“I think he’d be over the bloody moon,” says legendary bassist Peter Hook, when asked how late Joy Division frontman Ian Curtis would react to Joy Division/New Order’s induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. “[Ian’s] big point of reference was always the Doors. ‘We’re going to be as big as the Doors!’ He loved Jim Morrison. So, for us to be in L.A. for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame ceremony, he’d be over the bloody moon.”

Unfortunately, though, while Hook says “wild horses” wouldn’t keep him away from attending, performing, and honoring Curtis’s legacy at the Rock Hall Class of 2026 ceremony, which will take place at Los Angeles’s Peacock Theater on Nov. 14, he confirms that he won’t be celebrating alongside Joy Division’s surviving members. “After what they did to me, I’m afraid it’s unforgivable,” he says flatly.

Hook co-founded Manchester, England’s pioneering post-punk band Joy Division in 1976 with Bernard “Barney” Sumner and Stephen Morris, and in 1980 — mere days after the 23-year-old Curtis’s tragic suicide on the eve of what would have been Joy Division’s first U.S. tour — Hook, Sumner, Morris, and new addition Gillian Gilbert regrouped and carried on as the synthpop outfit New Order, eventually finding even greater success. “One minute it was all there; the next minute, the whole thing was gone and picking up like a Phoenix rising from the ashes,” Hook recalls.

It would be assumed that enduring such a harrowing ordeal would have bonded the band members for life. But following Hook’s acrimonious exit from New Order in 2007, a long-running battle between him and his ex-bandmates (particularly Sumner) culminated in Hook’s lawsuit pertaining ownership of assets. A “full and final settlement” was reached in 2017 regarding Hook’s legal use of the Joy Division and New Order trademarks for his own group, Peter Hook & the Light, who perform songs from both bands’ catalogs. But according to Hook, he and Sumner have not spoken in 15 years. “I think the [broken] bond is probably what hurts the most,” he admits.

Peter Hook & the Light could of course easily handle all Joy Division/New Order performance duties at November’s Rock Hall ceremony. (The Light’s live shows typically run “two hours and 47 minutes; sometimes it goes down at 2:45,” Hook quips — as he refers to the extensive setlist he’s planning for his upcoming 50th-anniversary Manchester Academy concert, which will also include songs from his side bands Revenge, Monaco, and Freebass.) But legally, that won’t likely be possible, so Hook plans to perform with to-be-determined guest stars. “I can’t really tell you who! But I’ll play on my own, if I have to,” he says with a grin.

In the Q&A below that Hook jokingly likens to a “therapy session,” he opens up about what his Rock Hall appearance might look like; how he feels about the Light touring this summer playing Get Ready, the New Order “honeymoon record” that he and Sumner recorded right before band relations unraveled irreparably; his biggest regret regarding Curtis’s death; and how he finally learned to deal with his grief.

LYNDSANITY: Congratulations! Finally, Joy Division and New Order are in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, after being nominated three times. How are you feeling about this long-overdue honor? Obviously, there’s a lot to process here.

PETER HOOK: Oh, youcan saythat again! [laughs] The interesting thing from my point of view is that when [the first nomination] happened, we’ve always been behind it as Peter Hook & the Light, absolutely 100 percent. And we worked to get in. The first time, the others [in Joy Division/New Order] were a little bit behind it, but the second and third, they hardly mentioned it. So, it’s a bit of a strange, weird feeling — like it’s not going to be weird anyway! It’s been a bit of a tsunami.

Well, that brings me to the billion-dollar question. It seems like you’re on board with the Hall and always have been, so I assume you’re going to be there. But I don’t know about your former bandmates. What’s going to happen? Will you all appear together? Will you reunite?

Oh, no. After what they did to me, I’m afraid it’s unforgivable. They would need Donald Trump and Henry Kissinger together to broker any kind of peace with us. The Hormuz Strait in Manchester is not opening up again, let’s put it that way. I don’t know what [New Order] are doing, in the same way that nobody ever knows. I saw their statement, which I thought was a little bit odd. … I mean, it came from “New Order,” which made me laugh, because am I not part of New Order?

I must admit, I was hoping for a different answer, but if you’d actually told me that a reunion was going to happen, I probably would’ve fallen off my chair.

If you’d have told me it was going to happen, I would’ve fallen off my chair! [laughs]

Well, obviously the Light could play on their own at the ceremony, but I’m sure there are legal or just political issues that would prevent that from happening. So, what are you envisioning? You’re definitely going to be there, right?

Oh, I’m going to be there. Wild horses wouldn’t keep me away. … I’ve not seen Barney for 15 years. Actually, I saw him walk past me once when I was in a bar and I’d won my side of the court case; he soon scampered off, because I’d won on that occasion. That was the last time I saw him, but I didn’t speak to him. And that’s 15 years. I’ve not seeing Gillian for 15 years. I spoke to Steve about four years ago when we were having another legal conflab. There’s been no social talk. And it is a shame, because the thing is, you don’t get to celebrate anything with anyone. But it’s just what happened. I suppose in a funny way, we’ve all moved on, but I was still really hurt by what they did to me and my family when they took the name, and how they’ve acted since. And even though you’ve made a kind of uneasy peace, shall we say, you are still not going to rush into each other’s arms.

It’s going to be very, very awkward [if the other New Order members attend show up]. But I mean, the thing is, my God, I’m 70. Barney’s 70. Steve’s 67. I mean, we’re all blokes, so we’re not going to be chasing each other around very fast, are we? “Come here, ya bastard!” [laughs] It’d probably be hilarious to witness.

Well, you’d have to play at the ceremony, in some capacity, because there is no one else that plays bass like you. Your bass-playing is so integral to the songs that honestly, when I see the Light perform, they sound more like classic New Order than the real New Order there days.

In a funny way, [New Order] have done me a favor by sounding, in some songs, completely unlike New Order [live], so that I can play it exactly how we did it and be true to the sound that I love. That’s my band. I mean, I was there. Barney’s taste changed and his ideas changed, and while we were together I expressed very much that I didn’t agree with what he was doing to the music. I made a deal with myself when we went back that if I thought there was something wrong, this time I wouldn’t swallow it and go bang my head on the wall and bury myself in drugs and drink. I’d actually f—ing say it. So, I made myself say it. But I remember we were having a [band] discussion once and … someone said, “Listen, why don’t we compromise?” And I went, “OK, let’s compromise,” and Barney was sat there with a weird look on his face and went, “No, I’m waiting for you to compromise!” Um, that’s not how compromise works.

I do think it’s strange that New Order and Joy Division are a joint inductee, not just because I feel both deserve to be in the Hall on their own, but also because — despite sharing three members — they are very different groups. Does the dual-induction bother you?

Well, from my point of view, the songwriting trio in Joy Division were very, very active all the way through New Order as a trio as well. There is a massive thread going through both bands. … I fully and quite categorically state, here and now, that if Ian had been around, he would’ve been singing on [New Order’s] “Blue Monday.” He was a great electronic [music] lover. It was Ian that introduced me to Kraftwerk. He introduced me to Can, Faust, all these Krautrock, dance-rock bands. He was well on board with everything we were doing. I remember we did a song called “The Only Mistake,” which was quite a disco rhythm, and he absolutely loved it. It was his favorite song because of the dance element. He always used to go on: “Oh, ‘The Only Mistake,’ it should be a single!” But it didn’t happen because of… I mean, it’s hard, isn’t it? Because Joy Division finished so suddenly. One minute it was all there; the next minute, the whole thing was gone and picking up like a Phoenix rising from the ashes. It was very, very difficult.

But we were still the same people. Barney, Steve, and I were the same people. The reason we got Gillian in, who actually wasn’t very skilled, was because we didn’t want anyone to change the sound. We didn’t want to bring in an established guitarist like Steve Severin [of Siouxsie and the Banshees], or Keith Levene [of the Clash and PiL], or anybody like that, who would come in and change the sound. We were being very, I suppose, selfish in that regard. So, she was thrown in at the deep end, if you like, with what was three very experienced songwriters.

But I can see the highway going through both, and [the dual nomination] doesn’t bother me. I think the interesting thing that I found when I started playing Joy Division’s music in 2010 [with the Light], I noticed that there was a great divide between Joy Division fans and New Order fans. What used to happen was when I was playing a Joy Division set, all the Joy Division lot would be at the front, and then when I played the New Order set, they’d all go to the bar and the New Order fans would come forward. But now, over my period of playing it, that divide seems to have gone.

So, will you be performing at the Hall ceremony with different all-star guests?

I can’t really tell you who! But I’ll play on my own, if I have to. … I was very disappointed because I would’ve had the Smashing Pumpkins, Billy [Corgan] and obviously Jack [Peter’s son, who plays with both the Light and the Pumpkins]. It would’ve been wonderful, but [the Smashing Pumpkins] are playing with bloody Morrissey that day [at the Darker Waves festival in Orange County]! How small a world is that?

Yes, and another Manchester artist, Oasis, will be inducted alongside you in the Class of 2026, so it will be an overall very Mancunian day in Southern California on Nov. 14.

How nuts is that? Oasis played their first-ever gig with Noel [Gallagher] on guitar, supporting Revenge, my old outfit. Liam  [Gallagher] came up to me that night and said, “We’ve changed our name from the Rain and we’ve got our kid on guitar. It’s his first gig tonight.” I went, “Yeah, whatever” — grizzled old rocker that I was then! So, yeah, Oasis played their first-ever gig with me.

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It is indeed a small world! It’s too bad Billy Corgan isn’t available, but have you given any thought to who might sing the Joy Division songs at the Hall ceremony? There are countless artists who have been influenced by Ian Curtis, and some who even sound like him, but there was only one Ian Curtis.

I felt a bit blank about it for a while. And then Jack, my son, said to me, “I’ve done a list.” He showed me his list and I was like, wow.

Who was on that list?

I cannot tell! … But I’ve been very flattered by the names that have been suggested.

Well, let me suggest one possibility. Hear me out: Grace Jones. She covered Joy Division early on, and she’s an icon who should be in the Hall herself.

Grace Jones did [Joy Division’s] first cover version. She paid us, and oh my God, it couldn’t have been better-timed! Her record company actually paid us 20,000 pounds for permission to put out “She’s Lost Control,” which she did with Sly & Robbie, and we’d have [accepted] about 50 quid! We couldn’t believe it; we nearly fell off our chairs again in that moment, that we got offered that amount of money when it would’ve been an honor anyway. And then really amazingly, there’s an A&R man at Polydor called the Captain; he was very well-known, a real character. And he came to me and said, “Hooky, we’re putting out a new Grace Jones collection. Can you do me a 12-inch version of Grace’s ‘She’s lost Control’?” And Potsy [David Potts] and I, as Monaco, did a 12-inch remix of “She’s Lost Control.” I actually got to sing with Grace… and then just as the record was about to come out, [the Captain and Jones] fell out. It’s a fantastical version. It really, really turned out well. I don’t know what the hell happened to it, but it’s never been out. And we did a reggae version as well, which was amazing. … I’ve got a feeling the whole thing’s disappeared somewhere, but we’ve still got the tapes.

Well, there you go! You and Grace Jones can perform “She’s Lost Control” at the Hall.

I must admit, as heroines go, she is up there, Grace. My God, her book was outrageous. I just love her. … You know what? Because you’ve given me the idea, I will put her on my list.

Awesome! But regardless of who takes on the Ian Curtis vocals at the ceremony, I’m curious — how do you think Ian would feel about this honor? The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame didn’t even exist when he was still alive, and mainstream, American-based accolades, especially for a band that was still so young and from Manchester, probably weren’t even on your guys’ radar then. But now that he will be honored for the immense contributions he made to music during his very short time on Earth, how do you think he’d react?

I think he’d be over the bloody moon. Because he used to spend all his time telling us how great we were and what we were going to achieve and where we were going to go. And literally if you wavered at any point, he would grab you by the lapels — he was like that guy in the trenches when you can’t go over the top, going, “Come on, you can do it! Get up there!” He was always that kind of guy, and he was convinced. And it was funny, because his big point of reference was always the Doors. “We’re going to be as big as the Doors!” He loved Jim Morrison. So, for us to be in L.A. for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame ceremony, he’d be over the bloody moon.

I think some people would be surprised to hear that Ian wanted to be a rock star, given his persona and the mythology surrounding him, and also the timing that he died passed right before the big opportunity of Joy Division’s U.S. tour. Many people might assume that he was willfully anti-commercial and didn’t want success or fame.

I mean, it’s a dream, isn’t it? Anybody who says, “I don’t want success” probably means they don’t want the problems that come with success. But the rest of it, I have to say, is pretty good. I mean, I’ve suffered from the problems that come with success, which is usually excess. Success and excess are very, very close together. But God, moaning musicians, how many do you know? They all moan about everything, don’t they? It’s sort of endemic. If they play to big crowds, they want to play to small crowds. If they play to small crowds, they want to play to big crowds.

But Ian was adamant, whether it was just his way of perking us up — which worked every time. It’s always the contradiction there, that we couldn’t do it enough for him. We couldn’t perk him up enough to make him want to stay around, which is quite an odd thing to admit: that he kept us up, but we couldn’t keep him up for whatever reason. But there’s been a few suggestions for Ian [from the Rock Hall], which are nice and could work out well.

Was the fact that Ian has such belief in the band a big motivating factor in the decision to continue as New Order, instead of just throwing in the towel? I have always been so surprised about how quickly you regrouped and soldiered on.

Do you want me to tell you the story?

Of course.

OK. We went to the inquest on a Thursday in Macclesfield, the inquest with the coroner, and it was horrible. [Ian’s widow Deborah Curtis’s parents] spoke, and it was heartbreaking. It was terrible. It was awful. And [Joy Division’s manager] Rob Gretton, after the end of it, went, “Come on, let’s go for a drink.” So, we went for a drink to a pub and we had something to eat and we were all sat there, and everyone was very quiet, obviously. And Rob Gretton said, “I’ve not asked, but what are you lot going to do? ” And we went, “What do you mean?” And he went, “Well, are you going to go back to work, or are you going to carry on?” We sort of looked at each other, me, Barney, and Steve, and just went, “Well, should we carry on?” And they went, “Yeah.”

So, we made a date to go in on Monday to the rehearsal room, which was really weird because Ian wasn’t there. It was the first time we’d been back. And we got there at the usual time, 10 o’clock, started playing, and never looked back. And weirdly, Thursday was the inquest, and on the Sunday afternoon, the house where I was living, we had no furniture. I used to go and sit on the floor in the back bedroom of this house with no furniture and play. And I actually wrote the six-string bassline to “Dreams Never End” that Sunday afternoon. So, when I went in on Monday, when we started again, the first song that we started with was “Dreams Never End” — which was suppose was quite apt, really. And that was it.

The interesting thing about that was that, because we were so focused on carrying on, we didn’t really get hit with the grief. Now, when you’re older, you realize the importance of grief. When you’re younger, you’d do anything to avoid it at any cost. And you’re allowed to avoid it as well. One of my biggest regrets in life is the fact that I didn’t go and say goodbye to Ian Curtis.

Do you mean at his funeral?

No. You can go and see the body. And I didn’t go. Neither me nor Barney went, because we stood there and I said, “Well, I don’t want to see him dead.” But everybody else went. I don’t know if Steve or Gillian went, but [Factory Records co-founder] Tony [Wilson] went and Rob went. Me and Barney never went, and I regretted it. … If someone had said to me, “Get your ass in there, that’s your mate, and go and say goodbye!” … I wish somebody had done that. Because for me, saying goodbye to someone you love is quite an important thing. I’ve never missed an opportunity since, but I always regret missing that. I don’t know if Barney does or not, but it was just us two that didn’t go. I went to see Rob, and went to see Tony [when Gretton and Wilson respectively died in 1999 and 2007]. I’ve said goodbye to a lot of people. It’s a bit like being surrounded by ghosts, to be honest with you. But I think they’d all be delighted [about the Rock Hall induction]. Tony in particular would be thrilled. Rob would just go, “It should have been years ago!”

You said regrouping so quickly as New Order was a way to not necessarily process your grief, but avoid your grief. Was there a moment later, even if it was decades later, where you did finally come to terms with your grief?

Well, you have to come to terms with it, because you’ve got to carry on, haven’t you? I mean, it’s a great world. We’re doing our best to destroy it, but it is a great world and there’s so many wonderful things that you can do. It is awful when you can’t [do anything]. I was clinically depressed at one point, and it was an awful, awful, awful thing. And whatever happens to me since that, I’ve always said the same thing: that I would never go down that particular rabbit hole again. I’m very lucky that my family look after me, so I wouldn’t have to.

Did your battle with depression help you better emphasize or understand with Ian did what he did when he’d been in his own dark place?

Oh, wow. Well, [my depression was due to] a nasty divorce. It was very, very depressing, though. I suppose depression gives you an understanding into what effect it can have on you physically and mentally. But suicides are different, aren’t they? We just lost a friend two years ago, and he did that thing where they give all the possessions away. And Ian did that, but I never found out until, oh my God, 25 years after he died, or maybe even longer. I saw Ian on a Friday night. He killed himself on Saturday night. My friend, who went to see him on Saturday afternoon, said Ian was trying to give away all his possessions. But he never told me that until 25 years later. … I didn’t know Ian was giving his stuff away, because I would’ve gone, “Whoa, we need to keep an eye on him.” So yeah, it was weird in that respect. But [my depression] wasn’t pleasant, and I’m very aware of the symptoms now. Didn’t Winston Churchill call it the “Black Dog”? Sometimes I can see the black dog in the corner of my eye — and that’s where it has to stay. So, I do look after myself and have to be careful. It’s the same thing with alcoholism and drug addiction. You are aware of it, so you have to be careful.

I think it’s great that you’re talking about this and that people are more aware, because in the ‘70s and ‘80s when Ian was struggling, no one was talking about mental health at all. It has really only become a topic of open discussion in recent years.

Yes. So, are you available next week at this time for another therapy session? [laughs]

Any time you need my help, I would be happy to.

We didn’t talk about your rates!

I will do it pro bono! But seriously, I think it’s important to talk about this stuff.

It is important. And in many ways it actually helps when somebody you know and love is going through it. Life is a learning process.

Peter Hook & the Light are touring in August and September, and the timing is interesting, because the album you’re focusing on is Get Ready. That was New Order’s comeback after an eight-year recording hiatus, and you’ve described it as a “honeymoon record” made while you and Bernard were getting along, before everything fell apart again. Since Get Ready was basically the beginning of the end for you and New Order, does it feel bittersweet to revisit that material now?

Bittersweet? It’s been bittersweet for a long time. It really has. I mean, it’s funny for me because the only thing that got me through the court case was playing the music and doing the gigs, because that gave me the lift to be able to carry on fighting for what I thought was right. It’s interesting with Get Ready: I didn’t know this, but it was our best-selling album in America. It sold more than Republic, and more than Technique. … Barney and I did it more or less alone, and I think that there was a lot of using each other’s strengths; that was the “honeymoon” side of it. It was like being in Joy Division again. … I must admit, it’s been my favorite LP to play [with the Light], and I didn’t expect that.

I consider the saga of New Order to be one of the greatest comeback stories in rock — right up there with AC/DC and the B-52s, who also both survived losses that many bands would not be able to recover from. That’s why I feel it’s bittersweet that New Order won’t reunite at the Hall. You went through something that very few people can imagine. There’s got to be some kind of bond still there.

I think the bond is probably what hurts the most. … But it’s OK. It’s good. So, I’ll see you same time next week? [laughs]

Sure, if you need another “therapy session”! But if not, I look forward to seeing you at the Class of 2026 ceremony. I am very happy for you, and for your ex-bandmates as well, and I’m happy to know that Ian would have been excited about this.

Yes, I must go and see him, actually. I’ve not seen him for a while, so I must go and see him.

Do you mean visit Ian’s grave?

Yeah. I’ve been meaning to, and I must do it. Maybe I’ll tell you what he says.

The above Q&A originally ran on Gold Derby, and has been edited for brevity and clarity. Watch Peter Hook’s full interview in the video at the top of this page.

photo courtesy of Facebook/G’s Gig Shots

Former Joy Division/New Order member Peter Hook is chatting me with from his home in England about his fall 2024 tour with Peter Hook and the Light, during which he’ll be performing both the New Order and Joy Division Substance albums in full. But the legendary bassist is in a nostalgic state of mind in other ways, as he shuffles through vintage photographs of Joy Division’s late frontman, Ian Curtis, and opens up about another interview he just completed — a podcast that will be a must-listen, and probably at times a tough listen, for Joy Division fans.

Hook reveals that he recently recorded a “two-and-a-half-hour chat,” on video, with Kelvin Briggs, Curtis’s best friend from high school and the best man at Ian and Deborah Curtis’s 1975 wedding. Briggs (who joined Hook onstage this past April at a Manchester fundraiser for mental health support) and Hook became close after Curtis’s suicide, residing in the same suburb 11 miles outside of Manchester and “talking to each other for ages,” and this interview has been a long time coming.

“The thing that fascinated me was that when Ian died, his wife [Deborah] gave Kelvin, who was his best friend, his record collection. And I kept saying, ‘Wow, this is what podcasts were made for! We should do a podcast and an interview about his record collection,’ because Ian was very generous with his records,” explains Hook. “And Kelvin had his record collection — which included the record that he played when he left us, The Idiot by Iggy Pop.”

When the 23-year-old Ian Curtis took his own life on May 18, 1980, on the eve of what was supposed to be Joy Division’s first North American tour, he was famously listening to Iggy Pop’s landmark 1977 album, which features classics like “Nightclubbing,” “Funtime,” and the original “China Girl,” later popularized by David Bowie. “To hold that record in my hands was the strangest feeling I’ve had in a long time,” Hook says softly. “And it had never been out of its sleeve since the day it was put back in when the [Curtis] house was cleared. So, yeah, that was a real, for me, that was a moment.”

While Hook and Briggs’s podcast will obviously take some dark turns, “culminating at the end with the record that was playing when [Ian] sadly decided to leave us,” there will be funnier, lighter moments. “For instance, when everybody said we sounded like the Doors, and Barney [Bernard Sumner] and I had never heard the Doors, [Ian] went, ‘I’ll get you a record.’ And the next rehearsal, he brought a vinyl record of the Doors for me and Barney each, and we went away and listened to it and thought, ‘Oh my God, we do sound like the Doors!’” Hook chucklingly recalls. “So, we actually started playing ‘Riders on the Storm’ in our set as a laugh, and nobody noticed.”

Hook, 68, said he’s “been promising [himself] to do this interview” with Briggs “before either of us shake off this mortal coil,” but “life gets in the way of many, many things, doesn’t it? … It was wonderful to actually sit there with him and get really sort of intimate and detailed with what Ian was like growing up and what he was like as a teenager, because Ian wasn’t far out of being a teenager when we lost him. … We talked about him growing up, what a wacky character he was all through his life. We talked about what the future may have been like. It was wonderful to actually get it done.”

Hook says he and Briggs currently “don’t know what the hell we’re going to do” with their interview, but he’s “sure it’ll appear sooner or later.” However, Hook is a fantastic interview subject in all contexts, so in the meantime, read our Q&A about how he feels about Joy Division/New Order being passed over for the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame’s Class of 2023; if he’d ever consider reuniting with his ex-bandmates in “New Odor”; why he was unable to find someone to sing the Ian Curtis vocals in the Light, so he took on the daunting task himself; why he declined an offer to play bass for Killing Joke; how he almost ended up playing bass for the Rolling Stones; and much more.

So, please tell me more about this podcast about Ian Curtis’s record collection that you did with Kelvin Briggs. I’m getting chills just hearing about it.

I was so pleased when I watched it back, because literally we didn’t have to edit anything. It was just a chat between two old blokes that knew a great geezer. It was as simple as that. That was lovely. My life deals a lot with the past. It deals a lot with the present, and hopefully the future. And I always count the audience as people who are just like me, who love the music and want to appreciate it going forward. I feel I’m in great company.

It’s great that you tour as Peter Hook and the Light, because you revisit all this classic material that so many fans want to hear you play live.

And also, because the other [New Order] band members wouldn’t play it! I mean, obviously they do now, because I think that they thought that I’d stolen it! So, I think this is their way of saying, “Oh, it’s ours as well,” even though they never played [Joy Division’s music] in New Order before.

There are various reasons I could speculate why New Order did not play Joy Division material previously. It could be because the two bands obviously sound very different, or because it was emotionally painful to revisit that music. What was the reasoning?

It was a little bit odder than that. We did play a Joy Division set once — when I threatened to play a Joy Division set with some friends. Suddenly the other members of New Order decided it’d be better if we did it as New Order, which we did for a cancer benefit. … Oh my God, it was wonderful again, to be able to play [those songs]. And then we repeated that when we did a New Order gig at Wembley… and then Barney decided he didn’t like it. He said, “It was miserable; I’d rather do New Order.” And I sort of get it. In the way that he’s singing it, maybe he prefers to sing his own words, words that we’d written as New Order, as opposed to harking back to Joy Division. So, that was the last time we ever played it.

When New Order split up in 2007, and it came to the 30th anniversary of Ian’s life, Joy Division was huge all around the world. And I just thought, “Oh my God, we’d never celebrated any anniversary of Joy Division, ever.” Nothing, never as us three. And I just thought, “I’m not letting this one go.” I had a chat with a few friends and tried to figure out a way. I didn’t want to pretend to be the band Joy Division, which live was so much different to what they were on record. I don’t like people who pretend to be the band, with hardly any members or with the wrong intentions or attitude — hence “New Odor.” I think it’s a crime to your fans. So, I thought, “How can I celebrate it?” And I read an interview with [Primal Scream’s] Bobby Gillespie and he was talking about Screamadelica, saying that he wanted to play all the songs on Screamadelica, because he felt that as a group they ignored what he thinks now are the best [tracks]. He said, “Now I’m going to play them all.” … It made sense to me to celebrate the [first Joy Division] record, which is what I did and what I do, and then what I went on to do with New Order. “New Odor,” in my opinion, don’t sound like New Order. And I’m happy about that, in a way! That makes me happy. It doesn’t make the fans happy, but it makes me happy. The thing is, is that you can’t pretend to be something that, you’re not. It’s wrong. So, the thing is, I’m able to celebrate the LPs in the way that we used to be, if you like, which is where I was happiest.

It’s the best of both worlds, to have you play material from both bands.

The fans [of Joy Division and New Order] are very different, but doing this tour of Substance Joy Division, which is such a different record to Substance New Order… the interesting thing is that when we play them together, as we are doing now, the Joy Division fans are subject to New Order, and the New Order fans are subject to Joy Division. And in some ways, as I say to the lads all the time, I sort of expect an “exodus,” because there are certain places where New Order are more popular than Joy Division. Us playing them together can be a bit challenging for certain fans. But I think we’ve opened up our audience, because we’ve made the New Order fans listen to Joy Division —  by choice, of course; we don’t lock ‘em in! — and the Joy Division fans listen to New Order. Now when we play them both, there’s not much movement in the audience. You don’t get half the audience going to the bar when you play New Order, or vice versa. I suppose in a funny way, we’ve actually helped an appreciation for both groups.

You’re talking about how Joy Division and New Order sound different and have different audiences, even if there’s some overlap. But when you were nominated for the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame last year, it was as both bands, together. In my opinion, both bands are worthy of being inducted separately, so it was a unique situation to put “Joy Division/New Order” as one entry on the ballot. How did you feel about that? I actually thought it was going to help your chances, because both fanbases would presumably consolidate to vote.

I think the interesting thing that I noticed was that New Odor didn’t do much promotion for it… because [they] didn’t want to have a row onstage accepting the award, the way that Blondie did. Which I thought was fabulous — if you’re going to wait for a beef to be aired, what a great place to do it! I have a sneaking suspicion that the others weren’t interested because they thought that we might have to meet…

…and play together? Was that ever on the table, even hypothetically, if you’d gotten inducted and attended the Rock Hall ceremony?

No, no. To be honest with you, the way that those bastards have treated me, I would never, ever. I’d be loath to share a room with them, never mind a stage. Never.

I was actually shocked, given the fact that in recent years your peers the Cure, Depeche Mode, Eurythmics, and Duran Duran have been inducted, that Joy Division/New Order didn’t get into the Hall. I thought you were a shoo-in.

In my opinion, it’s because the others didn’t get behind the vote. It was hardly pushed at all. I mean, we’ve got 3 million people on the Joy Division Facebook. We’ve got 2 million on the New Order Facebook. And it was hardly pushed. It really wasn’t. And I’m not in control of those [accounts], so I couldn’t push it. But I’ve been to the Hall of Fame [Museum in Cleveland] and there’s a full New Order section there, and that’s fine for me. I’m happy. I’m happy doing what I’m doing. I’m really happy that all I see around me [when playing with the Light] is a load of smiling faces. It’s as simple as that.

Well, you wouldn’t have been the first estranged band to have an awkward moment reuniting at the Hall, had it happened.

Yes, how many times have we seen this behavior? We see it nearly with every group. That wonderful match of chemistry, ego, money, and fame is a very, very toxic cocktail. And the thing is my problems with the other members when, in my opinion, they took the name without my blessing and without me knowing. They took it without asking me and valued it themselves. So, every time New Order earn a dollar, I get 1 cent, which I don’t think personally is enough. But that’s life, isn’t it? And we have to get on with it. One thing I noticed as I got older is that life is short. And to do things like this, there’s actually no need. You can get together. You can sort things out. You can do it. Everybody in law, they say everybody in a settlement has to be unhappy. It’s like a divorce of a marriage: If one side’s happy, then the other side’s guaranteed not to be. The way that lawyers always want a settlement is when both sides are unhappy. And on this occasion, [New Order] were very happy and I was very unhappy.

There’d be some people in your position, given all the stuff that’s gone on, who’d disavow the old material. But Peter Hook and the Light have done more than 800 gigs playing Joy Division and New Order material over the past 14 years.

It’s quite strange, actually. Me and the other three, we’ve actually played more in our fifties and sixties than we ever did in our twenties, thirties, and forties. Which is absolutely weird. As a band, New Order really stepped back from playing in the mid-‘90s. We actually split up in ‘93, got together again in ‘98. So yeah, it’s a weird one. But as my wife and my therapist keep telling me — and my wife is my best therapist — you’ve got to work with the hand you’ve got. That’s funny thing, isn’t it? I get such satisfaction from being free of them and being allowed to play all the back catalog. My aim when I started in 2010 was to play every song that Joy Division ever wrote and recorded, which I have done. My next aim is to play every song that New Order have written and recorded, and I’m very well up on that. Next year I will be playing Get Ready in its entirety, and Waiting for the Siren’s Call. I’m going to play those two together, which is great. I’m still on the way with doing these songs. I couldn’t believe it at the time; I didn’t understand why we wouldn’t play them.

We talked about how there are different audiences for Joy Division and New Order. Have you noticed there are different camps for what you call “New Odor” and Peter Hook and the Light, where fans take sides and will only go see one or the other in concert?

Yeah, that always makes me laugh, though. … People are critical, and were very critical. I mean, the reason I had to sing when playing Joy Division [songs with the Light] was because I had three vocalists lined up, and the internet, shall we say, scared them off. Trolling scared them off. And it was Rowetta out of the Happy Mondays that said to me, “OK, you’re not going to get anyone to do this. Ian’s shoes are too big. You are going to have to do it.” And I was like, “Oh, shit.” I must admit that for six months, eight months, I was absolutely terrified. But it’s been such a pleasure to sing [Ian’s] words and to get to know his words from a different place, is what I found. Wonderful.

Tell me more about that.

I heard his words when he was doing them, and I looked at him, but I didn’t really need to hear the words to know that he meant it. What he was saying was passionate. It was educated and it was intense. He meant every single syllable, every time he opened his mouth. So, the thing for me was to get that confidence and be able to learn to project, shall we say. I mean, I thought I was a bass player, and all of a sudden you’re putting somebody else’s shoes and you’re realizing, “Shit, this is a little bit on the difficult side.” It actually made me sympathetic towards lead singers, which I never thought I would believe! I never thought that that could possibly happen! And I must admit, when I moved on to New Order [material], I found Bernard’s shoes were a lot easier to fill than Ian’s, because Steve [Morris], Bernard, and I wrote the vocal lines and the words together, all the way up to and including Technique. So, I was a third of the way there before I’d even started. That was just as enjoyable. There were certain aspects of New Order’s music and certain songs that I hated, but then when I came to sing them, because I was playing the LPs in full, I found that in many ways I actually preferred them to others. And I was like, “Wow.”

Which was the material that you initially hated and then you changed your mind about?

Mainly Republic, because Republic was so fractured and such a toxic atmosphere while we were recording it that I really could not look at the music favorably. Stephen Hague, the producer, had a hell of a job to get us to finish it. He brought me in at the end to put the bass on when everything else had been recorded. Steve and Gillian [Gilbert’s] parts had all but disappeared along with my own, but Stephen Hague managed to bring me in at the end and redo it. They’d never been finished off by the group, so it was wonderful to be able to play the record, finish it off, and play it properly. And then I found a love for that record. … I’m excited about all these things that I’m doing. I’m also working on a lot of new music with people. I’ve got a lot of things coming up. It’s just a matter of fitting them in.

What can you tell me about the new music you’re working on?

I did two tracks with Wolfgang Flür from Kraftwerk. I did another thing with Rusty Egan, who used to be in Rich Kids with Glen Matlock; I’ve done a couple of tracks with him, which has been great. It’s different. I miss that aspect of being in a group. I miss that aspect of working towards your next thing, your next tour, LP. I also have an outfit called Man Ray with a very good friend of mine, Phil Murphy. We make a lot of music for that; we do a lot of charity stuff with that one and really wacky stuff. And I keep meaning to put it on Spotify. Some of it is on Spotify, but most of it isn’t. I’ve just employed my godson, who’s Oscar Boon and is now a bass player with the Inspiral Carpets with his dad, Clint, to get me a new Spotify page so I can put all this solo stuff up, so at least I can look at it! It’s very important as a musician. Rob Gretton, our manager, always used to say to us, “Your best song is your next one, so get on with it.” That was his mantra. And I still feel that, when I don’t write or play on anything new.

Last question: When you talk about how you miss being in a band, what is this story about how you almost joined the Rolling Stones once?

I was fifth in line for the Rolling Stones. Fifth! Is it Doug Wimbush who plays with them? [Editor’s note: No, but Wimbush was also in line to replace Bill Wyman in 1993, and he played on 1997’s album Bridges to Babylon. Darryl Jones ultimately got the job.] He told me he was fourth, and I was delighted. I’m tone-deaf, right? If Mick Jagger put a gun to my head and said, “Play ‘Satisfaction,’” I couldn’t play it. I’m tone-deaf. I can’t pick up other people’s music. I have enough trouble picking up my own when I’ve written it, so I couldn’t do that job. What my son [Jack] does [as a bassist] in the Smashing Pumpkins is completely alien to me, because I couldn’t play somebody else’s bass parts. I never have. I got invited to join Killing Joke, and I couldn’t do it. I said, “I can’t play those bass parts. It’s not in me. I can’t even pick them out.” It’s just as my mother said, “You couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket, Peter,” and really, she was half-right. … I remember Jaz and Geordie [from Killing Joke] sitting me down and asking me to join when they fell out with Youth, and I said, “Lads, I love you to death, but I cannot do it.” And they thought I was being horrible and I didn’t like the music. I love the music! I love Killing Joke! Geordie’s my favorite guitarist ever. But yeah, it’s a weird thing that I’m just me.

And that’s all you need to be.

This Q&A has been edited for brevity and clarity. Watch Hook’s full conversation in the spit-screen video above.

If you or someone you know is experiencing suicidal thoughts, call 911 or the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 988 or 1-800-273-8255, or text HOME to the Crisis Text Line at 741741.

New Order’s 1983 synth classic “Blue Monday” is one of the most important and beloved songs of the new wave era. The nine-minute alt-dance opus influenced and inspired everyone from the Eurythmics’ Dave Stewart to electronic music pioneers Kraftwerk, and to this day it holds the record as the top-selling 12-inch single in recording history, shifting more than a million units in the band’s native U.K. alone. So how exactly did “Blue Monday” manage not only to make no profit but to actually lose a whopping $100,000?

The Manchester group’s iconic founding bassist, Peter “Hooky” Hook, explains that it all came down to indie label Factory Records’ decision regarding the single’s very famous — but very expensive — packaging.

The die-cut packaging for New Order’s “Blue Monday” 12-inch single.

“[Graphic designer] Peter [Saville] came to the practice place, and he saw a floppy disk and he loved it,” Hook recalls, as he sat with Yahoo Music reflecting on his illustrious discography with both New Order and the band from which New Order sprang, the equally influential Joy Division. “And he felt we should do the sleeve [to look] like this. … Unbeknownst to him, it had to be die-cut three times, which made the sleeve ridiculously expensive — which [New Order bandmate] Stephen Morris thought was hilarious, because you were paying for the bits that you didn’t get, the hole, where the card had gone!

“But, yeah, the sleeve unfortunately cost 10p [approximately 20 cents] more than the record could earn, so every time we sold a copy of ‘Blue Monday,’ we were losing 10p,” Hook elaborates with a rueful chuckle: “It then went on to be the biggest-selling 12-inch of all time! I remember [Factory Records label head] Tony [Wilson] going to great trouble to cast a brass Factory symbol that said, ‘Well Done, Hooky!’ celebrating a loss of 50,000 pounds. … I suppose it really seals its place in history as a mythical being for that reason.”

The financial failure of what should have been New Order’s commercial career breakthrough was just one in a long line of both comedic and tragic errors for the beleaguered band. The most tragic of all, of course, transpired when it was known as the legendary postpunk outfit Joy Division, fronted by the charismatic but deeply troubled Ian Curtis. Struggling with the dissolution of his young marriage, new fatherhood, an extramarital emotional affair with Belgian journalist Annik Honoré, and, most of all, his increasingly uncontrollable epilepsy, the 23-year-old Curtis committed suicide in May 1980, on the eve of what was supposed to be Joy Division’s first North American tour — leaving his guilt-ridden bandmates behind to pick up the pieces and always wonder what might have been.

“With the making of [Joy Division’s sophomore album] Closer, Ian’s illness was degenerative, and it was getting worse,” says Hook. “The big problem with Ian was … he was very empathic to other people. He would go out of his way to make sure you felt all right about what he was suffering. … Ian worked very, very hard and was still suffering grand mals right the way through [the recording sessions for Closer]. He managed to hide it from his parents, from the doctors that he was being treated by. The guy wanted success. He wanted to achieve what he felt we deserved. And he hid [his epilepsy]. That was the problem. He would never let you know how poorly he was, so you were in ignorance. Even when you were picking him up off the floor when he smashed his head open on the sink or the toilet, he’d just get up. He’d never stop.

“Suicide of a very close friend or family member always leaves you with the guilt,” Hook continues solemnly. “And that’s the beauty of suicide, isn’t it? It’s not them worrying afterwards. It’s everybody else saying who, when, or why, or ‘Did I do enough?’ I’ve had enough of that in my life to realize that people who are left behind are the ones that suffer. But it was a great LP, and I think one of my greatest regrets when we finished with Joy Division and moved on to New Order was that we never got to play Closer. … It was heartbreaking to put it all away and never promote Closer, never promote [the single] ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart,’ put it in a box, put it in the back of the cupboard. And we went off to New Order.”

Incredibly, the surviving members of Joy Division immediately decided to reform as New Order. (“I think the great thing about being young is you can carry on, regardless. The great thing about being a musician is people will coddle you and pamper you, and pander to you, so we didn’t have to do much grieving. We just buried our heads and stuck together and ignored it, basically.”) Reconvening in their Salford rehearsal space the Monday after Curtis’s inquest, they went right to work on a prophetically titled new song Hook had written the previous weekend in tribute to Curtis, “Dreams Never End.”

But while New Order — pesky 50,000-pound loss aside — went on to greater success than the short-lived Joy Division had ever known, all was not dreamy in their world. At first, Joy Division fans were still in mourning, and they weren’t quick to accept this new phase in the band’s career. (“We got a lot of letters written in blood, things like that. People phoning you up. Being a ‘man of the people,’ I put my number in the phone book, and then I had every Joy Division loony phoning me up and being weird on the phone. That taught me a lesson,” says Hook.) Then, when New Order went to America to play the tour that had been originally booked for Joy Division, “fans weren’t supportive. They used to spend the whole gig shouting for Joy Division titles,” Hook recalls. “I didn’t expect them to be supportive, to be honest. … We actually lost a lot of our confidence. … The audiences were openly hostile. They wanted Joy Division.”

To make matters worse, on the very first night of New Order’s maiden U.S. tour, all their gear was stolen from their van. “And it wasn’t insured!” exclaims Hook. “In the space of two months, we’d managed to lose our lead singer [Curtis], our group [Joy Division], and our equipment. … It really was being at the bottom of a very long ladder. It was a hell of an education, that trip to America.”

New Order went on to moderate American success with perennial alternative radio staples like “Bizarre Love Triangle,” “True Faith,” “Shellshock” (which was included on the Pretty in Pink soundtrack), and a 1988 rerelease of “Blue Monday.” But over the years, friction between Hook and lead singer Bernard Sumner continued to grow, and in 2007, Hook left the band for good. Fans may hold out hope for a real New Order reunion (the band continues to tour and record sans Hook), but according to the grizzled bassist, who’s been battling his ex-bandmates in court for years, those fans probably shouldn’t hold their breath.

“Literally, [we’re] at that point in the relationship where you hate each other’s stinking guts,” he reveals. “It’s a tragic end to a wonderful, wonderful group. You know, I long for Tony Wilson [who passed away in 2007] to appear and bang our heads together. For [late band manager] Rob Gretton to appear and bang our heads together. For Ian Curtis to appear and bang our heads together! I really do wish with all my heart that we could stop and just respect each other. I think that’s what we should be working on.”

Says Hook: “We shouldn’t be working on getting one over each other. We should be sitting down and going, ‘Listen, we’re all different people, we all share this same heritage, and it’s important to all of us. So what we should do is share it, learn to live together, learn to show respect, because we created it together.’ Whether you like it or not, that’s the truth — it’s all of ours. You can’t take it off one person, and you can’t say one person’s wrong and shouldn’t have it. Because we should all have it. And until somebody wises up and says, ‘What are you doing?’ and that respect is shown, and you can’t even contemplate anything else.”

While a Hook-less New Order carries on, Hook is still out there on his own. He has penned three memoirs (including his juicy, 724-page latest, Substance: Inside New Order), and he regularly revisits the Joy Division and New Order discographies on tour with his band the Light, showcasing his distinctive bass style (which once even attracted the attention of the Rolling Stones, when they were looking to hire a replacement for Bill Wyman).

“The great bit for me is that in 2011, I got to play Closer [in its entirety for the first time], and it was one of the most beautiful moments of my life,” Hook says happily. “To sit there and have my son, who was exactly the same age I was when I did Closer [22 years old], playing the bass lines, and me doing my best to do Ian justice … the chills down your spine from hearing Closer live was a wonderful, wonderful moment. I do think really Barney [Sumner] and Steve [Morris] missed out on that.”

And as for what might have happened if Curtis hadn’t killed himself, Hook confesses that he wonders about that sometimes. “Do I think we’d still be together if Ian had lived? I would hope so,” he muses. “You know, one of the things about a song like ‘Blue Monday’ being as popular as it is, even now throughout the world, is that you’d have loved to hear Ian Curtis sing on it.

“But the important thing you realize, as you get older, is that the fact that [Joy Division] didn’t carry on wasn’t the most important thing for Ian. The most important thing was a daughter lost her father. Parents lost a son. A wife lost a husband. A lover lost a lover. That is really the important thing — because let’s face it, there’s lots of groups. There’ll be another along in a minute.”

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This article originally ran on Yahoo Music.