The Collapse Board Interview: Peter Hook (2026)
Peter Hook is an English musician, songwriter, and bassist best known as a founding member of the bands Joy Division and New Order. After leaving New Order in 2007, he formed Peter Hook & The Light, a band that performs the music of Joy Division and New Order.
Ahead of an Australian tour where the band will perform New Order’s album Get Ready in full to celebrate its 25th Anniversary, as well as a selection of Joy Division and New Order Greatest Hits, we spoke to Hook about the making of Get Ready, including how the band got back together after the long hiatus in the mid-1990s, why they needed to bring in a producer, and Peter Saville’s album artwork. With the recent news that his ex-bandmates Stephen Morris and Gillian Gilbert are stepping away from touring with New Order for the foreseeable future, we also posed the question “How many original members of a band does that band need to keep touring under the band’s name?”
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New Order headlined Reading in 1993 and then the band didn’t do anything for a while…
Imploded.
…You were working on Monaco in the mid-1990s but did you miss not being in New Order during those years?
I suppose in a weird way, you are sort of addicted to New Order. We all became addicted to the pain, I suppose, and the bitterness and the usual things that groups seem very good at manufacturing.
To be honest with you, when Barney actually did go off to Electronic, I was really shocked about it. When he told us, I remember we were in a hotel room in Los Angeles and he blurted it out at this crisis Factory [Records] finance meeting that he was going off to work with other people. And the shock was, “Wow, I never thought we’d escape!” [Laughs] And I thought, “Oh, the bastard, he’s escaped!” We were doing a sold out gig at Irvine Meadows in California and it was the most miserable gig that we’d done up to that point, because everybody was sort of watching the first crumble, if you like.
I think we always felt, or I always felt, that when we got New Order going, which was against all the odds after Joy Division, that it would be like a safe place for us. But as it turned out, it wasn’t. I mean, we never had these problems in Joy Division. We were too young and there was nothing like money or publishing credits to get worked up about. Everything was very balanced in Joy Division. It only became unbalanced in New Order. So really, you were all going in the same direction and then when we got to New Order, it literally changed overnight through Ian’s very, very sad demise. So, no, I didn’t miss it.
In a way, I was very nervous about what was going to happen next but very excited by it, because there was, like any relationship, they do tend to be unbalanced. You did find that Barney’s idea of compromise, which now seems hilarious, was that he would just wait for you to compromise. We’d go, “No, go on, compromise,” and he’d go, “No, that’s not what fucking compromise means. Compromise means when you all sacrifice something”, “Oh, well, I’m still waiting for you to compromise,” and he’s like, “All right, well, obviously.” He just doesn’t get that, so that was one of his many charms.
So, yeah, it was nice to be free, to be honest, at that point. Scary, but free. I think you had a confidence in yourself because of what we’d been through with Joy Division or with starting New Order. And then the work we’d done producing. We’d all played, well, me and Barney primarily, had played on other people’s record, and we’d produced other people quite a lot, so we did have a confidence, I suppose, in it. But, yeah, it was a bit of a shock.
I read that the catalyst for New Order getting back together to make Get Ready was Rob Gretton. Given everything that happened with the Hacienda and Factory Records, your manager was still someone you listened to?
It certainly wasn’t as straightforward as that. The catalyst for us getting back together again, insanely, was that Barney had changed his mind. Rob was annoyed because he kept getting these wonderful offers, especially while we were in financial trouble, for New Order to play. So when he got the offer for Reading, which was quite substantial, 200,000 quid or something, he was like, “Oh, if only these bastards would work, we could save the Hacienda and we could save Factory, and, we could save ourselves or whatever,” so it was his insistence that we got together.
To be honest with you, I thought it was over. But when we had the meeting, he said, and it was the shock of my life up to that point, “Oh, maybe we should do it. Maybe we should get together. Why don’t we do a bit of rehearsing and see if we can still get on?” And I was like, “Fucking hell, this bastard doesn’t half blow hot and cold.” And considering I’d known him since 11 years old, it was a bit of a shock. You know, I thought, “Jesus, this is a change.” So he got us back together again. And it does make me think, now that I look back with hindsight, that he wanted to put us all through the same pain again. The bastard! [Laughs] I think he had a really cruel streak because he did it over and over again. It was typical narcissistic behaviour.
Given how bad things were between the two of you during the making of Republic…
Well, they still are, mate, don’t worry about it.
…Did anything change to make you want to do what became Get Ready?
No, he kidded us into thinking it would be all right and it would be back to normal. And I must admit, we did have a great time, me and him, making Get Ready. When you consider that me and him together wrote our first few songs as Warsaw, and then me and him together, before Steve Morris and Ian Curtis came along, had the ideas for Joy Division. So we were very good at working together in a balanced way with the guitar and the bass. What happened was after going through a phase of literally being sat in a room with three other people in a band where they’d go to you, “Do you have to play on this track?” which was absolutely heartbreaking, seeing as I started the fucking band. To be able to be in that position with Barney, where the two of us could just work together, because Steve and Gillian sort of disappeared on that record and left me and him to it, it was great.
I think out of all the LPs we’ve played so far, which is 12, I think this is either 12 or 13, this is the most satisfying one to play for myself, because of the relationship between the guitar and the bass on these tracks. It really is balanced, the whole thing is great to play, and I’m enjoying it immensely. And I must admit that out of all the LPs we’ve played, apart from Substances [the two New Order and Joy Division compilations with the same title], this one is getting the most support from promoters in the fact that you can take it round the world and play it. So it must count for something, that this record is different. The trouble was, from a New Order point of view, that once we’d finished the record, Barney went straight back to being how he was before we split up. So we’d put three years’ work in, spent all our money doing it, and then he wouldn’t play, after promising that he would play.
For Republic, while Barney was off doing Electronic, you, Stephen and Gillian wrote a whole instrumental album that Barney then shelved. Did any of that music get used or reworked for Get Ready?
Well, I mean, all that music, much to my eternal annoyance, is sort of captured by Steve Morris on his computers. It’s all there. Presumably all you have to do is find it. And there’s a lot of ideas that sort of disappeared that I loved when we did Waiting for the Siren’s Call. And then, because we split up, I am not allowed access to that. They are never mentioned and they’ve just disappeared, which I think is an absolute crime and a shame to do to anybody.
But they have gone and I’m not allowed access to it because of the relationship at the moment. So, yeah, that stuff is somewhere. In my opinion, the last New Order track we ever wrote was ‘Regret’, because the way that Republic was written and rewritten by Barney, it was not about the group. He was not thinking of the group. He was just thinking of himself. Everything changed on that record. It was a very, very unhappy and very, very frustrating time. And then, of course, after being told that we had to do this record, because we didn’t want to do it, to save Factory and the Hacienda, it saved neither. And the only thing it did was put more nails in New Order’s coffin, which was really sad.
Get Ready is, as you just mentioned, after Factory Records, but you still got Peter Savile to do the album artwork. Was that important to the band to maintain him doing that work for you ?
Yeah, to Rob, it was important. I think Barney and I had discovered that other people could do LP sleeves as well, a damn sight cheaper and a damn sight quicker. But Rob Gretton in particular, and funnily enough, New Odour’s (sic) manager did the same thing when they got back together again. Presumably they wanted to keep the thread going, even though they decided to dump me.
Peter Savile has always been very lucky because we weren’t bothered about the way we looked in any way, shape or form. All we wanted to do was write music and play music. We weren’t interested in the sleeves particularly or any kind of photographs or anything like that, which sort of worked and gave a mystery, you know, for someone who was looking for a mystery. So the thing is, is that Savile was like a pig in shit. You know, he could do whatever he wanted. Could be as wacky as he wanted. He was indulged, probably in the same way that we were indulged. His sleeves cost a bleeding fortune. Rob and Tony [Wilson, co-founder of Factory Records] had a very interesting attitude to things like that, which they expressed in the Hacienda. Money was no object when they had it, so there wasn’t much care taken, shall we say, from a financial point of view.
But, you know, it worked. I’m still here. Most of them are still here, apart from poor old Rob. So the thing is, is that, yeah, we may have been slipshod and loose in the way that we handled ourselves, but we are still here, still smiling, still playing, most of us. And, you know, it worked and it gave you a backstory and a legacy that is very, very interesting, because you didn’t do things normally the way that other groups did them.
New Order self-produced a lot of their albums, but you used Steve Osborne for Get Ready. Was there any reason you felt you needed or wanted to use an outside producer for the album?
Yeah, the reason was Barney said, “I don’t want me and you to argue. So let’s get somebody else in and we won’t do the production.” And I said, “Listen, arguing, we’ve done great productions. Why the hell do you want to change that now?” So ironically, instead of Barney arguing with me about production, because me and Mike Johnson, the engineer, used to do all the producing, he then started arguing with Steve Osborne.
So I was just sat there going, “Oh, fuck,” you know, “this is a blessing on one hand.” But Steve Osborne did a great job and he was very patient and he was very, very good with him in particular. And interestingly, we got him in to work on Waiting for the Sirens Call. Because we were writing tracks that were slightly different from each other; one was rocky, one was heavy, one was, you know, soft rock, one was dance-y, one was dance-y soul-y, he decided to get a producer for each genre, and I was going, “Oh, my God, no, we had enough trouble with one producer. We don’t want nine.” And we ended up with nine producers. Barney sacked all, one by one. In the end, he actually sacked Steve Osborne twice. Sacked him, brought him back, and then sacked him again.
And I said, “Surely, mate, you’re not coming again, are you?” and he went, “No, I’m not coming back again Hooky. Bye.” I went, “Bye, mate,” and I was like, “Oh, my Jesus!” It became absolutely ridiculous. I think the thing was, that after the very sad demise of Rob Gretton, Barney decided that he could take command. And it’s true, you know, if you can’t do anything, if your lead singer won’t sing. So you can’t do it, and he realised that and he started acting like that.
New Order has been in the news in the last week or so. How many original members of a band does that band need to keep touring under the band’s name?
Well, my mate summed it up very well. He said it’s not a band, it’s a brand.
The actual fight we had legally was that they stole the trademark. In my opinion, they stole the trademark, in their opinion, they took it for better use, which was the three of them. So they transferred the trademark from the four of us to the three of them, and they paid me one pence in the pound, one cent in the dollar. They thought that that was all right for 30 years work, and I didn’t. So I fought to get the brand back and have it redone, but unfortunately, one well-off guy fighting three well-off guys and gals is usually a bit one sided, and they ended up launching two extra high court actions against me. One was for passing myself off as New Order, and the other one was for passing myself off as Joy Division at the same time, and when I had the three high court actions going, I could not afford to do it. My wife threatened to leave me if I didn’t stop, so I had to stop because that was the choice. And so none of us were satisfied. It would have been easier for them to buy me off, but instead, we decided that we’d spend five million just fighting each other’s egos in the courts.
So it was one of those things. they don’t sound like New Order. They didn’t when Steve and Gillian were there. That music that they play as New Order, doesn’t sound anything like New Order to me. The music that I play, I try and transcribe New Order faithfully because that’s what makes me happy, and that’s what makes me happy with Joy Division. I’ve never pretended to be either group. I’ve always said that it’s me playing our music. Them bastards have never done that, you know, and they’ve been supported by the friends and they’ve earned millions, in my opinion, pretending to be New Order. So he’s just carrying it on, and as long as the fans go and see him, then he’s right, he’s pulling it off.What can you say?
It’s a very strange position to be in, but I am much happier without the politics that came along in New Order. I have to suffer it at arm’s length because I’m still a 25 percent owner of the New Order brand. It’s just that I don’t get to use it because they took it. So I mean, he must have done a deal with Steve and Gillian. I hope they’re getting more than me.
What I’m delighted about is that we still know how to make a fascinating story. Even now, 46 years later, we can still make complete twats of ourselves. New Order’s been very good at that. Very good at that.
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PETER HOOK & THE LIGHT July 2026 Australian Tour Dates
Monday 13th July – ADELAIDE, Hindley St. Music Hall
Thursday 16th July – BRISBANE, The Tivoli
Friday 17th July – MELBOURNE, Palais Theatre
Saturday 18th July – SYDNEY, The Enmore Theatre
Monday 20th July – PERTH, Astor Theatre
Tickets: https://metropolistouring.com/peter-hook-and-the-light-2026/
