The Mancunian Candidates

There’s no bullshit with Peter Hook. You get that from the off. You ask the questions and Hooky, as he’s known and loved, gives you an unusually straight answer. Certainly unusual for a rock star. “I like your runners,” he tells me, looking at my Adidas Samba, “though that t-shirt’s off. I don’t do stripes, me.”
It’s Oxegen 2005. We’re sitting beside a bin in the festival’s VIP car park. Hooky thinks it’s hilarious.
“The glamorous rock ‘n roll life, eh,” he laughs. “It was hilarious hearing people warm up instead of getting fucking wrecked, ha! That’s the great thing about New Order. One day you’re in a dressing room next door to Primal Scream who are just getting fuckin’ twatted and the next you’re next door to Keane who are going ‘La la la la la la’. It’s fantastic. I was pissing myself.”
New Order are back. In less than an hour they will give their first headline performance to an Irish audience in over 10 years.
Taking in Joy Division classics such as ‘She’s Lost Control’ and ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart,’ as well as New Order staples ‘Crystal’, ‘Regret’, ‘Temptation’ and ‘True Faith’ it will prove to be the highlight of the festival.
Typically, frontman Bernard Sumner will be in cantankerous form, though he’ll be equally hilarious throughout, while Hooky will ooze cool, strutting his stuff with his trademark low-slung bass.
“I robbed that from Paul Simenon,” he confides. “I watched The Clash when they were supporting Siouxsie & The Banshees in Belview, Manchester and I thought that the way Simenon wore his bass was pretty cool. I just went back and lengthened my strap. As my mother said, you’ve got to have a gimmick, and she was very right.”
New Order though, are past needing anything but the music to sell concert tickets and shift records. Nearly 30 years in the business, Ian Curtis’ former bandmates are perhaps more relevant than ever before, given their influence over the current musical climate.
Though their latest opus, Waiting For The Sirens’ Call, may be in places patchy, their live shows indicate that the fire still burns bright.
“Well you'd like to think that we should know what we're doing after all this time," Hooky suggests, “but I do accept criticism of Waiting For The Sirens’ Call. Others in the band wouldn’t agree with me, but it’s definitely let down by really shit production in parts.”
Unlike their ‘80s heyday, the New Order of the new millennium hand over most of the production work to outside producers. On Waiting For The Sirens’ Call, three different twiddlers were drafted in.
“You see Bernard thinks it’s very important that we don’t argue, so we use producers,” notes Hooky as a sly grin comes across his face. He’s trying to hold back in his response. “I mean, I wouldn’t use producers personally. I think we’re as good as if not better than most of them. I’d rather argue and have a fantastic LP, but Bernard's very anti-arguing. It’s a mutual decision but you just end up arguing with the producer.
“In particular, I thought Stuart Price’s work was bloody awful. He watered it down and made it really mellow. I think that was a record company direction and I think New Order fans don’t like it. But that’s the drawback to being on a major label. They keep trying things with you. They try and make you sound like the last big thing.
“I thought we resisted that valiantly but the record company wanted to bring in Stuart Price because they felt that there was something missing. When he came in the only thing that was fucking missing was the bass! He managed to get rid of it, the turkey.”
In addition to the day job, New Order have been collaborating on a film about Ian Curtis, which has made them re-evaluate their relationship with their former singer.
I guess the thing, for me anyway, that resulted from Ian’s suicide was that you began to think that you didn’t really know him very well, or completely,” Hooky reflects. “It’s interesting in a way that you get given pieces of the puzzle even now. Like his suicide note, and letters that he wrote to Anneek (his secret Belgian girlfriend). These are there for you to read if you like, which is quite bizarre because if anything our relationship with Ian now is much deeper than it was when he died purely because we’ve lived with him another 25 years.
“He’s still quite important in our lives and our careers. If anything the bond has got deeper so it is a bit of a shock really to realise that if you want to you can fit in the last pieces of the puzzle.”
With Dutch photographer Anton Corbijn on board and a script that Sumner, Hook and Morris have approved, Hook is expecting the biography to be as close to the true Ian Curtis as is possible.
“It’ll be a dark film, no doubt about it but thankfully the script is being developed in such a way that it’s very factual and no one side is influencing it either way. It’s not like 24 Hour Party People where the most interesting thing for us was the amount of inaccuracies.
“You know Tony (Wilson –Factory Records boss) is a great fan of rewriting history because it’s part of his chaos theory that everything should change and even the truth should change many, many times.
“When I pulled him up about 24 Hour Party People because the stories weren’t right he said (adopts camp accent) ‘You’ve got to remember darling that fiction is far more interesting than fact.’ So that’s Tony’s look on it”.
Outside of New Order and work on the film, Hook has spent most of the last two years DJing.
“I do the DJing because I don’t get to play live often enough,” he says, again with a sly grin. “Bernard you see is not a fan of touring, which is fine.”
If their bassist has his way, the band will be out on the road again with a new album in super-quick time.
“It amazes me that they take so bloody long,” says Hooky, “but we’ve got seven songs left over from Waiting For The Sirens’ Callso I think we’re pretty close to doing another album immediately. It remains though to be seen if that happens. We haven’t discussed what we’re doing after these shows but I want to get it out quick. I think it would be fantastic for the fans. I mean the first thing they say to you is why do they have to wait so long for a new record, so it would be great if they couldn’t say that this time around.”
Hooky also believes the current musical climate is ripe for an excess of New Order.
“Enough bands sound like us, so why not have the real thing? No, funnily enough right now is my favourite time ever for bands. There are so many good groups around, people like The Killers, Bloc Party and Razorlight, and I think we should be right in there. (laughs) Half of them fuckin’ owe us that at least anyway!”
Waiting For The Siren’s Call is out now on Warner