It is not their signature track – that would be Blue Monday – or their biggest UK chart success – that would be World In Motion, made with the England football squad in 1990. But there can be little doubt that the song that made New Order into the electronic music pioneers they are regarded as today is Everything’s Gone Green.
Released in October 1981 as part of a double A-side with Procession that was beloved of the true believers but reached only No.38 in the main UK chart, the story behind its creation is a mix of inspiration, happy accident and determination that decisively changed the course of the band’s history.
Just over a year after the death of Ian Curtis which spelled the end of Joy Division, New Order were at a pivotal juncture. Remaining members Bernard Sumner, Peter Hook and Stephen Morris were determined to carry on – indeed, they were rehearsing as a three-piece within days of Curtis’ suicide. They added Morris’ partner Gillian Gilbert to the lineup but understandably were slow to shake off the shadows of their past. First single Ceremony/In A Lonely Place featured left-over compositions with Curtis, and his spirit was all over the subsequent Movement album – both in tone, vocal style and in titles like The Him and ICB (an acronym for “Ian Curtis Buried”).
New Order might have continued in this vein – Procession brings in the band’s trademark synth-wash and a lighter feel, including backing vocals by Gilbert, while retaining the portentous tone associated with Joy Division. Its title alone would have fitted among those on Unknown Pleasures or Closer. “We were moving away from the dark overtones of Joy Division, but we wanted to keep some of the darkness,” said Sumner.
But Everything’s Gone Green marked the birth of a new sound that would redefine their trajectory, courtesy of a sequenced rhythm pattern that arrived almost by accident. In his book Fast Forward, Morris recalled how the band linked up their Dr Rhythm drum machine with Gilbert’s ARP Quadra synth. He wrote: “Just as an experiment – I love a good experiment – we’d plugged a lead from its enigmatically labelled CSQ socket to a gate input on the Quadra, pressed play and the chattering synth and drum-machine rhythm pattern that would evolve into Everything’s Gone Green was born. The mechanical rhythm sounded fantastic. It was Kraftwerk on a tight budget.”
But the new sound was not to everyone’s liking, and that meant another significant break with the past – the departure of producer Martin Hannett, whose effects trickery had done much to define the Joy Division sound.
In his autobiography Chapter and Verse, Sumner wrote: “When we put ‘Everything’s Gone Green’ together, we thought it was great – these big, powerful drums under this pounding jigga jigga jigga sound from the synthesizer. It sounded like the future and, best of all, it sounded aggressive, like someone kicking you in the face.
“When it came to the mix, however, Martin started making it all wispy and ethereal sounding again. I’d whisper to Hooky, ‘The drum machine needs to go up, you tell him,’ and Hooky would. Martin’d tut, give him a dirty look and do nothing, so after about ten minutes I’d try it, and we’d bat it between us, harassing him into keeping the sound aggressive.
“In the end he got sick of this, stood up, said, ‘Right, you do it, then,’ and went to bed. So in the end we mixed it ourselves… and at the same time realized we’d finally had enough of this wrestling with Martin.”
In his book Substance, Hook recalls that the foursome then headed for dates in New York “feeling like a new band”.
He said later, “I think we were getting quite brave and not caring about what we’d done before. And we had a great time making Everything’s Gone Green.”
A second version of the track, adding a longer coda that makes it even more insistent, would soon arrive via Factory Records offshoot Factory Benelux. Hook has reflected: “I think the first thing that grabbed people was the fact that it had a beat that they could dance to. It was very important to us to be able to make music that we could dance to.”
New Order would continue to do that and they – and British independent music – would never be the same. Its fusion of post-punk and electronic elements ignited a spark that left an indelible mark.