Peter Hook Quotes

'24 Hour Party People' was a comedy, and I knew that from the beginning.

What was punk all about? To me, it was if you really want to do something, go ahead and do it.

You don't get many chances in the world, and you don't want to throw them away.

Democracy for us tends to be has to do with who shouts the loudest!

We loved country songs in New Order. That's our big secret!

I'd rather have ten people who are mad for it than ten thousand who aren't.

That's it really, at the moment I wouldn't say I was influenced by any one thing in particular.

I've stayed in hotels where you were scared to even put your feet on the floor, or had to sleep in a chair.

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.

The break-up of a relationship is always difficult, especially a 30-year one.

The reason Joy Division and New Order are as influential and successful as they are is because of the unique playing of all the individuals.

The chemistry involved made everything Factory did quite special.

Like the time I threw out Pete Murphy of Bauhaus for saying those six immortal words to Slim when he'd forgotten his backstage pass: 'Don't you know who I am?'
'Ha, ha, yeah, I do,' I said, 'You're out, arsehole'.

There are keyboard terrorists everywhere who hide behind a veil of anonymity to pursue their vicious slanders.

At my age, I only travel business class because I just don't bend anymore; my body can't cope with it.

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.

Atmosphere" is a massive song. A lot of people say it's their favorite Joy Division song, but it's not mine; it reminds me too much of Ian, like it's his death march or something, and it figures that it's one of the most popular songs to play at funerals: Robbie Williams has got "Angels" for weddings and we've got "Atmosphere" for funerals.

New Order never celebrated anything to do with Joy Division.

We don't to be some kind of rock supergroup for the sake of being a supergroup. You want to change things and say something fresh and new so you appeal to people as a new group.

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.

Dance music tends to be a solitary affair.

To be in one band that changed the world musically is pretty good, but to be in two bands that changed the world musically, that's amazing.

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'm one of those old cynics that thinks, whoever you vote for, the government always gets in.

The worst words I could ever hear as a bass player was, 'Can you play the root notes?'

The fact is that you don't want to be away forever, but you want to lead a normal life.

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.

Once you made that decision to split New Order up, you were like, 'Woo-hoo! I better get out there and get a job.'

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.

That was the thing about Joy Division: writing the songs was dead easy because the group was really balanced; we had a great guitarist, a great drummer, a great bass player, a great singer.

A poetic, sensitive, tortured soul, the Ian Curtis of the myth - he was definitely that.

In the late '70s, the conditions that bands had to endure were, shall we say, not as civilized as they are today. People were a lot more aggressive back then. So there was definitely a lot of suffering for your art. But I would argue that was a good thing. Generally, people make better music when they suffer.

Accept what you did do, and live with it.

When you balance it against New Order, New Order don't work or tour relentlessly. We definitely work in our own way and sometimes it's a bit too slow for me, so I like to plan ahead and fill my time up.

I regularly go to concerts with my children sharing the music.

What I've learned is that life is a balance between idealism and realism.

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'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.

Ten things you should always do when you form a group

1. Work with your friends
2. Find like-minded people
3. Have ultimate self-belief
4. Write great songs
5. Get a great manager
6. Live in Manchester
7. Support each other through thick and thin
8. Realise no one person is bigger than the group (thanks to Gene Simmons for that one)
9. Watch where the money goes
10. Always get separate legal advice for everything before you sign; failing that, ask your mam and dad

To me, New Order split up when Bernard and I stopped writing together. We started Joy Division together; we started New Order together.

Everything up to and including Unknown Pleasures really existed only when the four of us were in a room together playing it. Not written down, not recorded, just from memory.

People go and hide, but I don't. I'm a fighter.

Nobody is the same. If we were all the same it would be bloody boring.

I have a hard time getting my head around the idea of playing 'The Perfect Kiss' in my 50s. I can't quite get there.

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!

The scary thing is when I did my set in Texas everyone was excited. The show was great. I was done and the next DJ put something on vinyl and the difference! The quality!!

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.

Now I don't know why, but Morrissey had always hated Joy Division. Maybe Rob got it right when after a lively debate as the cameras were turned off he turned to Morrissey and said, 'The trouble with you, Morrissey, is that you've never had the guts to kill yourself like Ian. You're fucking jealous.' You should have seen his face as he stormed off. I laughed me bollocks off.

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.

Old men are cantankerous: they like to get their own way.

My father was always Labour, and my mother was always Conservative, so I tended to sort of go in the middle.

When I'm not playing music, certainly the last thing I want to do is listen to music!

Sarcasm is a Manchester trait.

Bootleggers quake in fear of me ringing them on a Sunday afternoon. I call after dinner, usually.

I am man enough to be able to admit my own mistakes. I think that is an important trait to have.

Any coalition, especially where one party is more powerful than the other, it's always bound to have a pecking order.

The rise of the iPod meant that digital music became the norm, It's sad, but you can still find the real stuff out there if you look for it!

I watched John Frusciante of the Red Hot Chili Peppers play it acoustically at their gig at the MEN Arena. I think I can safely say that, of the 19,000 people there, 18,950 didn't know what it was - but I did, and it brought a tear to my eye, definitely. Monster bass line. A bass line that every bass player dreams of and I got it, so thank you.

Bands don't play the whole LP. They play a selection of the songs that they like.

When you DJ, you're just on your own, which is nice because there's no argument.

We need to talk about what we are going to do and see and decide. We'll have to wait and see.

Yeah, I still feel as if I have things to do really. I'm not ready to stop.

It was only after we recorded Unknown Pleasures that I could hear and begin to take notice of the words, and it was quite startling then to see how they changed between that album, where they were still quite detached and aggressive, to Closer, which is even darker and not detached at all but really introspective and quite frightening - especially of course when you listen to it in light of what later happened.

I am always working on new material with my production partner Phil Murphy in our guise as Man Ray; we do a lot of soundtrack work & some great collaborations.

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.

It's really nice to be able to do what I'm doing without having to compromise with another musician.

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.

There are lots of Joy Division songs that are so powerful when played live, some of which we did either never play or played very rarely.

The interesting thing is that New Order finished on an okay note. It was only after we split that things got worse.

You can't buy class.

I've never been out of work in my whole life.

I just like keeping busy and having ten things on the go.

Music was such an important part of everyone's life in the '60s and '70s, but everywhere you played, the music was dreadful.

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.

I don't find imitating other people's music easy at all. I remember being fifth in line for a Rolling Stones tour, early '90s, when Bill Wyman left, and I was hoping against hope that I wouldn't get the call to audition. I wouldn't be able to play a Stones song if you put a gun to my head.

They amaze me most of those remixes. Some of them are crap. But every time I complain, someone comes up and says they are for a different market that you don't understand. Some of the New Order ones are really great, though.

'Movement' sounded like Joy Division, but 'Power, Corruption & Lies' is the first New Order record.

I look back on Joy Division very fondly indeed. I know that, of course, the band came to a tragic end, but that does not change the fact that Joy Division was a great band to be a part of.