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41 " It’s called sticking your head in the sand, and because I did that I lost millions of quid and still don’t have financial security now, even after forty years of being in the music business, the co-writer of ‘Blue Monday’ and ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’ and many successful albums. At the end of the day I’ve only got myself to blame for said actions and for never raising my voice against signing daft agreement after daft agreement, that signed away 30 per cent of my earnings in perpetuity and all my rights to publishing and song royalties to erroneous partnerships and companies I have absolutely no control over. It’s unbelievable to me now. "
― Peter Hook , Substance: Inside New Order
42 " TEN BEST NEW ORDER SONGS 1.‘Thieves Like Us’ 2.‘Leave Me Alone’ 3.‘Homage’ (unreleased) 4.‘Too Late’ (John Peel session) 5.‘Someone Like You’ 6.‘Ruined in a Day’ (K-Klass Remix) 7.‘Every Little Counts’ 8.‘Age of Consent’ 9.‘Temptation’ 10.‘Elegia "
43 " As we sat down, Barney late as usual, it came home to me how there were some things I didn’t miss about drinking, like choosing the wine. This now seemed like a right load of old bollocks. Hey, believe me, in the past I was just as guilty as everybody else. ‘Is it from the south side of the vineyard? Has it been trod by an Albanian virgin?’ All that crap! Basically just showing off, because believe you me, and you know I would not lie to you, a couple of glasses in, and I’m sure no one, not even Barney, could have told the difference between the finest Chablis and donkey piss. "
44 " I’ve read his book. I know he says the problem’s me and professes to be bemused by my antipathy towards him, and it’s true that I came out of rehab without that safety valve of drink and drugs, no ‘off’ button. I was more assertive than before. But he was behaving like the life of a rock star was the worst kind of life there was, and in my opinion he was taking it out on the group, the management, the technicians, and now the audience, and there was one person – one, me – who wasn’t prepared to let him get away with it. "
45 " Do we need to go into the circumstances of Ian’s death? Not really; they are well documented and I’ve already done that in my Joy Division book and, anyway, all the books are about Ian’s death in a way. We were very young. I was just twenty-four and, looking back now, in my early sixties, shockingly young to have to deal with any of it. We were now very, very nervous. What would happen? Would we succeed in any way now Ian had gone? Were we good enough on our own . . . without him? We were scared. "
46 " We had wanted to use a final sample to finish the twelve-inch track off, “That’s All Folks!” from the Warner Brothers cartoons. But we were quoted $30,000 for one use. And we were on their label. Just shows you . . . no favouritism. "
47 " I remember driving there in the afternoon, and I remember getting there and loading the gear in. I don’t remember the sound check. We had one, I think, but we had no idea what to do because we’d never done one before. No one had the foggiest. Not knowing what to do made it exciting, though. Like, now, everybody’s got a stage manager and a sound guy, lights, and so on. The bands know all about sound checks and levels, equipment and all that. Now they even have music schools to teach you that kind of stuff. Back then you knew fuck-all. You didn’t have anyone professional, just your mates, who, like you, were clueless; you had a disco PA and a sleepy barmaid. It’s something I find quite sad about groups today, funnily enough, the careerism of it all. I saw this program once, a “battle of the bands” sort of thing. It had Alex James from Blur on it and Lauren Laverne and some twat from a record company, and they’d sit there saying what they thought of the band: “Your bass player’s shit and your image needs work; lose the harmonica player.” All the bands just stood there and took it, going, “Cheers, man, we’ll go off and do that.” I couldn’t believe it. I joined a band to tell everyone to fuck off, and if somebody said to me, “Your image is shit,” I’d have gone, “Fuck off, knob head!” And if someone had said, “Your music’s shit,” I would have nutted them. That to me is what’s lacking in groups. They’ve missed out that growing-up stage of being bloody-minded and fucking clueless. You have to have ultimate self-belief. You have to believe right from the word go that you’re great and that the rest of the world has to catch up with you. Of us lot, Ian was the best at that. He believed in Joy Division completely. If any of us got downhearted it was always him who would cheer us up and get us going again. He’d put you back on track. "
― Peter Hook , Unknown Pleasures: Inside Joy Division
48 " Rob fought this so hard. He hired a musicologist in England to analyse the song. It turns out that musicologists use a scale of twelve notes and if eight of those notes are present in both songs, then the accused, us, is deemed guilty. Which we were. Rob wouldn’t have it, so he then got an American musicologist to analyse it. He said the same. We lost again. John Denver got his per cent cut and a writer’s credit. Warners wanted to take it off the album on any subsequent pressings, but we said no. I still don’t hear it now. Denver died in 1997, shortly after it was eventually settled. God, imagine if we did that with all the tunes that sound like us? We’d make a fortune. Humh . . . there’s a thought. "
49 " Now, this meeting would have taken place in mid-to-late 2004, over two years after we started recording, and a lot happened between that summit and the album coming out. One of them was that terrible tsunami in Indonesia on Boxing Day. Because of that, the record company got cold feet on Barney’s cover image, fearing a possible media backlash, and Alan Parkes from Warners had to go to Pete’s studio, pleading with him to do another sleeve. Pete was insistent. ‘No, I don’t want to do one. I don’t want to do it,’ but Alan was just as persistent, until at last Pete got fed up and wrote ‘NO’ on a piece of paper, gave it to Alan and said, ‘There’s my answer,’ and Alan went, ‘That’ll do,’ and took it. I like it. I think it’s one of his best sleeves. "
50 " There was a lot of downtime sitting by Mike, so I read. I had a little table on which I had my pile of books and, by the end, they were nearly as high as the studio ceiling. I used to get all the song titles from them. Even the album titles, as it turned out, because ‘A startling tale of power, corruption and lies’ was a review quote from the Daily Telegraph on the back of 1984 by George Orwell. ‘Leave Me Alone’ came from Tender Is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald, and ‘Ultraviolence’ was from A Clockwork Orange, to name but a few. "
51 " This really was the start of a period where me, Barney and Steve would all be meeting bands and getting into producing them. Barney did Section 25, Happy Mondays. Steve and Gillian produced Thick Pigeon (who, incidentally, were Stanton Miranda, Michael Shamberg’s girlfriend, and Carter Burwell, who later made his name scoring films for the Coen Brothers). "
52 " Blue Monday’ went on to be our biggest-selling single ever, still is. Even so, it was never that special to us and, to be honest, I thought ‘Thieves Like Us’ was a much better song. "