I love when these interviews with Hooky are conducted by sycophantic Peter Hook fans who don't ask him any hard questions.
DiS: I guess the fact they're playing what is primarily a greatest hits set could be dismissed as being pure nostalgia?
Peter Hook: The thing is, Bernard and Stephen just wouldn't ever choose a very interesting setlist. They're just settled on playing a greatest hits set. Whereas I don't think our greatest hits represented New Order to the full extent. I thought there were many other tracks that they didn't play which were more representative of New Order in the way we created a unique style of music. But they would never play them, which caused me a great deal of frustration in 2004 when we were playing Get Ready. By 2006 that frustration was still there. They were very catholic shall we say in their choice of set. So I must admit I was very delighted when they came back in 2011 amidst all that hoo-hah and they were just doing exactly the same thing. So I would have been intentionally frustrated if we hadn't have split up in 2006 when considering their shortcomings, they're still doing them. As to why they do that, you'd have to ask them. The interesting thing is whenever New Order do interviews most journalists never ask them pertinent questions. They're scared of them walking out I suppose?
When since New Order came back in 2011, they have either revived or played live for the first time (ever or in many years) 586, Age of Consent, Touched by the Hand of God, Thieves Like Us, 1963, Heart and Soul, The Perfect Kiss (because it was absent until 2006), Close Range, Here to Stay, Round and Round, World, I'll Stay With You, and Californian Grass.
Hardly the same set they were doing from 2001-2006. Plus they have also done revamped new versions of Temptation, True Faith, Krafty, and Bizarre Love Triangle.
Also...plenty of journalist have asked Bernard and the band "hard" questions about playing without Hook, and they always answer with respect and class, whereas Hooky always go out of his way to slag them off...especially when interviewed by a journalist with such a clear bias.
DiS: One rumour I've heard is that Bernard and his teleprompter set restrictions counteracted your philosophy for playing as much as possible from the entire back catalogue being partly responsible for the split. Was that the case?
Peter Hook: It is one reason, yeah. For sure. The nice thing about what I'm doing is I am getting to play every single song that we ever wrote and recorded. I've actually managed to get two songs into the set; 'Homage' and Promises'; that we didn't record, and I've also stumbled across a track called 'Too Late' which we recorded for a John Peel session that we never played and never recorded elsewhere. If you search it out on You Tube it's a great song. Why have we never recorded that? The only reason we never recorded it was because Bernard didn't like it. That was usually the edit and become the mantra of the whole group in my opinion. If Bernard didn't like it then you didn't do it.
Most bands have a leader...it's usually the person who does most of the songwriting. Switching out text for a teleprompter isn't that hard to do these days, first I've heard of this rumor. When most bands tour, they have a standard set they will play. LCD Soundsystem and the Scissor Sisters both played roughly the same set every night for their 2010 and 2013 tours, respectively.
Otherwise an interesting interview. I just finished reading Hooky's JD book, which I must say I really enjoyed, when he isn't overcome with bitterness he is quite the entertaining raconteur.
