New Odour ... UK musician Peter Hook says The Hobbit was more factual than ex pal Bernard Sumner’s autobiography. Source: Supplied
PETER Hook calls them New Odour.
That’d be New Order, the Manchester Hook co-founded in 1980 after the tragic demise of Joy Division. His bass was a New Order trademark until he left bitterly in 2007.
His band mates were angry Hook was playing the two Joy Division albums in full with his other band The Light.
Hook was angry Bernard Sumner, one of his oldest friends and New Order’s singer, was playing New Order songs in his other band Bad Lieutenant.
Hook had got bored of New Order’s live shows playing the same songs, but didn’t expect the then-dormant New Order to replace him on bass and start touring again.
Since then it’s been an ugly feud played out in music interviews and court rooms: they don’t want him to use Joy Division’s imagery, he doesn’t want them to use New Order’s name.
It’s also spilt over into rival biographies, Hook took a few potshots in the final chapters of his Joy Division biography Unknown Pleasures, Sumner firing back in last year’s Chapter and Verse.
Sumner went into great detail about his problems with Hook (in more detail than making New Order albums in some cases) and claimed everyone else stayed in New Order and only Hook is gone and that told fans that says it all.
Hook is in the midst of writing his own book on New Order’s incredible career.
How is your book on New Order going?
“Good. The fantastic thing about Bernard’s book is that it was so sh — it’s left it wide open for me to do a proper New Order book. In many ways he’s done me a favour. By the time you got to the last third of the book it was total character assassination of me. It’s concocted. To me, in my opinion, his book is like a letter to the fans — this is why we did New Order without Peter. To be honest, his book has as much to do with fact as The Hobbit. But The Hobbit was a more factual book than Bernard’s.”
Peter Hook can play a bass low and can hold a grudge for England. Source: Supplied
Bernard claims in his book that everyone remained in New Order, or working for New Order, except you and that that says it all to the fans.
“That’s not true. I pulled him up on that with the publishers. Five people have ‘left’, as Bernard puts it. To me New Order split up when Bernard and I stopped writing together. We started Joy Division together, we started New Order together. The fact we aren’t together when both our parts are so recognisable and so invaluable to the band, to me it’s a split. The thing he makes a big deal about is if you leave a band you have less legal recourse than if the band splits. It’s simply down to money and power. If you leave a band you give up all your rights to the name, copyrights, etc. If the band splits each member retains he copyright. So what’s he doing is for legal purposes.”
It’s quite sad it came to this, isn’t it?
“It’s really sad but after three and a half years of fighting, which is still ongoing, I’m actually used to it now. In a funny way, the emotion’s gone and this is just about business and money. My big problem is for the fans. They’re not New Order and they’re masquerading as New Order. To be honest with you, their performance is the same music we’ve been playing since 1996. It’s ridiculous. They’ve never changed the set. When you watch them, and I have, it really does seem they’re going through the motions and just cashing in. That’s sad. I’d hate to think the fans would think for one minute that they are New Order. They’re different to New Order. I don’t pretend to be Joy Division or New Order. What I do is very straight forward, it’s an interpretation and a celebration of the music, with different people. Everyone looks at it and knows exactly what I’m doing. New Order bears no relation to the group.”
So there’s someone playing your basslines in the new New Order and also in The Light.
“Yes, my position is quite odd. I’ve got two people playing my bassline in two different groups. One in The Light, one in New Odour. All I want to do is play the bassline. It’s really weird position to be in a the position to have two people mimicking you. I’m glad one of them is my son, he’s a much better mimic than the other gent.”
New Order in less miserable times: left to right Gillian Gilbert, Peter Hook, Bernard Sumner, Stephen Morris. Source: News Limited
As you knew New Order have just signed to Mute and are making a new album without you. How do you feel about that?
“Bernard found it very difficult recording the last New Order album with me. God knows what he’ll be like now doing it without me! To my knowledge Gillian (Gilbert) didn’t do hardly any writing in New Order, I don’t expect that to change. Stephen (Morris) had taken a very back seat role in New Order in my opinion. Unless (recent member) Phil Cunningham transforms himself from when we wrote Waiting for the Siren’s Call and unless this joker on bass is very prolific Bernard’s going to have a tougher time. But he will be getting his own way. He’ll have nobody pulling him up, nobody criticising him, nobody offering other input. It just means he gets his own way. Old men are cantankerous, they like to get their own way.”
You know fans dream about you burying the hatchet and joining New Order again..
“I have a lot of dreams about it where we’re getting back together again, funnily enough. But I don’t know the riffs. Isn’t that weird? It’s an odd one. At the moment we’re still fighting, very much so, this legal fight has accelerated to the point where we’re just about to go to court. Until that stops, there could never be any idea of reforming. What we’ve said about each other, Bernard with his ridiculous fantasy of a book and what I say about him, even in this interview, it means you’re not going to get back together. There’s no level ground. Not just yet. In an odd way I want it to happen as well. But I’m f---ed if I’m going to let them turkeys do me over! No way man. I’ve been in this business too long to let someone take advantage like that, especially when it’s not deserved.”
This tour of Australia features you playing Low-Life and Brotherhood in full, but you also play Joy Division songs as well?
“My aim is to play every song I’ve ever written and recorded before I shuffle off this mortal coil and join Ian (Curtis, late Joy Division singer). Once we moved into New Order, after finally getting Joy Division back after 30 odd years it was going to be a crime to lose it again. So we came up with the idea of supporting ourselves playing New Order by playing Joy Division. Each night we play a different set of Joy Division, which is nice, it means you don’t lose it.”
New Order down to a trio in 2002 — Peter Hook’s face says it all. Source: News Limited
What’s easier to sing — Joy Division songs, with all the gravity around them, or New Order songs?
``It’s interesting. My register is closer to Ian’s, which makes it sort of easier, but the delivery and the intensity of Joy Division is much more than New Order. New Order is a lot lighter, even though Bernard is out of my register. I was worried about it, then I read an interview with (opera singer) Katherine Jenkins, she was saying you can train your voice to change your timbre. So I thought f--- it, if Katherine Jenkins can do it, I can do it. Ian’s shoes were pretty big ones to fill. I was worried, especially about the backlash of doing that. Bernard’s weren’t that big to fill. There was certainly less worry, shall we say, taking on the New Order songs.”
There must be songs you have never played live you’re now playing?
“I’ve worked out is that New Order were incredibly lazy. And they’ve not really changed now they’re pretending to be New Order. It was all about ability. Bernard was writing these guitar lines and these wonderful keyboard lines that Gillian simply couldn’t play. In my opinion, that was the reason a lot of these songs were shelved. When it came to play them live they didn’t sound as good as they did on the record. Bernard just switched off and a lot of them were dumped. With The Light, even though these boys didn’t write these songs they can play them really really well. Those songs that were difficult as a four piece, to be gracious, are easier for a five piece. A lot of these songs have not been played for so long. There’s those websites that tell you the last time a song was played. Some of the songs on Low-Life and Brotherhood haven’t been played for 25 to 28 years. Which is more or less since they were written. I get a song up now, like Face Up, Sunrise, all the ones that got elbowed, to play them again and watch people sing along, it’s great. Then there’s the ones that never got played, like Ecstasy, and people are really digging it.”
The early days: Joy Division with singer Ian Curtis, who died in 1980. Source: News Limited
And playing the albums in full mean you get to do instrumental tracks like Elegia
“The feud with the others meant they were playing Elegia with no bass. That’s a crime. This has been a pretty unique feud in rock and roll. I was doing the Joy Division stuff, which Bernard said he was so upset about he decided to reform New Order to combat that. They had the New Order material, I had the Joy Division material. So it was nice to move into New Order to get the songs back. Getting the songs back and playing them again has been absolutely wonderful. It reminds you of when it was quite a good time, when it was happy times in New Order. Maybe not happy times, but certainly less miserable times! Every time I get to Low-Life and Brotherhood, we were having a hell of a tussle on Brotherhood, it was make or break whether we went electronic or stayed rock. That’s why the two sides of Brotherhood are separate, Bernard wanted the acoustic and electronic side to be separate. It was a difficult time for the band. The fact the feud is still ongoing and I’ve still got legal action against the others over the use of the New Order name does colour it. I can’t wait for it to be finished and just enjoy the bloody music without being involved in this one one-upmanship which we’ve settled in.”
What you’re doing is good for the fans, rare songs in small venues that New Order would probably never play ...
“I’m a fan. I love both New Order and Joy Division. We did a show in Mexico on the last tour and we had 4000 people in this massive hall. I was saying to Jack, my son, I was terrified because the crowd was so big, we’re used to playing smaller venues. I said ‘I don’t like this’ I prefer it when I can intimidate the audience rather than the audience intimidate me. I’ve been lucky in my career to have both. I’ve played Glastonbury as a headliner three times, I’ve played to hundreds and thousands of people and I’ve played to five hundred people. It’s great to do both. There are drawbacks to both, but massive highs to both. I’m enjoying it. My wife says, quite correctly, the reason she could never imagine me going back to the others is that every time I do a gig now I come home smiling.”
May 2015 marks 35 years since Ian Curtis took his own life and ended Joy Division. Source: Supplied
It’s 35 years since Ian Curtis died this year ...
“It is an important year. Joy Division are still so revered, so popular and so influential. That needs celebrating. I’m working on that. I see grown men cry when we play songs from Closer. It made me want to cry as well. You’re giving something life that in many ways Ian’s death took away. Ian’s death took the life out of Joy Division. it was nice to resurrect it and do it again. I always felt Bernard underestimated a lot of the early material because it was rockier. He’d gone into this top 40 we had where it was all about the singles. It was deathly boring, I was very frustrated. Bernard and Stephen’s reluctance to change it was awful. The great thing about The Light, we play the albums, New Order was so prolific in that period, there’s loads of tracks you can play. I never get bored, I never get to that familiarity breeds contempt. And before all that I get to play Joy Division songs. It’s like being Bruce Springsteen.”
Peter Hook and the Light, Astor Theatre Perth February 14. The Gov Adelaide February 15. Tivoli Brisbane February 18. Metro Sydney February 19. Summersault Festival, Southbank, Melbourne, February 20. Corner Hotel Melbourne February 21. Wrestpoint Hobart February 22. Ticket details at metropolistouring.com
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