And to the Republic: Stephen Morris and Gillian Gilbert discuss the return of New Order

The Other Two.

That’s not only the name of the solo project that Stephen Morris and Gillian Gilbert created during New Order’s four-year hiatus, but it also describes the role they play in the band.

With lead singer Bernard Sumner forming Electronic and bassist Peter Hook keeping busy with Revenge, Morris and Gilbert are the backbone and the background of New Order. The Manchester, England, quartet released Republic, its first album since 1989’s Technique, in May.

Morris joined Joy Division, New Order’s much-gloomier predecessor, in July 1977 as the new drummer. He teamed up with schoolmates Hook, Sumner and vocalist Ian Curtis, whose suicide in May 1980 brought an end to the band. Later that year, Gilbert came on board as keyboardist and second guitarist, and New Order was born.

The rest is NOT history, though. Since then, New Order has achieved worldwide success with albums such as Power, Corruption and Lies and Substance and singles including “Bizarre Love Triangle” and “True Faith,” but the past four years left the future of the band uncertain. The financial collapse of its record label, Factory, and numerous solo diversions helped push the release of any new New Order material back several years.

“The last tour we did was the biggest tour we’d done,” Morris said. “It was sort of like the most major music business, large-scale tour we’ve done. You need a bit of time to recharge your batteries.” 

Morris pointed out that during publicity blitzes and touring sprints, the members end up spending virtually every day with each other. He said that while it wasn’t the sole reason for the temporary split-up, it did play a role.

“The tour thing is a very artificial environment anyway,” he said. “It’s not very healthy. You can’t really go away for a couple of days. People get fed up with each other. It’s only natural, isn’t it?”

Still, New Order has survived what was thought to be the impossible: The band successfully made the transition from ‘80s new wave to ‘90s progressive. That must take some sort of teamwork, but Gilbert offered little insight into her role in the band.

“I’m in a group” was all she said, adding that she was still feeling the effects of some jet lag.

Morris believes one of the things that helped the transition was that the group brought in a producer, Steven Hague.

Republic has a much cleaner sound than the largely bass-driven Technique, and it still has that tinge of depression that always flavors a New Order recording. However, Morris refused to call any of the songs

“pessimistic.”

“A lot of the album was dictated by what was going on around us, which was the LA riots … watching the world outside fall apart,” Morris said. “I think the master plan for this one was to try and get the songs written before we went into the studio.”

One thing is for sure in the ‘90s sound of New Order. They are not jumping on the Grunge Bandwagon.

Morris, whose band has long been associated with the so-called “Manchester sound,” chided the media for lumping together bands that are from one locale, regardless of talent.

“I think that’s a journalistic ploy,” he said. “Initially, it starts out because it’s like

one, maybe two, good bands, and a record company starts catering to any bands that happen to come from anywhere near there, not necessarily if they’re any good. It’s not a fad; it’s something that people find that’s easy to write about.

“That’s not to say that there aren’t any good bands in Seattle. There are quite a few, but to me I think Seattle is like the Americans have finally got their own punk scene.”

A few things never change, though, and high-profile videos are one of them. This is a band that knew who Jonathan Demme was before The Silence of the Lambs hit it big. Demme directed the 1985 single “Perfect Kiss,” and big plans are in the offing for the visual side of Republic.

“We just finished a video,” Morris said. “I think it’s turned out OK. Bits of LA in it, bits of Rome in it. What does it all mean? Don’t ask me.”

Plans may even be in the works for a documentary.

“I’ve got loads and loads of footage on my VHS going back years and years and years, so I might start banging some of that together to make a documentary,” Morris said. “All sorts of interesting stuff.”

As for a tour, a revisit of the “major music business, large-scale” type is obviously out of the question, but the rest is up in the air.

“A little teensy weensy problem, but our record company sort of has gone bankrupt,” Morris said. “It’s been difficult to plan things because we really don’t have anything concrete to plan around. It’s very difficult to plan anything.”

Looking to what the future holds for New Order, Morris remained as noncommittal as ever.

“I don’t know,” he said. “It’s sort of an existential thing, you know. Take it as it comes.”

And what of Morris and Gilbert — where will they be in the not-so-distant future?

“On our farm ...” Morris said. 

“… Breeding ducks,” Gilbert finished.

Originally published in The Graphic, September 9, 1993 

The World According to Garth: Currents goes on the set with Dana Carvey, Aerosmith and the cast of Wayne’s World Il

“Welcome to Aurora … not just a place, but a state of mind. We’ve gotten word that there’s some bad Red Rope Licorice circulating in the crowd. Repeat, please stay away from the Red Rope Licorice. Do not bite any off and chew it. It could cause a dental emergency.”

Welcome to Waynestock.

Garth Algar, looking as insecure as ever, gets booed off the stage. The crowd is getting restless. Out comes Wayne Campbell to save the day.

“Check, check, sibilance check, check. LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, I GIVE YOU … AEROSMITH!”

This is the set of Wayne’s World II, the Mike Myers/Dana Carvey sequel to be released in December by Paramount. Adapted from the Saturday Night Live skit that made “as if,” “schwing” and “not” household words, Wayne’s World II boasts a bigger budget, a bigger cast and bigger expectations than last year’s blockbuster. 

The shooting schedule was extended from 37 days for the first film to 50 days for this one. Also new is director Stephen Surjik (Kids in the Hall) who makes his motion picture debut. 

And while the cameos in the first movie included SNL co-star Chris Farley and Married … with Children’s Ed O’Neill, the sequel features the likes of Charlton Heston, Christopher Walken, Kim Basinger, Drew Barrymore, Olivia D’Abo, Rip Taylor, Harry Shearer and, of course, Aerosmith.

This time out the boys have moved their cable access show from the depths of Wayne’s basement to a hipster loft-studio in downtown Aurora, Ill. Wayne feels angst about his future and faces a record producer (Walken) who has eyes for Cassandra (Tia Carrere). Also, Garth hooks up at the laundromat.

Today the cast and crew are filming Waynestock, a sort of Woodstock revival à la Wayne. About 2,000 hippy extras are on location at the Calamigos Ranch in Malibu, Calif., just a short drive north of the Pepperdine campus. 

Some of the extras appear to be getting into the hippie atmosphere a bit too much.

“Can we take care of this now?” asks a sheriffs deputy, holding up a bag of what seems to be marijuana and clutching onto an extra.

One crew member tries to convince the deputies to focus on security: “Do we really need two deputies?” 

The sheriff snaps back, “Pardner, when I was on narcotics 20 years ago I always worked with a partner!” 

Other extras appear they’re getting just as antsy as the audience they’re portraying. The extras have been standing in the oppressive heat for hours — without the stimulants that benefited the original Woodstock crowd — and even though they’ve got several hours of rooting to go, fatigue is setting in.

“Where are you guys going?” asks one crew member. Responses range from “the bathroom” to “we gotta make an emergency phone call!”

A crew member yells at a group of loiterers who have escaped to the shade: “They want people to just work for a little while.”This seems to go against the nature of the extras. “You haven't been here that long,” he scolds. Sunscreen is distributed to keep them in line.

One person on the set who is having no trouble staying in line is Dana Carvey. In fact, his only complaint is of “jaw pain,” which he says comes from extended periods of chin-mangling “Garthspeak.”

Carvey, now 38 years old and the father of two boys, says it’s not difficult to portray the youthful Garth because the character seems ageless.

“Garth thinks he’s grown up,” Carvey says. In Wayne’s World II, Garth hooks up with Basinger, who plays “the seductress,” and D’Abo, who plays Betty Jo, also known as “Garthette,” a female version of Garth. However, nobody’s saying whether Garth finally gets to take that “big step” into manhood. 

Carvey did take the big step this year of leaving Saturday Night Live, where he worked for seven years and 125 episodes.

“I like doing all kinds of stuff,” says Carvey, who will return from time to time for cameo appearances. “You can’t do it all, all the time.”

Carvey says his own success shocks him. “I always think I’m going to be out of this business as of next week,” he says. “I keep remembering I was a busboy in Belmont, Calif. I was mostly stoned, and mostly playing Risk.”

For now, Carvey is sticking to film projects, which include Clean Slate, to be released in February, and a possible Church Lady movie. While it’s clearly easier to play characters that Carvey has already perfected, he says he didn’t have trouble re-creating that ‘60s aura for Waynestock.

“I remember seeing the movie Woodstock,” Carvey says. “There were muddy naked people rolling around in the mud.”

As for Waynestock, Carvey says it has been easy to work with director Stephen Surjik despite the fact that he was an unexpected replacement for the first film’s director, Penelope Spheeris.

“You have a lot of input on this,” Carvey says. “If you suggest a shot to him he’s very open to it. I don’t feel very frustrated. Directors do control the medium for sure.”

As to how funny the finished product will be, Carvey is hesitant to predict. “You write it, you rehearse it and then you shoot it 50 times,” he says. “I think the film’s turning out funny, but you never know.”

Chris Farley, who returns this time as a roadie instead of the security guard he portrayed in the first flick, is equally pleased with the working environment on the set.

“I just feel pretty grateful to be a part of it all,” Farley says modestly. “I try to put my two cents in.”

The switching of directors isn’t the only change from the first World. While writers Bonnie and Terry Turner wish to remain true to the original, they also want to try some new things.

“It’s a sequel and there’s always that panic,” says Terry Turner, who, along with his wife, also writes for Saturday Night Live. “There are some sequels that depart totally.”

Bonnie Turner adds: “This isn’t a rehash. The soul of the movie is the same.

“It’s just about fun. Wayne is who we all wish we were and Garth is who we are.”

While the Turners utilize their 14-year-old daughter for input, executive producer Howard W. Koch Jr. goes to his children, ages 23, 20 and 14. He, too, waxed philosophical over what makes Wayne and Garth so appealing.

“It’s basically that most of us don’t like authority figures, and they think they are really cool … and they’re not,” Koch says. “I think everybody in their lives was Wayne or Garth.” 

Koch says he has high hopes for Wayne’s World Il but, like the original, one never knows what to expect.

“I don’t think anybody really had an idea of the explosion,” he says. “But we didn’t know whether it would cause a national change in vocabulary.”

Finally, it’s time for the big show. Aerosmith performs “Shut Up and Dance” several times for the grand finale. The audience is instructed to remain silent while moving their heads in unison like Wayne and Garth did during the infamous “Bohemian Rhapsody” scene in the Mirthmobile.

“Do you remember in the first Wayne’s World when they were sitting in the car doing a lot of this?” says a headbanging assistant director. “Now it’s your turn.”

Apparently some of the extras never saw Wayne’s World, as they are raising their arms in the air while banging their heads.

“This time no arms, no banging,” says the assistant director before the second take. “Just heads up-and-down, heads up-and-down.”

The sun’s going down on Waynestock and it’s time for extras and onlookers to head home.

But Myers is still recording the scene where he welcomes Aerosmith to the festival. Once again, the band exits Garth’s modified Pacer, which is now limousine length, chauffeured and emblazoned with flames on the side. Wayne musters up another hearty “Welcome to Waynestock!”

Thanks, but it’s time to split. Party on guys. And Garthspeed.

Originally published in Currents, Fall 1993 

The Awakening of Melissa Etheridge: ‘The experience of having breast cancer was an incredible gift’

On paper, Melissa Etheridge’s life seems like the stuff of storytelling legend. 

A Midwest girl chases her dreams of stardom to Hollywood ... only to discover the empty promises of fame.

A lesbian takes a brave leap out of the closet a decade before Ellen DeGeneres ... only to find that her popularity thrives as a result.

A health scare nearly derails everything ... until a spiritual reawakening puts her on a clear path toward a career high of Oscar gold, familial bliss and rubbing elbows with political leaders.

With all of this dynamic material, it would stand to reason that Etheridge can spin one helluva yarn. She puts these skills to use on The Awakening, a stunningly candid “concept album” that takes listeners on a journey through her life, from her 1982 arrival in Southern California to her 2004 battle with breast cancer.

Now on tour to promote a live CD/DVD version of The Awakening — and hard at work on A New Thought for Christmas, coming out this fall — the 47-year-old spoke with Just Out about a wide range of subjects: medicinal marijuana, ménage à trois, Britney Spears’ meltdown, Hillary Clinton’s gaffe and much, much more.

Jim Radosta: You obviously have a huge following here in Portland. What do you think of the city?

Melissa Etheridge: I love to walk around Portland every time I’m there. It grows and grows. What I love about Oregon is it’s such a paradox: You’ve got the most liberal liberals — you guys are way ahead on all the environmental scales of everything — and then you also have the most conservative people [laughs], the ones that are sort of pulling and dragging and putting their feet in. So I’ve always appreciated the people of Portland, Oregon, especially because they seem to be trying to lift everybody up.

JR: How goes preparation for The Revival Tour? Should fans expect anything different this time around?

ME: It’s not different in that you’re still gonna hear your favorite songs — I’m gonna do what I do — but I have organized the show a little differently than I usually do. With The Awakening, it’s sort of a chronicling of my journey, so what I’ve done is arrange the show in that I’m telling a story of this journey. The show moves more chronologically than before. It’s a little bit more expository.



JR: I would like to ask you some questions about The Awakening. To start with, do you think this fearless album — and the profound messages contained within it — could have happened had you not experienced breast cancer?

ME: Well, I would like to think that I would’ve gotten where I am, but I do know that the experience of having breast cancer and going through the chemotherapy and that whole thing — I look at that as a huge gift, just an incredible gift of forcing me to be completely still, to examine my whole life in this wonderful stillness, to experience my spirit apart from my body and my mind, to really have a physical and spiritual awakening. I do credit my experience with cancer as bringing that about.

And so now, I feel I want to help bring that about in other people without them having to go through cancer. [Pauses] But don’t wait — you can do it before then.

JR: Your lyrics share a really beautiful perspective on spirituality, which is often a difficult subject with gay folks. So I’m curious: What were your views like before the cancer?

ME: People would say, “Are you religious?” I thought, “Oh, goodness, no, I’m spiritual, though.” The gay community in general — we fight these things that are telling us we can’t love, and yet we believe in love and our right to love who we love, even though it’s hard and different. So I think we are ahead of everyone else sometimes on this journey because we have had this sort of resistance to love. And you just realize as you grow up: “Am I gonna keep myself in a shell because of their fear of sexuality? Am I gonna make myself small because of their fear?”

So I kind of had that going for me anyway and really was believing in that and was having my own spiritual path, but I didn’t ever say “God” much. “God” and that whole spiritual thing I sort of left to those that wear it. [Laughs] And that’s what really changed with cancer: “Why do they own God? I have God! I am God, and you are God, and God is in all of us, and I’m going to start saying God.” 

Because you know what? You can’t say you’re a Christian and then you own God. You don’t. [Laughs] God is everywhere, and that’s the message that has to get out.

JR: The album presents two very different perspectives on Los Angeles, from the hopeful “California” to the jaded “Map of the Stars.” How have your views on fame changed since you moved west?

ME: Yeah, that’s one of the things that I wanted to really get through on this album. That journey of mine was that I grew up in the Midwest, I completely believed every song and movie and television show I saw that Hollywood was this great place where everyone was there, and I wanted to be there and I could be different, I could be unusual and crazy and I could be in that, and I just really thought that it was Emerald City and we’re just all gonna be tra-la-la and happy there.

Hollywood is like a machine with this big maze, and you just keep thinking, “OK, if I just get to that thing or that award or that show or that party or if I just know that person, then it’ll all make sense and I’ll be in that place, I’ll be there.” And I kept going, “There is no ‘there’ here — it doesn’t exist.” And I found out that what I created every day  — my own life with my family, my friends — is the life I have!

There’s this illusion called Hollywood — and it’s only an illusion — it’s just a big machine that people keep going and churning out on television and film, but it doesn’t exist. That was a huge freedom; that was a big thing when I finally stopped sort of running on that hamster wheel. I stepped off of it.

And now I see these people that are still on it — ugh — and they’re getting skinnier and skinnier, you know, and they shave their heads and they go crazy. It’s crazy-making because it doesn’t exist, it’s an illusion, and people treat you like it does exist. You go insane.

JR: Your liner notes ask fans to stop everything they’re doing for an hour and listen to the album from beginning to end — which is so hard for some people to do in this ADD, iPod-shuffle culture. What albums inspired you to try this approach?

ME: I wanted to have an album to take people out of that — to give themselves the time to sit down: “Look, you can do this, you can take an hour. If you can’t sit, then drive somewhere. Just be with yourself and your breath for an hour!” 

I remember listening to Bruce Springsteen’s Born to Run and Rickie Lee Jones’ Pirates. You remember when we were much younger and we’d just sit — all you’d have to do is turn the record over. It was a journey, and it took you somewhere. All the Beatles records. The Eagles. It’s an art form, and I didn’t want to lose that art form. I wanted to say: “Look, this is an art piece. Please try to enjoy it once, the whole thing.”

JR: You also ask listeners to “help yourself to a glass of wine or a smoke.” Can I assume you're talking about weed and not tobacco?

ME: Yes, I would be on the record as a weed girl. I’m definitely not a tobacco girl.

JR: Because medicinal marijuana is already a hot election-year topic, can I ask if pot helped you through chemo?

ME: Oh Lord, yes. I have come out and talked about it to Stone Phillips! I don’t know how anyone gets through chemotherapy without marijuana, because the chemotherapy makes you so nauseous, and you don’t want to eat anything, and it puts you in such discomfort and pain. Yeah, you can take pain relievers and something for the diarrhea, but then you have to take something for the constipation, and you’re taking five or six different things with all the different side effects.

And you know what? I can smoke something straight from the earth, and I get no side effects; it takes care of every single one of those things. So I’m a big medicinal marijuana girl.

JR: I really appreciate the frank sexuality of “Threesome.” [“I don’t want to have a threesome ever again … l’d rather keep you all to myself.”] Since you’re in a very truth-telling mode, was that based on an actual incident?

ME: Well, yeah! Absolutely. I made a promise to myself with this album that if I feared anything, I would see it through, I wouldn’t back off of it. So I went ahead and did it.

I wanted to make my monogamy and my marriage and my true love for my wife — l wanted that to be as sexy as it could be. And dangerous — because I know it’s dangerous for some people to think that gay people actually get married and live normal lives. So I wanted to write a song that people could relate to, straight or gay, and realize, “Oh my gosh, I know how that feels!”

JR: You and Tammy Lynn have helped put a high-profile face on gay parenting. Obviously we’ve got a long way to go before everyone embraces nontraditional families. How have you seen things change since you came forward about the unusual nature of your family?

ME: Oh my gosh, so much. Sometimes I think we as a community need to stand up, give ourselves a minute, pat ourselves on the back and go, “Wow, we’re in the trenches right now, but look how far we’ve come!” When I was a young adult, the word marriage — no way! Gay marriage was weird! Uh-uh. We wanted to be way outside the norm. We were different, we were estranged.

And yet we have grown up, and my generation has said: “You know what? We’re gay, we’re American, we work, we want families, we want the same thing as everybody else.” And I think we’ve come a long way doing that and walking through and just staying the course and saying, “Look, we’re people, and it’s all about love.”

JR: To go back even further, I’d like to talk about how you felt right before coming out. The other day I heard your song “I Run for Life” on the supermarket Muzak, and now Ellen DeGeneres tops Oprah Winfrey as the most respected figure on television. Basically I’m wondering: Did you ever see this day coming?

ME: This is the someday that we always talked about. And I know we’re gonna get marriage when we all realize the equality of all of us. It’s gonna be a no-brainer.

Yeah, I felt like I was in Hollywood at a very special time when all of us gay people kind of found each other, and we were like: “You go. No, you go out. No, you come out!” And we all kind of just jumped in, one after the other. Basically, we just keep ascending, we keep moving up.



JR: You also must’ve opened many minds when a billion viewers saw you thank your wife on the Oscars. What was that experience like, and did you ever think that a song from an eco-documentary could beat the Dreamgirls juggernaut?

ME: I know! I sort of felt sorry for the gay community at that moment. Sorry, guys!

That was really something special, because I grew up, just like any good gay person, watching the Oscars every year and just loving the whole entertainment — that moment when you can say thank you and have that 45 seconds to talk to the whole world. And I had that dream, absolutely. That was sort of the epitome of Hollywood to
me.

So getting involved with Al Gore and [An Inconvenient Truth], I had no idea. First of all, he said, “Will you write a song for my slide show?” I thought, “This is going to be something in high schools.” So it truly was the furthest thing from my mind where it ended up, yet the journey was so sweet and beautiful — seeing that film change the world! Now I’m hooked on changing the world, man. That’s the biggest high I’ve ever been on.

And it culminating in an Oscar presented by Queen Latifah and John Travolta — the funny thing was I was like, “OK, I’m gonna thank my wife and my kids.” I say “wife” so often now, I don’t even think about it when I say it. So when I said it in the speech, the audience applauded, and I thought, “Yeah, she’s a great gal!” Then I realized, “Oh, no, they’re not used to hearing ‘wife’ from women, and that’s what that’s for.” I just kind of forgot for a moment there.



JR: What was it like serving on the panel for Logo’s gay-focused presidential debate?

ME: That was so crazy! First of all, I was so honored. If nothing else, our movement has informed, political, powerful people in it, yet I also knew l am a famous person, and I know that that brings people to watch things. I said: “You know what? I’m grateful for my celebrity. I realize that if it’s gotten me a place on this panel, I hope to represent my community fully and maybe ask some of the personal questions that might not get asked.” It was a really eye-opening experience.

JR: Did it sway your views?

ME: Yes, it did. I sort of went in, “Give me Hillary, give me Obama, give me Clinton-Obama, whatever.” I was very impressed with Obama. He was the only one who came backstage to my dressing room, shook my hand, gave me a book, signed it, said: “Pleasure to meet you. I appreciate everything you do.” Things like that, I think, go a long way.

Then confronting Hillary and saying: “Look, I was there in ’92. We were gonna be free, and we were the first ones you guys sold down the river!” Then I was surprised that her answer was: “Well, Melissa, you know, having gone through cancer, things just can’t happen quick enough for you.” So that kind of turned me off to Hillary.

And then hearing Dennis Kucinich just get out there and say: “Hello? It’s not equality. Period.” Why can’t my Democratic leader, who I know feels this way, why can’t they step out and just do what’s right?

I know that our movement is not about that one thing, marriage, yet it symbolizes so much, you know? You’re either really for equality or you’re not.

JR: I just saw Martin Scorsese’s documentary about The Rolling Stones in which Mick Jagger said in a mid-’60s interview that they might be around for a few years at most. I’d like to ask you the same question: How long do you see yourself performing?

ME: Well, see, I watch The Rolling Stones, and I think, “As long as they can do it, I can do it!” I watch them, I watch Bruce, and as long as I can do it and remain with my dignity intact — I mean, I’m not gonna get up there and shake my booty and try to compete with the youngsters, but as long as people enjoy the music, then I’m gonna be there doing it.

Originally published in Just Out, August 15, 2008