‘The country is an embarrassment’: Peter Hook on Brexit, the Hacienda and Joy Division
The former New Order and Joy Division bassist explains how his musical career is far from over, why he can’t understand ‘our selfish government’ and why he doesn't care about past grievances. David Barnett reports
Peter Hook looks better than he probably has a right to. Tanned and lean and with an infectious laugh, he’s 63 and has spent 43 of those years relentlessly embedded in the music industry, as first the bassist of Joy Division, then New Order, then with a raft of bands and projects culminating in his two current initiatives; performing the albums of his first two bands as Peter Hook and The Light, and DJing with the touring Hacienda Classical spectacle.
It’s a big year for fans of Joy Division and New Order. This summer marks 40 years since the former’s debut album Unknown Pleasures, their only LP released before the suicide of lead singer Ian Curtis, aged 23, in May 1980. The surviving members – bassist Hook, guitarist Bernard “Barney” Sumner and drummer Stephen Morris – transformed themselves into New Order that year, joined by Gillian Gilbert on keyboards, with Sumner taking over vocals. It’s 30 years since the band released Technique. It was their their fifth album, but the one that propelled them to the top of the charts and into proper stardom, influenced by the Balearic sound of house music.
Everybody, it seems, has a Joy Division or New Order story to tell, as evidenced by the books released this year. Jon Savage’s This Searing Light, the Sun and Everything Else is an “oral history” of Joy Division, published by Faber in April. Drummer Stephen Morris has his memoirs, Record Play Pause, out this month. Dave Haslam, one-time DJ at Manchester’s Hacienda club, the focal point of the so-called Madchester scene of the late 1980s and early 1990s, mentions his love of both bands in his recent autobiography, Sonic Youth Slept On My Floor.
“Hooky”, you might be unsurprised to hear, doesn’t have a lot of truck with any of them. We meet in a Costa in Alderley Edge, a leafy little town in Cheshire, only 20 miles away, geographically, from Salford, where Hooky and Bernard Sumner grew up, but half a world away in other respects.
He’s lived here for 20 years, and as we find a quiet corner of the coffee shop, I mention in passing that I took my 14-year-old daughter to listen to Haslam reading from his book a few weeks ago. “Well, when she grows up she’ll never forgive you,” he says.
Hooky perhaps has a reputation for abrasiveness, for speaking his mind, for not taking any crap. He and New Order parted ways in 2007 and don’t appear to be on good terms. I mention that Haslam had spoken fondly of him, which he finds hard to believe. Has he read Haslam’s book?
“I haven’t read many good Manchester books,” he says. “I think my favourite is Bez’s. I’ve got Mark E Smith’s on my shelf but not got round to it yet.”
Hooky himself wrote Unknown Pleasures: Inside Joy Division, published in 2012, and he says he did so as a direct response to the author and journalist Mick Middles’ 1996 book, From Joy Division to New Order. “That Middles book was a crock of f**king shit but he inspired me to write my own,” he says. “I suppose I’m in the unenviable position of being too close to the whole thing.”
I wave Jon Savage’s book at him and he shakes his head. “That is particularly annoying that one, it’s Joy Division in their own words but a lot of it’s just lifted from when we did the Joy Division documentary. Those interviews were from the Control interview, Faber bought them lock stock and barrel without our permission, without even a f**king charity donation. He had access to the whole transcripts. Didn’t make sense to me, especially from Jon Savage who you’ve known for 40 f**king years. We weren’t party to how it was done in any way shape or form so it’s just another annoyance.”
Does a lot of stuff annoy Peter Hook generally? He shrugs. “It’s not that bad after a while. You just get used to it. You get to that bit where nothing surprises you. I mean, I’ve had a few fracas with Jon because he sided with them lot and excluded me which I felt was really unfair, especially when I used to tow his f**king car back so our kid could fix it. So yeah… people have short memories.”
There’s a chapter in Dave Haslam’s book where he details being commissioned by NME to interview New Order, a band of which he describes himself as “a devotee, bewitched by them”. Haslam interviewed the band in 1986 at their recording studio in Cheetham Hill; afterwards, Hooky gave him a lift back into Manchester city centre. Haslam had taped the interview but something went wrong; his tape was blank. In a panic, he sat down in a cafe and tried to write down everything again from memory, commenting: “No one knew how I’d crafted the quotes by New Order.”
Tales grow in the telling. Legends get embellished. Stories take on a life of their own. “Yeah,” concedes Hooky. In 2010 he wrote a book called The Hacienda: How Not to Run a Club, and says he initially wanted to do it on interviews with the principal characters. “What I found which was really weird, when I started talking to a few people I very quickly realised that everybody had a different memory of the single occasion, so I thought f**k this, I’m going to have to do it on my own. And you find even though you think something is true you can be contradicted by people.”
As an example, Hooky cites his auctioning off earlier this year of all his old Joy Division and New Order memorabilia, to raise money for the Epilepsy Society (Ian Curtis suffered from it) and Calm, the charity aimed at tackling suicide, especially among men. He put a bell tree percussion device in the lots, saying it had been used on the Joy Division track Atmosphere. Drummer Stephen Morris, who would have used it, disputed the fact.
Hooky says, “I think you’d have to be deaf not to realise that a bell tree made the sound and it wasn’t a tambourine stuck on a pair of scissors. But that is an example of how people can remember completely different things. Normally it doesn’t lead to that level of aggro but it is quite shocking really because there is no truth, the only truth really is your truth. You’re not gonna lie. I’m sure Stephen Morris thinks it was but, y’know, in my opinion he’s wrong, and you have to go with your own truth otherwise you’d never get through life. It is interesting the way you can have completely different ideas.”
There’s a sense when talking to Peter Hook that his often cutting remarks about the people he’s shared some of the last 40-odd years with are, in a way, a defensive tactic, that there’s been so many wars of words since New Order split that he’s getting his jabs in first. At one point I ask him what would happen if Bernard Sumner walked into the Costa we were sitting in, and he laughs uproariously and says, “You’d need your camera, mate!”
But it’s obvious he loves the music. He’s rarely been without a band or project since he started; while New Order were still going he worked with another Factory band, Ad Infinitum. When New Order had their first break-up in 1993, he started two new bands, Revenge and Monaco. New Order reformed for almost a decade from 1998, during which time Hooky began to develop his DJing career, which now sees him about to embark on a tour with Hacienda Classical, kicking off on 8 June at Scarborough’s Open Air Theatre.
Classical accompaniment to pop and dance music is something of a thing right now, but this is the fifth year of the Hacienda Classical concept, which combines the live orchestral music of the Manchester Camerata with DJs recreating the sounds of the nightclub’s heyday. If you think that sounds a bit weird, then you wouldn’t be on your own.
“It was [house DJ] Graeme Park who wanted to do it and I thought the whole concept was ridiculous,” says Hooky. “Why would anybody want to see a DJ set with an orchestra? The two were so far apart it didn’t make any sense to me. But he was adamant that it could be done and we should be the people to do it.”
The idea had been pioneered by DJ Todd Terry in the States, and British DJ Pete Tong had started doing it over here. “Pete Tong was doing it more as a concert, songs finishing and starting. Graeme’s idea was to do it as a DJ mix, just the same as it would be in a club, so once you started you didn’t stop,” says Hooky.
That caused some problems with some venues because they wanted an intermission in which to make up the takings on the bar. “But we felt it was more intrinsic to the spirit of the Hacienda to be complete; it starts and it finishes, you’re f**ked and you go home and you recover. It was that depth of feeling that you wanted from what we were doing.”
The orchestra plays live and the sound is mixed by the DJ in to the classic Hacienda club tracks, with live vocalists. Hooky gets a bit of fire in his eyes that’s impossible to fake just for PR purposes as he waxes lyrical over the gigs. “A lot of these songs you’ve grown up with and they’ve marked many, many special occasions in your life… death, kids, meeting the missus, losing the missus … it’s very charged, it’s very physical, and people f**king love it. And it gives all us old people the excuse to live our youth again, get a babysitter, have the kids tucked up at home, and fearing what you’re going to feel like the next morning.”
Hooky started DJing in 2004, doing it full time in 2007 when New Order split for the second time. He says, “I started doing it out of necessity because I had no money at that point, as New Order we’d not worked for a bit. I mainly do dance music and I get in a lot of trouble because everybody expects you to play the f**king Stone Roses and the Happy Mondays ad infinitum.
“The other fantastic thing is most DJs are sober and they’re always on time, which is f**king fantastic. If I’m on at 9 o’clock I know the DJ before me will finish at 8.59.59. You play with groups and they’re always f**king late, nobody arguing about who goes on last and all that crap. It’s very courteous. The rivalry comes with you wanting to play a better set.”
So he’s looking forward to hitting the road with the Hacienda Classical Tour, which takes in the Royal Albert Hall and the Isle of Wight Festival among its dates. But Hooky has a special soft spot for the tour opener, Scarborough.
“Scarborough is a great place,” he enthuses. “I DJ’d in that old place on the pier the last time I was there. They were nuts. And I never realised how beautiful Scarborough was. Scarborough actually reminded me insanely of Palma, Majorca. I couldn’t believe how beautiful it was. All that European money, innit? And they won’t be getting that any more.”
Ah, here it is. We look at each other cautiously over our coffee cups. Ageing rock stars and Brexit. You never know how that one’s going to pan out, do you? Morrissey calling the referendum result “magnificent” and Johnny Rotten in a “make America great again” T-shirt.
“Look,” says Hooky, who lives in Majorca for half the year and has ambitions to do that full-time. “I’m a traveller. I go all round the world all the time and I do think it’s important in this day and age for us all to stick together, and not to be fragmented. I think that’s the worst thing that could happen to anybody and I think it exacerbates differences and things like immigration and racism.
“I just think it’s the wrong way of pursuing a modern life. It’s old-fashioned, and honestly if you found someone who still thought it was a good idea then they’re a f**king idiot because it’s been proved that our government can’t handle it, which is an embarrassment. I was sat there last week doing a Euro news interview and the guy’s going, ‘What’s happening with Brexit?’ and I haven’t a f**king clue but there’s one thing I do know that if I was doing my job as shit as them I’d be stood on me own in a concert hall. There’d be no audience, right, and that’s what makes me laugh about it. Our government is selfish, it’s only interested in power, personal power, personal politics, and the country is just an absolute f**king embarrassment.”
He pauses, then shakes his head and adds, “David Cameron should be torn apart by an angry mob. Theresa May had the balls to try to stay in office and say I’ll see it out, not like that shithouse.”
Though DJing with the Hacienda Classical tour will dominate this summer, Hooky does of course still keep his bass arm working, primarily with Peter Hook and The Light. That started in 2010, around the 30th anniversaryof Ian Curtis’s death, the same year he opened a new nightclub, The Factory, in the old offices of Factory Records in Manchester. The Light performs Joy Division and New Order tracks, as they were meant to be heard, faithfully following the order of the songs on the albums.
“I literally only booked one gig, which was at The Factory, and it was supposed to be a one-off celebration and we ended up doing two nights and we started getting loads of interest,” he recalls. “We hadn’t booked anything until we played, it all came out as a result of that and it was wonderful. I’d not played Joy Division songs for 30 years ... to actually start playing them was absolutely fantastic because we hardly ever did them as New Order.”
According to Hooky, New Order “buried Joy Division along with Ian”, and they would only very occasionally revisit the old stuff, such as when manager Rob Gretton asked them to play Love Will Tear Us Apart “because it’s f**king so-and-so’s birthday”. He says, “I think we played in our whole career of New Order about three Joy Division songs.”
That changed in 2006 when New Order played the first Manchester Versus Cancer gig, an initiative set up by Andy Rourke of The Smiths. They played a full set of Joy Division tunes. “It was absolutely fantastic, it was delightful, absolutely delightful to do,” says Hooky. “But I don’t think Barney liked doing it; and I understand that. He wanted to do his own lyrics, he wanted to do his own songs, which makes perfect sense. But it was a frustration, because you’re sort of given something back for a moment and then it’s snatched off you again."
But Hooky had developed a taste for performing the Joy Division songs he hadn’t played for 30 years, and The Light was born. In May 2020 The Light will perform the two Joy Division albums, Unknown Pleasures and Closer, in full, at the Manchester Apollo and the Brixton Academy. Again, they will be benefiting the Epilepsy Society and Calm. It will be 40 years, almost to the day, since Ian Curtis died.
Without taking anything away from any of the musicians Hooky has worked with (his own son Jack has played with Monaco and The Light), I wonder if it wouldn’t just be simpler – and more satisfying for fans – to get the old band back together again to play these classic songs?
We’re just a bunch of old men who are arguing, and we seem happy to keep doing that. But I do feel more and more that... well, life’s just too short, isn’t it?
Hooky thinks for a long moment before musing, “With any group you’re always going to get a problem if the members of the group don’t get on. Look at The Smiths; the only two that make most money out of it are Morrissey and Marr. It’s a great shame.”
I wonder out loud what The Smiths would be like if they were still together as a band today. Hooky looks at me. “Well, what would New Order be like if they were going today?”
And could that be a thing?
“What happened at the end of New Order was that Bernard and I had completely different ideas about the group, the music, the attitude to business, and they were that far apart,” he says holding his hands wide. “And the only thing in the middle was Stephen. I had the opinion that Steve agreed with me and then found out afterwards that he seemed to agree with Bernard so I’m looking forward to his book for an explanation of that.
“Then they reformed behind my back, and licensed the assets to themselves. Which is not exactly the most honourable thing to do but...” He shrugs. “It’s survival.”
There was a long-running court case over Hook’s claim of lost royalties after the band’s “restructuring”, which was settled out of court in 2017. Bernard Sumner, Stephen Morris and Gillian Gilbert continue under the name New Order.
Three decades since Technique, 40 years since Unknown Pleasures. Next year will be the 40th anniversary of Ian Curtis’s death. Is there any change of a reconciliation on the horizon at all? Over the course of the interview, Hooky seems to have mellowed away from his initial defensive-offensive tactic of getting his attacks in first, albeit done with wry humour as they were. Now he seems almost reflective.
“You asked me earlier what would happen if Barney walked in here,” he says. “We’re just a bunch of old men who are arguing, and we seem happy to keep doing that. But I do feel more and more that... well, life’s just too short, isn’t it?”
Hacienda Classical starts its summer tour on 8 June at Scarborough Open Air Theatre. Get tickets here. For Peter Hook and The Light events, click here
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