Peter Hook : Music News Feature

Intimately and entirely involved with all Factory Records and Hacienda endeavours over the last thirty years, Hooky’s remained a long term cohort and devoted associate of Factory past and present, despite as is widely acknowledged falling victim financially to the artistic projects and reckless largesse of Messrs Wilson and Gretton.

As passionate advocate for Manchester, its culture and its people, Hooky was one of the prime and passionate supporters in the establishment of The Tony Wilson Experience as is quite typical of him and his multi faceted approach to life. With plenty of projects on the go, he remains as sprightly, youthful, sanguine, and amiable as ever, despite in cricket terms, having notched up his half century a couple of years back.

Still when you’ve been in two of the most critically lauded bands of the last 30 years and lost the amount of money in the club that they did, one supposes a grounded and down to earth sense of humour is a pre-requisite. With Hooky, as Clash Music found interviewing him exclusively at the event, it’s a given.

“I hear you’ve just flown in from LA to be at this…”

“Yeah I’ve just got back. I was doing the launch of the Joy Division Zune over there. They’ve chosen the Joy Division documentary to be pre-loaded onto this limited edition piece which is absolutely beautiful. I went over to DJ at this launch and to do a Q & A on the film.

It was really weird in LA. I’d been driven round all day in an open topped sports car, been taken out for dinner and been to this wonderful art place, rather like here at Urbis funnily enough, and they were showing the documentary at one end of the room. There were loads of birds there, like out of work actresses, all going round with fish & chips and beef and onion pies, you know, all done out like it’s northern, Manchester type food in these completely wonderful, wonderful place. Then I caught sight of the documentary showing the slums of Salford and that gave me a real culture shock, I was like “Oh my god” cos it showed you what you’d escaped. LA is la la land anyway and when you look at where you’ve come from in the documentary, it was a sobering moment, even for an ex alcoholic like me. It’s hard to remember now but those times were grim back then.

“So today’s event, what do you reckon to it?”

“The event, to be honest, I thought that Peter had bitten off much more than he could chew, and yet thanks to the people behind the scenes like Vicki and Rose, Sarah and Jane, they have pulled together and pulled all of us up by our bootstraps and pulled it off. People like Peter and me we’re great at ideas but shit at sorting anything out so these people have taken this great idea of Peter’s and made it work. As to whether it has any effect, like a ripple effect, we’ll have to wait and see.

“Everybody’s reactions’ been hugely positive, like I’ve seen people just walking up to Peter Saville and giving him stuff….

“Yeah I’ve had people come up to me and give me stuff but that’s what it’s all about. It’s about inspiration and the awful, awful fight that you have to go through to achieve anything. Like if you look at a band like Joy Division, we had to fight so incredibly hard to get to where we were which in the end was nowhere.

“What do you think Tony would have thought of today?”

“I think he would have pissed himself and he probably is. You know that thing, “You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone” and Tony is one of the biggest examples of that I’ve ever seen in my life. This town is still in shock that he’s gone and that’s scary, it really is scary. If there was anyone that could step into his shoes and I’m not so sure we want someone to do it but we’ll see.”

“Well you’re doing your bit, bringing back the Hacienda with the tour you’re doing?”

“Yeah, I’m enjoying that, it really is brilliant to bring it back to people. It’s not a money making thing really, like I don’t think we’ll ever make enough to soften the blow of what’s gone before. It’s just a way of enjoying ourselves really and realising the legacy so to speak. What brought it home to me was when Graeme Park said to me “This is fucking great, you know I’ve not been working this much in fucking years”. It’s about that, whenever we do it we have a fucking great time and I think we play great music and I think that the people we’re working with are fantastic. The whole thing looks great and I don’t care what anybody says about it, I don’t give a fuck. “

“What touches you most about today’s event?”

“To me the most important thing about today is that the people I’ve been working with for 30 years are here, celebrating the guy that started it all off. The things that I’ve got and the things that I’ve done are all because of us working with Tony and Rob Gretton also. Rob Gretton, New Order’s manager, should never be forgotten. It makes me happy and it brings us together which I think is really important.”

By Richard Smirke

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