Peter Hook is responsible for many of the most iconic basslines in post-punk and new wave, being an essential component of Joy Division and New Order and consequently providing a significant influence on the musical landscape of today for both Manchester and beyond. As he prepares to tour the latter’s 2001 album Get Ready with his band Peter Hook & The Light, he candidly discusses the struggles of modern musicianship, his diverse experiences in the Manchester scene and the ways in which revisiting Joy Division and New Order classics allows him to reclaim the music of the past and the legacy he continues to craft.
Joy Division are well-remembered as one of the most influential groups of the late 1970s. Contemporaneously, they inspired figures as significant as The Cure’s Robert Smith, and their impression has undeniably stood the test of time, as artists as diverse as Radiohead and Tyler, The Creator cite Joy Division as influences. “I think we did inspire a lot of musicians in the same way that we were inspired by the Sex Pistols”, Hook says of their impact. “It’s always great to hear, when someone comes up to you and says they started playing bass because of you”.
Another notable influence that Joy Division and New Order had was on fellow Manchester titans, Oasis. “Oasis played their first ever gig as Oasis supporting me”, Hook says, recalling a gig he put on with his side project Revenge at Middleton Hippodrome in 1992. But this influence, in particular, is reciprocated: “whenever I do an interview, I always think to myself, what would Noel [Gallagher] say now?” It wasn’t always this way, however, as the two bands “had our snotty stand-off for a while because he was in an up-and-coming band and we were a band”. “They saw New Order at the Hacienda, they heard Joy Division, they saw Factory Records, they saw the Haçienda as a club. They wanted to emulate that life. It is a great compliment”.
Hook quotes the late Joy Division frontman Ian Curtis as saying “that every song we started we should finish, because someone always loves it”, and discusses how every song they have finished holds memories for one fan or another, recounting people who have told him that they got married to one song, or that one of his songs “saved their life”. The diversity of experiences that fans relate his music to remains striking even to him, and he notes that “these are the things you don’t think of when you start a band”.
Reminiscing on the beginning of Joy Division’s short-lived career, Hook states that he and his bandmates were “very staunch punks, adamant about doing things our own way”, not only musically and stylistically, but also financially. “We were an independent band from 1976 to 1995, we’ve financed everything that we’ve ever done off of our own money, we never owed anybody anything, we had no debts as a band”. Reflecting on this, Hook recognises that it was part of the appeal of Joy Division: “it was lucky, I suppose, that we had those ideals because it made us different. And people seemed to like the difference”.
“I must admit, a lot of the things we did, we sort of tried to make ourselves a failure”, Hook confesses, remembering how “we left all the singles off the LPs because we felt that it was unfair for the fans to have to pay for a track twice”. Joy Division took a similar approach to press: “it was a relief to not have to do interviews, because it didn’t feel natural in the early days”.
Hook recalls attending the premiere of Control, a highly popular and critically-acclaimed 2007 biopic on the life of Ian Curtis and Joy Division, in Canada. A fan, whom he refers to as “cheeky Canadian bastard”, asked him why it is the case that “for fifteen years of your career you never said anything, and now for the last fifteen, you won’t fucking shut up”. Despite the audaciousness of the fan, Hook sees his point, and admits “you didn’t feel comfortable talking and a lot of these journalists were very experienced, so they could suss you out” in the early days. Shying away from the press worked in Joy Division’s favour, “ironically”, as “in a different way, we became mysterious and people thought we had something to hide”.
A factor that facilitated Joy Division’s elusiveness was the support they received in their hometown. “We were so confident in the strength that we had with the record company and with our support in Manchester, with the Haçienda club. We had such a solid bedrock that we could tell everyone to piss off”. Reflecting on the Haçienda era, which fostered the acid house and rave scene of the 1980s, Hook admits that “once we became successful, our behaviour just went off the scale. We were rock and roll pigs”.
Despite the delights and positive impact of the Haçienda, there was a cost: “to entertain a city like we did for seventeen years out of our own expense, cost a hell of a lot of money”. It was necessary, however, as “there was nowhere you could go dressed as you liked in Manchester at that time. To go to a nightclub, you had to wear a jacket, suit, tie, proper shoes, etcetera. And it was very staid. It was very boring. And ironically, it didn’t make them any less violent”. Hook recalls a visit to America, which left him impressed by the attitude to clubbing across the pond, impishly insisting that “the biggest impression that it made was they actually let you in for free because you were in a band”.
“I wouldn’t change any of it”, Hook states, but “now it’s different”, with changes continuously occurring within the landscape of the music industry. “Musicians have to be different now, they’re taught not to make as many mistakes as we did, they’re taught that they have to look after the business side, otherwise it’ll finish”. The main cause of this, according to Hook, is that “you haven’t got records to fall back on the way that we did”, whereas Joy Division and New Order “were selling three million of a record” and thus able to continue their activities.
“In the eighties and nineties, all we had to do was turn up, and everybody else did everything for us”, Hook recalls, as opposed to the modern music industry which necessitates the constant online presence of upcoming artists. Hook also recognises that the incentives of musicianship are disappearing: “our biggest impetus was to give up work, and now a lot of people in bands work with music as a side-line. We’ve been very lucky”.
Recalling an informative visit to the Performing Rights Society (PRS), who collect and pay royalties, Hook attests that only 2,000 of the 750,000 artists they represent make a living through music. “It was alarming on one hand, but you realised how lucky you were. And I never knew”.
When moving from Joy Division to New Order, it becomes clear that Hook feels far more resentment towards the latter. “New Order’s attitude to each other is terrible. It’s been terrible for seventeen years. It’s been awful. And that destroys your impression of the group, it makes me feel like we’ve achieved nothing”. This doesn’t alter his impression of the music though, and it certainly won’t prevent him from touring New Order albums with The Light: “every time I come to play and I concentrate on the music or I do a gig, I realise this is fucking great, what a time we had, but it doesn’t stop the feud. I wish something would stop the feud because I’m not able to”.
Following Peter Hook’s departure from New Order in 2007, the remaining band members expressed their disgruntlement that he continued to perform Joy Division songs live, despite the part he played in writing them. Hook then sued New Order in 2015, claiming that he was losing millions of pounds in royalties, although an undisclosed settlement was reached in 2017, putting an end to years of legal battles but not concluding the rift between the band and their former bassist.
Hook has often discussed his vow to perform every Joy Division and New Order track written and recorded. As he prepares to embark on a tour with The Light centred around Get Ready, New Order’s seventh studio album which was released in 2001, he remarks that concluding this tour will leave him with two albums remaining to complete his mission “and that’ll be the end of it”. “I don’t consider the others to be New Order. They don’t sound like New Order”.
“You always do them with greatest hits”, he states, reassuring that “I will be playing Blue Monday any bloody time they want, I’ll play Love Will Tear Us Apart any time they want”. But he enjoys the classics, too: “I’m just delighted by the fact that I’m able to call this a job”. At 69 years old, Hook also recognises that he’s “got to be careful”, and will be “knackered” by the stretch, for which he is currently planning a 36-song setlist. “We’ll start early, and feel free to leave whenever you like”, but “both my son and I said we’re not doing less than 30”, he asserts, referring to the fact that he will be joined on tour by Jack Bates, who has been the touring bassist for The Smashing Pumpkins since 2015.
Reflecting on another distinction between then and now, Hook states that “in New Order, at most we might know twenty songs. With The Light, it’s over a hundred, it’s completely different. I can’t believe how lazy we were”. He clearly prefers it this way: “it feels the most natural thing in the world, it’s great to do, we’ve just done that all around the world and had a great time doing it. It makes you very proud. I’m very proud of the records”.
Hook seems particularly excited coming to Get Ready, confirming the album as the one he was most looking forward to performing. On the other hand, he admits “I was really not looking forward to performing Republic, which was the LP we did to bail out Factory Records and bail out the Hacienda, achieving neither. We hated each other while we were doing it. I hated that record with a vengeance, I thought it was shit”. However, “we got the record, we started playing songs, and I realised the reason I thought this was shit was nothing to do with the music. It was to do with what was around the music, and the music, actually, was great”.
“Strangely”, he “had the same feeling coming to Get Ready because it was mine and Barney’s [Bernard Sumner] honeymoon record, it was our honeymoon moment. We got back together after we’d split up, Stephen [Morris] and Gillian [Gilbert] were busy doing other stuff so weren’t there that much. And it was very much me and him, but it very quickly went wrong afterwards, like honeymoons always do”. When revisiting Get Ready with The Light in rehearsals, “we started playing and I was thinking, I’m not going to enjoy this. But blow me down, it sounds fucking great”.
As the conversation progressed, Hook became increasingly candid, testifying that it “became very important to me when I started to celebrate Joy Division, because losing Ian absolutely broke my heart, for years and years and years”. “I realise now that I should have done a lot of therapy at that time, and I also should have grieved”, he admits. “The thing was, we didn’t grieve because we were young, and we thought a year lasted two minutes. Then you get old and all of a sudden a year does last two minutes”.
Hook regrets that “we never got to play a lot of the songs on Closer”, Joy Divison’s second and final album, but views his mission to perform every song with The Light as a way of finishing what was started almost five decades ago. He is also grateful for his son’s presence in his band, noting that “he was the same age I was when I did Unknown Pleasures the first time”. Hook also finds a sense of reclamation in his performances with The Light: “it was a very strange thing, but to get those songs back was wonderful. Right through New Order, it’s been very up and down, but those songs I always felt part of”.
“Most of the songs on Get Ready have never been played by anyone, even New Order; I do feel blessed that I’ve been able to do it. And when I look at what we’ve achieved and where we’ve taken the music, to take Joy Division’s music all over the world, that has been absolutely wonderful, an amazing feat to do. New Order went everywhere, but we didn’t play a lot of the songs that we wrote, so I’ve been able to put that right, get every song we’ve written and give it another lease of life”.
Returning to the music’s impact, Hook recalls seeing “so many grown men and women cry” at his shows with The Light. “You play a song and it’s so important to someone that it moves them to tears. And I believe the others do that with how bad they play”, he jests. More sincerely, he discusses “looking at the YouTube comments” on ‘Run Wild’, a song taken from Get Ready: “there was two or three people that got married to it. A lot of the time I never get to realise because I’m so close to it and I don’t realise the effect it has on other people. I’d say that about Nick Cave or I’d say that about The National, but I’d never say it about my own music. But it is really nice to hear it”.
Overall, it is Peter Hook’s love of music that shines through everything he says. As the conversation draws to a close, he emphasises this: “I must admit I’m having a great time. I’m really looking forward to playing”. Quoting Haçienda DJ Greg Wilson, he insists that “you’ve got to keep the wheel going, you’ve got to make sure that everybody else who’s not doing it gets a chance to be inspired because otherwise, the wheel doesn’t go around”, recognising his own contributions to a cycle of musicianship and rightfully taking pride in this.
In the opinion of Tony Wilson, the owner of Factory Records, manager of the Haçienda and journalist retrospectively referred to as Mr. Manchester, “the reason we wrote great music is because we were always skint and unhappy. Music is quite puzzling, it’s something we all listen to every day and take for granted a lot of the time. It’s incredible how much music we listen to and the effect it has”.
Peter Hook & The Light are due to play at Manchester’s Victoria Warehouse on 19 April, performing an extended set in celebration of New Order’s 2001 album Get Ready.
