Orchestrating rock & popular music has become quite a thing of late, with dance acts such as Ministry of Sound & Basement Jaxx playing to audiences across the world and even Australian rock legends The Angels enjoying big success with their ‘Symphony of Angels’ live shows & CD release. Adelaide’s Zep Boys have also recently completed a tour of the UK & Europe with their Lep Masters Stairway to Heaven show, supported by a forty piece orchestra. So, imagine securing one of London’s most historic & iconic music venues and putting on a show and selling it out… and no one has ever seen before! Joy Division’s Peter Hook has done just that and he isn’t afraid to admit it’s a little bit daunting considering no-one has heard any teasers of the show as yet, but come July we will all have a better understanding of how this magical post-punk band’s music will transfer orchestrally, with Hook also bringing the show to Australia in August for five performances across the country. We managed to speak with Peter about his expectations for the shows and what we can expect to hear, as well as discussing the late Ian Curtis…
Sean: Good morning Peter, how are you doing?
Peter: I’m very well thank you mate. How are you?
Sean: I’m great thanks. Thank you for your time for a chat with us here at The Rockpit.
Peter: It’s a pleasure… I hope [laughs]
Sean: Firstly, congratulations on the news that you have sold out the show at London’s Royal Albert Hall in July.
Peter: Thank you very much mate. It’s been sold out for quite a while. I must admit it’s a little bit daunting, shall we say because there is a lot of trust involved because nobody has heard it, so I was very flattered that that many people, I think it’s around five thousand people, have trusted me enough to give it a chance, which is a great compliment – I’d like to thank each and every one of them. And your giving me the same privilege in Australia too because here we are talking about it but none of you have heard it or got nothing to refer to [laughs] so it is quite an odd situation to be in.
Sean: That must really keep you on your toes all the way through these shows as you move from city to city then Peter?
Peter: To be honest I’m fuckin’ terrified mate, don’t worry [laughs]. The odd thing is I’ve weathered this once before when I started playing Joy Division back in 2010, which seems like a hell of a long time ago now. The criticism that was levelled at me for wanting to play my own music was incredible and incredibly the other members of Joy Division were very vocal in their damning of me playing it, which was quite upsetting to say the least. The thing is it’s my music and in some ways I was wondering why I was apologising for playing my own music – I was just like “fuck off”. It’s a weird thing… it seems to really be about people pleasing. When I started the idea of playing Joy Division’s music I wanted to celebrate thirty years of Ian Curtis’s life. The record company weren’t doing any celebrations, the other members of the band weren’t doing any celebrations and I thought, “You know what? Fuck it. I’m gonna celebrate it because it is wonderful”. Joy Division has given me a wonderful life. Ian, with his efforts and his talent, has given me a fantastic life and he never had that. I thought that I wanted to give something back – the first gigs were done for charity to start off as we meant to go on actually. The thing is, the criticism – and people hadn’t even heard us do it – was immense. It scared off the singers and meant that in the end I had to do it myself as I had no one else to do it.
Luckily for me, my son played bass… so I felt really good about that because there is nobody nearer to me in the world or Joy Division than my son, so that completed the circle if you like. But stepping into Ian Curtis’s shoes was immense. So there is a little bit of that aspect here with the classical – the interesting thing about the classical is that I’ve worked with Tim Crooks, who is the orchestrator & conductor, for four years now doing The Hacienda and every time we do the Hacienda with a different set each year Tim always says to me, “I’d love to get my hands on Joy Division. Can’t we do a Joy Division one?” And I’m like, “In your dreams mate” [laughs] “Joy Division are a rock band – Piss off!” But over the years, I must admit I’ve come to appreciate what he’s added to these wonderful songs that I’ve grown up with… these dance songs. So he started steering me round to think maybe he could do it and add something that makes it valid. Because at the end of the day it’s all about validity and it’s about asking yourself why are you doing this – Is it to squeeze the sponge dry or is it because it adds another dimension to it? I couldn’t tell until I listened to what he did, so we tried a couple of tracks and I was breath-taken and blown away with the largeness, shall we say, that it gave the songs.
I’ve spent forty three years emulating & ripping off orchestras so really from a karma point of view I should be employing them instead of stealing their jobs with a few synthesizers [laughs] so there is that aspect of it where I’m finally giving something back musically but there is also the fact that Tim has managed to not change the music but enhance it and its brought a deeper, warmer more melancholy capturing aspect to the music that I found immensely moving. I get so many chills and bloody hairs standing up on the back of my neck when I’m listening to it – over the years I’ve listened to thousands of cover versions, some of which are terrible, some are wonderful – so I’ve managed to pick the bits that I’ve enjoyed and used aspects of that in people’s interpretation of Joy Division.
Sean: And with Joy Division leaving such a huge imprint on the music world, there must be some quite interesting covers? Any that really stands out?
Peter: Yes, one version that I really loved was by Malcolm McLaren that he did for his last LP, just before he died. There was an aspect of that that I absolutely adored so I’m using that as a homage to also to Joy Division and a homage to Malcolm McLaren. It inspired Pottsy & I, David Potts my guitarist & who was my co-writing partner in Monaco and was in The Light, to do a new track for us to say thank you to Joy Division. The new track is called ‘Higher, Higher, Higher Love’ and we’d been threatening to do it for years and it’s actually spurred us on and now we finish the first half, before the interval, with a new Monaco track which is a homage to Joy Division and a thank you to Ian, if you like. We’re hoping it may lead to another Monaco LP for me & Pottsy because it was such pleasure to do. The one thing I do miss about New Order is not being in a writing group because The Light is different because there is no writing group. With New Order it’s always about the next record so I do miss that and it was nice to get back to that. To be honest with you I’ve been so busy enjoying myself playing the old stuff that I’ve been sorely neglecting that aspect.
Sean: It certainly sounds like that hunger to create new music is very much still there…
Peter: Yes, I mean it was a way of saying thank you, first & foremost… hunger is probably not the right word. It’s quite funny when we started, Rob Gratton who was Joy Division’s Manager & Tony Wilson of Factory Records, they were always on at us all the time to carry on writing because they always said, “the best track your gonna write is your next one”. So, there was always that drive that we kept through New Order actually… I mean, it got more sporadic in New Order but we kept writing new music. So, it’s more the habit I’ve got out of but it’s not a hunger… it’s a drive.
Sean: So, Australia has the pleasure of five of these wonderful shows spread out all over the country. With only two albums in Joy Division’s locker, how have you gone about selecting a set list?
Peter: Sadly Joy Division didn’t write many songs – they only wrote fifty four in their career so I think we are playing thirty of them in the set. It was a combination of my greatest likes at that moment and because I’m playing them all, one minute I’m liking one then another, then I’m getting fed up with one… and we are playing some ‘B’ sides too so there are some interesting tracks so-to-speak. At the end of the day Joy Division only had the two hit singles ‘Transmission’ & ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’ so from that point of view there aren’t that many to pick from. I put together a list of my favourites that I passed to Tim, he then listened to them over the course of a weekend [laughs] – the thought of a classically trained musician listening to Joy Division did amuse me [laughs] – then he picked the ones he liked and thought that he could add something to. He asked me to trust him and I said, “OK” and then we keyed them in the way that Martin Hannett had taught us when we did ‘Unknown Pleasures’ so that each key is sympathetic to the next, got them running so we listened to the original tracks running then we played them and Tim did his orchestration on top.
And I must admit the chills that went down my spine listening to these wonderful orchestrations – they aren’t a million miles away from the original songs. We aren’t reconstructing or reimagining, its a celebration of the tracks as they are and as they were. It wasn’t about doing a jazzed-up funk version or a reggae version or anything like that, it was just about enhancing, in Tim Crook’s own inimitable fashion, the music that we were playing and I must admit it’s worked and as I said to you before, taking the cover versions that we liked and putting that in so it’s all like a stew of music, it’s all turned out really well and it’s a real big thing, a big ask for people – when you do something as whacky as this it’s a big thing to ask the fans to trust you but I do feel in a way I’ve earnt most of the fans trust from 2010. So if anybody wants their money back at the end I’ll be bloody delighted to give it to them [laughs]
Sean: I’m interested to see how diverse the audiences are going to be, because this is such a unique opportunity to open this music up to all ages & music lovers of all genres too.
Peter: When I started it in 2010 I thought it would be a load of fat old blokes like me, just wallowing in their memories but I just as you’ve said, it’s very diverse. A lot of people bring their children, which is the greatest compliment in the world but having not done the Joy Division Classical yet I don’t know what audience we are going to attract. I’ve no idea what those people in the Royal Albert Hall are going to be expecting – the expectation before we start is going to be wild. The nerves… the edge just before we start is going to be… I mean, I’m terrified now just thinking of that moment. Ultimately, we are celebrating a tragic end to a fantastic group that have gone on and had a massive influence both culturally & musically on the world, so we are all thinking, in the same way I am, “God, what could have been?” If Ian Curtis would have lived & Joy Division would have carried on what could have happened? We could have been crap! The next LP could have been fucking rubbish! Or it could have been sublime.
It’s that thing of never knowing but Joy Division is a fantastic group. They are just as important musically, in a cultural fashion, as they were in 1980. It’s a great pleasure & honour for me to keep flying that flag for the group all around the world and getting to places that Ian was desperate to get to but didn’t make it. So every time I pop up, whether it is in Mongolia or Chile or wherever I’m playing, I always think to myself, “Ian would have loved this.” I know that he wanted to take our music – because he was our biggest fan and even more so than the other three members. He was always there to lift you up whenever you had a doubt or whenever you stumbled he was always the guy there to catch you and let’s face it he wasn’t in the greatest condition to be in that position, but he did. Every time he would pick you up and say, “Don’t worry this is gonna be great, we are fantastic and we are going to rule the world”. And this is my attempt to keep that flame burning – it’s a simple as that.
Sean: It’s quite ironic that it was the thirty-ninth anniversary of Ian’s passing only a few weeks ago. It must be an emotional time for you, especially hearing the great love & admiration you had for him.
Peter: In that very same week, we not only did we have Rob Gratton’s death, we had Ian’s death and also the Hacienda opened on May 21st and then low and behold in Manchester we had the anniversary of the atrocity that happened at the Arena, so that was a wild week emotionally for me to say the least because my daughter was at the Arena that terrible night – she was one of the lucky ones that came home relatively unscathed. She is still suffering the trauma of it the same way a lot of the kids did and still are. So yeah it was a hell of a week I have to say.
Sean: I couldn’t begin to imagine. I’m really looking forward to seeing this show and we are lucky enough to have you playing in the Concert Hall here in Perth which has incredible acoustics so that should be just perfect.
Peter: Well mate, you can either come pat me on the back afterwards or kick me up my arse, I’ll allow you that [laughs]
Sean: Just before I lose you I did have a couple of reader’s question that were sent in to us, if you don’t mind…
To hear what questions our reader’s put to Peter listen in to the June episode of our monthly podcast The Heaven & Hell Show
Sean: I’ve just got time to throw one last question at you. What was the last album you listened to?
Peter: I listened to Niko’s ‘Chelsea Girl’ only yesterday. I was doing loads of emails and I don’t know what brought me round to it but I suddenly thought that I really fancied listening to ‘Chelsea Girl’ by Nico – it’s a beautiful LP with John Cale. It’s a wonderful, wonderful record.
Sean: Sadly we’ve run out of time and I have so much to talk to you about…
Peter: Save it for next time mate and then we can at least hope there is a next time [laughs]
Sean: And hopefully on August 9 I’ll be shaking you by the hand after the show to congratulate you for an unbelievable night…
Peter: And so do I mate because I really can do without a kick up the arse but thank you [laughs]
Sean: Thank you so much for your time and on behalf of us all at The Rockpit we wish you all the best for the Royal Albert Hall gig and see you over here in August.
Peter: Thanks mate. Take care of yourself.
Sean: Thanks Peter. Safe travels.
Joy Division’s legendary bass player Peter Hook is set to tour Australia with The Metropolitan Orchestra this August for a string of five concerts which will see him, special guests and a full orchestra perform the band’s seminal post punk repertoire with classical elements.
TOUR DATES
Friday 2nd August 2019 – Sydney Opera House, Sydney
Saturday 3rd August 2019 – AEC Theatre, Adelaide
Tuesday 6th August 2019 – BCEC, Brisbane
Friday 9th August 2019 – Perth Concert Hall, Perth
Sunday 11th August 2019 – Plenary Theatre, Melbourne
Tickets On Sale Thursday 18th April, 10am local time via www.wearenice.com.au
