Talking with Peter Hook

The important thing about Joy Division and New Order is that they weren't really Manchester bands. They were Macclesfield bands. Young blokes with a fury to escape the suffocating embrace of small town life. To get out from under the monochrome drizzle of declining market towns. Towns that that were becoming increasingly uniform as they began to wither and die

And I think it is this that was the essence of their appeal for us growing up in Bedford. If you were white and growing up in the ugly new housing estates that had doubled the size of this nondescript town in the 1970s, then you were living in a particularly arid cultural desert. (I say white because the many other cultural groups in Bedford prob did have more going on. But the honest truth is we didn't really mix.)

For us, nothing ever happened. Bands didn't play. There wasn't a real football team, there wasn't a theatre and the only youth club in Brickhill - the estate I lived on - was in the local baptist church.

We had the TV and we had music. Only my dad heavily censored television (no american shows, no violence, no ITV). And I didn't really get the music people around me seemed to like. Most people I knew liked heavy metal (another small town phenomenon. An attempt to create an artificial grandeur where none could ever exist) but it wasn't for me. It seemed nonsensical. pantomimic with its embarrassing lyrics and faerie worldes, and it also seemed intimidatingly musicianly. All those guitar pyrotechnics seemed as distant from me as the classical concertos Mr Stanley played us in our primary school music lessons.

I liked sixties pop. The Beatles, The Stones, The Kinks, The Who, The Small Faces, The Monkees (I was lucky in that I had a discerning cousin to turn me on to this stuff). I liked the satin and tat of Bolan and Bowie. And I liked Abba (I always liked a tune basically, though you had to be secretive about a love of ABBA then. Not like now, everyone from Morrissey to Eminem claims to like Abba these days.)

If you've been watching the re-runs of the 1976 TOTP episodes you'll know how badly the nation needed punk. But it took a little while to get a hold in Bedford, and, when it did, it didn't last long. There was a small group in my school for whom punk changed everything. It gave us an attitude, a side to be on. and the music was - let's not forget this - compelling too. As urgent and as basic as early rock and roll. But our two big favourites in Bedford - as in ten thousand other middling towns - were The Clash and The Jam. They had a richer musical palette than their contemporaries, without actually seeming anything like musos. And they were articulate. Strummer and Weller were the only poets and journalists I needed. Most of what I feel about politics comes from Clash and Jam records (single records too. Bought for 79p from Woolies. I didn't really have the attention span for albums. Still don't. You can imagine how I suffered during the age of the 75minute CD album). My political sense certainly didn't emerge from the sterile university debates I had later with members of SWSS. And everything I know about philosophy comes from the NME, from Paul Morley and Ian Penman.

And suddenly there were bands like Joy Division (and then New Order), Comsat Angels, Echo and the Bunnymen, The Teardrop Explodes and it felt here was a movement that made perfect sense of all the things that had been going on in my imagination up to then. These were bands who could marry the pop sensibility of the sixties with lyrical images that strove for a realisation of the darker places in the psyche. And I was 15 by then and in the special kind of mess that 15 year olds are often in.

And these bands also suddenly began to play Bedford. Necessarily in strange venues.

New Order played one of their first British gigs under that name in the Bradgate Boys Club (a boxing club), Teardrop Explodes played Kempston Rovers football club, The Comsat Angels played the Corn Exchange. And there was a place to go. Every other Monday we could go to the Essential Dance Music night at Winkles Club in Lurke Street and hear this new music. Music that had the iconoclastic energy of punk, but with an experimental imagination and a desire to articulate inner turmoil in the same the way that Weller and Strummer could articulate class alienation.

We also got a free burger at midnight. Something to do with the license. If you wanted to listen to Bauhaus or the Cocteau Twins after midnight in Bedford then you were compelled to eat irradiated frozen burgers.

And the fact that Bedford had this space where we could gather and argue and pontificate was down to Dec Hickey. And it was Dec who put the bands on too. An evangelist for Joy Division from the earliest days Dec was a prophet for new music in our drab town (a drab town that I love fiercely by the way. England is its smallish towns far more than it is its cities. the essence of England is not found in London, Birmingham, Manchester or Leeds. Neither is it found in cricket games on village greens in Hampshire. The real England is in Peterborough, Northampton, Milton Keynes, Luton, Stevenage. Towns like that. Bedford IS a drab town, but it is MY drab town and always will be.)

Seen from this distance 30 years on, a lot of this music seems melodramatic, absurdly grandiose, or just pointlessly abstract. Or - still the big crime for me - tune-free. But a lot stands up. And of all the post-punk bands the most important for us were New Order. They were the band Dec was closest too, the were the band that first bothered to come and play for us and they had this terrible grief to carry around with them and to exorcise on stage. And the music was great. they always seemed to challenge themselves. And us. A capacity to change and to surprise while retaining that special thread with their own past, their own mythology.

We saw them all over the place crammed into unreliable cars listening to bootlegs of previous gigs all the way there - and a new bootleg of the gig we'd just seen on the way back.

All of which is a too lengthy attempt to put into context the special nervousness I felt last night when I found myself interviewing Peter Hook live on stage in front of 200 odd people at Hebden Picturehouse. I had high ambitions for this event. Firstly - and most importantly - I wanted Hooky not too think I was a tosser, but I also wanted to find out nerdy, geeky things about how songs were written and recorded.

And I wanted to find out emotional things about how you feel when your friend, colleague, singer, almost-brother kills himself the very night you'd given him a lift home. I wanted to know about the other kind of pain involved in the long drifting apart from the friend you'd had since you were 11. And I wanted him to have the space to tell some funny stories. I wanted a complex kind of entertainment I guess. Part confession/part stand-up/part lecture.

And we got all that. Mostly. I think.

Peter Hook is a warm man. Lively, engaging, easy to talk to. Very open. The first surprise for me was that he remembered the Bedford Boys Club gig. Remembered it well. He also spoke warmly of Dec Hickey, a man he's still in contact with and has collaborated with on a coffee table book about the many New Order gigs the 'Bedford Crew' went to.

On stage we covered things more or less chronologically and my role as a (frankly amateur, and full of cold) interviewer was just to press the buttons to move things forward because Peter could quite clearly have spent entertaining hours on each part of the band's story. We heard about the impact the Sex Pistols gig at Manchester Free Trade hall had. That Peter Hook hadn't thought of joining a band until that point. How he bought a crappy bass speaker off his old art teacher, Mr Hubbard, and that he began to play the bass high up the neck as the only way to be heard over the racket Barney made on his slightly more expensive amp. (Incidentally, Barney was referred to as 'twatface' throughout the evening. somehow I don't think that the New Order reunion is happening any time soon. Mr Hubbard meanwhile is a member of the band the Salford Jets).

We heard about how a Joy Division song would come together. Ian always had tons of words and the band would jam until something emerged. How the band were writing songs so fast they could barely keep up with themselves. How the first time they played Transmission live was the moment everyone knew that the alchemy of the group was taking them somewhere special.

We learned that Martin Hannett fought with Barney and Hooky who wanted Unknown Pleasures to sound like never mind the bollocks and were initially gutted about the production of it, But they're very glad now that it's an argument that they lost. (and so are we all surely)

We learned how Ian Curtis was always irrepressibly positive. How he would always say things were fine, when they manifestly weren't. How they went to his funeral on the Thursday and were rehearsing as New Order on the Friday. Only actually, they were rehearsing but not as New Order - they spent a few weeks as the Witch-doctors of Zimbabwe.

What else? We learned that Gillian Gilbert's prime qualification for invitation into the group was that she couldn't play and would do what she was told. That Barney quickly tired of playing live and so Peter's relationship with him was undermined by years of forcing him to do what he didn't want to do. That Barney sees the best version of a song as the one that is recorded and Peter sees songs as being most alive while they're being played. It's a fundamental philosophical difference and, in the end, an impossible circle to square.

We learned that Peter was 'devastated' when Barney formed Electronic. That during New Order's last gig Peter Hook wrote The End on his bass cabs but Barney was still surprised that the group was over (this last gig was in front of 135,000 people in Buenos Aires).

The evening all went past in a bit of a blur (my amateurishness as a host was underlined by the fact that I didn't wear a watch during the gig and so had to try and time things with furtive looks at Peter's. Not ideal). I've done these things quite a lot, but generally at sedate literary events attend by 30 or so nice women. This was a whole different thing. But I wasn't heckled and the questions from the audience were respectful, funny and to the point.

It was an audience question that elicited the response that 24 hour party people is 'Carry On up the factory.' Pretty fictional - though not as fictional as Tony Wilson's autobiography - but that Control is spookily close to the truth of how things were.

And at the end of things we sold dozens of copies Peter's book How Not To Run Club (far more books than we normally sell at a literary event), he signed them and then I walked him round to the Trades Club where he was doing a DJ set.

They say you shouldn't meet your heroes. But then again, sometimes, just some times, you should. We had a nice time and I learned a lot. This doesn't mean I think his idea of touring and playing - and singing lead vocals on - Joy Division albums with his new band The Light (which includes his son) is a good idea. It clearly isn't (but his legacy to trash if he wants) nor do I have any opinions on who is to blame the well documented fall out with his old schoolfriend and bandmate Barney. From the outside, it just seems like a shame. Bands break about though. If they are any good at all, it's what happens.

So I Burnt Some Poppies... So What?

20/03/12 - WE had those excitable bods from The English Defence League outside the office earlier today wanting to shout stuff and wave their fists at some poor kid who said stupid things about Our Boys. Teenagers Say The Stupidest Things... It's hardly news is it? It wouldn't make a radical new cutting edge reality show would it?

They are very hot-headed though aren't they, those EDL types? They're different from us. Do you think it's a genetic thing? Anyway, let them shake their fists and SHOUT STUFF  if they want to. It's a free country. And I'm sort of the opinion that we should be able to say more or unless anything we like... and last year - November, Poppy Day time - I wrote this about that very thing. And today with the EDL SHOUTING STUFF outside - well, it seems worth repeating...

November 2011

Earlier tonight it was getting pretty nippy so I lit a fire and onto it I tossed a whole box full of British Legion poppies. Whoosh they went as the little paper petals caught, creating a fierce little blaze for a moment or two. Perfect kindling for the American flag which I also threw on. Old Glory goes up well. It could have been made for burning. You could heat a house for a week on one coffin sized number. But I wasn't done. I also burnt a Union Jack, a Koran, a Bible, a copy of London Calling by The Clash, a Shakespeare First Folio, and a rare video recording of an episode of the Likely Lads from 1965.

Like I said - it was a cold night.

This week there was a bit of a fuss in the papers because an anti-war protester publicly burned a poppy and was only fined £50. I must have burned at least a grand's worth. And this is why. If our soldiers fight for anything, isn't it for the right for citizens to say what we like? To make political gestures? To create visual metaphors encapsulating our feelings about the state of things?

If we offend one another, well, OK let's be offended. I love The Clash, but if people want to take the piss out of them, then that is fine. And even I have to concede that 1-2 Crush On You (B-side of Tommy Gun) is a bit shit. So I added their best LP to the pyre just because I can.

All of us have to face the fact that stuff we really, really love means fuck all to some people. They hate it. And that might include the Royal Family, the prophet Mohammed (may his name be praised etc), Bob Marley, Joe Strummer, plays, poetry, the British constitution and the American Dream.

The thing that makes our democracies great (and yes, you might not think they're that great. That's your right and you can burn something emblematic of our culture to prove it if you like) is that - in theory - we are allowed to say what we like, think what we like and, if it doesn't hurt other people, do what we like. Or we should be. But the ranks of the Offended seem to swell daily and it's a shame that we've got so touchy.

(Btw - I didn't really burn a rare copy of an episode of the Likely Lads. Of course I didn't. That really would be sacrilege.)

AOL and the Huffington Post - Marry in haste, repent at leisure...

You know the thing that most annoys me about Big Business? It's the how crap they are... at business. AOL for example. This is the company that forked out £850 trillion on Bebo (I might be wrong on the exact figures but it was a helluva lot anyway. For Bebo. Bebo.) And they off-loaded that in June. I don't know how much they got for it. No-one does, they wouldn't say. They were doubtless - and rightly - too ashamed. Let's assume it was a couple of hundred quid on eBay. About the same price as a for-spares-or-repair Vauxhall Corsa. And they're at it again. This time it's a mere £315 million for the Huffington Post. What was Einstein's definitation of madness? Doing the same thing twice but expecting different results? The only thing a big company buying a digital business proves is that it's, like, already soooo over for its quarry. Big business can only catch up with the prey when it's on the point of exhaustion. When it knows it can't hack it in the wild anymore. Yeah that start-up might might still look as sleek and bouncy and as twinkly eyed as young Bambi but the heart is on the point of giving out.

When I was working at ITV (I was a teaboy. Oh, alright - a storyliner. Same difference) that company forked over £400 million notes for Friendsreunited. In 2008. Any child could have told them it was dead in the water by then, and had been for years. And because of the desperate scramble to be part of the net - to be with it, hip and happening dudes - the whole company nearly went under. Local journalists were fired in their dozens. The Bill was cancelled and drama as an idea was thrown into the gaping maw of Reality. For years. And they're looking to flog that. It'll be coming to a boot sale near you pretty soon. How much would you give for it? A tenner? Come on, it's got to be worth a tenner. OK five then...

And what is the Huffington Post? It's a a perfectly respectable online newspaper. It compares quite well with, say, The Yorkshire Post. It's whizzy and buzzy and gossipy and there are lots of video links and all that. Even though, right now, it does seem to be busy telling the world exactly how whizzy and buzzy and video linky it is, in a way that looks a bit insecure for a product ostensibly worth a third of a billion pounds.

I have a mate who is terrible - terrible - with money. Far worse than me, and that is saying something. One of his key ways of getting rid of his dosh was to buy memerobilia for movies and TV series. So he had a life size replica of a Lord of the Rings Sword, a full-size Dalek, Geekabilia of all kinds. He'd have these items for a few months, then next tremour along the financial faultline on which he lived would mean he would be flogging these goodies for a fraction of their worth just to buy eggs and milk, or to pay his rent. His friends used to despair. He had to have serious therapy in the end and it took personal bankruptcy and having to move back into his mum's spare room to drive him to that. And what did he learn in therapy? He learned that his dysfunctional relationship with money was because he felt worthless. He didn't deserve anything, so he got rid of anything he did have as soon as he could. And of course buying toys is a fairly crude way of telling the world that he got no love as a child.

What, I wonder, is the excuse of the AOL board? And should they be acting out their childhood angst in a way that might further fuck up the world's economy? Unless at some dark and deep level, that's actually what they want. Someone should get a hold of AOL and get them to the doctors quick. Or they'll be back in their mum's spare room.

It makes my blood boil, honestly. Capitalist bastards are horrible. Incompetent capitalist bastards are even worse.

For Twoc's Sake - Tory Story

Taking Without the Owners Consent...

Every day I find myself struggling for metaphors to describe the new government and, in particular, their approach to the economy. I have - approriately enough - road-tested this one. And it seems to sort of fit. Not only are the govt acting (in economic terms) like pissed up rugby students on the mother of all stag nights, but it's like they've taken the keys to their Dad's Jag. Which is our car, actually. One that we saved up for but don't get to drive much with the price of fuel being what it is.

After 13 years of lessons, these Cherub-faced, polite-but-dims somehow fluked the test and now - with full Bullingdon rig under their 'ordinary middle class' clothes - they are speeding round the country lanes heedless of rules of the road or the damage they'll do when they hit something. Intoxicated by the thrill of getting their hands on the wheel at last, they're really pushing to see how fast this baby can go. Osborne is the key with hands on the wheel. But the whole vehicle is full of kids getting a notch harder every time he puts the pedal closer to the metal. 'Faster, Pussycat, Faster!' they yell from the back seat. There's a couple looking a bit green around the gills. These car-sick weaklings must be Liberals and they sight of their wan faces as they try to look like they're enjoying the trip, just provokes their more bullish mates. Taking the LibDems to places they don't want to go is part of the thrill of the joy-ride.

But it's not the main thing. The main thing is just being in charge of this beast. This Trillion dollar vehicle and just giving it all she can take. Whoop-Whoop!

Let's hope they run out of fuel before they hit someone. An economy is a lethal weapon, you know lads. You'll get fined, banned, you'll end up in jail if you keep driving like maniacs. Your insurance will go through the roof. (Only of course they're not insured are they? Joy-riders never are.)

But they're not listening. Like a lot of young male new drivers they think they know everything. They feel like James Bond, Michael Schumacher, Jensen Button. They don't see that they're coming over all Toad from Wind-in-the-willows. They are soooo turned on right now. If this was a film what would we call it. Tory Story? The only trouble is our two toy-sized leads just aren't loveable enough. Or life-like enough. And please God don't let there be any sequels.

It's going to end in tears. This car will be totalled wrapped around around a recession that they didn't see. 'It just ran out in front of me officer. I didn't have a chance.'

To which the only answer can be' just blow into this bag, sir... Properly.' And then maybe we'll get to take the license away for good this time.

And if no-one gets killed, if we do get away with it, our lasting memory might be the sight of some Liberal puking and claiming that he was somehow innocent. 'He told me he could drive... He told me I'd look cool, get girls...' And we can ban them too. In fact they should go to jail because it was the Liberals that nicked the keys from our study and handed them to 'Ozzy' Osbourne in the first place.

Call the cops - these crazies could do anything

It occurs to me what the new coalition most resembles. It's like having demented drunks in the house. Gate-crashers claiming to have been invited by 'Dave. You know, Dave.' and who are now rampaging through the house breaking things (glasses, vases, the NHS - things like that.) They're looking for more booze and snacks. Most of all though, they're looking for arguments all wild-eyed. And they need speaking to softly, because they could do anything! Anything at all.

This coalition have all the belligerent certainty of drunks. Drunks who moved beyond being amusing some time ago, but drunks that no-one dares fetch a cab for. They are terrifying because you know they have no boundaries... who knows what they might do next? You can't reason with them. They are way beyond that. And they have money and mad friends and they might come back and do you over good an proper if you stand up to them. And they claim to know your boss but, look, if this carries on we'll have to, like, do something. Because there's some valuable things in this house. And other things that have sentimental value... and, right, they've gone too far now... that's my wife... It's that kind of situation.

Of course I'm sure in the morning, when they've sobered up, they'll be ringing round apologising and promising to pay for the damage. They're probably pretty decent really. Just excited at getting that long awaited promotion. But for now they're just scary.

This town is sold out

One of the things I do is help programme the Hebden Bridge Arts Festival. last night there were three events. New writing in the theatre, Flamenco at the Trades Club and 'dead-pan comedian' Rich Hall at the Picturehouse. All sold out.

So in a town of 4000 people 800 were at arts events. 20% of the entire population. On a Thursday night. Of course a lot of those almost certainly came from out of town. Bringing their money with them. That's about £12000 in ticket spend plus all the drinks they bought, meals they had, babysitters they paid for... that's a decent amount of economic activity in one small town midweek. And there's this amount of activity going on for two weeks. that's a lot of lives altered in small ways, and a lot of businesses supported...

And the point I'm making in this none too subtle way, is that the arts matter. They matter in terms of quality of life, they matter for the things we learn and the way they change our relationship with the world around us. The way they shake up our world-view. And they matter financially and economically.

How to solve the banking crisis

Talking with the most over-qualified man I know... Dr English (2 letters in front of his name - and 17 after not including brackets) and we wonder gently why amid all the talk of cuts and deficits, no-one mentions the obvious. Shouldn't we think about raising taxes?

1p on income tax for most of us - 2p for the rich - and the deficit more or less disappears. No cuts in services, no need to fork out for benefits, no repossessions. People tighten their belts (but not by an excruciating amount), some grumbling but no riots in the streets. And no need to steal the pensions of public servants.

Imagine this: Imagine saying to your bank ' yeah I know I agreed to pay £400 a month for 25 years, but I find that this is unaffordable. I'm going to pay £200 for 15 years. And oh, there's no guarantee I won't find that unaffordable too in a year or so.' You'd be on the streets, or in jail. And yet this is what the government (and the last one to be fair) feels it has a right to do. If private pensions are so rubbish, then THAT is the scandal, not that public ones are so good. Private companies are more effective at ripping off their employees.

Raise taxes and make private companies provide better pensions... it's another way to go. Not that anyone listens to me or Jim. Despite his 19 letters.