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Peter Hook on reclaiming the songs of New Order – Metro US

Peter Hook on reclaiming the songs of New Order

Peter Hook on reclaiming the songs of New Order
Jody Hartley. 

Peter Hook knows that he still has his work cutout for him. The legendary bassist of the seminal British Post-Punk band Joy Division and later the Alternative-Pop sensations New Order has been touring the world with his band, Peter Hook and the Light, devoting tours to recreating some of the classic recordings throughout his career for audiences dying to hear them. For his current tour, Peter Hook and the Light will be performing the New Order albums “Technique” and “Republic” in full as well as some fan-favorites and a set devoted the Joy Division era.

That’s the simple and pleasant part of the story, of course. When I spoke with the music legend over the phone, he explained to me that he would not be performing these records on the road — 13 at this point with only three left to go in the catalog, in his words — if it were not for the unceremonious split of New Order back in 2007. Since then, Hook formed this band as a way to just simply play music. But when the band New Order reformed without him, he took it personally. And rightfully so. 

“I’ve got a great relationship with New Order’s songs. I just wish I had great relationships with the other members of New Order,” – Peter Hook 

Peter Hook

Peter Hook. Photo: Jody Hartley

“When New Order split up in 2007, one of my great frustrations with the band was the songs that we didn’t play,” Hook explains. “We played a very similar set list all the time. There’s so many great songs that we just ignored, that Barney [Bernard Sumner, vocalist and multi-instrumentalist of New Order] didn’t want to play. Yeah, it was a hell of a frustration. So the thing is, is that when I started doing Joy Division, celebrating Joy Division in 2010, it seemed sort of logical to do the same thing with New Order. Now, when they found out that I was going to celebrate New Order, I’m pretty sure that’s when they decided to get the band back together again behind my back, you know? And excluding me, shall we say, from it, because they knew that I was going to do New Order. Maybe they thought they were either going to get it back or I was going to steal it from them. But I mean, certainly I had no intention of using the New Order name. To me it’s all about the music. I don’t want to pretend to be something I’m not. It’s about enjoying the music that I helped to write, and that everybody else is ignoring.”

While the Hook has been out on the road with Light treating fans to performances of these albums in their intended sequences and played to air-tight precision performances, I ask him if he feels a sense of reclamation of the material they are playing.  To that question, Hook offered a blunt yet frank answer. 

“Yeah, I mean put it this way: I’ve got a great relationship with New Order’s songs. I just wish I had great relationships with the other members of New Order,” says Hook. “I’ve got the songs back. Me and the songs are in love. It’s the honeymoon period. We’re all over each other. Unfortunately, with the other members of New Order, we’re still in the… shall we say cutting the trousers in half and looking at the cat with a saw, and things like that. Very, very bad divorce still ongoing, shall we say.” 

As such an integral part of the classic sounds Joy Division and the innovative dance-forward territory that New Order went during this period of the band, can you really blame Hook for his enthusiasm for celebrating the material night after night? With both of these records in particular Hook is not only rekindling his love of material that may have been made during a fraught and tense time in the band, but fully realizing songs he believed never reached their potential in the studio.

“The interesting thing about playing ‘Technique’ and ‘Republic’, obviously they’re very different. And they were also written… Maybe I can’t say under very different circumstances. But certainly one, we were definitely a group, shall we say. The second one, we were definitely not a group. I think our attitude toward each other was probably pretty much the same, truth be told. But ‘Technique’ is very well known in England, and ‘Republic’ isn’t. Whereas in America, ‘Republic’ was our best selling album. So even much bigger than ‘Technique’. So it’s going to be interesting to see what the reaction is. I mean it’s a tough LP. Technique is tough to play. It’s not easy. ‘Republic’, because of its different feel, is quite difficult to play. And there’s a wonderful sense of achievement when you do get it right. Probably, people don’t notice. But we do, because we’ve had to work so hard to get it up to a standard,” says Hook.  

Reclaiming these records, in a figurative way, is no small feat for Hook and he is finding both a sense of enjoyment and closure while celebrating them for the influential achievements that they are. That is to say, no matter how challenging it can be to pull off the material night after night. 

“This [set] is quite a challenge, actually. We’ve played long sets before, but this set that we’ll be playing in America is two hours and 45 minutes. It starts off with a Joy Division set, then we do ‘Technique’, then ‘Republic’,” says Hook. “So yeah, it is a hell of a set. But I must admit, it flies by. I’m enjoying it immensely, absolutely. It’s probably the only time that I truly relax with anything we regards to New Order, is when I play the music. Because outside of playing the music, it’s still so angsty and so dysfunctional. But yeah, the only respite you get is when you play the music.” 

Make sure to catch Peter Hook and the Light on tour this Fall.  

Watch Peter Hook and the Light perform the New Order classics “Ceremony” and “Digital” below…