You've Got Style You've Got Class But Most Of All You've Got Love Technique

A New Order postscript- I meant to post this during last week's extravaganza and forgot so it's here as an extra. When Run 2 was released a buffed up version of Run (from Technique) was put out as a single in August 1989. The b-side was this, MTO (Made To Order apparently). The 12" was limited to 20, 000 copies ('19, 000 in the Greater Manchester area and 1000 for everyone else' was someone's comment at the time but I don't know if there is any truth in this). Peter Saville designed a very fetching sleeve inspired by washing powder packaging.

The band's engineer throughout much of the 80s was Michael Johnson and according to Hooky he put together this track/medley from bits lying around in the studio, largely constructed around Bernard's 'you've got love technique' vocal from Fine Time but also parts of what sounds like Vanishing Point's drum track. MTO was then remixed by Mike 'Hitman' Wilson. The 7" version is the best- a kick drum, some acid squiggles, a rubbery synth bassline and that vocal line. The longer Minus Mix uses some different vocal parts but loses the nice acidic squiggles for some more clattering drums. Neither is going to be on your Best Of playlist or cd but for some reason I'm quite fond of MTO.

MTO

MTO (Minus Mix)

New Order 'Run 2' Extended Version

Technique is perhaps the best New Order album, nine tracks of sunshine pop with the perfect mix of rock and dance. The lp was supposedly/supposed to be recorded in Ibiza, but by the band's own admission they got distracted and didn't get too much done. Stephen Morris claimed all they came home with was 'some drum tracks and a guitar solo' so they decamped after the summer in Ibiza to finish/start the album at Peter Gabriel's expensive Real World studio. And people wonder why Factory went bust.

Run was the third single off Technique, and is peak period New Order. It was remixed by Scott Litt, who chopped out an instrumental part and replaced it with a another chorus. It was then released as Run 2, in a very nice Peter Saville Bold washing powder inspired sleeve, and limited to 20,000 copies. It's relatively rare and if you see it for under a fiver you should probably buy it. The version here is the 5 minutes 22 seconds extended version, which sounds a bit like it was extended for the sake of it, but is interesting enough to the New Order collectors amongst us.

Incidentally this was the song that led John Denver to sue New Order, claiming that it was too similar to his Leaving On A Jet Plane. They settled out of court and Denver has had a co-writing credit on subsequent compilations Run has appeared on. It's hard to believe this was anything other than coincidental plagiarism but it's nice to think of Bernard, Hooky, Stephen and Gillian suffering from writer's block in the studio and someone saying 'Why don't we just rip off John Denver? Who's gonna notice?'

run2ext.mp3