Peter Hook: Shining a Light, following New Orders.

 

His name in Lights, so to speak.

He is, almost universally, known as “Hooky”.
Developing a bass sound so distinctive many are still trying to emulate – and still not quite getting it.
Even his stance and silhouette while playing instantly identifiable.
Although he has passed some tips onto his son, who now even stands beside him onstage spooling out some of his Pa’s famous basslines.
But back to dad, and his notable list of credits: Producer, book author, venue part-owner (but the title of his book The Hacienda – How Not To Run a Club might give a hint how that went…), in his own bands – Revenge, Monaco, Freebass, The Light – and that couple he started off in you may have heard of: Joy Division and, from 1980 to his extremely unamicable 2007 exit, one called New Order.
From a planned one-off anniversary performance of Joy Division’s first masterpiece, Unknown Pleasures, Hook is now somewhat keeper of his own flame, each tour he now makes chronologically centring on an album of the New Order back catalogue. Which means he’s now up to a celebration of Get Ready – home of the splendid Crystal and 60 Miles An Hour among other delights.
But back when he was still sorting out which way things were going to go, one of his first go-rounds was to Australia. Fifteen years on, he’s still coming.

Variable Pleasures. 

It’s a striking image. The graphic representation of the flashes from a dying Pulsar star in fact. But as an album cover it’s as iconic as that baby in a swimming pool or those four guys on a pedestrian crossing.

It is Joy Division’s Unknown Pleasures. When released in 1979, the critics embraced it. But as the band’s tragedy unfolded, with Ian Curtis becoming a generational martyr, the myth and influence of the album grew. Even now there are echoes of its moody atmospherics in music still seeping out from disaffected young men and women in bedsits everywhere from Fitzroy to Brooklyn.

Peter Hook’s throbbing bass was one of the centrepieces of its sound, but even he certainly didn’t think it would endure. As the man himself offers, in a Mancunian accent where you half-expect him to be called from the phone at any moment because of ‘…trouble at mill…’: “If someone told me years ago I’d be going to Australia to play Unknown Pleasures in 2010 I would have just said ‘Don’t be fucking ridiculous’.” That he’s now going tour-to-tour working through all the New Order back catalogue probably amuses him even more.

He offers the back story: The idea actually came from (Manchester’s) Macclesfield Council – we were supposed to celebrate Ian’s life and the record’s 30^th anniversary. But naturally, being a government idea…it all fell through,” he chuckled drily.

“For whatever reasons, we’ve never celebrated one, five, ten, or twenty years of it – and I decided we weren’t going to let it happen again. To be honest, I thought we’d play it once at home – and I want point out that every time we did it was because I was asked to do it, not from me pushing to do it. I’m gratified people did, and the journey we’ve gone on with it all since.”

That history – and particularly that first album’s effect on people then and now - makes people very protective of it, and their memories. Hook allows he’s careful as he’s worked through playing respects to the whole catalogue. “I’ve got records that mean so much to me: Ian Dury’s New Boots, Nico’s Chelsea Girl, The Clash’s first. Of course you don’t want people making a mess of them, even accidentally.”

He heard the whispers that he was committing some sort of sacrilege, and is typically blunt in his response: “If someone had come up to me after any of it and ‘That was shit, mate,’ I would have packed it all away. And yeah, we had people saying that before we got it all up and running for these years now, but nobody’s says it after they hear us.”

“And those who say I’m ‘just cashing in’? Fuck, I waited 30 years just to ‘cash in’? Yeah, I had the winning lottery ticket – and just left it in my pants pocket for 30 years? I fucking wish.” The laugh that followed was suitably dark.

“The fact is there were songs on both Joy Division’s and particularly the early New Order records we just never played live. Not really technical or musical ability problems – more that it was just easier to ‘rock out’, and the more delicate songs just fell by the wayside. C’mon, when we started we were 21 and punk as fuck - and really just wanted to take everybody’s ‘eads off with the racket.”

Hook also admits that the icy and lonely sound of those early records was probably more down to the eccentric genius of producer Martin Hannett than four Manchester kids bashing away. “He gave us, and Unknown Pleasures, that aura that was very lasting, very ethereal. (Now estranged guitarist/singer) Bernard (Sumner) and me would have just made a punk record – we were all about The Clash and The Pistols, we certainly wouldn’t have put in the mystique Martin added to it.”

“But it was like working with a mad professor most often – we really didn’t even know what he was talking about half the time.”

It was all about the arrogance of youth, apparently. Even they didn’t understand the greatness of what they achieved, particularly early on. In fact, they actively disliked the result. “Fook no! I hated it. I thought he’d emasculated our music, when he’d actually empowered it. He found and brought out depths we certainly never knew were in it.”

So, heading toward 50 years on, Hook and his compatriots in The Light add the necessary knowledge, context, and hindsight to their live performances. And some compromise is achievable it seems. "When we play the Joy Division material, I kind of hope it’s a cross between Martin’s, ours’, and the audience’s idea of what it should be. His, er, ‘atmosphere’ and the ‘balls out’ we put there,” he smiled. “Back then, we probably wanted Love Will Tear Us Apart to be sung from the terraces – and it often is now, even though it’s still pretty fucking bleak.”

Many of the Joy Division songs, complete with Curtis’ increasingly despairing worldview as he spiraled down, have proven surprisingly durable, and even surprised and thrived when attacked in unexpected ways. As Hook explained, “We’ve even done Unknown Pleasures with orchestra and choir – that’s a real long way from punk,” he offers. “I used to piss myself laughing when Deep Purple or somebody did that back in the ‘70s. What a wank, I thought - but here we are.” You can almost hear the shake of his head, before he gets sincere. “But it can sound fantastic – Atmosphere is sublime with an orchestra driving it. Unfortunately, we still can’t afford to take a 20-piece string section with us everywhere.”

Thus, The Light is a rock and roll band - featuring Hook offspring, Jack Bates, often playing dad’s trademark melodic basslines while the old fella does the singing and other duties. What started as maybe a touch nepotistic budgetary constraint over ago has developed. Jack now well-regarded in his own right, even being bassist for the latest incarnation of Billy Corgan’s Smashing Pumpkins.

 “I do see myself in him sometimes,” a proud dad admits. “As his confidence grew over the years, I watched the bass get held lower and lower. But I think he’s worked out I pinched that stance from watching (The Clash’s) Paul Simonon…” 

Hook & Son: low-slung bass to the gentry.

But having been through the million pitfalls and traps that being in a band can confront you, Hook Sr. was at least well-placed to see his boy right. “Oh yeah, there’s certainly still rules that still stand. Here’s the first one: Don’t sign anything when you’re 19. I’ve got this little game with my solicitor – he’ll show me some piece of paper, and I’ll go ‘What fucking idiot did that?’, and he’ll just turn the page over: ‘Well, that’d be you…’. Thirty or 50 years on, and I’m still paying.” Ah, showbiz.

But even such benefit of hindsight cynicism can't make for all happy endings. The other surviving members of Joy Division, Sumner and drummer Stephen Morris – who went on from there to spend 20 years with Hooky and made New Order one of the world’s biggest bands before fairly unceremoniously, er, hooking him - still mainly communicate through their various solicitors. While the money issues have largely been solved, stubborn personalities are still making for what seems like a somewhat dysfunctional family.

“Yeah, it still is a bit,” Hook reflects. “I sometimes feel like the drunk uncle at Christmas lunch – sitting and grumbling in the corner.” But then he gets a bit more reflective and nostalgic: “It is a shame, yes. Particularly when anniversaries and milestones come around. Unknown Pleasures and everything that came after gave us the lives we have today. It is sad we can’t share it. I owe a lot to Barney, Stephen – and Ian, and what we did together.”

“Yes, of course we should acknowledge it all – even just walking around with sandwich boards with that cover on it, yelling ‘This is a great fucking record, you should hear it!’. I’d be happy with that.”

Hooky, and some chaps he used to know.

The Hope of P.J.Harvey.

P.J.Harvey, ICC Theatre, January 2017.


What PJ Harvey does now goes beyond mere rock'n'roll. Presenting records as wilfully 'difficult' as Let England Shake and the blunt reportage of The Hope Six Demolition Project live would be a fool's errand to any lesser artist.

But after negotiating the mysteries and metal detectors of the still-with-new-car-smell ICC, there was other challenging music as warm up. The latter element of Xylouris White is Jim White of Dirty Three. His sometimes skittering/sometimes booming drumming ricocheted off George Xylouris' Cretan lute. One moment it was a goat-herder by a meandering stream, then a Zorba dance on a tank. Impressive and puzzling.

More drums, this time through a hushed darkness, announced PJ Harvey's arrival as the ten-piece band marched on — a black-clad second line at a hipster's funeral. Chain Of Keys was an ominous welcome to the urban stories of The Hope Six Demolition Project, The Ministry Of Defence threatening, more disturbing as delivered by her so-plaintive voice. These songs have a life now not entirely present on the record. There were sudden stops, sudden blackness — like you had to blink and look away from what she saw.

A suite of Let England Shake songs was almost relief — as if The Words That Maketh Murder is a cheery jig and reel comparatively. The tour for that album presented its sometimes blood-drenched songs as austere sepia-toned memories. Here, with a backdrop of a brutalist concrete wall, it was even darker.

Harvey was drama on spindly legs. Throwing big shadowy shapes with a saxophone as prop, security blanket, weapon. She's a hieroglyph, a banshee, maybe even death. Then she sighed the foggy regret of When Under Ether, becoming a fragile girl making the hardest decision. There was no between-song patter — that contact might somehow break the spell.

Then back to The Hope Six Demolition Project for a troubled walk Near The Memorials To Vietnam And Lincoln, and the messed-up blues of The Ministry Of Social Affairs. The descent into madness of Down By The Water was a return to the familiar. Polly Jean Harvey dropped the mask(s) for a moment, to introduce a phenomenal band centred around long-time collaborators, John Parish and kinda-hometown-boy Mick Harvey. 

River Anacostia offered odd beauty, ebbing away on the ensemble's voices alone. Of course that's not all: her snarling take on Dylan's Highway 61 Revisited gave way to a final Is This Desire?. You filed out, exhausted from the emotions she had torn out of your chest.
Performance art.
Art as performance.
Extraordinary, again.