Unknown Pleasures: Inside Joy Division

by Peter Hook

  Barney went berserk – absolutely wild. After he’d put the shirt out, he was calling us all sorts and shouting at us to fuck off and waving his burnt shirt around. In return we were giving him the Vs and telling him he could fuck off and that he deserved it (although I’m not sure he did, actually; it was probably jealousy on our part, but there you go). Ian thought it was hilarious and these two girls, both completely naked, were absolutely terrified, poor things, the room suddenly full of Northerners chucking fireworks around, setting clothes alight and swearing at each other. Hardly the erotic feast they might have been hoping for.

  We would have spent all night screaming at each other had the hotel porter not arrived and kicked off. As he was shouting at us, Barney stormed out of the room, giving it all, ‘Right, you fuckers, I’ll show you,’ as a parting shot, and we were like, ‘Yeah, yeah, fuck off,’ as he went.

  Everything calmed down. Most of us went to the bar for a drink, gave the girls a bit of privacy at last, and as we were sitting there Barney came in, still raging.

  ‘Where’ve you been?’ we said.

  ‘You’ll see,’ he was saying. ‘You’ll fucking see, you bunch of bastards.’

  We were like, ‘Fuck off, twatto,’ finishing our drinks. Only to discover the following morning that the stupid twat had let all four tyres down on the car.

  I was like, ‘What you do that for?’

  ‘You burnt my fucking shirt.’

  ‘But you’ve japed yourself. You have to travel in that car as well, you stupid twat.’

  Of course it took us hours to get the four tyres pumped up. We had to buy a foot pump then take it in turns. We were all sweating like bastards, including Barney.

  A lot of the japes took place between us and the Buzzcocks and their crew, and in the run-up to the last gig of the tour, which was at the Rainbow at Finsbury Park, their guys were telling us that they were going to spring something really big on us, really nasty, for our last night.

  ‘Oh, we’re going to get you. We’re going to get you,’ they were saying. ‘When you’re on stage, mate, mid-performance. We got something very special in mind for you.’

  But fuck ‘em: they were messing with the kings and straight away we formed a council of war to concoct our retaliation. What we came up with involved the purchase of twelve live mice – we wanted rats but we couldn’t afford them – ten pounds of live maggots, ten cans of shaving foam and five dozen eggs. That was all we could afford. A fortune was spent on this jape, but it was going to be worth it.

  The plan was to get the Buzzcocks with the maggots during their performance. They’d think that was all we had to offer, but in the meantime we’d have put the live mice inside their tour bus and used the shaving foam on the doors and windows. They’d deal with the shaving foam, board the bus, see the mice, run screaming off the bus and we’d egg as they came out. Brilliant. We were as good as inventing japes as we were at writing songs.

  So it got to the gig. Even though we knew we had something lined up we were still worried about what they’d do to us. Their crew were all sniggering. We’d been threatened with the jape to end them all. All week they’d been leading up to this. What would they have come up with? What horrors lay in store for us?

  They put some talcum powder on the snare drum.

  That was it. That was the full extent of their world-beating jape. A bit of talcum powder on the snare drum. I didn’t even notice at the time. As we were coming off I said to Steve, ‘What’s happened to the Buzzcocks’ jape, then?’ and Steve told me that they’d put a bit of talc on his snare drum and when he’d hit it a little cloud had come up. That was it.

  What a bunch. Oh dear: our response was going to look a bit on the disproportionate side. Still, more fools them for doing such a lame joke, we thought, and seeing them chortling away, thinking they’d been dead funny with their talc-on-the-snare-drum trick, just made us even more determined to set about our reply as planned. We waited until they came on and launched phase one of the plan: the maggots.

  Ten pounds of them, we had. That’s a lot of maggots. That’s five bags of sugar’s worth of maggots. Towards the end of their set, as they started playing ‘Boredom’, we livened things up by creeping up behind the crew with our bags: a couple of bags of maggots each, emptying them first on to the flight cases where the Buzzcocks’ crew sat to watch the set, then on to the Buzzcocks’ backdrop, which the maggots began crawling up, just as we’d hoped they would, and then on to the fold-back desk.

  Barely holding it together we retreated to watch the mayhem from a safe distance, watching the maggots advance. The crew noticed something first. A tide of maggots had made its way from the flight cases up the backs of the crew, then into their hair. We watched as first one then another started to scratch and a horrible realization dawned on them. The next wave of maggots had by now worked their way up the backdrop and were falling on the Buzzcocks’ drummer, John Maher. Now the guys on the fold-back desk were running around screaming. So were the rest of the crew. John Maher finished ‘Boredom’ in a shower of maggots and the band came off, furious with us.

  That was it, they thought. Jape over. How wrong they were. They had two buses outside, one for the band and their girlfriends and another one for the crew. We’d prised open the windows, dropped in the mice, coated all the door handles in shaving foam then returned to the Rainbow for an end-of-tour party.

  Sarge let us into the dressing room. At last. Allowed inside the sacred dressing room. And what a riot that turned into, everybody pissed. Their lot were laughing about the talc on the snare drum – ho ho, what a funny jape – and we were laughing about the maggots, letting them think that was the end of it but secretly anticipating the carnage we’d prepared for when they got to their buses.

  One food fight later and it was time to leave, so we scarpered out quick and piled into Steve’s Cortina, parking up beneath an underpass or railway bridge or something, oblique to where the coaches were and across the road, each coach primed with six live mice in it and the windows and door handles coated with shaving cream.

  So we watched . . . And out came the Buzzcocks and their girlfriends and, in hysterics, we then watched them cursing us and wiping off the shaving cream. They saw us over the road and started screaming at us, but didn’t even bother trying to get us – we’d have been out of there while they were still doing the Green Cross Code. We cradled our eggs as we watched them clean off the last bits of foam and board the bus, then we waited for them to come running out as soon as they saw the mice.

  But they didn’t. The bus drove off. We looked at each other. Shit. Still, at least we had the crew to come. Sure enough, a little bit later, out came the crew; they now saw their coach with shaving cream all over it, started wiping it off, spotted us, and were shouting insults while we sat there killing ourselves and holding on to our eggs, watching them clean up and board their coach.

  This time it worked a treat. Seconds after the coach door had shut it opened again and out poured the road crew, falling down the steps, screaming, ‘Rats! Rats!’

  Brilliant. We were already out of the car and legging it across the road, where we started pelting the lot of them with eggs. It was all over in seconds. We covered them in egg then scarpered back to the Cortina, busting a gut with laughter – only to find a couple of coppers standing there.

  Behind us over the road was complete mayhem, with the crew only just recovering from the egg attack, their coach covered in egg and shaving foam, and shitting it about the rats inside. One of the coppers pointed over. ‘You do realize that’s vandalism?’

  Then, for some reason, Dave Pils went, ‘Is this ‘cause I’m black?’

  Which was funny, because he isn’t black.

  ‘But you’re not black, Dave.’

  ‘It’s ‘cause my girlfriend’s black.’

  Jasmine was black – he was right about that.

  ‘Dave . . .’

  ‘It is, isn’t it, you racist bastard?’

&nbs
p; ‘Dave.’

  We managed to calm the police down but it took us about fifteen minutes, by which time the Buzzcocks’ crew had got rid of the mice, got in their bus and fucked off back to the hotel to meet up with the band.

  ‘Fucking Joy Division put rats in our bus. Did they get you?’

  ‘No,’ said the band, ‘they wouldn’t fucking dare put rats in our bus.’

  But Sarge told us later that he’d been in the bus, and Steve Diggle was in there chatting to his girlfriend when Sarge had looked down and seen a mouse in her handbag.

  ‘I thought I was tripping,’ he told us later. Looking around he saw a load of beer cans in the corner, and another mouse. Then another. And another. But he’d decided to keep it to himself, guessing that all hell was going to break out if anyone noticed. Instead he just waited till the band got to their hotel and ushered everyone off as quick as he could before dealing with the mice by stamping on them. We didn’t like that – we were animal lovers – but I wasn’t going to argue. The idea of the Buzzcocks unaware that their coach had been overrun with mice was somehow just as funny as them finding out.

  I’ve got to say, that was a great end to what had been an eventful year to say the least. At the beginning of December we played at Eric’s, which was quite a landmark gig, really, because it was the first time Gillian ever joined us on stage. There had been the usual horseplay, with us hanging around the venue in between the sound-check and the doors opening and working our way through a crate of beer that Roger had given us. Barney and Rob had been play fighting, messing about with beer bottles, and one of them cut a finger open. Just our luck it was Barney, who couldn’t play the gig because of it. I think it was Rob who suggested that Gillian join us on guitar, because she’d played guitar in the Inadequates – he was always a bit sweet on her, to be honest.

  Fortunately Barney was okay for our next gig, at Les Bains Douches in Paris, where Steve told us that he’d be able to negotiate our way around because he had an O Level in French.

  ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘I used to love speaking French. Really good at it, I was.’

  He never spoke a word of French the whole trip. Not even in the petrol station, the bit he had been practising: ‘Fill her up, mate’ was all that came out.

  Anyway, so we got on the ferry and, fuck, the waves were enormous. They were so big they were actually spinning the boat; the captain had to let it drift. Like a bunch of twats, me, Dave Pils and Twinny went out on deck to have a look. We were the only passengers stupid enough – the wind was howling, there were huge waves slapping against the side of the ship and pouring rain.

  We made it to the stern, hanging on to the rail, grinning maniacally. It started getting too rough even for us and we made our way back to the door, got there and pulled ourselves in – just as the biggest wave I’ve ever seen in my life engulfed the whole of the stern where we’d been standing, taking everything that wasn’t bolted down. We just stood there, shaking, knowing that another second and it would have been us.

  Rob, meanwhile, was down in the casino, pissed and gambling, swearing that he wasn’t gambling with the band’s money; because, as he always said, ‘I keep the band money in this pocket, and me own money in this pocket.’

  But by the end of the night it looked to me as if both pockets were empty, pulled out like an elephant’s ears. Things got even more interesting after that. When we arrived at the gig we discovered that an ex-girlfriend of Steve’s had followed us over, trying to win him back from Gillian. The venue was an old Turkish baths, an early design by Philippe Starck, actually, quite weird: all the baths were still in place, and some still had water in, so people could – I don’t know – throw money in them, make a wish or paddle or something.

  So anyway, we were playing this gig, two numbers into the set, when suddenly the backstage door opened and Steve’s ex, Stephanie, appeared. She stuck her head out and started calling him.

  ‘Steve! Steve!’

  Oh dear – he nearly died. He went bright red and kept his head down and then, as she carried on shouting at him – ‘Steve! Steve, I love you!’ – started played faster and faster.

  As if keeping up with Steve wasn’t exhausting enough, afterwards we had to make a dash for it in order to avoid her. Eventually we ended up looking for this street Rue St. Denis, which we’d heard was full of hookers. Not to partake, just to gawp. And this is one of my lasting impressions of Ian – an image I have in my head of him, like the image of him chasing the drum down the motorway or pissing in the ashtray. It’s of Ian, who liked to read Burroughs and Kafka and discuss art with Annik, asking this French guy where all the girls were. ‘Girls,’ he was saying. ‘Where are all the girls?’ Holding his arms to his chest and waving them up and down like a pair of jiggly boobs. ‘Where are all the girls?’

  UNKNOWN PLEASURES

  TRACK BY TRACK

  I really recommend listening to the record while you read.

  ‘Disorder’

  I’ve got the spirit, but lose the feeling . . .

  Because we recorded Unknown Pleasures so quickly there wasn’t the time to re-record much (with the exception of Steve’s drums, obviously) so there are a few bum notes on the album, most of which are courtesy of yours truly. The ones that are most noticeable – and these are the only ones I’m going to point out – are on ‘Disorder’, where it sounds like it could be Bernard’s guitar but it’s not, it’s me. The funny thing is, though, they’re now part of the song, even though they’re bum notes. It’s where I was playing the lower string and catching the A and D with my plectrum, which has given it that guitar sound. Playing it back, I can’t imagine ‘Disorder’ without those sounds. Some of the low notes are a bit wild too but, hey, we were young. Like Pete Saville’s theory, now we’d stop and go, ‘Hold on, Hooky’s played a wrong note. He’s caught the strings, we’ll have to fix that!’ It’s a mistake, but it ended up being a good mistake; to me it sounds really interesting.

  ‘Day of the Lords’

  This is the room, the start of it all . . .

  We’d only ever played these songs live before, never demoed them. I think the only ones we’d demoed were ‘She’s Lost Control’ and ‘Insight’.

  ‘Day of the Lords’ is a slow song, but it’s a great song. The guitar’s loud and swept along by the bass. Martin overdubbed the keyboards. At the time we were all like, ‘What? keyboards? If we want fucking keyboards we’ll get a fucking keyboard player.’ So he overdubbed them when we weren’t there. We didn’t even hear it until he’d done the mix. He played us the mix and me and Barney were pulling faces behind his back because he was putting keyboards on things. He was right, though, Martin. The keyboards sweeten it and make it better. Bleeding keyboards, soon to be the bane of my life. Great snare sound.

  ‘Candidate’

  I campaigned for nothing, I worked hard for this . . .

  Martin needed two more songs so he said to me and Steve, ‘You’ve not got enough songs. You need to go in and write more songs.’

  We were like, ‘“Go in and write”? We can’t “go in and write”! What do you mean?’ That just wasn’t the way we came up with songs. We jammed them as a band; we didn’t write them like that.

  ‘Just go in there and write two more songs.’

  ‘Oh, for fuck’s sake!’

  So we took ourselves off and started ‘writing’ – well, jamming. We got ‘Candidate’ immediately – and also ‘From Safety to Where’, which ended up not making it on to the album. If you listen closely to ‘Candidate’ it has that feel of a song that’s not quite finished – well, it does to me, anyway, because I know that it’s a jam that Ian went and put a vocal on. A great song, yes; but, like I say, not completely worked out. Great for that reason, though.

  So we had these two tracks and Martin said, ‘Right, Bernard, go and put some guitar on those songs; they’re really good, these.’ So Bernard went and was sitting there with his guitar for ages, not playing on the tracks – well, hardly playing a
t all – because he didn’t like them. This was the guitarist’s equivalent of a huffy teenage strop. Like when you tell a kid to tidy their room and two minutes later they go. ‘Happy now?’ That’s what I mean when I talk about his ‘economical’ playing. He’s a brilliant guitarist but woe betide you if he didn’t like the song; he’d either refuse point blank to put guitar on it or do such half-arsed guitar you wish you hadn’t bothered.

  Martin decided to turn the twenty-four-track tape over and play the track backwards, pushing him to play over it forwards, which he seemed to quite like; he perked up a bit and we did actually got some good guitar. Martin then spun the tape back over so the guitar’s backwards. It actually worked. ‘From Safety to Where’ was Barney’s economical guitar playing at its very best.

  ‘Insight’

  Reflects a moment in time, a special moment in time . . .

  ‘Insight’ is one of my favourite songs and also one of my favourite bass riffs. I mean, the great thing about Joy Division was that we used the bass to write the songs. Most bass players are just used to back up a song, to fatten it up: to ‘follow the root notes’, as they say. I don’t do that. I remember, very early on in our career, Barney turning round to me and saying, ‘Can’t you just follow the guitar?’

  ‘No, I can’t. You follow me. Ha!’

  The lyrics are wonderful and there’s no chorus. There’s repetition in the lyrics, but no chorus. That sound at the beginning is the creaky old freight lift in Strawberry that Martin had mic’d up and recorded, adding fantastic atmosphere to the track. Steve’s snare has such great presence. It’s well known that Martin used a lot of echo plate and digital delays on Unknown Pleasures, which gives it a very unique sound. The very sound me and Barney hated for years – that was ‘HIS’ sound. There was a rumour that he’d recorded the lead vocal down a telephone line to get the distortion just right, but I doubt that’s true; in those days it would have been very difficult to achieve. I reckon he would have ‘pumped’ the vocal. This was a technique he pioneered, where you used an external speaker in a very ambient room. Using a fader on the desk, you’d send the signal out into the room at a suitable volume and bring it back through a microphone into the control room to mix in with the original track. A great trick. Martin used it on the piano on ‘Transmission’, putting a speaker underneath the strings and recording it back then adding it into the track as ambience. We also used it to great effect on the bass drum on ‘Blue Monday’ at Brittannia Row.