Famed bassist Peter Hook talks ‘70s angst and finding comfort in Ian Curtis’ legacy ahead of Limerick show

TO COMMEMORATE over four decades of Joy Division and Ian Curtis’ continuing influence, Peter Hook & The Light are on tour. Soon, they’ll be making a stop to the Treaty City.

A few days before talking to Limerick Live, Peter Hook played La Madeleine in Brussels – in this reporter’s homeland.

In October 1979, Joy Division played Love Will Tear Us Apart live for the first time in Europe’s Capital. Hook remembers: “The first time that Joy Division went abroad was to play at Plan K in Brussels, it was our first foreign gig. It was so strange to be back about 44 years later. There was hardly anybody in that gig, but it was a great crowd, and we had a wonderful time.”

After touring, a jet lagged Hooky – as he has been called since his school days - is back home, near Manchester, for the first time in eight weeks.

“As I was saying to somebody this morning, I am really looking forward to playing Ireland for the simple reason that we ignored it so much as New Order.”

Over the years, Hooky has played in Limerick a few times and is no stranger to Dolan’s. Speaking of the venue, he says: “Dolan’s was one of our highlights of our tours, so it's great to be doing this with them, even though it's in the Big Top, which will be different for us. We’ve always had the very cosy and confined Dolan's bar.”

Hook can’t help but wonder, “how on earth” did this reporter end up in Limerick. “You certainly picked up the accent. And strangely, I can hear your Belgium accent in that.”

He calls Ireland an infectious place. “Our Irish friends are wonderful people. They’re very warm, easy-going, ‘F&*k it!' ‘Whatever!’, that type of attitude. It's absolutely gorgeous to see what a beautiful country it is, if only it would stop bloody raining.

“Luckily, coming from Manchester, I’ve got wet feet anyway. I do feel quite at home there,” he admits.

For Hook, everything clicked in a very unmusical fashion. “When I started reading in the music press about this new phenomenon called punk, it appealed to a different side than the musical side. I was going to a lot of football matches in the seventies, it wasn't a very comfortable period in England's history, shall we say.”

At the time, there was a lot of angst. "Punk seemed to have a lot of answers to that angst, which was to rebel against it, by shocking people and expressing yourself madly in many different ways."

When the Sex Pistols played the Free Trade Hall in Manchester, he dragged his friend to their gig for the cost of 50 pence. Hook remembers: “They were awful, f&*king terrible. It was a cacophony, and Johnny Rotten was just screaming ‘f&*k off’ at the audience. And you know what? I actually thought I could do that.”

That’s when Hook realised he wanted to form a band. “We walked out of the concert in June 1976, and became a punk band, we had no thought about music.”

After borrowing 35 pounds off his mother, Hooky bought a base, but was surprised when he was told it only had four strings. That’s how Hooky became a bass player: by default. Years later, he also became a singer.

“It’s weird now being a singer by default. It amazes me whenever we do the albums to sing Ian's wonderful words. I used to hear the words when we played, but I never really understood them.”

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Fondly talking of his dear friend, he says: “I knew he meant, lived, and breathed what he was doing because you only had to take one look at Curtis to realise that he f&*king meant it. He meant every single thing he was saying with his heart, his soul. He put everything into it.”

Hook admits that taking up the mantle was terrifying. “It was still absolutely terrifying because of the expectation to actually take on Ian's. Not his role, I could never be like Ian.”

Still speaking of Ian, he says: “We couldn't control lan's illness, we were too young to be able to help him. That's the kind of survivor guilt that you always have, and I will always have it all my life, the grief was unbelievable.”

However, Peter Hook & The Light aren’t trying to sound like Joy Division. “We have an amalgamation of the way the record sounded with a live band. I'm not trying to copy Joy Division, I'll leave that to New Order!”

He finds comfort in honouring Ian’s legacy. “The music is a great solace. It's nice to be able to keep going and to watch other people enjoy it with me and give that thank you to Ian. I sort of regret not being able to help him as much as I should have done.”

Speaking of Love Will Tear Us Apart, Hook notes: “When you listen to it from an overview, it sounds like a very happy, upbeat, sing-along tune. It's very uplifting, and yet the lyrics are miserable and are about a failed, doomed relationship. Presumably, Ian was singing about his marriage, and it's the saddest thing in the world when you analyse those.

“It always strikes me when I'm singing it and looking at the audience, who are going bananas. The contradiction in the lyric to the song is unbelievable,” he adds.

Looking back on the days when he practiced in a Warehouse in Manchester, he talks about how the band’s most famous song came to life – out of a Tesco bag.

“Steve Morris and I came up with the melody, I came up with the melody, and he came up with the drum riff for it. Ian said, ‘that's great, I'm gonna go and do some words for that, and I'll see you on Sunday afternoon’.”

Read my interview with @peterhook, co-founder of @joydivision in this week’s @Limerick_Leader

We talked about 70s angst, becoming a bass player by default, and how one iconic song came out of a Tesco bag. pic.twitter.com/uQhFZAPIWf

— Manon Gilbart (@ManonGilbart) October 12, 2022

That Sunday, Curtis turned up with a Tesco bag. “He used to carry all his lyrics in it on some little scraps of paper. He got these lyrics out and started singing them to the song. We loved it. We didn't know what he was saying at that time, but he looked like he meant it.”

How did Hook find his signature sound? “The reason I play as I do is because I had a really bad bass amp. When I played low, I couldn't hear anything. The only time I could hear myself play was when I played high on the base, it cut through Ian Curtis. As soon as he heard it, he said, ‘f&*king hell, that sounds great’.”

Hook finds it amazing how many young people come up to his gigs. “When we first got together, I thought it'd be full of fat old blokes like me moshing in the pit. But no, those guys brought their children.

“The music still manages to grab your heart, doesn’t it? It does something for your soul. I’m just very lucky. I was in not one band that changed the world, but two, how many people can do that? And then, have a nightclub that changes the rest of the world and a record label that became a template for how fair and straight record labels should be run.”

As he needs to kiss his daughter goodbye before she leaves, our call comes to an end. Before we part ways, he shares who he would like to see at his dinner table – dead or alive.

“My wife just pointed to herself,” he laughs. “No, it'd be Ian Curtis, Howard Marks, and I suppose on the theme of that they're not here any more, one of my best mates, Rex - I'd like to ask him a few questions.”