Get Hooked

AT the tail end of the 1970s, an unlikely looking bunch of skinny lads from Salford released a record that would go on to change the world.

The band were Joy Division and their record: Unknown Pleasures.

Commercially speaking, it bombed – charting at Number 72. But this slice of intensely brooding, angst-driven energy went on to define an era, and influence generations of bands to come.

The year was 1979, two years after the Queen’s Silver Jubilee and Britain was on the skids. The country had just come out of the Winter of Discontent, industrial unrest crippled the economy, and the Troubles in Northern Ireland were at their height – with Lord Mountbatten of Burma and MP Airey Neave killed by bombs.

Against that background, Joy Division’s depression-plagued epileptic frontman Ian Curtis, guitarist Bernard Sumner, bassist Peter ‘Hooky’ Hook and drummer Stephen Morris seemed to fit in perfectly – their burst of atmospheric post-punk coming across simultaneously dark and tortured yet strangely uplifting.

A year later Curtis committed suicide after pleading with his estranged wife not to divorce him. He was 23.

“Manchester was a very depressed, and depressing, place back then,” says Hooky. “It was a difficult time. But Ian was a heady cocktail. He will always be remembered; for his music, incredible lyrics and his ‘live fast die young’ existence.”

His bandmates, went on to form New Order, of course, enjoying huge success and enduring more than their share of strife, tension and their own disintegration.

Having turned his back on the band (“there’s no love lost,” he sighs), Hooky has set out to celebrate the legacy of those early days by performing the whole of that seminal Joy Division album live.

How, I ask, did the idea come about?

“It’s a weird one,” he admits. “It started off as a celebration but I only planned to do it for one night.

“When we were in New Order we felt it was okay to ignore Joy Division, but when we split, I thought ‘why ignore it?’ And on the 30th anniversary of Ian’s death, I decided to get a band together and sing his songs to honour him.

He decided to play Unknown Pleasures all the way through.

“I stole the idea from (Primal Scream frontman) Bobby Gillespie who was playing his album Screamadelica. He felt a lot of the songs had been ignored by the group. And I thought ‘that’s like Unknown Pleasures’.

“The only reason I’d never played it before was because of the backlash. There were so many critics of the idea. But when I realised no one was going to help me, I decided to do it myself.”

He formed a band The Light. But with Hooky taking on frontman’s duties, that left him with a tricky dilemma? “I had to find a bass player,” he laughs. “Luckily my son agreed.”

Jack, 22, it turns out, is a pretty handy player. “He started at the age of 13,” says Hooky. “He’s almost as good as me! He’s not into my music though. He prefers American rock!”

On Saturday, at the O2 Academy, Oxford, they play Unknown Pleasures in its entirety, along with other songs by Joy Division and predecessor Warsaw.

Does the dad-of-three and one-time husband of Mrs Merton herself, Royle Family star Caroline Aherne, expect the show to appeal to original fans, or a younger crowd not even born when the record was released.?

“I always thought the only appeal would be to grey-haired fat old blokes like me!” he says bluffly.

“But there have been lots of young people coming along.

“It’s a wonderful celebration of a wonderful album, which is making as much impact on people’s lives now as 30 years ago. But it is also a tribute to of Martin Hannett’s production and all Joy Division’s music.”

That includes artist Peter Saville, who designed its iconic sleeve, and Factory Records’ boss Tony Wilson, who was so confident of its brilliance that he invested his life savings into the initial run. But, more than anything, it’s a tribute to Curtis.

“Over the years it was very difficult to cope with the loss of Ian,” says Hooky. “I missed him as a friend and as a worker.

“He made writing songs much easier. Writing with Joy Division was a joy, and with New Order it became difficult.”

He adds: “Ian was also a really nice guy, but his pleasantness was his downfall.

“Even when he was ill, he wouldn’t tell you as he didn’t want to let you down. All that was important to him was that you were happy and the group was successful.

“But the bigger we got, the worse his illness got. Anyone with a brain would have said ‘pack it in and have a break’. But people didn’t.

“His death was terrible. He was the first person I lost, personally, in my life. But we never grieved. We were just 23 year-old kids; what we were supposed to do? We went to the pub and got on with it.

“What shocks me now is how many bands sound like Joy Division, but we ignored it and hoped it would go away.

“But we were a good band – so let’s play it!”

* Peter Hook and The Light perform Unknown Pleasures at the O2 Academy, Oxford on Saturday. Doors open at 6.30pm. Tickets are £20 from ticketweb.co.uk