Hooky’s salute to legend Andy
PETER Hook led an emotional applause tribute at the Star and Garter to the pub’s popular landlord Andy Martin, a fortnight since his untimely death.
Manchester music legend Hooky was performing a special Joy Division set at the historic pub in a fundraising gig.
Andy had been excitedly helping to organise the gig alongside Peter and the charity before falling ill last month. He died on March 29 after the sudden illness aged 52, leading to heartfelt tributes from across the Manchester music and hospitality industry.
Hook and his band The Light performed a unique Joy Division set at the gig on Friday night – kicked off by playing the same setlist the band played at their very first Manchester gig as Joy Division at the Pips club in the city in 1978 and followed by their greatest hits.
But before the start of the music, Peter paused to ask fans to pay tribute to the Star and Garter’s Andy who has been praised for his support of the grassroots music scene in Manchester over the past 20 years.
Peter said: “I was going to say let’s hold a minute’s silence, but he wasn’t the kind of guy who liked silence.
“So, Andy,” he said before leading a rousing round of applause and cheers from across the venue.
Peter also paid tribute at the gig to his bandmate Ian Curtis, who died on the eve of the band’s first American tour in 1980, dedicating Love Will Tear Us Apart to the singer at the finale of the night.
The pub, on Fairfield Street, had been chosen as the location for the special charity gig thanks to its place in the Manchester music scene, as well as the recently installed mural to Joy Division’s frontman Curtis on its wall.
Fans enrolled in a charity ballot in a bid to win tickets for the gig organised by music and mental health social enterprise Headstock, which raised an incredible £18,500 for the free confidential Shout text service for those in need of mental health support.
Peter was also joined on the night by photographer Philippe Carly, who took the iconic image of Curtis at a Joy Division gig at the Plan K club in Belgium in 1979, and street artist Akse who created the mural using the image on the side of the Manchester pub.
Philippe joined Hooky on a panel that also included Ian’s best friend from childhood, Kelvin Briggs, as well as Joy Division’s first roadie Carl ‘Twinny’ Bellingham for a lively Q&A session at the start of the night.
Peter reflected on the first-ever Joy Division gig held in Manchester.
He said: “We booked a gig in Pips, it was by the cathedral, and at that time we were called Warsaw, but there was this band in London called Warsaw Pakt and we didn’t want people to confuse us, so that’s when Ian decided we needed a name change. He was reading the House of Dolls at the time and he picked out the name Joy Division.
“So that’s why we changed the name of the band – but it was half way through the advertising campaign which really p **** d off the guy at Pips, but we were very excited as it was one of our first headline gigs.
“The material had been coming on really well in that past six months, you’ll see from the setlist it’s a really strange mix of punk stuff and what you’d consider to be Joy Division stuff.
“But the gig was very exciting, Ian brought along a record and said ‘I’m going to play this before we go on, it’s a German band,’ it was Kraftwerk. But while it was playing someone dropped a bottle on the floor and Ian went over and started kicking it off the dancefloor, being Mr Nice Guy, but this big bouncer came out and grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and dragged him out for kicking glass on the dancefloor!
“So then we had to go and beg this guy to let him back in for the gig.” But it wasn’t to be the end of the drama, for Hook added of the show: “It ended in an almighty fight. We were playing this very important gig with our new name, we were so buzzing about it, and all the audience could do was roll from one side to the other which was all our mates, there was the Salford lot and all these guys from Liverpool started joining in.
“So yeah, we’re hoping we don’t get that tonight!”