‘Someone needs to just bang our heads together’ says ex-New Order bassist

When ex-New Order and Joy Division bassist Peter Hook first began performing the music of his former bands in 2010, he was petrified. Especially in playing songs by Joy Division, whose music had been all but mothballed by the former members since their singer Ian Curtis died by suicide in 1980.

Hook had a lot to lose. First, he’d left New Order in acrimonious circumstances and his ex-bandmates were watching on closely with acidic displeasure and legal interest. Second, he was going to be singing these songs himself, a role he was none too comfortable with. And third, performing Joy Division music, one of the most beloved alternative bands of all time, carried pressures.

“I was so pissed off that New Order had played so few songs out of our own amazing back catalogue,” recalls Hook, 66, on a Zoom call from his home in Alderley Edge, near Manchester. “But we’d never celebrated anything to do with Joy Division either, which was heartbreaking. I was so nervous stepping into Ian Curtis’ shoes – and they were very big shoes to fill – and people’s expectations were very, very daunting and frightening.”

When Curtis died, the remaining Joy Division members – Hook, Bernard Sumner and Stephen Morris – formed New Order, also adding keyboardist Gillian Gilbert. New Order were one of the most innovative and successful synth-pop groups of the era, but they were personally dysfunctional and, after years of in-fighting and disharmony, Hook quit in 2007, believing that to be the end of the band.

Instead, they recruited two additional members and resumed touring as New Order in 2011. Legal challenges ensued from both parties about royalties and the use of band assets, with a settlement finally reached in 2017. With years of ugliness between them, Hook doesn’t hold back in interviews.

“They certainly are not New Order – that’s for sure,” he says vehemently. “The way they took the name was, in my opinion, absolutely disgraceful, and I’m still fighting it now. If they’d shown respect in what they did, if they’d told me what they were doing instead of springing it on me, then maybe I wouldn’t be so bullish. [It’s sad] to see us trash each other and the wonderful achievements we managed. Just like kids in the playground, someone needs to just bang our heads together, really!”

In 2010, Hook recruited members of his side-project band Monaco, as well as his bassist son, Jack, to form Peter Hook & The Light. He struck on the idea of presenting Joy Division’s albums in full sequential order, augmented with non-album singles such as Transmission, Atmosphere and, of course, Love Will Tear Us Apart.