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 candour 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. |
Unknown Pleasures: Inside Joy
Division
Author: Peter Hook
Published: 27th September 2012 (UK)
318 pages
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Ltd
Hardback in card box sleeve
RRP £40.00 (only at HMV, instore or hmv.com)
ISBN-10: 0857202154
ISBN-13: 978-0857202154
HMV special edition of the above
1000 numbered copies
Signed by Peter Hook
Comes in a card box sleeve
Has one extra page for Hooky's signature - see image
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