New Order and Joy Division Guitarist Bernard Sumner Penning Memoir

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New Order, Joy Division and Electronic guitarist Bernard Sumner will release his autobiography – Chapter and Verse [New Order, Joy Division and Me] – on September 25th in the U.K. According to a description on Amazon, the 58-year-old guitarist will cover his childhood, Joy Division’s early days, the formation of New Order, stories behind songs like “Blue Monday” and an account of Manchester’s legendary venue the Haçienda. Sumner will also go into detail about the 1980 suicide of Joy Division’s lead singer Ian Curtis.

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In addition to working on the book, Sumner and his New Order bandmates have been working on new music, its first without the songwriting contributions of founding bassist Peter Hook, who acrimoniously left the group in 2007. Last year, Sumner told Rolling Stone, “We’re coming out in small bursts and writing in small bursts at home, so we’re constantly here whether you like us or not, we’re here to stay.”

At the time, he said that the group was considering doing a series of EPs rather than an album. “I think we want this album to be more of a synthesizer-electronic album, because the last two have been more guitar-based,” he said. “I think we wanted a vacation from electronic music just to get a bit of distance from it to see what it was that we loved about it…. But that’s not to say there won’t be enough space on the album for enough cool guitar tracks if someone’s got them.”

The group debuted a track fittingly titled “Drop the Guitar,” which showed off the group’s electronic sensibilities, at Lollapalooza Chile in April. It’s the first group the song has released since the writing sessions that produced its 2005 album, Waiting for the Sirens’ Call, and outtakes LP, Lost Sirens.

New Order and Joy Division Guitarist Bernard Sumner Penning Memoir