My point of entry to New Order was with the “Movement” album, which got a lot of airplay on WPRK-FM, which I was listening to heavily in 1981! It sounded pretty good, but I don’t think I went all in on New Order at the time, as I’d been late to the party on Joy Division; I only ever heard them after Ian Curtis had committed suicide and that colored my experience of the music to the point where I couldn’t listen to them at the time without feeling like a ghoul. Since I had never heard “Unknown Pleasures” when it came out, I’d seen Joy Division come out of nowhere, at least according to my perception, and become a cause célèbre on the back of what I thought was a tragedy. So I never bit on Joy Division and was distanced from New Order. Had I heard “Unknown Pleasures” from the first, it might have been different for me, I’m sure.

That said, I liked what I’d heard of “Movement.” I can’t quite remember the occasion where I first heard “Blue Monday,” but once I saw that 12″ single I quickly overcame my reticence and at that point bought every New Order release. Scooping up copies of “Power, Corruption + Lies” and “Movement” as well as the non-LP single they released between the two albums. The latter of which is our focus today.

New Order: Temptation – UK – 12″ [1982]

1. Temptation [12″] 8:50
2. Hurt [12″] 8:05

It almost sounded like a folk song with expression vocals by Bernard Sumner over a bed of jangly guitars and an unremitting drum machine beat, shot through with what sounded like Simmons drums used for emphatic fills. At nearly a minute there is a cry of jubilation, down in the mix, as though the band were calling out to each other while recording and they just left it in because it felt right.

Then a higher, more joyous octave was explored. At first tentatively, but then the band embraced it fully as the drop brought the sprightly sequencer to the fore for half a bar before Sumner entered the song; his voice double tracked on the heartbreaking refrain or “oh you’ve got green eyes, oh you’ve got blue eyes, oh you’ve got gray eyes.” The key to the song is that it balanced on the knife edge of depression and despair at one moment, and in the throes of euphoria at the next. As the chorus proved conclusively.

The contrast between the thin, trebly guitars played high up the neck and the typically melodic bass from Peter Hook dominating, maintained and paralleled the dynamic of contrast that made the song so beguiling and successful on multiple levels.When the various melodic threads of the song crossed over in multi-part harmony at the song’s climax and then followed by the drop where ticking synthetic hi-hat and the Simmons drums were the main accompaniment to Sumner’s wordless performance until the coda’s soft explosion into oblivion.

The B-side, “Hurt,” was quite a different kettle of fish. It trafficked in similar production gambits with sequencer featured heavily, but the foreboding tone of the song was in contrast to the incredibly upbeat A-side. After a vocoded 4-count, the drums sounded like sheet metal being struck as the sequencer percolated a busy melody. The string patches were expected; the melodica was not! And under all of this Steven Morris was programming Krautrock motorik rhythms with accent beats on the Simmons kit. The middle eight break had dub space for Sumner’s vocals as the bass dropped out for a few bars. The drop at 6:19 seemed to prefigure the drumming that made “Blue Monday” so compulsive on the next single. It all sounds precarious and bolted together; owing to New Order producing themselves for the first time and this resulting single being something of a shakedown cruise for the band. The length of the track really tightened its bonds to Krautrock. Even as it only had enough ideas for maybe four minutes, it needed the repetitive power it accrued at twice that length.

The A-side remains my favorite New Order song; making what happened to my copy of the 12″ rather tragic in retrospect. In 1987, I was excited to see that New Order would be releasing a double CD called “Substance” with the band’s 12″ A and B-sides across the two discs. This was the best thing that could happen to New Order fans with CD players in the mid-80s! So, knowing that it would soon be out, I foolishly traded in my New Order 12″ collection for trade-in value to buy CDs with as was my policy back then when I re-purchased music I had on records and also on the silver disc as well. I had not yet become a “collector” so it was not until years later in the 90s that I usually regretted this decision.

But not with New Order! That happened almost immediately in this case. It wasn’t until the album had been released that we discovered that “Temptation” had been re-recorded by the band in a shorter, cleaner, slicker, more guarded version that managed to sadly wall off most of the rough euphoria of the original version. All of those superb Peter Saville covers…gone with the wind. [Except for “Blue Monday,” at least!] It was in the late 90s that I finally started buying the other 12″ singles that had mixes left off of “Substance” for a New Order rarity project that happened in 2003, that I once more had some New Order 12″ singles in the Record Cell! But most of the classics are still missing. In the 21st century I’ve seen these records zoom up to a healthy two figures in most cases…certainly beyond my meager music buying budget these days! As most of them are on “Substance,” I have to make do without that gorgeous Factory wax.

The annoying thing was that the “Touched By The Hand Of God” CD-5 from 1987 claimed to contain the original “Temptation” 12″ mix but in fact had the 1987 version instead! As far as I can see, the only place to get the original “Temptation” on a CD is the Canadian “1981-1982” EP that I never had but has made it to the silver disc, albeit at a high price. I can only surmise that the band were embarrassed by their early production chops. It does sound a bit ramshackle, but that only adds to the charm and vulnerability of a great song like “Temptation!” Thought the phrase was coined for the likes of Culture Club, the 1987 version of “Temptation” really did seem “Like Punk Never Happened.” And the fact that it is the easily obtainable version on CD for 36 years is a small tragedy.

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