Biography
Guitarist Bernard Sumner worked within the towering presence of singer and songwriter Ian Curtis as a member of the post-punk band Joy Division. Curtis’s suicide by hanging on May 18, 1980, looked as though it had sealed the group’s fate. Instead, the event opened a different path. The musicians discarded the Joy Division name and re-formed several months later as New Order, with Sumner stepping forward as lead vocalist. Early performances retained traces of Curtis’s brooding delivery, yet Sumner cultivated a cooler, more detached vocal approach by the time the band released Power, Corruption and Lies in 1983—an approach later echoed by numerous synth-pop acts. Like its predecessor, New Order became one of new wave’s most enduringly influential groups. In 1991 Sumner joined former Smiths guitarist Johnny Marr in the side project Electronic. Although Sumner had conceived the collaboration as a solo vehicle, the resulting self-titled debut yielded four alternative-radio hits: “Getting Away With It,” “Get the Message,” “Tighten Up,” and “Feel Every Beat.” Sumner’s rap on the final track represented an artistic gamble that split listener reactions. Two further Electronic albums followed, but mainstream audiences largely overlooked them. After a lengthy absence from recording during the 1990s, New Order completed a new studio album in 2001.