By Christopher Hollow [@doughboyhollow]
Ahead of his Australian tour playing Low-Life and Brotherhood with The Light, ex-New Order and Joy Divison bassist Peter Hook talks about missing good old-fashioned show riots, his latest New Order memoir, being called “Twat-Face”, and wishing he wrote Robbie Williams’ ‘Angels’.
You’re playing two live sets – does Peter Hook and The Light playing New Order blow Peter Hook and Light playing Joy Division off-stage?
No. Both are treated with the same respect and deference, and very enthusiastically by the group actually. The New Order stuff is more difficult to play than the Joy Division stuff. We can’t figure out why. I stand there with Pottsy [David Potts] and my son, Jack, on bass and try to figure out why it’s harder to play. We can’t figure it out. It’s that bloody Ian Curtis, since he left us everything became more difficult. It just requires a bit more work and, if anything, New Order sounds like three people trying to sound like Joy Division’s four people.
What’s the song that people will riot if you don’t play?
I love a good riot, mate, I miss them. As I’m doing the New Order book, I realise how many riots we used to have in the old days, and I’m thinking how staid and boring gigs have got. I love a good riot. It’s a weird one because you’re playing some archetypal New Order numbers, which I’m delighted by. If you look at a song like ‘Perfect Kiss’ and ‘Thieves Like Us’, I don’t think you’d get a riot these days, I don’t think people are like that now. I must say, we’ve never had a riot in Australia. Had a few riots in America, had a few riots in Japan, but we’ve never had one in Australia. Isn’t that strange?
It’s never too late.
Maybe this will be the first time. We are playing a very lengthy set. It’s the two LPs [Low-Life and Brotherhood], plus the singles and the B-sides in between. Literally, I don’t think there’s any song that we miss out. But I’ll be pushing to get a riot.
What’s the song from either of those records that you wished you didn’t have to play?
No, no. I’m enjoying them all, amazingly, it’s really weird. If you applied that question to the next few records, it’d be a different story. There isn’t a song that I don’t like on this lot. Some of them are harder than others, Bernard’s vocal range tends to be higher than mine, so some of them are a little bit of a stretch for me. But I did read an article by Katherine Jenkins where she said she moved her voice from one register to another and you can teach yourself how to do it. I thought, if she can do it, I can.
What’s the strangest place you’ve heard one of your songs being played?
You tend to hear them in some very unlikely moments actually. I seem to hear a lot of acoustic versions when I’m by the swimming pool. I’ll listen to it and go, ‘It sounds like an acoustic version of ‘Blue Monday’. Lo and behold, it will be. I suppose the other place you hear them is funerals, especially for Joy Division. You tend to hear ‘Atmosphere’ a helluva lot at funerals, especially with the people that I know. It really grates. When we went to Tony Wilson’s funeral, god rest his soul, I really wished we hadn’t written it. It was like, ‘Oh, god’. It’s an odd feeling. They did a survey here recently and found the most popular wedding song is ‘Angels’ by Robbie Williams and the most popular song to play at funerals is ‘Atmosphere’ by Joy Division. I must admit, that moment when they start to carry the coffin out, I wish I’d written ‘Angels’.
I love Galaxie 500’s version of ‘Ceremony’. What’s been your best cover version of a New Order track?
I get sent some really wacky ones actually. My particular favourite was the Japanese heavy metal version of ‘True Faith’. There was also a heavy metal version of ‘Blue Monday’ that was a massive hit in the States by Orgy. We got an award for the most played record on American radio in the late ’90s. I looked at it, thinking, ‘Oh, god, I don’t remember having a record out that year’. And it was ‘Blue Monday’ by Orgy. So I got an award for that. Unbelievable. You should have heard it, it was shit. Horrible. And I got a bloody award for it, to remind me of it forever.
You mentioned it before, you’re writing a New Order book – what will be the book’s biggest revelation?
[Laughs] I can’t tell you that, can I? No one would buy the book. The thing is we were very hard-drinking, hard-loving, we were quite opposite to our arty intellectual image. I’m not sure if that will make the book interesting, or shatter too many illusions. Bernard’s book [Chapter and Verse] didn’t really do New Order justice in any shape or form, which was nice for me because it means I can do a proper book about New Order. We were quite ordinary, I think people somehow get this idea that you’re aloof and intellectual and artistic. Maybe in your soul you are, but really we were just another bunch of beer’d up crazy boys, including Gillian [Gilbert] [laughs].
We know from writing books that people get pissed off, and it’s not necessarily the people you were expecting. Who was most pissed at your Joy Division book, Unknown Pleasures: Inside Joy Division?
That’s an interesting one, that. I did get sued for defamation by Bernard and Stephen. They didn’t follow through because I don’t think there was anything in it, to be honest. But they both sued me when they hadn’t read it, which I thought was marvellous. Sue someone for defamation when you haven’t even read the bloody book was incredible. Now I’m suing Bernard for defamation in his book. I think his book is about as truthful as Harry Potter. I think there’s probably more truth in Harry Potter than in Bernard’s book. At least I’ve done him the respect of reading it first, which didn’t take long.
Did you go to the index first?
No, me mate phoned me up and said, ‘Have you seen the index in Barney’s book, you’ve got two-and-a-half pages’. [Laughs]. I took it as a great compliment. If I could still annoy him that much that he feels he has to make up a load of really nasty stories about you in 2015, I must’ve made an impression, mustn’t I?
You’ve had people play you on the big screen, but have you been happy with how you’ve been portrayed cinematically?
Well, 24 Hour Party People was a very irreverent look at what we all achieved. Factory, New Order and Joy Division. So I didn’t really expect much. Michael Winterbottom did a very comedic look at everything, so you wouldn’t really have analysed any of that in-depth. Anton Corbijn with Control went exactly the other way. He was very adamant that the actors had to really study us. I must admit I got a few tingle moments, not only with me but also with the others. He certainly caught Bernard’s feminine side, shall we say. And Stephen’s eccentric side. Control you recognised yourself, very much, but not in 24 Hour Party People. The Joy Division documentary was perfectly in the middle, wasn’t it.
You’re a distinctive looking fellow. Who do you get mistaken for?
I get mistaken for me mate, Bowser, all the time. Not that any of you would know Bowser. He’s a friend of mine ’round here, looks just like me. Everybody thinks he’s my brother, if they don’t think it’s me. I don’t get mistaken for anybody. Someone told me there’s a dentist in Manchester who’s the spitting image of me. He gets recognised a lot, as me. Otherwise, it’s just Brad Pitt, really. ‘Are you Brad Pitt?’
What do people shout at you in the street?
It’s quite funny really, I went to the pictures yesterday. I went to see The Gambler, which is okay actually, it’s a good film. There was two people in the queue. One was dead young, dead-trendy. And there was this old geezer and the old geezer was buying his popcorn, he walked past, lent into my ear and went, ‘Legend’. [Laughs]. I thought, ‘Ooh’. Then, amazingly, as I was giving me ticket to the hip-kid, he went ‘Legend’ to me. Sometimes it’s ‘Living Legend’, which I like because it means I’m still alive, I’ve still got another shot. I’ve been very lucky to have a very long and, shall we say, illustrious career in music in Manchester. I think people realise that what you did, while you were in a group, was different and I think it puts a different feel on it. You weren’t just a normal musician, you were trying to break the mould and it’s wonderful that people appreciate that.
You’re on tour with your son, Jack. What’s the best piece of rock and roll fatherly advice you’ve passed off to your son?
[Laughs]. He’s quite interesting, Jack, because whenever I say something to him like, ‘You’re playing the bass part wrong, son’, he goes, ‘No I’m not’. I keep thinking, ‘Where does he get that from?’ Of course, I realise it’s a younger me. No, you lead by example. If you do things properly, you treat people properly. Rob Gretton [Joy Division and New Order manager] always said to me, ‘Be careful on the way up because you met the same people on the way down’. That was the best bit of advice I ever had. What he was saying was, ‘Be nice or people won’t be nice to you’ and it was as simple as that. That’s what I always say to Jack, ‘You’ve got to treat people the way you’d like to be treated. It’s a bloody good thing you’re not in New Order, isn’t it.’
Everyone knows you as Hooky, but what’s the second best nickname you’ve had?
Twat-Face. ‘Where’s Twat-Face?’ That seemed to stick for quite a while.
Saturday 14th February 2015: Astor Theatre, Perth
Sunday 15th February 2015: The Gov, Adelaide
Wednesday 18th February 2015: Tivoli Theatre, Brisbane
Thursday 19th February 2015: Metro, Sydney
Saturday 21st February 2015: Corner Hotel, Melbourne
Sunday 22nd February 2015: Wrestpoint, Hobart