Bernard Sumner

Musician

1956-01-04

Bernard Sumner is an English musician, singer, and songwriter known as a founding member of Joy Division and New Order. He is one of the defining figures in post-punk and electronic pop.

Books by Bernard Sumner

Chapter and Verse - New Order, Joy Division and Me
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Chapter and verse
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Divided joy
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Quotes by Bernard Sumner

If you're driving around or at home with the stereo blasting pure dance track, it gets boring within about 15 minutes. It doesn't work at home like it does in a nightclub. You've got no atmosphere.
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I like singing now, but I didn't at the start. I didn't think about singing, didn't know how to do it, so I hit the ground stumbling.
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In New Order, I played about 95% of the synths. It's not much fun for the other guys in the band when I'm playing my synth parts.
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If you have a bereavement in your family, it's a terrible, terrible thing. But, you know, time passes. It's part of the cycle. It doesn't hurt so much.
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In Salford, we had fish in our tap water. I remember, one hot summer day, running to the toilet at playtime and dunking our heads in a sink full of water. I remember putting my head in and seeing all these little fish in it.
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If you're a lead singer, then you can't afford to be sensitive. On stage, everyone looks at the lead singer, even if you don't want them to - in America, they have those massive follow spots on you all the time; it does your head in. So, if you are a lead singer and you don't toughen up, you're in the wrong job, and you have to get out.
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The drummer is the backbone of the band and is the real underrated one.
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There's challenges in life that present themselves unexpectedly, and if you rise to them, then those challenges will toughen you up.
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I think when you're in your 20s, going from adolescence to about 24, I think your life is a series of emotional storms that you have to weather. Life is more emotional at that time, and you're less equipped to deal with what life throws at you. I always think that if you can get past 24, than life really starts at that point.
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My mother, Laura Sumner, had cerebral palsy. She was born absolutely fine, but after about three days, she started having convulsions that left her with a condition that would confine her to a wheelchair her entire life.
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