Joining us from his hotel in Paris, after a stealthy switch of accommodation, where Peter Hook is currently on tour with The Light, he reflects on his illustrious and influential career with Joy Division, and – after the untimely suicide of Ian Curtis in 1980 – the formation of New Order. The Light is a project spearheaded by Hook, and is the result of multiple disbandments due to interpersonal issues and band politics in the wake of Curtis’ tragic passing – but it’s this that Hook would go back in time and change if he could: “The only thing I’d do differently is I’d save Ian Curtis.”
If there’s anything that surprises Peter Hook the most, it’s the inevitability and unbridled momentum of the passing of time (“I can feel the grim reaper at the stage door,” he jests). It’s been almost half a century since Joy Division’s seminal debut release, over 40 years since the formation of New Order, and 30 since their first of many turbulent disbandments.
Peter Hook’s influence on the music scene has transcended just that, Joy Division and New Order are no longer regarded as just bands, but pioneers of The Haçienda movement and the architects of the rich Manchester music scene. One thing Hook would like to make clear, however, is he’s not from Manchester, and neither is previous bandmate Bernard Sumner (Barney) for that matter: “We’ve got that enormous Salford chip on our shoulder”. But, it’s seldom you can venture into Manchester without seeing a Joy Division tattoo peeking out of someone’s sleeve, and Hook fondly admits his love of ink.
Hook is only one of countless influential musicians who’ve been played on the big screen, and he notes that 24 Hour Party People was made with the view that Michael Winterbottom thought they were “idiots” and couldn’t believe they’d achieved anything. Whereas, Anton Corbijn (Control) took them seriously, and opted to show this side in his Ian Curtis biopic. He said: “In reality we’re between the two, we’re very serious about what we do, but we’re a bunch of fucking idiots. When I saw the Sex Pistols I thought they were so bad and thought ‘I can do that’ I want people to look at me and feel the same, that they can do what I do – it keeps the wheel going, keeps people inspired.”
Hook’s career seems to be filled with doubting crowds and industry professionals who haven’t taken his music seriously, but in spite of this he’s carried on regardless – doing it for his overwhelming love of music and performing, rather than to impress the un-impressable. Even when discussing the sub-par quality of the hotel he had left for a shinier establishment, Hook had an overwhelming sense of joy to his quips: ‘When you get to my age and you walk in a shit hotel, I just go, “Listen, life’s too short, fuck that I’m out of here’.” The passing of time isn’t only a home for nostalgia and wistfulness, but also aids in the realisation of what we will and won’t stand for, and it seems Hook’s line in the sand is crappy hotels.
The probing of his visits to France with Joy Division in their early days took Hook deep diving into sentimentalities rooted in the late 70s. “The funny thing is that the first time we played in France was in 1979 in Paris as Joy Division, which was fantastic, and it was in a beautiful venue called Les Bains Douche, which was very famous because it was designed by Philippe Starck when he was very young,” he said. And though Parisians received Joy Division with admiration and awe, the city wasn’t always so kind to its successor: “France was a bad place for New Order, the French never got us. We never had a good gig, and I remember we did a gig in Paris, and you know when you finish a song and it goes all quiet, and the same voice at the back went, ‘hey’. And we sort of looked and this French kid went, ‘hey, the song, she is a shit’. Talk about wishing the ground would open up and swallow you whole. That memory always stuck with me, because it was just one of those things when the silence came and he just took advantage of it, and it was just so embarrassing. I mean, New Order had a very checkered reputation in Europe, and it was only when we had a lot of commercial success that we started to get over that. Without Ian Curtis, we were also very awkward, so it took a long time to get over that.”
It wasn’t just Paris either, where they saw crowds display a blatant dislike for one of their outfits: “When we first started as The Light, if we played New Order, all the Joy Division kids would go to the bar, and I’d see them walk away. And if we played Joy Division, all the New Order kids would go to the bar. Now, they don’t go to the bar, so the audience is there throughout. Now, I don’t know whether that means that we’ve managed to, you know, meld both of them together, or whether they’ve just become more appreciative of each other”.
Paris has always been an attractive honeypot for newly emerging artists to test their sound in foreign waters, and the fame of Château d’Hérouville as a recording studio far precedes itself; housing the likes of The Grateful Dead and David Bowie whilst they penned some of their most impressive works (‘I Know You Rider’ and Low). The latter had great significance in the formation of Joy Division. Originally known as Warsaw, the band took their name from Bowie’s track, ‘Warszawa’, and that wasn’t where the influences ceased.
Hook fondly recollects Bowie as one of his favourite artists; it was in a music store in Shudehill that he stumbled upon a recently abandoned collection that allowed him to garner most of Bowie’s popular works for a mere 20 pence a pop. “I got Aladdin Sane, Space Oddity, right up to Ziggy Stardust. I was 13 at the time, and became the biggest Bowie fan. Funnily enough it was Ian who brought the album that has ‘Warszawa’ on it – what was it called? [Low]”. The name change to Joy Division came due to confusion with another similarly titled band of the time: “Whenever we phoned up as a group for support slots, they’d think we were Warsaw Pakt” – and they’d have to politely correct them.
Hook’s extensive record collection not only informed their original moniker, but would shape their sound, too. Ian wasn’t just their frontman, but their educator; bringing in records from Faust, Lou Reed, and The Velvet Underground to aid in shaping their sound (he was also secretly veining the sound of The Doors throughout their earlier cuts). “When we started playing as Joy Division, everybody said we sounded like The Doors. So me and Barney sat with him one day, and we asked, ‘Ian, do you know this band The Doors?’ And he went, ‘Yeah, of course’. And I said, ‘Everybody says we sound like them’. He said, ‘Well, I’ll tell you what, I’ll give you a record’. So he gave us a record each, and bloody hell, didn’t we sound like The Doors? It was incredible. We actually went through a phase of playing ‘Riders on the Storm’ as a joke, but nobody rumbled it, I wish we had a recording of that. Nobody got the gag though, so we just stopped playing it.”
On the flipside, several bands cite Joy Division as significant influences (The Strokes, Radiohead): “It’s something you appreciate when you’re older.” Hook frivolously confesses he’d think bands were “cheeky bastards” for wanting to imitate their sound, but he now takes this as a humbling compliment: “You don’t set out to influence anyone, you set out to be true to yourselves and try and do something that hasn’t been done before.”
Despite the tumultuous nature of the bands Hook found himself ingrained in throughout his youth, he’s made the rest of his career on touring with The Light since 2010, reliving and replaying snippets from Joy Division and New Order’s golden years, taking each record in turn and resurrecting them on stage with each new tour.
This most recent iteration, sees The Light playing a record that he originally hated, and that was rarely played live: “Barney couldn’t sing and play at the same time”, Hook quipped with an air of amusement, recounting that it made the songs sound weak live, and recalling there was also an “air of laziness to the decision”.
Hook, however, doesn’t have that luxury, with the mission statement of his live repertoire consisting of albums played in full: “With Get Ready, I can’t turn around and not play a song because I don’t like it, or because it’s too complicated.” He also confesses that the tracks he hated while recording, often turn out to be those he enjoys playing live the most: “It’s really weird, the trouble with New Order’s history is that it had so many ups and downs, and a lot more downs than ups. Get Ready, as a collective, reminds you of the downs. Like with Republic, (which was the one we played last) I thought it was shit, and that’s because we had a shit time making it. Because we never played them live, you never let them grow organically, into something that you liked. It was just something that you recorded in a period when not only did you hate yourself, but you hated everybody else (and even on Republic we weren’t getting on).”
Get Ready, as an album, was made to save Factory Records and The Haçienda, a task that faltered and resulted in New Order ceasing to operate. But despite this, Hook often regards it as a honeymoon record. With it, Stephen Morris and Gillian Gilbert took a much smaller role in the creation of Get Ready, and for this they opted for a producer: “I remember Barney saying to me, ‘look on the bright side, if we’ve got a producer we won’t argue as much’, and I said that it was ‘us arguing that made great records’.” Steve Osborne, the producer, captured the essence of the two in the record, managing to stave off any brawls. However, it was once New Order came to play the tracks live that “all the old beefs resurfaced and the honeymoon was over”.
Despite Hook having made an immovable mark on the music scene, it isn’t just through his bands that his legacy will live on. “It’s bloody fantastic, but he’s always telling me what to do… cheeky bugger,” he remarks on his son following in his musical footsteps. Jack Hook has a staggering career of his own, acting as touring bassist for The Smashing Pumpkins: “He plays to audiences and there’s literally hundreds of thousands of people. I’ll be on the phone to him, asking how it’s going and he’ll say ‘yeah it’s alright’, but he’s playing to 200,000 f*cking people, bloody hell. And it’s funny, because we featured Billy Corgan on Get Ready.”
There aren’t many people who can live up to Peter Hook’s bass playing prowess, and in the eight bassists The Light has gone through, he admits it’s only his son that can play in the same style as him: “He’s actually better than me, I’m tone deaf. He can listen to someone’s else’s record and he can just play it.” Having met Billy Corgan originally when he was 14, before either of them were in bands, he fondly tells how Corgan treats Jack on tour. “They look after him. It always makes me laugh, because he’s got a nut allergy, Jack, and when you get to the Smashing Pumpkins, there’s big signs all over, all round backstage, ‘nut free zone, Nuts not allowed’. They look after him much better than I do, I’ll just walk in with a Snickers!”
Throughout our chat, one thing is clear: despite all the heartache, disgruntled band members and unsettled arguments, Hook is still overtly cheerful, and happy to talk about his history to anyone that’ll listen. Almost half a century on and Hook can still grab the attention of adoring fans, he doesn’t need the people who he used to share a stage with to perform back-catalogue hits. He’s happy with his inter-generational line-up and the brilliant repertoire of musicians he’s picked up along the way.
Finally, Salford’s biggest success story offered one last sentiment to fans and burgeoning musicians alike, noting, “If I can do it, anybody can bloody do it”.
Peter Hook and the Light are embarking on a string of UK dates, performing Get Ready in full alongside Joy Division and New Order hits:
APRIL
Thu 17 Bristol Marble Factory (Get Ready headline date)
Fri 18 London Troxy (Get Ready headline date)
Sat 19 Manchester Victoria Warehouse (Get Ready headline date)
Words by Lana Williams
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