4 Years on and the New Order split fallout intensifies?

Last Updated on Saturday, 06 August 2011 10:52

The New Order split has always been a trail of hypocrisy and schoolyard politics. 4 years on and things have (unbelievably) taken a turn for the worse. Prior to the recent Guardian article I decided to collate the available evidence and timeline it to see if any patterns emerged. If you take the time to read these excerpts, I think you'll find that the picture becomes much clearer:

New Order have split up, according to bassist Peter Hook. Hook Interview, NME.com May 4th, 2007

As previously reported the band denied they were splitting earlier this year despite drummer Stephen Morris being quoted as saying: “We should stop for a while.”

Speaking about his involvement in Perry Farrell’s Satellite Party, Peter Hook told Xfm that the band have broken up.

He said: “I spoke to Perry, and he asked me to play bass, as he’d heard about New Order splitting up. Well yeah, me and Bernard (Sumner) aren’t working together.”

When asked if the split was permanent, he added: “Bernard went off for a break with Electronic, but that was different. But it’s like the boy who cried wolf this time.”


Peter Hook's June 2007 myspace blog post has since been deleted but here is a transcription from part of it. Courtesy - Billboard.com

"Well here we go again another action packed week.I suppose it was the interview with Clint Boon that started it all off. He'd asked me for a few words on Perry Farrell's Satellite Party single 'Dogstar'. So I went on and lo and behold mentioned the NO split."Suppose because it was me sayin it it was out at last. I'm relieved really hated carryin on as normal with an awful secret so lets move on shall we?. Played the openin of rios in Leeds on friday great crowd and considerin theyd been through 5 local bands already had an amazin resilience/ Some kid came up and gave me a hug and said, "Sorry to hear about new order hooky" I was really touched its like your budgie dyin!. Hook's post goes on about getting woken up by his daughter's friend and his travel plans. It got boring about a third of the way down. Hey, I thought it was suppose to be an action packed week!

New Order without bassist Peter Hook after band members Bernard Sumner and Stephen Morris issued a statement today (July 20) saying they vowing to continue. NME.com July 20th, 2007

The pair's statement comes after former bassist Hook claimed recently that he is not working with his bandmates anymore.

Sumner and Morris declared: "After 30 years in a band together we are very disappointed that Hooky has decided to go to the press and announce unilaterally that New Order have split up. We would have hoped that he could have approached us personally first. He does not speak for all the band, therefore we can only assume he no longer wants to be a part of New Order."

Last week’s Hook told NME.COM that the band was over explaining: “We’ve decided not to work together anymore. It’s been on-off-on for a while and last time we just went out separate ways.”

Sumner and Morris did not reveal any plans about the band’s future without Hook, only to declare that "New Order have NOT split up, they continue to exist".

Ex-New Order bassist Peter Hook, who left the band after New Order’s Bernard Sumner and Stephen Morris declared him no longer part of the set-up, has declared the band defunct. from 'Peter Hook attacks New Order Bandmates'. NME.com July 30th, 2007

He has threatened to sue the pair over continuing under the New Order banner.

Previously, Hook had told NME.COM that New Order wouldn’t be continuing.

This prompted a statement from Sumner and Morris declaring that New Order was active, but from now Hook would not be part of the set-up.

Addressing Sumner and Morris, Hook wrote on his MySpace page: “This group [New Order] has split up! You are no more New Order than I am! You may have two thirds, but don’t assume you have the rights to do anything 'New Order-ey', because you don’t. I’ve still got a third! But I’m open to negotiation.”

He signed the statement off by writing, “See you in court!”

Hook: New Order split was hurtful. Gigwise.com October 2nd, 2008

Former New Order bassist Peter Hook has said he found the acrimonious way in which the band parted company “hurtful”.

Hook told fellow band members Bernhard Sumner and Stephen Morris in February 2007 that he no longer wanted to be a part of the group.

But three months later Sumner and Morris released a statement denying the group had disbanded. Hook responded by telling Gigwise last October that New Order had “no Future”.

Despite his comments, Hook recently re-mastered New Order's five albums with Factory Records alongside Morris for a special re-release package.

In an interview with BBC Radio 2, Hook insisted that he had told his band mates about his plans to leave the band, and had made his feelings known during their last tour in Brazil.

“I just felt it was like an empty shell, New Order. It really was for me. I can’t talk for the others...Bernard never came to me. Steve never came to me. So I just thought that's the end of it,” he said.

“The statement which I found really, really irksome was like I was a lunatic, I hadn't told everybody. Everybody didn't know what was happening, which wasn't the case. Which is why it was so hurtful."

When asked whether his recent collaboration with Morris could spell a reunion, Hook replied: "I've no idea really. Sometimes you wonder what you were arguing about.”

Off the Hook - Peter Hook interview, Scotland on Sunday - Published Date: 05 October 2008

Since his acrimonious split with New Order, Peter Hook has seldom been happier. Ahead of his memoir about the legendary Hacienda club, the pirate captain of disco-rock talks to Stephen Dalton about being one of the 24 hour party people
PETER HOOK talks like a man newly released from jail. Although proud of his legacy with Joy Division and New Order, the 52-year-old Mancunian seems delighted to have finally quit his day job last year after three decades as the most recognisable bass guitarist in modern music.

In true rock'n'roll tradition, New Order's divorce is proving acrimonious. Singer and guitarist Bernard Sumner has challenged Hook's decision, lambasting his former Salford school friend as "arrogant" and "distasteful" for ending the group unilaterally. In turn, Hook has threatened legal action if Sumner continues New Order without him. It is safe to presume neither will be sending the other a Christmas card this year.

"It just got to the point where New Order wasn't achieving what I wanted it to achieve," Hook says. "It's too many factors. It's like asking why did you split up with the missus? Because she snores, because she leaves the suds on the pots when she washes up, because she keeps putting your shoes away… Is that her fault or yours? It's complicated, and I wouldn't say it's their fault – a lot of the time it's my fault. You have to compromise, that's what makes life work. But you get to the point where you just can't compromise any more."

The New Order story may have a whiff of vintage rock soap opera, but it is tinged with tragedy too. Formed from the ruins of Joy Division following the suicide of singer Ian Curtis in 1980, they went on to create some of the most forward-thinking pop of the post-punk era.

Hook's low-slung, high-pitched, soaring basslines graced timeless dancefloor epics including 'Temptation', 'Blue Monday', 'True Faith' and the England football anthem 'World In Motion'. All of which have been newly remastered for deluxe expanded versions of the band's first five classic albums, from 1981's chilly Movement to 1989's shiny disco-pop masterpiece Technique, reissued last week.

The band members managed to co-operate on these reissues, despite their frosty relations. "I don't talk to Bernard, which makes life difficult for the ongoing catalogue," Hook says. "But I can live with that."

This is not the first time these volatile Manc-rockers have split. New Order spent most of the 1990s in hibernation, with each estranged member concentrating on side projects before finally reforming at the dawn of the new millennium. But Hook insists this latest fall-out is final.

"Bernard and Peter have quite a complicated relationship," New Order's drummer Stephen Morris told me recently. "People don't change. To me it's still the same thing, going back to the bloody playground. It's very Spinal Tap."

Now a father of three living in the Premier League footballer belt on Manchester's leafy southern fringes, Hook has survived bitter feuds, financial disasters and superhuman levels of chemical hedonism during 30 years as the leather-trousered pirate captain of disco-rock. But he has also been chastened by a succession of untimely deaths including studio producer Martin Hannett, band manager Rob Gretton and Factory Records boss Tony Wilson, who succumbed to cancer last year.

"I think Manchester realised how much they took some people for granted when Tony died," Hook says. "All those wonderful people, like Rob Gretton, as soon as they've gone that's when it hits you how important they were to Manchester specifically. But everybody learns to cope, like we had to with Martin and Ian. It's like a phoenix rising from the ashes really. That's the way you have to look at it."

With or without New Order, Hook remains busy with multiple projects, all rooted in the glory days of Manchester's music scene. He is currently completing an album with his new band project Freebass, which features former Stone Roses bassist Gary 'Mani' Mounfield, Andy Rourke of the Smiths and vocalist Gary Briggs.

"We haven't got a record company, but in this day and age I don't know if I want one," he says. "You can do it yourself, which is nice, because it goes back to the old Factory punk ethic. But I don't know yet, we're going to see what happens. My main priority is to get the record finished."

Hook has also written a memoir about the Hacienda, the Manchester club co-owned by Factory and New Order, which became a launch pad for acid house before drugs and guns forced its closure in 1997. The book's blunt title says it all: How Not To Run A Club.

The original Hacienda site is a block of luxury flats, but last year the club was reactivated in the form of a touring DJ crew featuring Hook alongside former turntable regulars Graeme Park, Jon Dasilva and others. Asked whether he ever feels nostalgic for the club's fabled heyday, Hook laughs.

"No," he says. "God, it was hard work. Looking back over the memories, the difficulties we had, makes it quite painful having to relive it all again. But I'm very happy with the exploitation of the brand now, the way it's come back with me and the DJs going out doing Hacienda nights, playing Hacienda music. I'm really happy with that because you haven't got the stress of the club. You can use the good memories, the music, the attitude, without the bad stuff – the gangsters and the drugs."

Barely a week passes without a new book, movie, art exhibition or album that mines Manchester's golden age of post-punk pop. Three recent films – 24 Hour Party People, Control and Joy Division – have wrapped Hook's musical legacy in myth and legend. There are even plans afoot to rename Whitworth Street, the site of the Hacienda, after Tony Wilson.

But Hook bristles at my suggestion that Manchester is in danger of becoming a rock-nostalgia theme park. He cites the recent Mercury Music Prize success of local band Elbow as proof that the city refuses to rest on its laurels.

"Rob and Tony always insisted that we needed to look forwards," he says. "Graeme, Jon and I are very forthright about playing new music when we DJ. There's nothing worse than revelling in the past, and that's one of the awful things you get stuck with in a group, nobody wants to hear your new material. It's called Rolling Stones Syndrome."

Despite his reputation for blunt-talking belligerence, it is striking how mellow Captain Hook sounds in 2008. Having interviewed him on four or five occasions over the past 15 years, this is the first time he has radiated a kind of soft-spoken contentment. Perhaps this is the euphoria of liberation, or just weary resignation.

"I'm stressed and busy, but very happy at the moment," Hook says. "I've got a lot of things on the go, but they all sort of lead you to a good place. As I get older that's more important. Being in a group is completely different, because it's always about compromise, it's always a juggle and you never particularly get your own way. Maybe for once in my life, I'm actually enjoying having my own way."

All the same, despite Hook's tone of finality about New Order, a sneaking sense remains that none of the band has truly achieved closure yet. The bass player has already hinted that he would consider reforming for a one-off tribute to Wilson, and does not entirely rule out a future reunion. Some itches just need to be scratched.

"It hasn't actually stopped being painful yet, so I don't know," Hook says. "I'm a businessman. If people come to me with things I can do in my business, then I'll do anything. Like Mani says, we are all prostitutes, but if they're ugly we want more money."

From the Toronto Sun and published by New Order Online March 23rd, 2009

New Order bassist Peter Hook likens his recent split from bandmates Bernard Sumner and Stephen Morris to the unravelling of a marriage.

"You know in a marriage or in a relationship when a few years after you get together you look 'round and see a stranger?" said Hook, down the line from his home in Manchester leading up to Tuesday's release of War Child Presents: Heroes, featuring a Hot Chip cover of Joy Division's Transmission.

"It was just a change of attitude, really. I mean over the years we (in New Order) developed different tastes and different attitudes. Being in a group is all about compromise and the more you compromise, each of you, the better that group works ... Basically it just got to the point where I thought I had compromised enough. What surprised me is that I didn't think Bernard was bothered about New Order. It was only after we split up that I found out he was."

Since the split, Sumner and Morris have indicated that New Order, formed by the three musicians in 1980 out of the ashes of Joy Division after the suicide of lead singer Ian Curtis, would continue without Hook. But Hook is not convinced that could ever happen.

"They wouldn't be allowed to go out as New Order 'cause I'd sue 'em," Hook said. "It'd be a Spandau Ballet moment -- that thing where Tony Hadley can go out playing the songs of Spandau Ballet. It's childish but that's what being in a group is all about, isn't it?"

Hook, who was a founding member of Joy Division with Sumner in 1976, said he'd never considered touring without him.

"If Bernard would have left and it had been me and Steve, I wouldn't have carried on as New Order. It's sort of an unwritten rule that we had that 'came from Joy Division' (label). We never really talked about it. When we split up, we did it through our management. In my mind, the management made a terrible job of it. Your manager is supposed to be there to sort these things out, and ours panicked and that made it very bad between the two of us. So rather than them getting in the way, they just let me and Bernard fight. So it's over now, and time's a great healer and we just get on with it."

New Order & Blur members announce supergroup guardian.co.uk 15th June, 2009

Bad Lieutenant formed last year, after New Order's acrimonious break-up. "Basically [bassist Peter Hook] left the band, that's all I want to say about it," Sumner said. "We split into two factions. There's me, Steve and Phil. The other is Peter."

Hook Interview, spinnermusic.co.uk July 13th, 2009

As for the rest of his former bandmates, Hook blames their falling out on a couple of different things, including lack of communication. "I didn't think, which was proved wrong, actually, that Bernard [Sumner, vocalist] was very interested in New Order," Hook says. "I got the impression he couldn't give a f--- to be honest, whether it happened or not. And it's quite interesting because when I told him I didn't want to work with him anymore through our manager he didn't respond. Then he started telling everyone that I hadn't told him. I put it down to Alzheimer's. He seems to have forgot that he'd been told six months before."

If you think there's animosity though, Hook swears that isn't the case. "It was a wonderful partnership while it lasted, it really was. But in my mind the time had come." And to prove his graciousness, he is actually a fan of the first Bad Lieutenant song he heard. "I heard the track he did, which I thought was okay," he says.

At 53, having gone through several bands, Hook is actually pretty philosophical over the split of a partnership that lasted more than three decades in Joy Division and New Order. "It's one of those funny things, when you're so close to somebody, when you work like that you tend not to talk," he says. "We are the old cliché in music; every group you look at ends up like us. It's an old musician thing, isn't it? It's not been done for the first time in New Order and it won't be the last time that a group will fall out, will it?"

Interview with Peter Hook From The Guardian, Sunday 25th April 2010

He hasn't spoken to Bernard Sumner or Stephen Morris, with whom he formed New Order in the immediate aftermath of Curtis's death – since they acrimoniously split up in 2007. "It becomes a very difficult thing," he said, "because I'm not in a relationship with Bernard and Steve – that's a sad fact of life. So I'm thinking 'am I not supposed to do anything?'"

From NME and published by Rolling Stone rollingstone.com December 8th, 2010

New Order 'Could' Reunite, Drummer Says
Despite New Order's acrimonious split in 2007, drummer Stephen Morris hasn't ruled out the group reuniting for one gig, at least. "New Order could play a gig together again," Morris said at an event in London Wednesday night celebrating the release of Joy Division's new boxed set, + -.

Bernard Sumner rules out a New Order reunion Manchester Evening News June 10th, 2011

Bernard said: “New Order haven’t disbanded, Peter Hook left.
“I still work with Steve, but I don’t work with Peter.”
He adds: “I can’t see me working with Peter ever again.”
But it would be a shame for the band not to come together at some point again, wouldn’t it?
“It’s a shame, let’s leave it at that,” Bernard says firmly.

Strangely, though, Bernard says he’s not one for “looking back” or “nostalgia”.
He says: “I don’t really like poring over the past, I’m a forward-looking person.
“That’s why I’m writing new material.

Joyless Divisions, the end of New Order, The Guardian 14th July 2011

Selected quotes from http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2011/jul/14/new-order-split-peter-hook

Peter Hook: "Bernard's a twat and always has been"

Peter Hook: "We're a bunch of fat old men arguing. It's pathetic really, but we're all happy to keep on doing it."

Stephen Morris: "There's no future for New Order. It's hard to draw a line under everything, but I think we have."

Bernard Sumner: "Too many things have been said and done. We've spent all our life as an outfit with principles and ideals and what Peter" – Sumner makes a face like some appalling insect has just flown into his mouth – "has done goes against everything we've stood for."

Somewhere among all this to-ing and fro-ing is the memory of an incident that Hook won't talk about. "It's personal," he tells me, "and I've told you too much already. But it happened on the last Brazilian tour."

"Everyone's entitled to start a tribute band," Sumner says, as he gets ready to head home. "Peter could have done a lot of things and we could still be friends, but now he's taking our actual heritage just like he took the Haçienda. It's hardly surprising we're so angry about it."