Peter Hook: Happy to raid a brilliant back catalogue

PETER HOOK emits a blokey chuckle. "Ian Curtis had very big shoes to fill," says the former Joy Division and New Order bassist. "Bernard Sumner’s shoes aren’t that big actually — about the same size as mine. So that worked out okay."

Curtis was the tragic Joy Division frontman who committed suicide in 1980 at the age of 23, while Sumner remains lead singer of New Order, from whom Hook is heartily estranged. Since falling out with his former collaborators in 2007, he has toured the world as Joy Division/New Order covers outfit Peter Hook and The Light, digging deep into the catalogue of two groups regarded as among the most important the UK has produced across the past 30 years.

“The first time I went on stage and sang Joy Division songs I was terrified,” says Hook, 58. “There was a lot of internet criticism of that first gig. People expected that I would fall flat on my face. I managed to pull it off. We stay very truthful to how the records sounded: I can’t say we are Joy Division. We give a pretty good It used to bother Hook that New Order would never perform many of their best loved songs.