In the frank, no-holds-barred style that has seen his previous book The Hacienda: How Not to Run a Club reach critical acclaim, Peter ‘Hooky’ Hook takes us to the heart of Joy Division and the sound that defined an era and inspired a generation with propulsive bass guitar melodies such as ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’.
Peter Hook
Driven by the attitude, energy and sound of Punk, particularly the Sex Pistols, four young lads from Macclesfield and Salford shared the same vision and created a band with their own unique sound.
Cobbling together instruments and a clapped out old van, they played in pubs and clubs – first across the north- west, then across the whole of Britain, until in 1980 they had released two albums and were
on the cusp of touring America.
The definitive story of Joy Division told by the band’s legendary bassist, PETER HOOK.
“It’s very strange. Over the years Joy Division has become a huge part of music culture. A lot of people think they know what happened. But they don’t. Anyone who’s ever written a book or made a film about Joy Division, unless they were sat in that van or car with us, they don’t know anything about it. Me, Barney, Steve, Ian, Rob, Twinny, Terry and Dave. Only us lot know what really happened…” PETER HOOK
Then Ian Curtis committed suicide leaving everyone around him bereft.
In Unknown Pleasures, Peter shares previously unseen photographs and paraphernalia and reflects, with eye-opening candour, on the suicide of Ian Curtis: often seen as the “intellectual one” – to Peter and the band he was just “one of the lads”. He shares his regret that Ian’s burdens of balancing his epilepsy and the demands of his domestic life only emerged when it was too late.
‘I supposed in the end it’s almost too easy to look back and say what you should have done, how you might have changed things. How you might have done things differently and ultimately stopped Ian from doing what he did.
What’s harder, what’s much, much harder, is to accept what you actually did do. Accept what you did do, and live with it’ PETER HOOK
Covering the band’s friendships and fall-outs; their rehearsals and recording sessions; Peter gives a truly fascinating insight, as only an insider can, into the characters who formed a vital part of the Joy Division legend.
Peter Hook was born in 1956 in Salford. He was a founding member of Joy Division and New Order and nowadays DJ’s internationally as well as touring Joy Division’s music with his new band The Light.
