Substance: Inside New Order QUOTES

1 " Bernard insisted on having ‘just one more go’, and in doing so used up mine and Steve’s tracks, wiping them, so by the time Martin finally threw up his hands and told us to fuck off, Barney’s was the only vocal left on tape. Which is pretty much how he became our singer. "

― Peter Hook , Substance: Inside New Order

2 " In my rules of a group: never let the singer do his own backing vocals. To me it sounds weird. When Ian was alive he made sure that the other members had a go because that’s what you do in a group. It’s a group. Not just a bunch of musicians backing the singer. "

― Peter Hook , Substance: Inside New Order

3 " Ten things you should always do when you form a group

1. Work with your friends
2. Find like-minded people
3. Have ultimate self-belief
4. Write great songs
5. Get a great manager
6. Live in Manchester
7. Support each other through thick and thin
8. Realise no one person is bigger than the group (thanks to Gene Simmons for that one)
9. Watch where the money goes
10. Always get separate legal advice for everything before you sign; failing that, ask your mam and dad "

― Peter Hook , Substance: Inside New Order

4 " Barney turned up the next day feeling better, and of course the tour went ahead, but if you ask me that was a revelatory moment for him. He must have thought, They need me. They can’t do it without me. "

― Peter Hook , Substance: Inside New Order

5 " Then came a rather surreal exchange about Joy Division T-shirts, with us proudly proclaiming we did not sell merchandise because we didn’t believe in self-promotion of any kind, preferring to let the music speak for itself. ‘Rubbish,’ boomed Scotty. ‘How come wherever I go I see Joy Division and New Order T-shirts, worn and for sale, eh?’ Now, we had no idea where he was going to see these things, but we were all speechless anyway. He continued, ‘I don’t believe you, and will be fining you accordingly.’ So we would get fined £10,000 for not doing our own T-shirts. "

― Peter Hook , Substance: Inside New Order

6 " There was the sudden realisation that maybe some of these people in charge – i.e. Rob and Tony – didn’t actually know what the fuck they were doing. But if it was a lesson, then it wasn’t a hard enough lesson, because we reacted to it by doing nothing. "

― Peter Hook , Substance: Inside New Order

7 " When a song is written, depending on who wrote what, the percentage split between the writers and performers must be agreed. In a democracy, e.g. New Order, it was all split into quarters, 25 per cent each, and the same for the performance royalties. This stayed the same up until Republic, when Barney decided he wanted more, and truth be told, he deserved it. He was doing two jobs. "

― Peter Hook , Substance: Inside New Order

8 " Ten things you should never do when you form a group 1.Work with your friends (they won’t be for long if you do) 2.Let the singer do his own backing vocals (this is a great opportunity for the band to pull together – ignore it at your peril; see also ‘narcissism’) 3.Have a couple in the band (they will always conspire against you) 4.Listen to an A&R man (apart from Pete Tong, everyone I have ever met has been an idiot) 5.Let your manager open a club/bar (see The Haçienda: How Not to Run a Club) 6.Let the publishing/performance split go unspoken (sort it out as soon as the recording is finished and put it in writing; this is the worst thing you will ever have to do, but the most important, and usually splits most bands before they even start) 7.Get off the bus (Fatty Molloy did this once and has regretted it ever since) 8.Think one member is bigger than the group (courtesy Gene Simmons again) 9.Sign anything that says ‘in perpetuity’ (that means forever, even you won’t live that long) 10.Let your record company owe you money (see Factory Records) 11.Ship your gear – always hire (a very famous sub-dance sub-indie outfit once phoned their manager after they’d split and said, ‘Hey, where did all the money go?’ See above!) 12.Interfere with another group member’s sleep (they will turn very nasty and may call the police) 13.Interfere with another group member’s girlfriend/wife (this will always end in violence) 14.Never have a party in your own hotel room (always go to someone else’s) . . . Oh shit, way too many. I’ll stop now. "

― Peter Hook , Substance: Inside New Order

9 " They were also the tracks on which we channelled a love of Kraftwerk and Giorgio Moroder. Ian Curtis had first introduced us to the icy Germans, and that was quickly followed by an even greater admiration for Moroder, particularly his work with Donna Summer on ‘I Feel Love’ and his production of the wonderful Sparks track ‘Number One Song in Heaven’. His solo record E=MC2 became a big inspiration and definitely led us into ‘Temptation’. All we had to do was work out how they bloody did it. "

― Peter Hook , Substance: Inside New Order

10 " I suppose it was karma that Substance would then turn out to be our biggest-selling album ever; we gave away our biggest-selling record to the record company at a reduced cost – for no reason other than they couldn’t pay us for the other ones at the full rate because of bad management. "

― Peter Hook , Substance: Inside New Order

11 " True Faith’ ended up being a big song for us, no doubt about it. The title I got from a book I was reading at the time, James A. Michener’s Texas, which talked about Catholicism being the only ‘True Faith’. Rob liked that. Here’s a little-known fact: Barney and I were the only two Protestants at Factory; nearly all the rest were Catholics. Read into that what you will. "

― Peter Hook , Substance: Inside New Order

12 " Barney told me he’d written ‘Liar’ about our manager. I was really shocked when I saw the lyrics. Poor Rob. "

― Peter Hook , Substance: Inside New Order

13 " As a group of people, New Order acted like a divorcing husband and wife: we couldn’t even be bothered to hate one another any more. We’d simply stopped caring about each other. We played our guts out most nights – I like to think we didn’t let our band politics affect the performances – but as soon as we were offstage all our heart was lost again. "

― Peter Hook , Substance: Inside New Order

14 " On ‘Bizarre Love Triangle’ we’d had one of our first arguments about the level of the bass guitar. Our engineer Mike Johnson had insisted to the others they were wrong to suggest turning it down. ‘It’s a great counterpoint,’ he’d said. ‘That’s what New Order is all about. "

― Peter Hook , Substance: Inside New Order

15 " before you go thinking I’m some kind of King Canute – it was my stance against programmed music that made our sound the way it was (even if I do say so myself), keeping it a hybrid of rock and dance: the sound of the future. Instead I decided to bury myself in the recording process, becoming the band’s recording engineer. "

― Peter Hook , Substance: Inside New Order

16 " We were like, ‘Hey, what are you doing!?’ but soon twigged they were trying to give us a proper Japanese welcome by carrying our bags for us. Great. This was the life. Then we looked round and saw Gillian still struggling with hers. Turns out that in this culture they don’t help a woman. We got her a trolley. "

― Peter Hook , Substance: Inside New Order

17 " You reply to a fan, you get a fan for life, Rob would say. I should put that in my rules for a group, really. "

― Peter Hook , Substance: Inside New Order

18 " Movement came out while we were away. The reviews were OK, and though I grew to like it more and more as the years went by, we weren’t especially happy with it at the time. When we listened to the finished product what we heard was the sound of a band whose producer had lost faith. You could hear it. The album had ended up sounding like a Joy Division album with New Order vocals. "

― Peter Hook , Substance: Inside New Order

19 " I know that Get Ready isn’t considered a New Order classic but personally it’s one of my favourites, much better for me than the dreaded Republic. "

― Peter Hook , Substance: Inside New Order

20 " The story of New Order is in some senses the story of a coup: how a band went from being a democracy to a dictatorship, and of course, it was a typically Barney, bloodless, passive-aggressive coup, in that it happened bit by bit, brick by brick, decision by decision. "

― Peter Hook , Substance: Inside New Order