AFTER THE TRAGIC DEATH OF IAN CURTIS, THE SURVIVING MEMBERS OF JOY DIVISION COULD HAVE FADED INTO OBSCURITY. INSTEAD, 1981 SAW THEM REBORN AS NEW ORDER, MASTERS OF ALTERNATIVE SYNTH-POP. “WE OWNED THOSE 10 YEARS,” PETER HOOK TELLS CLASSIC POP

JOHN EARLS

PETER HOOK 

The suicide of Ian Curtis in May 1980 would have finished most bands. Yet, just 16 months later, Bernard Sumner, Peter Hook and Stephen Morris were releasing their debut album Movement as New Order, with Morris’ girlfriend Gillian Gilbert joining on keyboards.

Although he’s one of life’s great anecdotalists, a born comedian who just happens to be a brilliant bassist, even Peter Hook pauses when the speed of New Order’s achievement is put to him. “We didn’t think about what had happened to Ian, or what was happening to us as people,” he considers. “Writing music had never been a problem for us, so we threw ourselves into that. It was the easiest way to find any familiarity. It wasn’t that we were thinking about what music we should do next, it was about doing what we always did.

“Before Ian disappeared, we’d always hang out at our practice place with our manager, Rob Gretton, and make music, and then we’d go to the pub together. So that’s what we did, and there was a lot of strength in that familiarity. There was a big hole doing it without Ian, of course there was. But the strength in that togetherness is what got us through it all.”

Before Sumner added being the frontman to his guitar duties and the band’s name was changed, the trio briefly considered carrying on as Joy Division.

Kevin Hewick, a folk-tinged punk whose tremulous voice shared an outsider’s quality with Curtis, recorded a session as Joy Division’s frontman, which resurfaced last year on Les Disques Du Crepescule’s compilation From Brussels With Love. “I’m still friends with Kevin, who’s a lovely man,” enthuses Hooky of the singer, who still plays live and helps young musicians in Leicester. “Kevin is too nice to have been Joy Division’s replacement singer. We’d have eaten him alive.”