Peter Hook Quotes
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I remember driving there in the afternoon, and I remember getting there and loading the gear in. I don’t remember the sound check. We had one, I think, but we had no idea what to do because we’d never done one before. No one had the foggiest. Not knowing what to do made it exciting, though. Like, now, everybody’s got a stage manager and a sound guy, lights, and so on. The bands know all about sound checks and levels, equipment and all that. Now they even have music schools to teach you that kind of stuff. Back then you knew fuck-all. You didn’t have anyone professional, just your mates, who, like you, were clueless; you had a disco PA and a sleepy barmaid. It’s something I find quite sad about groups today, funnily enough, the careerism of it all. I saw this program once, a “battle of the bands” sort of thing. It had Alex James from Blur on it and Lauren Laverne and some twat from a record company, and they’d sit there saying what they thought of the band: “Your bass player’s shit and your image needs work; lose the harmonica player.” All the bands just stood there and took it, going, “Cheers, man, we’ll go off and do that.” I couldn’t believe it. I joined a band to tell everyone to fuck off, and if somebody said to me, “Your image is shit,” I’d have gone, “Fuck off, knob head!” And if someone had said, “Your music’s shit,” I would have nutted them. That to me is what’s lacking in groups. They’ve missed out that growing-up stage of being bloody-minded and fucking clueless. You have to have ultimate self-belief. You have to believe right from the word go that you’re great and that the rest of the world has to catch up with you. Of us lot, Ian was the best at that. He believed in Joy Division completely. If any of us got downhearted it was always him who would cheer us up and get us going again. He’d put you back on track.
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We were like, ‘Hey, what are you doing!?’ but soon twigged they were trying to give us a proper Japanese welcome by carrying our bags for us. Great. This was the life. Then we looked round and saw Gillian still struggling with hers. Turns out that in this culture they don’t help a woman. We got her a trolley.
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We've had a problem finding a vocalist. We have not been lucky yet to find the one. I think the problem is that the three of us have such a pedigree of vocalist, that if we come out with someone that's not good we'll obviously be slated!
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I think people expect mud at festivals, I think you'd be asking for your money back if you didn't get it.
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There was a lot of downtime sitting by Mike, so I read. I had a little table on which I had my pile of books and, by the end, they were nearly as high as the studio ceiling. I used to get all the song titles from them. Even the album titles, as it turned out, because ‘A startling tale of power, corruption and lies’ was a review quote from the Daily Telegraph on the back of 1984 by George Orwell. ‘Leave Me Alone’ came from Tender Is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald, and ‘Ultraviolence’ was from A Clockwork Orange, to name but a few.
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It was only after we recorded Unknown Pleasures that I could hear and begin to take notice of the words, and it was quite startling then to see how they changed between that album, where they were still quite detached and aggressive, to Closer, which is even darker and not detached at all but really introspective and quite frightening—especially of course when you listen to it in light of what later happened.
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You reply to a fan, you get a fan for life, Rob would say. I should put that in my rules for a group, really.
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Sarcasm is a Manchester trait.
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Movement came out while we were away. The reviews were OK, and though I grew to like it more and more as the years went by, we weren’t especially happy with it at the time. When we listened to the finished product what we heard was the sound of a band whose producer had lost faith. You could hear it. The album had ended up sounding like a Joy Division album with New Order vocals.
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I’ve read his book. I know he says the problem’s me and professes to be bemused by my antipathy towards him, and it’s true that I came out of rehab without that safety valve of drink and drugs, no ‘off’ button. I was more assertive than before. But he was behaving like the life of a rock star was the worst kind of life there was, and in my opinion he was taking it out on the group, the management, the technicians, and now the audience, and there was one person – one, me – who wasn’t prepared to let him get away with it.
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We had wanted to use a final sample to finish the twelve-inch track off, “That’s All Folks!” from the Warner Brothers cartoons. But we were quoted $30,000 for one use. And we were on their label. Just shows you . . . no favouritism.
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On ‘Bizarre Love Triangle’ we’d had one of our first arguments about the level of the bass guitar. Our engineer Mike Johnson had insisted to the others they were wrong to suggest turning it down. ‘It’s a great counterpoint,’ he’d said. ‘That’s what New Order is all about.
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Before you go thinking I’m some kind of King Canute – it was my stance against programmed music that made our sound the way it was (even if I do say so myself), keeping it a hybrid of rock and dance: the sound of the future. Instead I decided to bury myself in the recording process, becoming the band’s recording engineer.
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Like the time I threw out Pete Murphy of Bauhaus for saying those six immortal words to Slim when he'd forgotten his backstage pass: 'Don't you know who I am?
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Barney told me he’d written ‘Liar’ about our manager. I was really shocked when I saw the lyrics. Poor Rob.
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Adidas produced a limited-edition pair of Haçienda trainers, designed by Yohji Yamamoto (Saville has worked with Yohji since the late 1980s, creating his catalogues and advertisements). They retailed for £345 but people queued up from midnight just to be first through the doors to buy a pair. The shoes disappeared in twenty minutes - all soled out.
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Then came a rather surreal exchange about Joy Division T-shirts, with us proudly proclaiming we did not sell merchandise because we didn’t believe in self-promotion of any kind, preferring to let the music speak for itself. ‘Rubbish,’ boomed Scotty. ‘How come wherever I go I see Joy Division and New Order T-shirts, worn and for sale, eh?’ Now, we had no idea where he was going to see these things, but we were all speechless anyway. He continued, ‘I don’t believe you, and will be fining you accordingly.’ So we would get fined £10,000 for not doing our own T-shirts.
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I suppose in the end it's almost too easy to look back and say what you should have done, how you might have changed things. What's harder - what's much, much harder - is to accept what you actually did do.
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The fact is that you don't want to be away forever, but you want to lead a normal life.
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But then I quite enjoy when something goes wrong, because when I watch DJs that take it very seriously, it's nice when you make a mistake and laugh about it.
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We don't to be some kind of rock supergroup for the sake of being a supergroup. You want to change things and say something fresh and new so you appeal to people as a new group.
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We need to talk about what we are going to do and see and decide. We'll have to wait and see.
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Ten things you should always do when you form a group 1. Work with your friends 2. Find like-minded people 3. Have ultimate self-belief 4. Write great songs 5. Get a great manager 6. Live in Manchester 7. Support each other through thick and thin 8. Realise no one person is bigger than the group (thanks to Gene Simmons for that one) 9. Watch where the money goes 10. Always get separate legal advice for everything before you sign; failing that, ask your mam and dad.
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...if you're going to waste an opportunity, there are a few important things to remember. Do it in style. Do it in public. And, above all, do it in Manchester.