Getting Closer to Peter Hook

The first time I heard Joy Division’s music, I realized straightaway it had a power over me and that was something I’d heard before. Formed in 1976 during the punk explosion, the Manchester quartet of Ian Curtis, Bernard Sumner, Peter Hook and Stephen Morris started playing a much darker, subtler style of music than what was out on the scene, yet they still managed to call themselves a punk band. Joy Division put Manchester’s music on the map and pioneered a sound that would echo for generations.

Though Joy Division’s time was short after singer Ian Curtis committed suicide over 30 years ago, their legacy remains timeless. From the ashes of Joy Division, the remaining members formed New Order. While New Order ended in 2007, everyone has been keeping busy; Sumner and Morris started Bad Lieutenant, while Peter Hook has been taking Joy Division’s classic album Unknown Pleasures on the road. Just this month, Hook and his band, The Light will perform Closer for the first time ever in full, at a benefit concert in Manchester.

I spoke to Peter Hook as he was gearing up for the Closer gigs. When Hook was coming of age, Manchester was almost entirely a total industrial city, filled with factories and blue collar workers. Music and art did not seem to flourish. ‘When I started, there was no scene, not that I was aware of, because my interest in music was strictly pop. It was only after seeing the Sex Pistols that I developed an interest in music and then discovered the scene in Manchester, which seemed to me to be inspired by Sex Pistols.’

It was at that gig that he and friend Bernard Sumner realized they wanted to be in a band. ‘I was into heavy metal, Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple. You were reading about these people and this other world all the time and then the Sex Pistols started to sneak in to the music press. I remember one occasion where I was on holiday in the South of England, buying Melody Maker and it was the picture of Johnny Rotten fighting at a gig on the front.

‘I thought, “Well, that seems more like real life”, because you never saw Robert Plant fighting. They seemed [to have] more grandeur and this seemed more street and more earthy and more realistic.’ When I asked Hook if the 50p cost of his gig ticket was the wisest investment he had ever made, he laughed and replied, ‘Yeah, alongside the 35 pence which was for my guitar, which I bought the next day. Those were probably the best investments I have ever made and there are not that many!’ When they placed an ad in local papers looking for a singer, Ian Curtis answered.

‘Punk did give me a very healthy and tenacious attitude to life,’ said Hook. Starting off as Warsaw and pulling in influences from punk, David Bowie and Kraftwerk, the band changed their name to Joy Division. While the band would take the UK and then the rest of Europe by storm, ‘In those days, it was not money; it was about wanting to succeed in something you believed in, because it was a hell of a struggle. We were literally a jogging group who were doing a very difficult job because we believed in it.’  As the band rose in popularity, Curtis, who suffered with epilepsy, could not find a balance between his condition, his band and personal life, and would take his own life on the eve of the band’s first American tour.

The end of Joy Division created New Order. ‘When Ian died, we just put Joy Division’s music in a box and just buried it. We never did anything about Joy Division, we never celebrated anything to do with Joy Division, it was an unwritten law that we would never talk about Joy Division and will never play their music.’

New Order would explore electronic sounds rather than the textured and heavy tones set forth by their previous band. Though New Order may have released more records and stayed together longer, the impact of Joy Division seems to be much greater. ‘If Joy Division continued, we would have probably ended up doing the same thing as we did with New Order and gone into more electronic-sounding music. Don’t forget it was Ian that introduced us to Kraftwerk!’

Today, Peter Hook has been taking his latest band, The Light, which features his son Jack, around the world and bringing Joy Division’s albums to life. For some, if not most of his audience, they are hearing Joy Division live for the first time. What was supposed to just be a one-off gig in Manchester sprawled into a worldwide tour due to demands from fans and promoters alike.

After he announced a full tour last year in support of the 30th anniversary of the band’s masterpiece, Unknown Pleasures, press, fans and even colleagues called Hook every disparaging name in the book. People accused him of living off the past, even saying he is ‘stealing from a dead man’s wallet’. Hook just laughs it off. ‘You have to take it as a compliment or else it will drive you mental.’ His reason for plugging away is simple: ‘I never had any idea that I would play anywhere apart from Manchester that one night [18th May 2010]. I have been asked to play all around the world and everywhere we have gone we have gotten a great reception.’

After touring, Hook will work on original music and ponder the next step. ‘I am very lucky to still be out as a jobbing musician and play[ing] the music I wrote 33 years ago, it’s a hell of an accolade and I enjoy it very, very much.’ As for Joy Division’s legacy and his impact on Manchester, ‘as a group we were very insular and we did things for ourselves, and I know that sounds a bit naïve but its true. You were doing things because you believed in it and doing it for no reward. It is quite an odd thing, it wasn’t even about surviving: it was about playing your music to your people.’

Salvatore Bono writes about music for The Huffington Post and his blog, Officially A Yuppie.

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