Photo: Mark McNulty
Peter Hook, founding member and bassist for both Joy Division and New Order, has been spending all day rehearsing for his tour. “Today,” he tells us when we ask how it’s going, “I'm crapping myself.”
It’s not an entirely surprising confession. At the end of September, Hook will not only be playing New Order’s third and fourth albums Low Life and Brotherhood in full alongside their singles and B-sides 1983 to 1987, he’ll also be opening with a set of Joy Division material, under the moniker Peter Hook & The Light. It's something we're keen to discuss with him (as are his management) rather than focus on the increasingly messy fallout with Bernard Sumner and New Order. In practice though, it's Hook who brings up the subject, sharing frequently and with great candour, his disdain for his former band.
To begin with though, we're still on his forthcoming tour. “Trying to learn 30 songs,” he admits, “when you've not played them for 25 years, is a little bit daunting… to say the least." Despite the hype though, and the occasional waves of terror, performing live is an experience Hook relishes – “Because Joy Division never went anywhere. Most of the world never got anywhere near Joy Division, so it's a real achievement to do it. I love playing still, I love the physicality of it, I always did.”
Watch Peter Hook & The Light play 'Love Will Tear Us Apart' below
We all know the reason Joy Division “never went anywhere” - they never got the chance to. But from the ashes of Ian Curtis' tragedy, New Order were born. Despite foundations built on darkness, they achieved decades of success. By the turn of the 21st century though, things very publicly soured. Hook left the band in 2006, and New Order broke up.
Five years later, they reunited, but with one crucial difference - Hook was not invited. His contempt for Bernard Sumner and co first comes to the fore when we ask if he feels added pressure for his own live shows, given his former band are still touring. He interjects: “Well they aren't New Order, they're masquerading as New Order! I definitely remember New Order and it didn't look like that.”
The fractured relationship between Hook and his former bandmates is a messy, drawn-out affair, which involves legal proceedings and a large dose of public mud-slinging. “If they'd have handled themselves properly and honourably,” he insists, “and done the right thing when they wanted to come back, it would have been all hearts and flowers. But they didn't, and they seemed to infer that I didn't handle myself honourably before, because I was playing Joy Division songs, when in reality they played Joy Division songs in Bad Lieutenant before me."
“If they'd have come to me and said, ‘Listen, we don't want to play with you, you don't want to play with us, we want to reform, let's do a deal and sort it out’, then I would have gone, ‘Alright that's fine, I'm not gonna push myself on you if you don't want me, what human being could possibly do that?’ Then you go off and you go, ‘Good luck mate, we had some great times’. But the fact that they chose to do it while I was abroad in China, and the way they treated me financially, it's just disgusting. You just can't wish them well. It's impossible. I defy anybody to do it.”
Below: Hook reading Sumner's autobiography frrom the bassist's Twitter.
Amongst the long list of things about the current New Order lineup which irks Hook, is that they allow their newer members to sign old New Order merchandise. “I won't let my lot do that,” he says. “If someone brings a Joy Division album, just because they're playing Joy Division, doesn't give them the right to sign it. The whole point about this so-called reformation or whatever, is that it's very anti-me, and they are leading a hate campaign against me.” He thinks for a moment, before adding, “In the same way, I suppose, that I'm leading one against them. I've not heard them say anything good about me, unless you can correct me...” There’s a short silence and a little nervous laughter on our end. “So there you go,” he says, satisfied.
Hook is no stranger to rivalry, though it hasn’t always been between members of his own band. During the 1980s, Joy Division’s rivalry with The Smiths spurred both to greater heights. Perhaps the sheer quantity and quality of the music coming out of Manchester led to a more intense sense of competition? “It's funny,” he says, “I was having this conversation the other day. There's not been a wave of Manchester bands for a year or two - I think Manchester actually might have peaked. It's had a stranglehold on music for years and years and years, and it did just strike me the other day, I thought, 'Hang on a minute, where's all the bands now?’"
The 1975? “Ah yeah, they're from Cheshire, he's actually a neighbour of mine. I know his mother very well. He came up to me when I was judging a competition with his mother, Denise Welch, and I met him. God, he must have been 13, 14, and he told me that he loved Joy Division and he was forming a band. The 1975 are a very interesting group, but to me, they sound a bit like Hall & Oates? Their music has that sort of American twang, which is quite interesting considering where they come from, but it's an interesting LP.”
It surprises us, we tell him, that The 1975 were influenced by Joy Division, given that the two sound so profoundly different. “That's good though! I actually like that, because so many bands sound like Joy Division when they've been influenced by Joy Division. The art of being a musician is to take your influences, use them and then sound different. Like Interpol - 'Oh we love Joy Division' - shit, they sound just like Joy Division! White Lies - 'Oh we're big fans of Joy Division' - oh God you sound just like us! That is a difficult art. I don't mind though, I take it as a homage.”
Peter Hook & The Light performing in San Francisco (Photo: Marianne Carillo)
Perhaps the reason Joy Division’s influence has remained so profoundly evident, even 30 years on, is because their music inspires an intense, emotional reverence from fans. “It always used to puzzle me whenever people who reviewed Joy Division would say ‘It's very dark, intense, tragic music, that makes you want to lock yourself away and slit your wrists’” he laughs. “I'd go, 'What? I'm having a great time, mate! I wrote it, I played it, I'm full of the joys of spring!’ I used to love Joy Division, I used to love playing, and that was one of the tragic things for me when Ian did take his own life - 'How could he do it? Why did he do it?'
“But the simple fact of the matter was that he was ill. And in those days treatment for epilepsy was almost like putting leeches on him, it was that old fashioned, that barbaric in a way. It's come on so much over the years, and unfortunately, Ian's family are the ones that had to pay the heaviest price. Ian was a very poorly man, very sad, and it was a very tragic end, and nobody wants that for anybody.” Does he ever worry that the reverence of fans might add greater weight to the problematic ‘Live fast, die young’ mythology? “I'm only with them for an hour, and I might see them for ten minutes afterwards, and then they have to lead their own lives,” he says, matter-of-factly.
“But I would hope,” he adds, “that, in the same way as someone would look at Ian, who had a tragically short life, and didn't really enjoy it as much as he should have, that they’d then then look at me and go, 'Oh he's having a fucking good time, look at him, the old twat'. I'd hope that they'd go, 'Oh I'm gonna do that’.”
Peter Hook and the Light head out on tour next week - for their debut Low Life and Brotherhood concerts. Details below.
September 2014
Wednesday 24th Glee Club, Cardiff
Thursday 25th The Ritz, Manchester
Saturday 27th Shepherd's Bush Empire, London
