Peter Hook brings the music of Joy Division, and some New Order, to LA for two shows

Bassist Peter Hook worked as a DJ in the years immediately after New Order broke up in 2007, ending his three decades as a founding member of that band along with its predecessor, Joy Division.

It was a good gig, decent money, and fun, too, he says. But still.

“I mean, it was fantastic,” Hook says. “I was really enjoying DJing. Getting paid to play other people’s music is a great thing. But getting paid to play your own music is the be-all and end-all.”

At that point, Hook had fallen out with his New Order bandmates, guitarist Bernard Sumner and drummer Stephen Morris, both of whom also founded Joy Division, and keyboardist Gillian Gilbert, upset that they continued to use the name over his objection.

But that band rarely played songs from its Joy Division past, he says, and with the 30th anniversary of Curtis’s death in 2010, Hook thought there might be a way for him to celebrate that legacy.

“I was struggling to figure out how to do it,” he says. “I didn’t want to impersonate the group, because I think that’s a heinous crime.”

Then it occurred to him that there was a whole lot more music than “Love Will Tear Us Apart,” “Control,” and the handful of other songs most people knew from Joy Division’s albums, “Unknown Pleasures” and “Closer.” And those were the songs he wanted to play most.

“The ones you ignored are actually the ones that you would like to play,” Hook says. “Wouldn’t it be good if you could play them all? So I thought, ‘Why don’t we do that then? Why don’t we play “Unknown Pleasures”?’

“Because most people have heard Joy Division only on record,” he says. “They’ve never heard them live, and Joy Division were a very different sound live than we were on record. So that was it.”

Peter Hook and the Light formed in 2010 and since then has toured regularly to play the songs he helped create as a young man in Manchester in the late ’70s.

The band comes to Los Angeles on Sept. 8-9 to play shows at the Theatre at Ace Hotel that will include all of “Unknown Pleasures” and “Closer,” as well as a set of New Order songs, too.

“This was the truth that struck me,” Hook says on a video call the morning after a recent concert in Atlanta. “It was about me being so proud and so passionate about Joy Division, and wanting people to share it with, really.”

Finding a voice

Joy Division often centered Hook’s melodic basslines in the mix, so that was no problem. And finding musicians to replicate Sumner’s sparse guitar and Morris’s metronomic drumming wouldn’t prove impossible.

But Curtis’s voice, an urgent, almost pleading baritone – that wouldn’t be easy to replace, Hook thought.

“I had three singers lined up, three people to sing, and once the keyboard criticism began they were terrified,” Hook says of online critics of him even thinking about replacements for Curtis. “They couldn’t handle it. I was quite shocked because maybe I’m a little older and I’m thinking, ‘Oh, you know, (bleep) ’em.’

“These three people were scared off,” Hook says. “They wouldn’t do it. And Rowetta from Happy Mondays said to me, ‘You’re gonna have to do it.’

“I was like, ‘Oh (bleep),’” he says. “I’d never envisaged that. And it wasn’t an easy decision to make.

“Frankly, it was terrifying, mate,” Hook says. “The learning process and stepping into Ian’s shoes was frankly terrifying. It took me at least six, nine months.

“I mean, I can’t honestly say that I’m comfortable in it now,” he says. “But I managed to get a pair, and Ian’s shoes fit pretty well.

“The interesting thing was moving into New Order,” Hook says of filling the vocalist role, which in that band is performed by Sumner, or Barney as he’s commonly known. “Barney’s shoes were a lot easier to fill.

“We’d written all the songs, lyrics and vocal lines together for many years, so there was a great attachment to that. I found New Order a hell of a lot more easy and was very comfortable very soon.”

Sound shaper

For as much as Hook is critical of Sumner and Morris – whom, along with Gilbert, he sued over New Order royalties, eventually settling out of court – he has only praise for singer and lyricist Curtis.

That generosity of spirit also extends to the late producer Martin Hannett, who greatly influenced the sound of New Order’s records in the studio in ways that the band initially did not like – “hated” might be the more accurate term.

In the 2007 documentary “Joy Division,” Hook laughs as he says the dislike of Hannett’s impact on their records might be the only thing he and Sumner agree on, though today, he’s completely changed his tune.

“I mean, mate, to be honest with you, it’s just maturity,” Hook says of his change of heart about Hannett. “Because I was an idiot. And Barney was an idiot as well. And we just wanted to sound like the Clash. We wanted to sound like the Sex Pistols.

“Martin gave us this wonderfully mature, polished, gorgeous-sounding record, and we were going, ‘(Bleep) off, we’re punks, we hate the world, turn it up,’” he says. “We were just idiots, we really were. And we bore a grudge.

“I mean, the fact this fight me and Barney are having now – we split up in 2007 and we’ve been fighting for 15 years and it shows no sign of de-escalating.

“This really is a fight to the death, and that just shows you how much we bore a grudge,” Hook says.

The innovative techniques Hannett used – looping, echoes, filters and delays among them – made the Joy Division records much more timeless than releases by many of their contemporaries. So yeah, Hook says, even though Hannett could be difficult, he helped make the band become what it did.

“What did he say Joy Division was? ‘Three Man United supporters and a genius,’” Hook says, laughing at the memory. “He didn’t mince his words, Martin, to say the least.

“And he was right. At that time, he was right.”

Now and then and the future

Notes of regret surface often as Hook talks of Curtis, whose lyrics touched on universal themes that still resonate with listeners today.

“Ian’s words, and Joy Division’s message of alienation and confusion and what the hell’s going to happen in the world is just as obvious now as it was then,” Hook says. “I mean, we were teenagers when we wrote that music, and that was how we felt.

“So the thing is, is that we found a vehicle to launch it on, which was punk,” he says. “And I think people now maybe take comfort and a bit of security from the music, like we all did when we were kids.”

He also regrets that he and the others in and around Joy Division didn’t have the maturity at the time to see Curtis needed help and help him get it before his suicide.

“When I was younger, I only used to think from the group point of view,” Hook says of how his view on Curtis’s death has shifted with time. “‘Oh, what we could have done. We could have been touring arenas in America. We could have done 10 LPs.’ You know, ‘We could have been rich.’

“As you get older, you realize the thing that is the saddest part of Ian’s passing is nothing to do with the group,” he says. “It’s that he was a father. I mean, I got to walk my daughter to school on her first day. I got to take her to secondary school. All these things that I’ve so enjoyed.

“And I’ve watched Ian’s daughter grow up, and go through her own milestones and trials and tribulations. So it’s these things, and thinking about what Ian could have been as a friend later.

“He was a boy when he took his life,” Hook says. “So that aspect, as I’ve grown older, is the thing.”

At one point, Hook expresses regrets about the sorry state of his relationship with Sumner and Morris.

“I would admit that I would like a better relationship with the other two members of Joy Division,” he says. Then he lists all the reasons why that probably won’t happen, ending with, “So anyway, (bleep) ’em, you know.”

As for him, and his future, it will be on the road with the Light and the music of Joy Division and New Order for now, and the future, too.

“I’m amazed to still be able to do it and enjoy it as much as I do at 66 years old,” Hook says. “It’s just bonkers, mate.”

Not long ago he and his wife watched Paul McCartney play the Glastonbury festival on television.

“She said to me, she said, “Look at that. He’s 80,’” Hook says, laughing. “And I was going, ‘Oh (bleep) off! Please. I’ve still got to be doing this at 80?’

“But the chances are I’ll feel the same as I do now. And hopefully, get as much enjoyment as I would imagine he is doing now at 80.”