their mistake, and subsequently, later pressings had sleeve without holes to save costs.
"Blue Monday" left a significant legacy. In the mid-80s, Quincy Jones licensed "Blue Monday" for his label, QWEST. This eventually led Jones to remix the song for a 7-inch single release. This remix became known as Blue Monday 88.
"He did a very "safe' job on the 'Blue Monday' remix.We were all very happy with it, and we took the fact that it sounded so similar to the original as a great compliment to our own production skills.Even the great Quincy Jones couldn’t improve on it” Peter Hook, Substance: Inside New Order (2016) Author: Peter Hook
Regarding its influence, its impact was practically immediate. Within months of its release in 1983, artists and bands set in motion their semi-automated dance machines inspired by "Blue Monday." It has been sampled 50 times according to whosampled.com, including 5 samples during 1983-84.
Neil Tennant of Pet Shop Boys once said in the New Order documentary "New Order Story 1993.”
"Chris wrote this song once called 'I'm keeping my fingers crossed' and the bass line went... imitates Blue Monday's bass line ...and then about a week later, this fabulously packaged New Order record came in and I put it on, there's... imitates Blue Monday's bass line ...and I nearly burst into tears because this was so much what Chris and I were trying to do."
It has also been covered 63 times according to WhoSampled. One particularly unique and interesting cover is by the Orkestra Obsolete, which uses instruments from the 1930s to play it.
"Essentially, it was a machine to facilitate dancing. As a song, I wouldn't say it's my favourite New Order track, but as a prompt to make you dance it's unsurpassed. Even today, more than three decades later, when 'Blue Monday' comes on in a club, people get straight up and on the floor.It still cuts it." Bernard Sumner, Chapter and Verse (2014) Author: Bernard Sumner
My Personal Thoughts & Other New Order Song’s I’d recommend
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