Ep553: The Ghosts That Haunt Peter Hook

Peter Hook reflects on 50 years of music, the emotional weight of performing Joy Division and New Order live, and the many memories and ghosts of his past.

Tickets for Peter Hook & The Light, Australia 2026

Topics Include:

• New Order toured Australia as early as 1982, helped by Factory Australasia's local support.
• Hooky calls Australia the only place he never wants to leave — he still suffers leaving every time.
• Peter Hook and the Light played their seventh-ever gig in Melbourne on their first Australian tour.
• He is now working through every New Order and Joy Division album ever recorded live.
• Get Ready features songs never played live as New Order, with Steve Morris largely absent during recording.
• The band's Grammy came from Orgy's heavy metal cover of Blue Monday — Hook loves the weird covers most.
• He revealed a plan to stage a full New Order classical concert, eyeing the Sydney Opera House.
• Ian Curtis performed with absolute conviction every single night — something Bernard Sumner couldn't match early on.
• Hook recalls first seeing Ian smash up a venue at 2:30am, dancing through broken tables — terrifying and electrifying.
• That chaotic Stiff/Chiswick talent show led directly to Rob Gretton becoming Joy Division's manager.
• Ian's lyrics, Hook says, are heartbreaking up close — Love Will Tear Us Apart masks devastating words in euphoric music.
• Singing Ian's words himself has given Hook a profound new insight into what Curtis was actually expressing.
• Tony Wilson signed them with a handshake — no contracts — while other labels arrived with thick legal documents.
• Bernard Sumner found the Unknown Pleasures pulsar image in a textbook; nobody planned the iconic sleeve.
• Hooky was actually sued for bootlegging the Unknown Pleasures artwork — which Factory themselves had originally stolen.
• Ian Curtis reportedly wrote a letter complaining about how Closer sounded — a detail Hook only learned years later.
• During Closer sessions, Curtis was being torn apart: marriage collapsing, new love, epilepsy worsening, the band pushing forward.
• Hook deeply regrets not seeing Ian before his cremation — but a gravedigger privately told him where Curtis is actually buried.
• The inquest into Ian's death so disgusted the band they decided on the spot to continue as New Order.
• Joy Division was deliberately boxed away for 30 years; Bernard called playing those songs "miserable" and refused to continue.
• Bobby Gillespie suggested the album playback concept so Hook could faithfully recreate Martin Hannett's studio sound live.
• Watching his son learn Joy Division bass lines at the same age Hook was then felt like staring into the past.
• Performing these songs, Hook says he is "living surrounded by ghosts" of collaborators now gone.
• The K-93 sessions saw Killing Joke's Geordie Walker move into Hook's Manchester home for six weeks, causing complete chaos.
• Those lost K-93 tapes mysteriously surfaced after the label went bankrupt — and Jaz Coleman promptly went silent again.

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