This review originally appeared on Goodreads on July 16, 2017.

The Hacienda: How Not to Run a Club

By Peter Hook – Simon & Schuster UK – October 1, 2009

Review by Robin Marx

This is the first of three books written to date by ex-Joy Division and New Order bassist Peter Hook. It chronicles how he and a motley crew of other Factory Records idealists managed to create a now legendary nightclub that played a central role in Manchester's music scene despite a comical lack of business acumen and competency.

While an entertaining read, I found this to be the weakest of Hook's three books. There was a great deal of overlap between this book and his other two, with many of the most memorable anecdotes covered in more depth in his Substance: Inside New Order book. Fans without a nostalgic connection to the Hacienda and/or Madchester music scene in particular can safely skip this book in favor of his more engrossing Joy Division and New Order memoirs.

★★★☆☆

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This review originally appeared on Goodreads on December 21, 2021.

Fast Forward: Confessions of a Post-Punk Percussionist: Volume II

By Stephen Morris – Constable – December 3, 2020

Review by Robin Marx

Much like the previous volume, this is a brisk and entertaining look at one of the most important bands in pop history. Hooky’s books get into more of the dirt within the band, Bernard’s book was pretty shallow, but the two Stephen Morris books feel like the most clear-eyed and grounded account of the history of Joy Division and New Order.

★★★★☆

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This review originally appeared on Goodreads on July 13, 2017.

Substance: Inside New Order

By Peter Hook – Dey Street Books – January 31, 2017

Review by Robin Marx

The third book written by ex-Joy Division and New Order bassist Peter “Hooky” Hook, this is also his best. While over 700 pages long, this was a gripping read that was simultaneously both expansive and incredibly detailed.

Joy Division and New Order are bands surrounded by a lot of mystique and mythology, a great deal of it cultivated by the band themselves. They avoided the press and only grudgingly promoted their own albums. I hoped lead singer Bernard Sumner's Chapter and Verse: New Order, Joy Division and Me would shed some more light on the inner working of the band, but I was left disappointed. Much as he did with his previous Joy Division memoir, Hooky stepped up to deliver the nitty gritty details—the Substance, so to speak—that Sumner's book lacked.

Hooky covers the story of the band both on-stage and off-, and he refuses to shy away from painting himself and the others in an unflattering light with tales of their intoxicated revels, property destruction, womanizing, and other rock star antics. There's also a great deal of information provided about the music-making process, the evolution of the equipment used, and set lists for individual gigs.

The core of the book, however, is the deteriorating friendship between Sumner and Hooky. Both were childhood friends and the first members of Joy Division, but it's clear that life in the music industry changed both of them. Hooky has always come off as combative and competitive, and he paints a picture of Sumner as becoming gradually more controlling and diva-like in his interactions with the rest of the band. I suspect that both members are equally to blame for the falling out. Now sober for ten years, Hooky speaks frankly about his damaging addictions to cocaine and alcohol, and it appears that Sumner was equally prone to substance abuse, and perhaps still is. Hooky chalks up the cause of much of his own bad behavior to his struggle with drugs, but seems curiously unwilling to extend the benefit of the doubt to his former best friend.

Regardless of how the blame for Hook's departure from the band should be best assigned, rather than simple hate Hook seems more hurt and wounded by how things have turned out than anything else. New Order fans who read this book might end up learning too much about their favorite band, seeing how fractured the internal dynamics were and how petty the members could be, but even provided by a biased storyteller I found this deeper understanding adds an extra layer of appreciation when listening to New Order's iconic music.

★★★★☆

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This review originally appeared on Goodreads on September 25, 2020.

Record Play Pause

By Stephen Morris – Constable – February 7, 2019

Review by Robin Marx

This book made an interesting contrast to the memoirs by Peter Hook and Bernard Sumner. It was more entertaining than I thought it would be, but a bit lacking in other respects.

As the drummer of Joy Division, Stephen Morris was generally silent and stuck in the back. As a result it was difficult to know what to expect from this book. While not as entertaining a storyteller as Hooky, this memoir has a wry, self-deprecating sense of humor throughout that caught me off guard. While Hooky and Sumner more or less grew up together, Morris was a later addition to the band who joined through Ian Curtis, giving him a slightly different perspective on events. Both Hooky and Sumner’s memoirs are largely about how they related to Ian Curtis and secondly how they related to each other, so insight into Morris himself was also in short supply in the previous books. Hooky portrayed him as semi-autistic and Sumner didn’t mention him much at all. Morris relates his own story in a humorous and engaging fashion.

Morris offers his own perspective on Curtis, humanizing this much mythologized figure of post punk music. He also shares his experiences with manager Rob Gretton, Factory Records co-founder Tony Wilson, and record producer Martin Hannett. The frustrating thing about this book is that Morris’ living band mates remain mostly ciphers. Apart from some amusing anecdotes about drug-fueled pranks, he fails to portray Hooky and Sumner in the same depth as his deceased musical collaborators, and some more detail about the band’s internal dynamic would have been greatly appreciated. Perhaps we’ll get more of that in the soon to be released follow-up volume, covering the New Order era.

★★★★☆

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This review originally appeared on Goodreads on July 28, 2015.

Chapter and Verse – New Order, Joy Division and Me

By Bernard Sumner – Corgi Books – September 10, 2015

Review by Robin Marx

I read this book in parallel with Peter Hook's Unknown Pleasures: Inside Joy Division, and the two books could not be more different.

Chapter and Verse is appealing in that it covers the history of New Order as well as Joy Division, but it felt like the narrower scope of Unknown Pleasures allowed a much more satisfying level of detail. Hooky really got into the nitty-gritty of Joy Division's history, full of juicy anecdotes. This book was still very interesting, but written in a brisk, breezy style that ended up feeling shallower than Hooky's book.

The portions about Sumner's childhood, the gradual failure of the Hacienda, and his falling out with Peter Hook were the most fleshed-out and, perhaps consequently, the most intriguing parts of the book to me. While Hooky's book was mostly dismissive of Sumner, Sumner seems genuinely hurt and puzzled about the reasons behind the deterioration in their three-decade friendship. Fans hoping for much insight into individual events in the band's history or the story behind many of New Order's most famous songs (apart from the rather dispensable World Cup theme “World in Motion”) are likely to be disappointed. That being said, I felt like I gained some insight into Sumner's life, and that was enough for me.

★★★☆☆

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This review originally appeared on Goodreads on July 27, 2015.

Unknown Pleasures: Inside Joy Division

By Peter Hook – It Books – January 29, 2013

Review by Robin Marx

This is a phenomenal look at one of the most influential and mythologized bands in modern music, written by one of its founding members.

The book is written in an immensely engaging style. Rather than go for an aloof, literary voice, Hook writes as if he's telling tall tales down at the pub. Joy Division fans will find a lot to love here; the book is packed with colorful anecdotes, including many that do a lot to humanize post-punk's pseudo-martyr figure Ian Curtis. There's so much detail about individual gigs, and the sections where he provides track-by-track commentary on Joy Division's albums were especially appreciated.

While immensely entertaining, I also got the feeling that Hooky was a bit of an unreliable narrator. Some passages—about drunken fights and pre-suicide warning signs from Ian that the band had turned a blind eye to—seemed very honest and self-reflective, but it felt like (due to the current and much-publicized acrimony between them) he minimized Bernard Sumner's contribution to the band. That was the only sour note in the book for me, everything else was pitch-perfect.

Wholeheartedly recommended to even casual Joy Division fans.

★★★★☆

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