Unknown Pleasures: Inside Joy Division - Softcover

Peter Hook

4.13

5,090 ratings by Goodreads

9781849833608: Unknown Pleasures: Inside Joy Division

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1849833605 ISBN 13: 9781849833608

Publisher: Simon & Schuster UK, 2013

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Joy Division changed the face of music. The sound of music. The meaning of music. Godfathers of the current alternative scene, they reinvented rock in the post-punk era, creating a new sound -- dark, hypnotic, intense - that would influence U2, Morrissey, R.E.M., Radiohead and many others. The band's image, once subversive and alienating, has become an internationally renowned 'look' well documented by photographers Anton Corbijn, Kevin Cummins and graphic designer Peter Saville. Inspired by the attitude, energy and sound of Punk, particularly the Sex Pistols, Peter Hook and his old school friend Bernard Sumner started a band which continues to influence popular music 35 years later, uniting with a gifted lead-singer and lyricist, Ian Curtis, and a brilliant drummer, Stephen Morris. With some cobbled together instruments and a clapped out old van, four young lads from Manchester and Salford shared the same vision and created their own unique sound in pubs and clubs first across the north-west, then across the whole of Britain, until in 1980 they had released two albums and were on the cusp of touring America. Then Ian Curtis committed suicide leaving everyone around him bereft. Best known for the propulsive bass guitar melodies of 'Love Will Tear Us Apart' Hooky was at the heart of the sound that came to define an era and inspire a generation. In the frank, no-holds-barred style that has seen his previous book The Hacienda: How Not to Run a Club hailed as one of the best music books of 2009, Peter 'Hooky' Hook gives us the inside story of life with Joy Division. He talks with eye-opening candor and reflection about the suicide of Ian Curtis: often seen as the "intellectual one", to Peter and the band he was just "one of the lads" and the burden of balancing his epilepsy and the demands of his domestic life only really emerged when it was too late. He covers the band's friendships and fall-outs; their rehearsals and recording sessions; and the larger-than-life characters who formed a vital part of the Joy Division legend: Tony Wilson, Rob Gretton, Martin Hannett, and more.

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Review:

'The current, bitter feud between Hook and Bernard Sumner...simmers throughout, with frequent airings of what Hook views as the guitarist's meanness and laziness, tempered with admiration for his playing - Observer

Hook writes with real enthusiasm about the unlikely lads who ended up forming two of Britain's most influential bands... he is genuinely funny - Sunday Times

An immense account of Joy Division's rise, cataloguing the group's struggle for recognition... Having read Hook's book, you'll feel like you were he fifth member of the band - GQ

The most colourful and intimate account of Joy Division ever written... explaining the creation of his band's remarkable music with all the passion and insight it deserves' - Mojo

This is an honest, enthusiastic account of the life and times of the band... It s a window like no other into the reality of life in this most aloof of bands Metro

This memoir is a bittersweet, profanity filled recollection of their brief existence, delivered with much, often indiscreet detail. If you like Joy Division, you really have to read it' - Q Magazine

A lucid and unromantic account of the band's short life and a veritable treasure trove for those aforementioned fans... truly heart-wrenching - Live4ever Ezine

A memoir of the recording of that legendary first album and an insider's look at a band that has moved into myth... He's frank, incredibly funny, and isn't shy about talking about his book' - Artrocker

Peter Hook's Unknown Pleasures: Inside Joy Division is refreshingly no-nonsense account of the band's brief career - Uncut

Hook has restored a flesh-and-blood rawness to what was becoming a standard tale. Few pop music books manage that --Big Issue

'The Joy Division story often appears misleadingly neat in the telling: two near perfect albums of unusual grace and gravity, then a human catastrophe which forced the surviving members into a new life as New Order... Hook's mission is to relate the chaotic day-to-day existence of four young men kids, really before it was smoothed into legend' - Dorian Lynskey, The Observer

'This new Joy Division biography by the band s bassist "isn't just Peter Hook collecting some already exhausted stories for a quick pay out," Michelle Kambasha writes in Clash. "It provides a kind of personal insight that most of us haven t been privy to until now." The Joy Division story is steeped in layer upon layer of myth. "Hook's mission," writes Dorian Lynskey in The Observer, "is to relate the chaotic day-to-day existence of four young men kids, really before it was smoothed into legend." This is accomplished, according to Lynskey, through the author's characteristic straightforwardness and lack of pretension: "The demystification process starts with Hook's portrayal of himself as a laddish delinquent who, thunderstruck by punk rock, spontaneously decides to form a band with Salford schoolfriend Bernard Sumner." "What makes Hook s book so refreshing is the lack of linguistic and intellectual showboating, and its simple laying of facts on the line," notes Tony Clayton-Lea in the Irish Times, admiring Hook s unaffected style. The book emphasises the band's focus on music, fun and friendship famously at the expense of even a semblance of business-mindedness: it was only in 2008 that Hook "discovered neither Joy Division nor New Order had trademarked or registered their names." But hanging over every youthful anecdote is Hook's knowledge, shared with the reader, of Ian Curtis' impending suicide. As Lynskey writes: "So the tragedy infects the farce, as Curtis's ultimate fate casts ostensibly amusing on-the-road antics as symptoms of denial: never mind the worsening fits and self-haharming, --Big Issue. Review Round-Up, New Statesman

From the Back Cover:

Joy Division changed the face of music. Godfathers of alternative rock, they reinvented music in the post-punk era, creating a new sound—dark, hypnotic, and intense—that would influence U2, Morrissey, R.E.M., Radiohead, and numerous others. The story is now legendary: in 1980, on the heels of their groundbreaking debut, Unknown Pleasures, and on the eve of their first U.S. tour, the band was rent asunder by the tragic death of their enigmatic lead singer, Ian Curtis. Yet in the mere three years they were together, Joy Division produced two landmark albums and a handful of singles—including the iconic anthem "Love Will Tear Us Apart"—that continue to have a powerful resonance.

Now, for the first time, their story is told by one of their own. In Unknown Pleasures, founding member and bass player Peter Hook recounts how four young men from Manchester and Salisbury, with makeshift instruments and a broken-down van, rose from the punk scene to create a haunting, atmospheric music that would define a generation. Peter talks with eye-opening candor and reflection about the suicide of Ian Curtis; the band's friendships and fallouts; the evolution of their sound and image; and the larger-than-life characters who formed a vital part of the Joy Division legend, including Factory Records founder Tony Wilson and producer Martin Hannett. Told with surprising humor and vivid detail, Unknown Pleasures is the book Joy Division fans have awaited for decades.

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