New Order’s 1983 synth classic “Blue Monday” is one of the most important and beloved songs of the new wave era. The nine-minute alt-dance opus influenced and inspired everyone from the Eurythmics’ Dave Stewart to electronic music pioneers Kraftwerk, and to this day it holds the record as the top-selling 12-inch single in recording history, shifting more than a million units in the band’s native U.K. alone. So how exactly did “Blue Monday” manage not only to make no profit but to actually lose a whopping $100,000?

The Manchester group’s iconic founding bassist, Peter “Hooky” Hook, explains that it all came down to indie label Factory Records’ decision regarding the single’s very famous — but very expensive — packaging.

The die-cut packaging for New Order’s “Blue Monday” 12-inch single. More

“[Graphic designer] Peter [Saville] came to the practice place, and he saw a floppy disk and he loved it,” Hook recalls, as he sat with Yahoo Music reflecting on his illustrious discography with both New Order and the band from which New Order sprang, the equally influential Joy Division. “And he felt we should do the sleeve [to look] like this. … Unbeknownst to him, it had to be die-cut three times, which made the sleeve ridiculously expensive — which [New Order bandmate] Stephen Morris thought was hilarious, because you were paying for the bits that you didn’t get, the hole, where the card had gone!

“But, yeah, the sleeve unfortunately cost 10p [approximately 20 cents] more than the record could earn, so every time we sold a copy of ‘Blue Monday,’ we were losing 10p,” Hook elaborates with a rueful chuckle: “It then went on to be the biggest-selling 12-inch of all time! I remember [Factory Records label head] Tony [Wilson] going to great trouble to cast a brass Factory symbol that said, ‘Well Done, Hooky!’ celebrating a loss of 50,000 pounds. … I suppose it really seals its place in history as a mythical being for that reason.”

The financial failure of what should have been New Order’s commercial career breakthrough was just one in a long line of both comedic and tragic errors for the beleaguered band. The most tragic of all, of course, transpired when it was known as the legendary postpunk outfit Joy Division, fronted by the charismatic but deeply troubled Ian Curtis. Struggling with the dissolution of his young marriage, new fatherhood, an extramarital emotional affair with Belgian journalist Annik Honoré, and, most of all, his increasingly uncontrollable epilepsy, the 23-year-old Curtis committed suicide in May 1980, on the eve of what was supposed to be Joy Division’s first North American tour — leaving his guilt-ridden bandmates behind to pick up the pieces and always wonder what might have been.

“With the making of [Joy Division’s sophomore album] Closer, Ian’s illness was degenerative, and it was getting worse,” says Hook. “The big problem with Ian was … he was very empathic to other people. He would go out of his way to make sure you felt all right about what he was suffering. … Ian worked very, very hard and was still suffering grand mals right the way through [the recording sessions for Closer]. He managed to hide it from his parents, from the doctors that he was being treated by. The guy wanted success. He wanted to achieve what he felt we deserved. And he hid [his epilepsy]. That was the problem. He would never let you know how poorly he was, so you were in ignorance. Even when you were picking him up off the floor when he smashed his head open on the sink or the toilet, he’d just get up. He’d never stop.

“Suicide of a very close friend or family member always leaves you with the guilt,” Hook continues solemnly. “And that’s the beauty of suicide, isn’t it? It’s not them worrying afterwards. It’s everybody else saying who, when, or why, or ‘Did I do enough?’ I’ve had enough of that in my life to realize that people who are left behind are the ones that suffer. But it was a great LP, and I think one of my greatest regrets when we finished with Joy Division and moved on to New Order was that we never got to play Closer. … It was heartbreaking to put it all away and never promote Closer, never promote [the single] ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart,’ put it in a box, put it in the back of the cupboard. And we went off to New Order.”

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