Chapter and Verse - New Order, Joy Division and Me

by Bernard Sumner

  I was completely taken aback. For one thing, I thought, Hang on, I finished that album, we all did, pulling together while you were in rehab. And we could have been bigger? We were up there in that bar to celebrate how in that last bunch of gigs we’d played to hundreds of thousands of people across three continents. But no, it wasn’t enough for him: my life was somehow getting in the way of his, and that was that. He was seething. I felt like letting him have it with both barrels, but we had an important gig to do, the last of a long run before taking a break with our families, so I didn’t want to ruin things with a full-blown argument. I think, in reality, his problem was something within himself but he’d somehow externalized it by blaming me for everything. It seemed to me that he couldn’t understand why I didn’t think like him and how I couldn’t want as much as he did. When he projected his personality upon me, it came back with a negative and he didn’t like it.

  We’re back to this supposed ‘rivalry’ that Hooky seems to believe exists between us. A rivalry is by definition a two-way thing, but in this case it’s all coming from one direction. Whatever the origins of his issues with me, it was clear from his outburst in Tokyo that, for him, things had come to a head. It seemed that if he couldn’t get what he wanted then, well, we were all bastards. But I was the biggest bastard.

  We did a few gigs in Britain and Europe in the summer of 2006 and Hooky would occasionally give Andy and Rebecca a hard time, such as when we were playing in Newcastle and he told them he’d drive himself there. When he found out they were sending a car to take Steve home after the gig he went berserk at Rebecca because they’d not got him one, even though he’d specifically told them he didn’t need one. All he saw was them looking after Steve but not him.

  Odd outbursts like this aside, things generally chugged along in New Order world until the autumn of 2006, when we went on tour to South America. There was an increasingly tangible tension on that tour which centred on Hooky and his attitude to me. I kept catching him giving me looks that seemed to say, You know exactly why I’m so angry – but I didn’t, I absolutely didn’t. I really had no idea what this guy had against me and why.

  In South America, Hooky was deejaying until 4 a.m. most nights at his after-show parties, and one night Sarge, our security guy, had told him we were leaving at half past eight the next morning. But Sarge had got it wrong, we weren’t leaving until later in the day, so when Hooky got up after four hours’ sleep to check out, he found nobody else there. He went mad. But he didn’t go mad at Sarge, he called Andy and Rebecca, screaming at them about having got up so early for no reason when it clearly had nothing to do with them.

  There were a few of these weird little eruptions offstage, but then strange things started happening on stage as well. He’d taken to spraying slogans on his bass amps, stuff like ‘Salford Rules’ – which was strange, as he hasn’t lived in Salford for years – but I never usually saw them because, on stage, I was at the microphone and his amps were behind me to my left. It was left to the roadies to pull me to one side and tell me what he’d been spraying on the amps over the space of three gigs in South America. The first one was ‘Two little boys met at school’; the next was ‘And then they fell out’; and the night after that it was ‘And now they hate each other.’ Pretty strange stuff: I wasn’t very happy with him, to say the least, but I certainly didn’t hate the guy. If he had a problem, which he clearly did, if that really was how he saw it, why spray it on his amps instead of talking to me about it?

  Then he’d persistently stand right in front of me on stage while I was singing. It was getting beyond strange now. The roadies are telling me about the amp thing, I’m getting daggers off him all the time, Andy and Rebecca are getting abuse off him, and now he’s doing this. The bigger the gig, the more he was doing it. In addition, if the show was being filmed, he’d make sure he stood in the way of any cameras trained on me. He was also doing it to Phil, our guitarist. It was just ridiculous. It was a hard tour anyhow: our regular sound engineer wasn’t able to do it and his stand-in couldn’t cope with what was at that time a stupendously complicated live set-up, and I couldn’t hear myself on stage. Add to that an airline strike creating delays of five hours or more at some of the airports, and there were already significant levels of stress. By that stage, I’d had enough and just wanted to finish the tour and get home.

  Then Control happened. We’d been working on the soundtrack, and that caused even more friction with Hooky. The brief from Anton Corbijn was that he wanted some ambient background music behind the film, so I thought I’d start the ball rolling with a few soundscapes and then get everyone else to play on them. I think Hooky, meanwhile, was envisaging the whole band going into a studio and jamming to the visuals. Some of the scenes, like the one showing Ian on the night of his suicide, were very delicate and had to be handled carefully and a jamming session probably would not have fulfilled the ambient brief we’d had from Anton.

  We’d played a gig at the Civic Hall in Wolverhampton just before the 2006 South America tour, a really good gig. When we came off stage I told Hooky that I was going to work on Control that week and suggested he came round and worked on it with me. He said he couldn’t because he was deejaying. I reminded him that we were leaving for South America the following week so only had a limited amount of time. ‘Well I can’t help that,’ he snapped. ‘I’m busy.’

  Control was due to be shown at the Cannes Film Festival in May 2007. We’d not gigged since the South American tour so it was the first time we’d been in the spotlight for a while and we were looking forward to it. Being screened at Cannes is a great honour for any film: we were delighted to be out there, and delighted for Anton. It turned out the film would pick up a clutch of awards at the festival, so it was all really exciting and positive.

  At least it should have been.

  Four days before the screening, word came back to us that Hooky had done an interview on Clint Boon’s show on XFM and taken it upon himself to announce that New Order had split up. More specifically, he said that the two of us would not be working together again.

  None of us knew about this announcement.

  If a band splits up, it’s usually a pretty basic prerequisite for the members of that band to know it’s happening. Of course we hadn’t split up. We’ve never split up. Even through the years when we were all working on different projects we were still New Order. What on earth was he playing at? When a band splits everyone agrees to it and goes their separate ways. The only person going their separate way in this instance was Peter Hook and it was entirely of his own volition. I was furious. Not just at what he’d done but that he’d chosen to do it right before Cannes, hijacking Anton’s and the film’s big occasion. I was so angry I couldn’t even speak to Hooky. I didn’t want to stay in the same hotel as him, I didn’t want to set eyes on him. After thirty years together and all we’d been through, I thought what he’d done was disgraceful.

  It also meant that when we got to the festival and did interviews that were supposed to be about the film, we were bombarded instead with questions about New Order, apparently, breaking up. Our reason for being there in Cannes – supporting the film and supporting Anton – had been completely undermined. It was a deeply uncool thing to do.

  Steve and I were doing interviews together – we refused to do them with Hooky – and just kept saying that we had no idea what he was talking about, that we knew only as much as they did and that they had better ask Peter Hook. They all trooped off to Hooky and he was asked the same questions. Afterwards, back in the UK, he felt like he’d been allowed to make a fool of himself and fired Rebecca.

  Given the media frenzy that followed, and in the interests of the fans who were, understandably, concerned, we put out a statement in order to set things straight:

  After thirty years in a band together we are very disappointed that Hooky has decided to go to the press and announce unilaterally that New Order have split up. We would have hoped that he could have approach
ed us personally first. He does not speak for all the band, therefore we can only assume he no longer wants to be a part of New Order. Whatever happens, musically or otherwise, New Order have not split up, they continue to exist. New Order will be making no further comment about this matter.

  We wanted to – indeed, we had to – carry on, but circumstances intervened. For one thing, Gillian had just been diagnosed with breast cancer and Steve really needed to be with her. Also, after Japan and South America and the previous few years, which had seen a progressive intensity take over New Order again, I needed to do something else for a while. I went on to work with Jake Evans, Phil Cunningham, Alex James and three drummers: Carl Jackson, Jack Mitchell and, when Gillian had successfully completed her treatment, Steve, in a band called Bad Lieutenant. We wrote an album called, perhaps appropriately, Never Cry Another Tear: I needed a break from all the stress and to work on something positive, with people who didn’t come with any baggage. Bad Lieutenant was a really pleasant experience and that contributed to what I think is a good album.

  While this was going on, we did have meetings with Hooky. Although he’d left the band, it was a little more complicated than him just walking off into the sunset with his bass slung over his shoulder, as we were still shackled to him in a business sense. Things had moved on a bit from the days when we could resolve band departures with a box of Milk Tray, a slap on the back and a cheery ‘All the best, mate.’ There were a couple of discussions – sour affairs, let’s say – about how the business side of things should move forward. Before one of these meetings – I think there were two – our manager had learned that Lesley, Rob’s widow, owned half the Haçienda name. This was news to me, as I thought Hooky owned it all. He’d certainly left me with that impression and had never mentioned anything about Rob’s involvement in the purchase. Lesley wanted to offload her share, because she simply couldn’t deal with Hooky any more. Technically, he had first refusal but, even though he’d indicated he wanted it, Lesley was prepared to let us, the other members, have Rob’s half for nothing instead.

  He’d sacked Andy and Rebecca by this stage, accusing them of favouritism and claiming they always agreed with me. I think, really, the problem was that when he said jump they didn’t always jump; instead, they would make the most logical decision in each circumstance. In addition, I suspect he still saw everything through the prism of the imaginary power struggle he’d conjured up between the two of us and examined everything Andy and Rebecca did from that perspective.

  At the end of the second meeting, we said, ‘Oh, by the way, we believe you’re trying to buy Lesley’s share of the Haçienda name?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, a little surprised that we knew. ‘That’s right, I am.’

  ‘Well, we want it,’ we said. ‘Considering all the money and hours we put into the Haçienda over the years, we feel we have a right to at least part of the name.’

  He flew into an incredible rage, shouting and screaming at us, losing it completely. I tried to ask why he thought he had a right to it while we, apparently, had none.

  ‘You didn’t go through those three years of hell!’ he bellowed, jabbing his finger at me.

  ‘Hang on,’ I said. ‘That was entirely your choice. We went through twelve years of hell before that, which was why we finally wanted it to stop. Have you forgotten about that?’

  In fact, I had remained a shareholder until the bitter end. Hooky stood up, bellowed at us a bit more and stormed out, slamming the door near off its hinges and leaving us all sitting there looking at each other open-mouthed.

  There were a few moments’ silence.

  ‘That went well,’ said Steve.

  That was the moment I decided I didn’t want anything more to do with the guy. I still feel that way today, even though it’s several years since he left the band. The business side of things is done through our management and third parties. His ‘Fuck you, I’m having that’ attitude was just too much for me to bear any more after much provocation accumulated over a period of – what? – thirty years or more. When you’re in a band, everyone needs to pull in the same direction and want what’s best for the whole, not the individual. No one is bigger than the band and it’s vital everyone thinks that way. We’re a team. That’s the most important thing. If the strikers in a football team aren’t playing for the benefit of the whole side, if one won’t pass to the other or goes for goal when there are team mates in a much better position because their personal ambition has crept ahead of their sense of the team ethic, then it’s to the detriment of the whole outfit and, by extension, to the supporters too. It’s exactly the same in a band.

  This denouement had come in three distinct stages. First, his buying the Haçienda name, which we felt belonged to all of us. Second, his claiming that New Order had split up, when it was clear to anyone that we hadn’t. The final straw was this tornado of self-righteous rage at our audacity in feeling we had a right to 50 per cent of ‘his’ Haçienda.

  I finally accepted there was no reasoning with him. He just wouldn’t listen to anything that didn’t suit his agenda, an agenda that appeared to us to be nothing more than looking after number one. His behaviour in general had become intolerable, but over the Haçienda in particular we felt he’d effectively stolen a large part of our heritage and, frankly, enough was enough. As I’ve said before, I’m nobody’s fool.

  While he was still a member of New Order Hooky had put together a band called Freebass with Andy Rourke and Mani from The Stone Roses, which had quietly imploded, and not long after that we discovered he’d formed another band, with the sole intention of touring Unknown Pleasures played from start to finish. He was doing exactly what he’d done with the Haçienda to an album with which Steve and I had been intimately involved. He didn’t ask us or tell us about it – as usual, we had to find out via the press – but I’d also heard through a little bird that he planned to work his way chronologically through all the Joy Division albums and then all the New Order albums. I’ve heard him claim he did this because I was playing New Order and Joy Division songs at Bad Lieutenant gigs, which is true. But out of a set of, say, fifteen songs, we would play no more than three – and we only had one album’s worth of material ourselves. Obviously, he doesn’t have to account to us for his every move now he’s no longer in New Order, but this was different: Unknown Pleasures was hallowed ground and something all three of us had helped to create and all three of us hold dear.

  Peter Hook has said a lot of stupid things about me, especially since he left the band. I’m sure I don’t hear about them all – and I certainly don’t go looking for them – but I’ve done my best not to respond, as most of them don’t deserve the dignity of a response. I’ve neither the desire for nor the intention of being drawn into a public slanging match with him, but it’s difficult sometimes, especially with some of the more outlandish claims and slurs, calling me highly offensive names in the press. He still seems determined to perpetuate this imaginary rivalry but New Order have moved on, and I’ve moved on. He left of his own volition and is now doing his own thing. Good luck to him. I hope he finds the happiness and fulfilment on his own which it seems he couldn’t as a member of New Order. We’re happier with the way things are now; I hope he is too.

  For all my disagreements with Hooky, I’ve always said that the work he did on bass was really great and something that played a big role in creating our unique sound. It’s a shame that his frustration, his perceived thwarted ambitions or whatever it was that led to his departure had come to stand in the way of his talents as a bass player. I’d never say anything bad about his playing: there’s no doubt about it, he’s really good. Whatever talents you have, however, you still have to live with and have respect for other people, especially those with whom you work closely. That’s a huge part of being in a band. I’m in no way perfect myself, of course, and openly admit that on occasions I’ve been a right miserable scumbag. It’s usually been the result of some binge or other, but not always,
and in any case, I’m not sure how much of a defence that is. However, I’ve learned that if you don’t give respect to or lose the respect of your peers, then eventually things are going to go very wrong indeed. No matter what you say or who you are, it’s what you do that matters. Your actions will ultimately betray your true nature.

  For the stranger on the street or even a diehard Joy Division and New Order fan, it must be hard to decide what’s really going on, because of course they can’t see things from the inside. All I can say is: just do the maths. Everyone else in the band is still here. Everyone involved with the management side, the entire crew and backroom staff, they’re all still here too. Some people made an effort to at least stay on civil terms with him after he left the band, but it was just thrown back in their faces. It’s quite sad in a way, because he’s lost out on so much. He was a big part of this incredible journey but threw it all away and alienated a lot of people in the process, some of whom he’d known and worked with for decades.