That the sleeve presented images of recordings of the first Pulsar discovered resonated deeply with the album’s bleak and dark soundscapes, as if to say that here in Ian Curtis was a dead star echoing out to us from the imaginably distant recesses of space, utterly isolated, utterly alone. It’s the sound and energy of post-industrial alienation; something cold, angry and male timelessly captured in all of its emotional disenfranchisement. It is a record just as fresh and relevant today as it was in its own Mancunian economic wasteland of the late-70s.

 

To celebrate Ian Curtis’ life on the thirtieth anniversary of his death, in March this year former Joy Division and New Order bassist Peter Hook performed the entirety of Unknown Pleasures at his Fac 251 club in Manchester. With ‘Hooky’ giving a repeat performance at the 1-2-3-4 Shoreditch festival later this month, Don’t Panic spoke to him about what makes that record so special.

 

What inspired me was that Macclesfield council were finally celebrating Ian Curtis’ life. The idea was to do an exhibition and a one-off gig at Macclesfield Football Club on May 18 to celebrate thirty years on from his death. I thought that this was well overdue, because none of us had particularly done anything to celebrate anything over the years. I was delighted, actually. Pete Saville was doing the exhibition with John Savage, everybody was on-board and in-tune, which is quite a rarity these days, and we all seemed to be going ahead quite well. But it didn’t happen. It just got stopped. And I thought that after all that build up, to not celebrate it was criminal. So I went ahead and did it on my own.

 

 

The reason I picked Unknown Pleasures was because it’s the first one, quite simply. My intention was to celebrate Ian’s life. I was thinking that ever since we started thirty years ago, that of the songs we started with there were loads we’d never played. I’d been playing No Love Lost, which is off the first Joy Division EP with Section 25, but we’d never played it as New Order. We hadn’t even played it as Joy Division, much. And when I was playing the song I just thought fuck me, what a great song, this is great! Then the idea just morphed, so that well as celebrating Unknown Pleasures, I’d start with the first Joy Division track and continue in the timeline that they were released.

 

It is. It’s like being in a different place in the car; it feels a bit alien for a while. But the thing is that I’m enjoying it, and I think that people appreciate the fact that you’ve made the effort to do what is the most difficult thing, to my mind anyway. If I’d just played bass and got another singer in, I don’t think I’d be happy.

 

Martin was like Professor Stanley Unwin, he used to talk in riddles, and Martin was a riddle-talker. He was an absolute genius and he was very catalystic. It was like putting a cat amongst the pigeons. He had a reputation for being able to split any group up, no matter how well they were getting on, in a matter of hours. He was a very difficult person to work with, but a very troubled genius. When you listen to what he did – the songs were fantastic anyway – but he just gave them a lift and a push, and also helped us develop as musicians in that he didn’t do much musical work on Unknown Pleasures. He encouraged us to open up, to expand the music. He really was a troubled genius and he had a very strong personality. Barney and me in particular, because we’re the same way with strong personalities, used to clash with him all the time.

 

It’s quite funny because when I saw Control, which I thought caught the atmosphere perfectly, I never realized that it was in black and white. I just watched it and it seemed to suit my memory of that time perfectly. I think there was a glumness about Northern England because it was subject to the decline of the industrial revolution that had carried it along. The old fashioned way that Manchester used to work was being changed completely. It was also a very austere period, with the troubles with the Conservative government – I came from a working class background, a very poor working class background, so I associate the time with not being well-off.

 

 

Probably when it was re-mastered this time, because I had always stuck to that old idea that I had in 1979 that I didn’t like Martin’s production – to me he really watered it down and took all the power out of it. So it was only really thirty years on, when I listened to it when we re-mastered it for Warner Bros that I thought about how much he really had played it down and given it a beauty, a subtly and a lasting appeal that people can hear now.

 

If Unknown Pleasures was as straight-ahead as Never Mind The Bollocks it wouldn’t have the fanbase that it has now. I think it’s a very seductive thing about Joy Division. It’s very powerful, the songs are powerful as rock songs, but they’re produced in a way that makes them so beautiful you can dive into them. Martin Hannet’s production was very accurate, very open, and really all-enveloping, whereas me and Barney just wanted to kick around with the guitars – which is typical of young teenagers. We just wanted to rock. He recognized the beauty in the songs, the inspiration of the period, and made them that way. And thank god for that! I was wrong and I’m happy to admit it now. It’s quite interesting playing it live because you can give a little bit of the bollocks back, the aggressiveness which suits a live format.

 

Peter Hook performs Unknown Pleasures at the 1-2-3-4 Shoreditch Festival in Shoreditch Park on Saturday July 24. For more information and to purchase tickets see here.