Peter Hook says he’s overjoyed to be able to play New Order tracks the way he thinks fans want to hear them.
The 67-year-old formed the group with Bernard Sumner, also 67, after the suicide of their Joy Division bandmate Ian Curtis, who took his life on 18 May, 1980 aged 23 after battles with epilepsy and depression.
He exclusively told Bang Showbiz about how he hated the direction Bernard took with the group: “I was miserable playing the music with New Order and didn’t get the chance with Joy Division.
“So it’s now about finally being able to enjoy myself and play it with the right amount of passion and integrity.”
Pete has been on the road with his group Peter Hook and the Light since 2010 playing his old tracks alongside his son Jack Bates on bass, as well as Andy Poole (keyboards) and Paul Kehoe (drums) – who both played with Hook as part of Monaco, one of the musician’s previous groups.
He added: “The weirdest thing was that when New Order split up, I DJ’d for about three years and went all over the world and it absolutely fantastic – being paid to play other people’s music is really fantastic.
“But the thing was I really missed music, and people never stopped asking me, ‘When are you going to get back with New Order?’ and ‘Are New Order going to get back together again?’
And I just thought, ‘We never celebrated anything to do with Joy Division as New Order, and we never celebrated anything with New Order when we were New Order.’
It was a bit of a miserable existence and playing very few songs and ignoring hundreds of songs we had written. And I agreed with our fans that we should be playing these tracks, but we couldn’t play them because Bernard didn’t want to play them.”
Pete – known as ‘Hooky’ – fell out with Bernard over a major royalties row.
The band initially split in 2007, with Pete retaining a 25 per cent stake in Vitalturn Company Ltd, a royalties company created by the band following the demise of Factory Records in the early 1990s.
When they returned in 2011 without Hook in the group, a huge dispute over royalties erupted, leading to a lawsuit in 2015.
Despite finally settling their financial differences in 2017, Pete has said it’s unlikely that he and Bernard will ever sit down in an attempt to settle their broken relationship.
Peter Hook and The Light will play Rochester Castle Concerts with Soft Cell on Friday (07.07.23.) For more information and tickets go to www.rochestercastleconcerts.com.