Stephen Morris refused to rule out a New Order reunion when question by fans at an NME talk in London last night (December 8).
The drummer was speaking at the Rough Trade East store along with the band’s sleeve designer Peter Saville and writer Jon Savage to mark the recent release of new Joy Division box set ‘+-‘.
When asked by a fan whether he and Bernard Sumner would ever put aside their differences with bassist Peter Hook, he said: “New Order could play a gig together again.” He wouldn’t be drawn further on the issue despite Saville urging him that it would “bring a lot of joy to a lot of people”.
Elsewhere during the conversation, chaired by NME‘s Paul Stokes, the trio discussed Joy Division‘s impact on the late ’70s Manchester scene, Factory Records and the remastering of the band’s songs by Morris for the new release.
The drummer explained that the band had been initially spurred on because they felt “no-one in Manchester liked us, we had a massive chip on our shoulder and that made us want to be really good”.
Saville praised his late Factory co-founders, Joy Division/New Order manager Rob Gretton and Tony Wilson. He said the latter attracted and held talents “in his orbit”, although the trio did joke about his bad taste in shoes, claiming that he got them “from Granada TV wardrobe and they were made of cardboard”.
Speaking about his work on the songs for ‘+-‘, Morris explained that he had relived the band’s sessions because “genius” producer Martin Hannett had “recorded everything, but he wasn’t very good at labelling”.
Towards the end of the chat Morris joked that “Annie Lennox ate my sandwiches” when Joy Division played the London Lyceum in 1980, while she was in the band . The drummer declared with mock indignation that “she had the whole plate!”
