This is the opening night of Peter Hook & The Light’s 17-date tour of the UK and Ireland, a tour that will see them play the Substance albums by Joy Division and New Order in full. Peter Hook played bass guitar in both of those seminal bands and has undoubtedly earned the right to perform these records live. As too, of course, have Bernard Sumner and Stephen Morris, as well as Gillian Gilbert in the case of the New Order material.
Peter Hook and guitarist Bernard Sumner – two school friends from Salford – had formed Joy Division (then called Warsaw) in 1976, later recruiting singer Ian Curtis and drummer Stephen Morris. The four men changed their name to Joy Division two years later but the band was to dissolve in May 1980 following the suicide of Ian Curtis on the eve of the band’s first American tour.
The three remaining members resolved to keep going, changing their name to New Order in the process before recruiting Gillian Gilbert on keyboards and guitar. New Order continued until first breaking up in 1993. They were to reform five years later. Peter Hook then walked out of the band in 2007 and their story since has often featured a recurring feud between Hook and Sumner in particular and one that centred around disputes over royalties (since resolved) and ownership of the band’s name.
It is this ongoing antipathy and anger, you suspect, that continues to fuel Peter Hook’s fire and his unwavering commitment to both preserve and promote two of the greatest legacies in contemporary music. The fact that there are both older and also many younger faces in tonight’s audience would suggest that he is being successful in achieving those objectives.
Four songs in and Peter Hook & The Light – including David Potts (guitar) and Paul Kehoe (drums) from Hook’s mid-90s New Order side project Monaco – are crossing the bridge that connects Joy Division with New Order when they play ‘Ceremony’, written by the former and released as the debut single from the latter. By then they had already set foot firmly on the New Order bank of the creative river with the beautifully melodica-tinged deference towards Kraftwerk that is ‘Your Silent Face’, a pulsating ‘Procession’, and early B-side ‘Cries and Whispers.’
Thereafter, it becomes a glorious convoy of New Order vintage classics one after the imperious other, a magnificent demonstration of how best to meld dance music with rock. ‘Temptation’ is the first true example of this winning formula they had hit upon, one where they add electronic beats and a supreme pop subtlety to the equation. ‘Blue Monday’, with its hypnotic absorption of influences as diverse as those of the Italian composers Giorgio Moroder and Ennio Morricone, is dedicated to Mike Johnson who engineered the original recording of the song back in 1983 and who is in the audience tonight.
And then there is what has to be my favourite New Order track of all time, ‘Thieves Like Us’, unusual in their canon in that it is a love song but still absolutely perfect in its execution. The only thing that could have improved it would have been if it were followed by its original B-side ‘Lonesome Tonight’ but Peter Hook & The Light were quite rightly sticking resolutely to the Substance script this evening. And given it had reached the pinnacle of New Order’s successful quest to blend club music and rock together and is also the final song from Substance, it is only right and proper that ‘True Faith’ concludes the first half of tonight’s performance.
Piped back onto the stage after a short intermission to the thunderous strains of Kraftwerk’s ‘Trans-Europe Express’, Peter Hook & The Light tear straight into Joy Division’s Substance album by way of their very early recordings ‘No Love Lost’, ‘From Safety to Where…?’, and ‘Glass’ which as a rather primitive post-punk starting point evidence just how far the band were to then travel in their tragically short lifetime.
The graphic alienation generated by ‘Disorder’ – the opening track from their debut album Unknown Pleasures – gives an early indication of the fertile creative ground that Joy Division were quickly eating up. Their music, by now, was evolving into something far more extreme, far more dramatic, far more on the edge. It possessed a dark, ethereal energy, key elements that Peter Hook & The Light firmly grasp during what is a truly spectacular reading of ‘Shadowplay.’
Yet for all those feelings of unsettling displacement that Joy Division could engender in the listener, they were also just as capable of creating moments of inclusive beauty. That much is clear on a spine-tingling ‘Atmosphere’ where this glistening, glacial masterpiece is brought back to life tonight, anchored by the melodic brilliance of Peter Hook’s bass-playing.
Peter Hook and The Light end with a euphoric ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’, during which the crowd joyously join in on the chorus. The song’s inherent melancholy is somehow supplanted by an overriding belief in the restorative power of love. You sense that Ian Curtis would have enjoyed that moment.
Photos: Simon Godley
