Words matter. These are the best Peter Hook Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
Sarcasm is a Manchester trait.
It was nice doing my own Joy Division book to be able to put forward the fact that Ian was actually quite a nice guy and very hardworking, ambitious and loyal. But the thing was, he was battling such a dreadful illness in an era when they really didn’t know how to treat it.
‘Unknown Pleasures’ is a very important record for me. It was the first LP that I recorded.
People go and hide, but I don’t. I’m a fighter.
There are so little outtakes from the Joy Division era. We didn’t have much money. You couldn’t be very generous in recording, so we were very thrifty in how we recorded. Everything was very, very well looked after financially because we just couldn’t afford it.
The chemistry involved made everything Factory did quite special.
Music was such an important part of everyone’s life in the ’60s and ’70s, but everywhere you played, the music was dreadful.
My mother used to always say to me, ‘Do naught, get naught.’ It’s an adage that I hold by. If you don’t do anything, you can’t really expect anything.
I’d rather have ten people who are mad for it than ten thousand who aren’t.
Knowing very little about a band only adds to the allure.
‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’ is very simply written.
I’ve been very grateful and humbled by the fact that young people really dig Joy Division’s music. It’s a great testament to the chemistry and the songwriting prowess between the four original members.
Great music seems to come from a lot of angst, and that angst is from great musicians getting together with intense chemistry. When that chemistry isn’t there, people tend not to write great music.
Once you made that decision to split New Order up, you were like, ‘Woo-hoo! I better get out there and get a job.’
America stopped making vinyl and phased out the single but Germany held out and refused. Warner’s never phased out vinyl in Germany. Now America imports it!
I regularly go to concerts with my children sharing the music.
New Order never celebrated anything to do with Joy Division.
I play a lot of hard, uncompromising dance music; it can be anything from dance to rock to reggae.
I love that young bands will do anything to succeed.
Old men are cantankerous: they like to get their own way.
Over the years, Joy Division has become a huge part of music culture.
There are so many bootlegged Joy Division/Martin Hannett tapes, a lot of really bad bootlegs on the Internet.
We’ve had a problem finding a vocalist. We have not been lucky yet to find the one. I think the problem is that the three of us have such a pedigree of vocalist, that if we come out with someone that’s not good we’ll obviously be slated!
Dance music tends to be a solitary affair.
My father was always Labour, and my mother was always Conservative, so I tended to sort of go in the middle.
’24 Hour Party People’ was a comedy, and I knew that from the beginning.
Accept what you did do, and live with it.
Bass players are always the underdogs of the band, but I made sure that I was never viewed as one. I went out of my way to steal as much limelight as I could.
I’ve watched so-called ‘New Order’ playing in Auckland, and Tom Chapman is miming along to my bass on tape… He’s got his fingers on the low, and you can hear my high bass in the background. So he’s miming.
What I’ve learned is that life is a balance between idealism and realism.
I think that you have to bear in mind that music is about escape, and it’s not unreasonable to think the music business would be based around escapism.
What was punk all about? To me, it was if you really want to do something, go ahead and do it.
And they do tend to be fast and up, because that’s how I like to drive.
You don’t get many chances in the world, and you don’t want to throw them away.
The fact is that you don’t want to be away forever, but you want to lead a normal life.
‘Movement’ sounded like Joy Division, but ‘Power, Corruption & Lies’ is the first New Order record.
When you’ve travelled for 34 years as a musician, you do all the culture stuff when you’re young and full of energy. In the middle stage, you indulge too much and are scared of daylight. Then, in the final stage, you’ve seen it all, so you tend to take things a lot easier.
Madonna’s like a black widow spider. She tends to use people, then they shrivel up and disappear.
When you’re fat and comfortable, your music is going to sound fat and comfortable.
The thing with Joy Division’s music is that each member was playing like a separate line. We hardly ever played together; we all played separately. But when you put it together, it was like the ingredients in a cake.
Most people have just heard Joy Division on record. And Joy Division on record was completely different than it was live.
For the first 18 months of Joy Division, we used our jobs to fund the band. We’d all chip in three, five quid to go and do a gig. But it was worth it. It was amazing we could afford to feed ourselves. But we were so creatively and artistically satisfied. You can’t explain that to somebody who’s never been there.
I must confess that over my career, I’ve actually downplayed the importance of DJs. It’s such a different art form. Then all of a sudden you try it, and you think, ‘Good God, these guys do work.’ I used to be very cynical and very blase about it. I can only apologize.
But then I quite enjoy when something goes wrong, because when I watch DJs that take it very seriously, it’s nice when you make a mistake and laugh about it.
I don’t pretend to be Joy Division or New Order. What I do is very straight forward: it’s an interpretation and a celebration of the music, with different people. Everyone looks at it and knows exactly what I’m doing.
You look at 30 Seconds to Mars, and you don’t think, ‘Ooh, I bet they’re angry.’ No one really does anger these days. I suppose it’s a turn-off.
Any coalition, especially where one party is more powerful than the other, it’s always bound to have a pecking order.
It’s really nice to be able to do what I’m doing without having to compromise with another musician.
You can’t buy class.
I’m one of those old cynics that thinks, whoever you vote for, the government always gets in.
Bands don’t play the whole LP. They play a selection of the songs that they like.
There are keyboard terrorists everywhere who hide behind a veil of anonymity to pursue their vicious slanders.
I’ve stayed in hotels where you were scared to even put your feet on the floor, or had to sleep in a chair.
When I’m not playing music, certainly the last thing I want to do is listen to music!
I just like keeping busy and having ten things on the go.
