“It was pretty nerve-wracking – playing your hometown usually is – but I’d always, always wanted to play there. I’ve seen so many great gigs there down the years.”<\/p>\n
Tom Chapman is recalling last year’s two-night stand at the Apollo with New Order, for whom he’s now playing bass after Peter Hook’s acrimonious departure back in 2007. The shows came as part of an exhaustive touring schedule that the band have undertaken since reforming in late 2011, with Bad Lieutenant – the group launched in the interim by Bernard Sumner and Stephen Morris – being put on hold.<\/p>\n
“It was really just pure luck,” says Chapman of his introduction to New Order. “Myself and (guitarist) Phil Cunningham have a mutual friend, and they told me that Bad Lieutenant might end up needing a new bass player, because it wasn’t working out with Alex James, who was based down south and starting to play with Blur again. As soon as it was clear that Alex was going to have to bow out, I got a phone call, went to audition and the rest is history, I suppose. The thing is, when you meet other musicians for the first time, it either works or it doesn’t. I clicked with the guys straight away, and we found ourselves very much on the same wavelength, musically speaking.”<\/p>\n
The decision to revive New Order was effectively forced by circumstance, with Chapman insisting that the kind of lengthy tours that they went on to play were never on the table to begin with. “There was never any masterplan to reform,” he says. “We got a call from a long-time friend of the band called Michael Shamberg, who was involved with directing a lot of New Order music videos back in the eighties. He’s quite ill, and he’s been living in the States, where he needs money to pay for his treatment. He asked if we could do something to help with his medical bills, so we basically decided to do two concerts; one in Brussels, and one in Paris.”<\/p>\n