No love lost, no songs forgotten
PETER HOOK is estranged from his former New Order bandmates, but hasn’t lost his connection to the group’s celebrated catalogue
“Some guy said to me, ‘Can you tell me why you’ve been in a group for 30 years and for the first 15 you wouldn’t do interviews, and for the last 15 you won’t f---in’ shut up?’ ”
Peter Hook laughs. And has plenty to say. Cheery and matey, the iconic and ... how do we write it ... former? ... New Order bassist brings his solo band, Peter Hook and the Light, to Club Soda Wednesday to perform the first two New Order albums, Movement and Power, Corruption & Lies, in whole, folding in the singles of the era, including the elemental Blue Monday.
“Some of the songs we’ll be playing in Montreal haven’t been played for 20-25 years,” Hook says. The tour follows his acclaimed recreations of New Order antecedent Joy Division’s albums Unknown Pleasures and Closer. (Hook brought the former to Club Soda in 2011.) “My idea was to play every song I’ve written and recorded at least once before I shuffle off this mortal coil.
“It’s hard work and it really means pushing the band harder. But it’s a nice contrast for me, because I always felt quite frustrated before New Order broke up in their reluctance to visit the older part of the catalogue. I couldn’t understand it. There was a real feel that Bernard (Sumner) and Stephen (Morris) were doing just enough to get by. Not really putting much into it. And in their masquerade as New Order now, they still have the same attitude, and are still playing pretty much the same set we played in 2006.”
Ah. This is as gentle as it will get. New Order is now an Old Feud, dating back to a dispute over whether the band broke up or Hook left in 2006, and with enough subsequent bad blood to feed the Borgias. I interviewed Sumner at Osheaga in August, and as he effortlessly reached behind him for a glass of chilled rosé, I realized it was the first time I’d discussed a third party without his name being mentioned. As in “the other guy.”
“I’m very complimented, actually, that two years after getting the band back, he’d still act like a prick,” Hook says. “That is really odd, innit? The fact that you got up his nose so much that he can’t say your name is actually quite ridiculous.”
This, then, is genuine bad feeling. “Their position is that I left New Or- der and therefore deserve nothing. It’s not what happened, because the band was split up. Their pretence has to be that (I) left New Order. And my thinking is they’re as much New Order as I am Joy Division. It’s the emperor’s new clothes.”
So there is no impending happy reunion. “No, I’m still seeking a legal remedy for what I consider their taking of the New Order name without my consent or knowledge. I’m also very, very unhappy with the settlement which landed on me, which was voted to me by them, which I don’t think is fair.”
Hook charges that he lost 25 per cent of the band trademark.
“You’d think they’d be going, ‘Well, f--- him, we’ve pulled it off — we’re in the limos, he’s in the tour bus. We’ve obviously won.’ ” Instead, Hook believes “he (Sumner) obviously feels guilty.”
As for his replacement, “I do love the fact that they’ve got their bass player doing interviews, cracking on about New Order when he’s a session man. This jerk, who doesn’t even use the right guitars ... he’s using a medium scale Fender guitar,” he says with distaste. “And the whole point of the New Order bass lines is that they sing because you use double-octave straightthrough neck bass guitars. He plays six-string lines on a four-string Fender.”
Well, the transformational brilliance of Joy Division and New Order was always steeped in pain. “People say artists should suffer to make great music, and we f---in’ suffered,” Hook says. There was Joy Division singer “Ian (Curtis)’s untimely demise.” There was the loss of all Joy Division masters, which disappeared when Factory Records went bankrupt. And only New Order could have the biggest-selling 12-inch single of all time — Blue Monday — and “lose 10p on every single copy sold.”
Even recently, there was the woman who discovered unreleased recordings and tried to leverage cash out of the band. “What can you say? She just wants more money. We offered a finder’s fee; she had in mind a figure that was 10 times that.
“I think in life, there’s not only respect you have to show, but respect you have to pay,” Hook says. He pays it to New Order’s legacy with this tour, which wowed Webster Hall in New York on Friday.
“I wanted to do something that was a bit more artistic and a bit more creative. And more demanding, not only for the band, but the audience. When we played Closer, the feeling of that album is intensely claustrophobic and intimate. And I could see the strain not only on the band’s face, but on the fans’. And that gives you something, whereas a greatest-hits set seems like the lowest common denominator.”
“Your fans became your fans because of all those songs, not just because of Bizarre Love Triangle.”
Hook will also remind people of that history with a forthcoming autobio, Inside New Order: Coming Up. It’s due Oct. 14. Of course, that is the same day Sumner releases his autobio.
“It’s gonna be like Blur and Oasis all over again,” Hook says, and of course, he’s wrong. Those bands put together couldn’t equal this story.
Peter Hook and the Light perform New Order’s Movement and Power, Corruption & Lies Wednesday at 8 p.m. at Club Soda, 1225 St-Laurent Blvd. Tickets cost $28. Call 514286-1010 or visit clubsoda.ca.