Unknown Pleasures

Unknown Pleasures: Inside Joy Division

by Peter Hook

3.75 out of 5 (2 ratings)

Format:
Hardback 
Pages:
336 
Publisher:
Simon & Schuster Ltd 
Publication Date:
27 September 2012 
Category:
Music: Styles & Genres 
ISBN:
9780857202154 

Description

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.

Showing 1-2 out of 2 reviews.

  • I got into this book with mixed feelings. How can a bass player develop into serious writer? Thankfully I was so wrong. This book is really entertaining and it reads more like fiction than boring listing of facts. It's a true story, as Peter Hook remembers it. I liked how the book showed musicians side of Joy Division, compared to movie Control, which concentrated more on the cool factor of the band. You get the highlights and the downsides and funny insight to the life of a bass player. I'd recommend this book to not only Joy Division fans, but to anybody who's ever played in a band. It may be a long reach, but funniest parts of the book are comparable to adventures of Spinal Tap.

    4.50 out of 5

    markohei

  • Peter Hook does a very good job making you feel like he is just having a friendly chat about Joy Division. His prose style is very informal and loose. And his different view of Ian Curtis does a great job making him less mythic and more human. It must have been a difficult journey for Hook to look at this time in his life, he repeatedly states his feeling that they all let Ian down (including Ian himself) and should have done something. But as with any book written by someone in a group dynamic, we get one man's side of every situation. Bernard Sumner might have a completely different view point. So we are left with a good book, that you must take with a grain of salt. I just got to the end and my everlasting feeling was simply "I miss Ian".

    3.00 out of 5

    erikschreppel

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