by Peter Hook
Barney had this mate called Doctor Silk, who I think he worked with, or knew through work or something. Strange boy. He was a magician. When you spoke to him he’d be doing things with his hands and would suddenly do a trick. It was all very impressive the first few times he did it, but became tiring really quickly; by the fourth or fifth time you just wanted him to disappear. He had a very strange haircut and he didn’t drink, which for some reason annoyed me and Twinny. Maybe I annoy people now that I don’t drink. I don’t know. Maybe he just had an annoying way of not drinking.
But anyway, because he was always doing stupid tricks and had this irritating not-drinking thing going on, me and Twinny made it our mission to get him pissed. We were doing this gig at the Factory, so after we’d sound-checked in the afternoon we took Doctor Silk down the pub and started plying him with booze.
‘Come on, mate, have another tomato juice! Have another!’ By now we were putting double vodkas in his Bloody Mary but none in our own, thinking, Ha, this’ll get him.
When he didn’t seem to be getting at all pissed we started putting triple and quadruple vodkas in his drinks. Until, after a while, we realized that we were both pissed as farts and Doctor Silk as sober as a magician who had seen right through us, knew exactly what we were up to, and had been swapping the drinks round all night – giving us the spiked ones and supping the alcohol-free ones himself – which was exactly what we deserved.
Oh dear. By the time we staggered back to the Factory for the gig we were polatic. I found out later that Ian had had a fit in the dressing room, before the gig, but if I was told about it on the night then it didn’t register – sorry, Ian – because I was so drunk. The rest of the band were giving me the evil eye, like, Look at you, you’re so pissed, and I was giving it all that, like, Pissed? I’ve never felt better. Bring it on, man, bring it on.
So we were playing. Me arseholed, the other three sober as judges. We did the gig, the place going absolutely wild, and mid-song I was saying to Steve, ‘Faster, mate, faster.’
Steve just looked at me from under his fringe, going, ‘Fuck off, Hooky. I can’t go any faster.’ But I was forcing him to keep up with me, really pushing the songs forward so that each one was flying past and we were whipping the audience into a frenzy. A huge, messy mosh pit had developed at the front, a right melee, even more brutal than usual. And there was this one kid – a real fan, you could tell, because he was by himself and he was mouthing the words to the songs and had lots of badges on his jacket – when suddenly, Bok.
Some guy had nutted him on the back of the head. For no reason at all that I could see. No provocation. This guy had just stepped forward, grabbed the fan by the hair and struck. Really vicious, it was, and the fan dropped like all the air had been let out of him.
Straight away I saw red, pulled my guitar off, held it by the neck and swung it at the boot boy, all in one movement. Trouble was, I was pissed. I don’t think I even connected. Instead what happened was the weight of the bass pulled me off stage and into the audience where the same kid and his mates descended on me. Swarmed all over, like those little dinosaurs in Jurassic Park, and held me down. Then the kicks started landing.
I thought, This is it. I’m going to die.
Did the band stop? Did, Barney, Steve and Ian wade in to help their mate getting battered by the boot boys? No they didn’t. They played on. It was Twinny who leapt from the stage, twatted one of the kids, grabbed me, pulled me up, punched another and then took the original thug by the scruff of the neck and together we dragged him all the way back to the mixing desk and started leathering him.
Suddenly the kid was going, ‘I’m a fan. I’m a fan!’ We looked down and he was covered in Joy Division badges: this was just some other poor kid we’d picked up on the way and we’d been beating up the wrong guy. By this time people were dragging us off and I’d hardly had time to apologize before he was gone. Still the band were playing and I was throwing insults at them. I’d climbed back up on the stage and was calling them miserable twats for not helping me – ‘I was getting my head kicked in, y’bastards!’ – calling them all the names as they played ‘Atrocity Exhibition’ like nothing had happened. Like I hadn’t just almost been ripped apart in the audience. Then I stormed off into the dressing room, picked up a bottle and threw it at the wall – just as Ian came in.
It just missed him, luckily. ‘You’re such a yobbo,’ he said.
‘You’re such a fucking poof!’ I screamed back at him. Bernard, Steve and Rob then arrived. ‘I only decked off to help one of our fans. I didn’t see any of you bastards wading in.’
(Of course, I didn’t mention that we had accidentally beaten up a fan. You don’t want to let a little thing like that get in the way of your righteous indignation, do you?)
‘I tell you what,’ I was still shouting, ‘you fucking wait until you’re getting the shit kicked out of you. I’m fucking leaving you there.’
Twinny resigned on the spot, calling them all the names under the sun, and stormed off, only to be grabbed outside by Mike Nolan, the Buzzcocks’ tour manager, who was very impressed by his on-stage actions and asked if he would do stage security for them, for extra money, on the upcoming tour. Twinny came straight back in the dressing room and withdrew his resignation.
The next day we had a band meeting. Of course I’d sobered up by then.
‘Why did do you do that, Hooky?’
‘You really upset Ian.’
‘Sorry, Ian.’
‘You almost hit Ian with a bottle.’
‘Oh God, sorry, Ian.’
‘He’d had a fit earlier.’
‘Oh, fuck, I’m so sorry, Ian.’
‘Look, come on, it won’t happen again.’
It was lucky for me that the bass was integral to so many of the songs: otherwise they would have kicked me out for sure. In the end they settled for Rob giving me a telling-off, although he must secretly have been pleased because we got a lot of publicity out of it. As far as I was concerned it was the beginning of a reputation that I’ve been trying to live down ever since. Everyone started gunning for me from then on: ‘Let’s get that fucking twat Hooky because he’ll kick off.’
And for a long time, of course, I was only too happy to oblige.
‘Bring it on’
Next, Joy Division embarked on a British tour supporting the Buzzcocks, who were promoting their third album, A Different Kind of Tension, and by all accounts struggling to maintain their edge. Quite apart from the prestige of the tour – and the fact that an on-form Joy Division are widely believed to have overshadowed the Buzzcocks almost every night – this meant the band members leaving their jobs to finally go professional.
Now this was a bit more like it. We were a proper band now. On £12 a week – £15 for Ian, with a week in hand because he had a family to feed and Debbie had kicked off proper. Rob kept a tally so he could pay back the extra later. Only on £1.50 per diem still, but it didn’t matter. We were professional musicians. The first thing we did when we arrived for the opening date in Liverpool was to look up our old friends the Buzzcocks, who we hadn’t seen for about a year.
Our dressing room was the kind of dressing room you’d expect for a band on the bones of their arses: some plastic chairs and a couple of wire coat hangers. But the Buzzcocks’ dressing room was a completely different proposition. They had the luxury version and, looking at the activity there, we were rubbing our hands together with glee. All kinds of crates and trolleys were being loaded in: beer, sweets, sarnies, piles of clean towels, the works. Earlier one of their crew had been flashing a bagful of interesting-looking pills, one colour to get you up, another colour to get you down, just like in Quadrophenia, not to mention a huge block of dope, as if to say, This, lads, is the rock-’n’-roll lifestyle. Get ready to party . . .
We were as ready as we’d ever be. Bring it on. They even had a huge tattooed guy with thick chains around his neck standing guard on their dressing-room door to keep out all the u
ndesirables. Perfect.
‘Where are you going, dickhead?’ he said as we rolled up ready to become reacquainted with the Buzzocks and partake of their beer, sweets and sarnies.
‘We come to see our mates the Buzzcocks,’ I replied. ‘We started with them in 1976. Very good friends with them, we are.’
‘Fuck off,’ he said, and stepped in front of the door with his arms folded across his chest.
‘Oi, you can’t do that!’ I said.
He could and did. This was Sarge, and he went on to become one of my best mates – he still is. And if Sarge says you’re not going in a dressing room, then you’re not going in it.
So we skulked off, denied entry. Always guarded by Sarge, the dressing room became a source of fascination for us, the door a portal to another world, a Narnia filled with clean towels, crisps and groupies. If the Buzzcocks were on stage and Sarge went for a piss we’d be straight in there, helping ourselves to beer and biscuits. Or we’d loiter around until the end of the night when they’d all buggered off, move in and hoover up the dregs.
Otherwise they’d be in it, and the only times we saw much of them during the tour was on the night of the gigs, when one of them – Pete Shelley, usually – would tell us what a wonderful time they were having at whichever five-star hotel they were staying at.
‘I’ve had lobster thermidor,’ he said to us one night, like Little Lord Fauntleroy. Back in our dressing room with its torn-up seats and wire coat hangers we called them a bunch of bastards who’d forgotten their roots. We were like, ‘Lobster thermidor? What the fuck is lobster thermidor?’ I thought they were a local band.
I think the Buzzcocks thought of us as their rough cousins, to whom they couldn’t say no in case they caused trouble, which we were a bit, I suppose. It might seem strange now, but at the time they were the middle-class arty types and we were the working-class yobbos. I mean, they had a new bass player, Steve Garvey, who used to change his strings every night. Every night? I changed mine when I broke one, and in between times I boiled them in vinegar to get the finger fat off. That’s how different we were then.
Thing is, they had too much of the good life. They were trying to do something new with the album they were touring, A Different Kind of Tension, which had a more adult-orientated rock sound, and they’d got fat and bloated – musically and physically. Meanwhile we were at the top of our game, playing a tight half-hour or so of great music every night, and every night, apart from in Manchester, where they had a very loyal audience, we blew them off stage. A lesson there: never have a support band who are at the top of their game. As New Order we had OutKast supporting us once. Big mistake that was.
So that was good, anyway; it was satisfying to feel like we were at the top of our game, even eclipsing the mighty Buzzcocks. Plus it was luxury for us to not have to get up for work in the morning. I was living with Iris and she’d get upset because I’d still be in bed when she left for work. She hated it so much she used to deliberately miss the bus so I’d have to get out of bed and drive her into the Co-Op in town. I’d have got in at three in the morning, something daft, but she’d insist I drove her in. I found out years later she never really missed the bus, just let it go past. Women. Still beat going in to work, though. All I’d do was hang around until the afternoon, wait for Steve to come and get me, then go on to the next venue, wherever it was, meet Twinny, Terry and Dave Pils and listen to them regaling me with tales of whatever they’d got up to the night before.
The reason? Our crew were travelling with their crew on the tour bus, staying in the same hotels as the band. It was always going to be good. Jammy bastards. They had to be there to set up our gear for the early sound-checks.
‘All right, lads, what did you do last night?’
‘Fucking great night, mate. We were up till half five boozing with the band, all doing blueys and smoking dope and chatting up these girls. It was fucking excellent, mate.’
They rubbed it in. God, did they rub it in. We were the band and we were snuggled up in bed at night while our crew were living the rock-’n’-roll lifestyle. What a swizz. Me, Steve and Bernard were dead jealous.
But not Ian, of course. Outwardly Ian was the same as he’d always been. One of the lads. But with the benefit of hindsight you can begin to appreciate some of the pressure he was under: his attraction to Annik and the side-effects of the tablets; the responsibility he felt to both band and home. This was the period during which Debbie was most on his case about money (understandably, mind: they had a new baby); we knew that Debbie was on Ian’s case because she was also on Rob’s case. Debbie was the one who took against Rob’s ‘no partners’ rule the most and she’d be coming in to rehearsal wanting to have it out with him, mostly over money. There’s no doubt she was a force to be reckoned with and you’d have to say that if she was like that with us then she was possibly twice as forceful at home. Maybe because of that pressure, or perhaps just a general worsening of his condition, or the fact that he was spending more time with the band and was less able to hide it, Ian began having more seizures, often during the gigs themselves. Rob used to have mega fights with lighting men at the venues, telling them not to flash the lights; the flashing would always set Ian off. But the lighting men must have either thought, Fuck off, y’Manc bastard, telling me what to do, or got carried away, or forgot, because they’d start a light going off on the snare, then on the sides. We’d notice but too late: by then Ian would have stopped singing and gone into a trance, and then he’d either fall over into the drum kit or go apeshit on stage. We started using these washes of lights, which became our trademark – yet another of those things that unintentionally ended up defining us – and which we carried through into New Order. But sometimes he’d just go anyway. Ian had excellent microphone craft – you only have to look at the pictures to see how natural he was on the microphone – and of course he had the dance as well. Mesmerizing. Trouble was, it would set him off. He’d work himself up into a frenzy and go. It was like he couldn’t help himself, and we’d end up having to carry him off the stage.
There was a bad one on the second date of the tour, at Leeds, when I had to hold him down backstage. Holding his tongue, I thought he wasn’t going to come out of it – that he was going to die. After that he should have rested, of course. (And why didn’t we insist? Because he said he was all right, that’s why. And because it suited us to take his word for it.) But the next night he was playing Newcastle and the night after that we were in Scotland, where we were staying away from home and behaving like pigs at a trough.
Now there’s a story. It all started at the Hilton in Glasgow, the first time we got to stay out with the Buzzcocks. The bands and our crew were all in this hotel, drinking in the bar. Drinking like mad things, charging the drinks to other people’s rooms, getting absolutely arseholed. Us lot were crowded round Sarge, who was of great interest to us because he’d been in the Hell’s Angels – a former sergeant-at-arms, which accounted for his nickname. The sergeant-at-arms is the guy who does all the enforcing. He polices the Angels, and one of Sarge’s jobs was to preside over the initiations, which he was telling us about, one of them being that the new guys have to drink a pint of piss.
We were like, ‘How fucking disgusting is that?’ and Sarge just shrugged.
So Ian said, ‘Go on then, you drink a pint of piss.’
‘All right,’ said Sarge, ‘You get a pint of piss and I’ll drink it. But it’s going to cost you a fiver.’
That was it. Us lot were running around scabbing money off people to pay him to drink the piss, and once we’d got enough we set about filling the pint pot – Terry mainly, whose piss was like treacle it was that thick and brown.
We handed our warm pint pot of thick, treacle piss to Sarge and put it on the table, watching as he looked at it then dipped his hand in it then put it in his mouth.
He went, ‘It’s warm. I want a tenner.’
We raised more, gave it to him then watched as he downed the pint i
n one, banged the glass down and said, ‘Right, shit sandwich for twenty quid.’
Shit sandwich. We needed some bread for a shit sandwich.
Disaster – we couldn’t find any bread. Next thing you know the whole lot of us were tearing around the hotel trying to find bread. Me and Dave Pils ran down a corridor and came across this breakfast trolley that had all the stuff in it you could wish for, so we started rooting around in it and then, for no good reason – apart from that I was pissed and it seemed like a good idea at the time – I turned the trolley over on Dave and pinned him to the floor. Lying there covered in knives and forks, and little pots of marmalade and sachets of brown sauce, he was laughing, calling me a bastard, then he shoved off the trolley and came at me, grabbed a huge plant out of a pot and began swinging it at me.
One messy plant-pot fight later and we got back to the bar, only to find it had been closed because we were getting so rowdy. We weren’t having that. They’re supposed to leave it open all night if you want. So, even though it was four o’clock in the morning and we were as pissed as bastards – or more likely because it was four o’clock in the morning and we were as pissed as bastards – one of the Buzzcocks’ lighting crew ripped the shutters off the bar and we all dived in. Midway through that session somebody shouted that the cops were on their way – they weren’t; it was just somebody being a bastard – and we all scarpered. Never has a bar emptied of people so quickly. Then we all passed out in our beds.
I woke up the next morning to discover two things: first, that I’d slept with my arm out of the bed; and second, that the police really were on their way. The theft/vandalism/whatever you want to call it in the bar had been discovered and Joy Division were being blamed. For about half an hour we ran about like headless chickens, Rob grabbing our clothes for us and shoving them into bags, desperately trying to get us out of the hotel before the police arrived. The Buzzcocks’ management could sort it out later. We just needed to concentrate on not being taken into custody and risk missing that night’s gig in Edinburgh.
