Top 104 Quotes & Sayings by Peter Hook - Page 2

I've been very grateful and humbled by the fact that young people really dig Joy Division's music. It's a great testament to the chemistry and the songwriting prowess between the four original members.

I was reading an article about Kings of Leon's bass player, who said that he was directly influenced by Joy Division and by me. I was like, 'Woah!' It surprised me. It's a great compliment.

There are so many bootlegged Joy Division/Martin Hannett tapes, a lot of really bad bootlegs on the Internet.

I regularly go to concerts with my children sharing the music.

Originally, I didn't play any New Order when I deejayed. I suppose it comes from being a little embarrassed or humble or whatever. But people were coming to see me because of New Order, so in the end, I had to realize that if they were using my name on the poster, then maybe I should play some of the music.

In the late '70s, the conditions that bands had to endure were, shall we say, not as civilized as they are today. People were a lot more aggressive back then. So there was definitely a lot of suffering for your art. But I would argue that was a good thing. Generally, people make better music when they suffer.

Great music seems to come from a lot of angst, and that angst is from great musicians getting together with intense chemistry. When that chemistry isn't there, people tend not to write great music.

When I play a gig and look out at the audience, you're literally looking at a sea of Joy Division T-shirts.

Bass players are always the underdogs of the band, but I made sure that I was never viewed as one. I went out of my way to steal as much limelight as I could.

The worst words I could ever hear as a bass player was, 'Can you play the root notes?'

I must confess that over my career, I've actually downplayed the importance of DJs. It's such a different art form. Then all of a sudden you try it, and you think, 'Good God, these guys do work.' I used to be very cynical and very blase about it. I can only apologize.

What was punk all about? To me, it was if you really want to do something, go ahead and do it.

I play a lot of hard, uncompromising dance music; it can be anything from dance to rock to reggae.

One of the great things about education is that it should stop you making mistakes - and I have made a lot of mistakes.

My father was always Labour, and my mother was always Conservative, so I tended to sort of go in the middle.

'Unknown Pleasures' is a very important record for me. It was the first LP that I recorded.

Any coalition, especially where one party is more powerful than the other, it's always bound to have a pecking order.

There are lots of Joy Division songs that are so powerful when played live, some of which we did either never play or played very rarely.

You don't get many chances in the world, and you don't want to throw them away.

I've watched so-called 'New Order' playing in Auckland, and Tom Chapman is miming along to my bass on tape... He's got his fingers on the low, and you can hear my high bass in the background. So he's miming.

Most people have just heard Joy Division on record. And Joy Division on record was completely different than it was live.

New Order never celebrated anything to do with Joy Division.

For the first 18 months of Joy Division, we used our jobs to fund the band. We'd all chip in three, five quid to go and do a gig. But it was worth it. It was amazing we could afford to feed ourselves. But we were so creatively and artistically satisfied. You can't explain that to somebody who's never been there.

People go and hide, but I don't. I'm a fighter.

I always do try to encourage my children to vote and at least exercise their right.

Accept what you did do, and live with it.

When I started DJing years ago, I took great delight in annoying the audience. Playing Johnny Cash in the middle of a banging night.

The interesting thing is that New Order finished on an okay note. It was only after we split that things got worse.

There are so little outtakes from the Joy Division era. We didn't have much money. You couldn't be very generous in recording, so we were very thrifty in how we recorded. Everything was very, very well looked after financially because we just couldn't afford it.

I don't find imitating other people's music easy at all. I remember being fifth in line for a Rolling Stones tour, early '90s, when Bill Wyman left, and I was hoping against hope that I wouldn't get the call to audition. I wouldn't be able to play a Stones song if you put a gun to my head.

I am always working on new material with my production partner Phil Murphy in our guise as Man Ray; we do a lot of soundtrack work & some great collaborations.

My big frustration in New Order was that they played the same tracks all the time.

When I'm not playing music, certainly the last thing I want to do is listen to music!

It was nice doing my own Joy Division book to be able to put forward the fact that Ian was actually quite a nice guy and very hardworking, ambitious and loyal. But the thing was, he was battling such a dreadful illness in an era when they really didn't know how to treat it.

Madonna's like a black widow spider. She tends to use people, then they shrivel up and disappear.

Bootleggers quake in fear of me ringing them on a Sunday afternoon. I call after dinner, usually.

Over the years, Joy Division has become a huge part of music culture.

I'm one of those old cynics that thinks, whoever you vote for, the government always gets in.

We loved country songs in New Order. That's our big secret!

When you're fat and comfortable, your music is going to sound fat and comfortable.

I suppose in the end it's almost too easy to look back and say what you should have done, how you might have changed things. What's harder - what's much, much harder - is to accept what you actually did do.

There's a very fine line between being artistic and being a dickhead - it's like love and hate.

When digital recording came in about '84, everything started to follow into digital. Now, you've got the best recording media in the world, but it's not very pleasing to the ear.

I think the most important thing about what musicians do is the music. You can be as big an arsehole as you want but if you're not making good music, you won't get away with it.