/WORLD CUP
IT is regularly voted the greatest England football anthem of all time - and with World Cup fever currently gripping the nation, New Order’s World In Motion is back at the top of playlists. The Manchester band - Bernard Sumner, Peter Hook, Stephen Morris and Gillian Gilbert - recorded their official England anthem for the 1990 World Cup with actor Keith Allen and the England team and it became New Order’s ONLY number one single.
Here, bass player Peter Hook tells us the story of how the track came to happen, in his own words. It all started with Tony Wilson
“You know how Tony [Wilson, Factory Records supremo] used to hobnob at all these wonderful meetings? Well he was at one with the head of press at the FA in 1988, who just so happened to be a big music fan.
“He was saying to Tony ‘oh my god Manchester is so cool you’ve got so many cool bands and here at the FA we have to put up with all these idiots doing the anthem, we want a cool band doing it’. So Tony said to him ‘well why don’t you ask who you want?’
“The guy said New Order. So Tony said ‘well there you go why don’t you ask New Order?’.
“At the time we were recording Republic it was quite a serious session really so we were delighted to have the diversion to be considered for the football song.
“It was a great compliment. The great thing about New Order is we always used to do things for devilment, if there was something we shouldn’t do we would do it, we flew in the face of doing anything normal it was a great trait!
“So we said yes. And of course then we were absolutely terrified as we didn’t know what to do.” Teaming up with Keith Allen
“We’d met Keith Allen before, Tony knew him and knew he was a crazy football fan, and Tony decided that what New Order needed was Keith Allen to give us the balance as we weren’t mad