Offering tall tales and ripping yarns in which he reconstructs entire conversations from the early 1980s with suspiciously precise recall, Peter Hook carries on the story he has already partly told in his Haçienda nightclub and Joy Division books. It begins with the group’s decision to carry on without Ian Curtis. Having all their equipment stolen in New York, they returned to the UK and bought all-new kit. This was partly what set them on a different course as a synth-based band.
He makes no secret of his dislike of singer Bernard Sumner, taking every opportunity to ridicule him. Likewise he has little respect for Gillian Gilbert, the keyboard player, and he credits her with minimal creative input.
It’s fascinating to read about the absolute mess of New Order’s business and tax affairs. They naively took little interest in their accounts, with their finances catastrophically tied up in the economic black hole that was the Haçienda, and they wasted millions owing to mismanagement.
Hook’s tales of hedonism, groupies and wild rock-star behaviour are at odds with the myth of New Order as a somewhat dour, icy unit: “On record, of course, we remained a perfect cerebral proposition, beloved of intellectuals everywhere. In real life, however, we continued to lay waste to that image wherever we went.”
There’s also a fair bit of what went wrong in the New Order democracy. Hook blames the other three for attempting to minimise his input, placing his bass too low in the mix and making them even more of a synth band in the process: “And it was funny, because much later, when Bernard went off to do Electronic with Johnny Marr, I'd hear that he was doing the same to Johnny. Barney had one of the world's best guitarists on board and and filling all the tracks up and leaving Johnny just one track for he’d layer hundreds of keyboards and sequencers on the songs, mixing them and filling all the tracks up and leaving Johnny just one track for his guitar.” In fact, according to Hook, Marr had initially suggested working with him instead (“hand on heart, it happened”).
From the late 1980s, New Order seemed to become a battle of egos between Sumner and Hook, both regarding themselves as the keeper of the legacy. Sumner’s own book, Chapter and Verse, is frequently referenced in this one, with Hook swearing on his children’s lives that certain statements were completely false.
In addition to the running narrative, there are discographies and tour listings for each year of the group, with Hook’s added commentary. There are also “geek alert” boxes in which technical equipment and processes are explained.
This is a huge piece of work – 752 pages – and you do wonder how he can remember so much from so long ago, but it’s a very entertaining read that rattles along with endless anecdotes and a healthy dose of retrospective wisdom. It could have been even bigger. In an interview on the Salon website, Hook is quoted as saying: "The actual book was 300,000 words and 1,200 pages, and the publisher insisted we cut it down to below 800. We actually lost a third of the book, which was heartbreaking. So it had a hell of a lot more detail, and a hell of a lot more stories and geek alerts in it. It was another book, basically. So we’ve got that held in reserve for whenever we can find a way to use it."
Things go really wrong as the band become increasingly estranged and work on solo projects (Electronic, The Other Two, Revenge), Hook becomes a cocaine addict, they are forced to record Republic (which Hook regards as a Summer solo LP) to save the Factory debts, but Factory goes bankrupt anyway. Later come Hook’s alcoholism and Hook and Sumner beginning to loathe the sight of one another, until Hook finally announced that he’d left the group in 2007. He believed that they had split up, but that wouldn’t be the end. Sumner reconvened with Morris and Gilbert to record an additional “New Order” album (released in 2015) and ugly legal tangles would follow. It’s an all-too-familiar story of how a bunch of young and ambitious friends end up being business associates at best and arch enemies at worst.
One other thing you can’t help noticing is that the death toll in this story has been fairly drastic:
• Ian Curtis died in 1980, aged 23.
• Martin Hannett, their producer, died in 1991, aged 42.
• Rob Gretton, their manager, died in 1999, aged 46.
• Tony Wilson, Factory boss, died in 2007, aged 57.
and
• Caroline Aherne, his wife from 1994–97, died in 2016, aged 52.
Substance is often funny and often tragic, but always fascinating.
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