19/11/2024
OUT NOW!
Four days to FHtH2024 - and a pre order link is in the comments...
Four years into their existence and New Order were nearing the end of their first ‘proper’ UK tour. To date they hadn’t strung more than three dates together on home soil but Portsmouth (Aug ’84) was the seventh of eight dates and as such, the tour that finally beat me. Margate and Chippenham Goldiggers sounded like they could have been a hoot but I’d only made it to Hull and Gloucester and it was all too much. To be fair, ever since mid ’81, with the cost factor kicking in the band had regularly larger tours abroad (Europe, US and Australia) but in the UK this was a noticeable push and very Factory-like… as there was no album or single to promote. :)
The day before Portsmouth had probably felt more strenuous than a normal gig for the band, as they had crawled along massive traffic jams traveling up to London from Cornwall to perform for half an hour live mid afternoon on the BBC 2 music marathon, Rock Around The Clock. Being a Saturday, after a lunchtime pub session I’d hauled a bunch of friends back to my house to watch it and as the band had arrived to the Beeb very late they’d played out a frustrating, technically hampered session, heard in full stereo clarity via a link up with Radio 2. I then went on a bender for the rest of the day, not ideal preparation to head to Portsmouth Guildhall the next lunchtime. After the TV misfire Barney might have felt like going on a bender, too but the next day he’d be heading to Portsmouth Guildhall, too…. which was handy.
Five of us drove down to find our guest list tickets were seats up in the balcony, which after that new experience at the Royal Festival Hall I remember being fine with. It was punchy loud, I remember that. Thumping clearly through the speakers and again like the RFH night, it seemed perfect for anyone up a floor. The crowd were loud too. I bet those chanting ‘Here we go’ following opener Confusion would have been jumping big time when Face Up arrived two tracks later, as the line ‘Oh, how I cannot bear the thought of you’ seemed to take on a life of its own with the audience. From Heaven in 1981 to well… the gig to come, any wind of change has maybe blown stronger through them than through the band.
Buried somewhere I have the very large tour poster. Unusually, especially for the era, I got it signed by a couple of our heroes in Portsmouth… in weedy biro. Rookie mistake.
