Closer to the Truth?

As a fan, it's been strange seeing the rise of Joy Division from cult act to existing in the mainstream. In 1997, it was hard to find out much about them. In 2012, they are rightly considered one of the seminal bands of British pop music, influencing countless others and being the topic for endless dissection.

There's been films, documentaries and plenty of books. In the print camp, there's another, albeit one with a greater deal of authority than the others. Unknown Pleasures - Inside Joy Division is bassist Peter Hook's record of the lifetime of the band, following on from his account of the Hacienda nightclub through the 1980s.

When writing his own memoirs, the wrestler Mick Foley relates some advice he was given about it not being about settling scores. Well, our Hooky has elected to disregard that, leaving us a book that could be subtitled Why Bernard Sumner is an Arsehole, such is the amount of petty potshots at his one time close friend.

Which is a shame, actually, as the other vast majority of the book is a really enjoyable read for fans of the band. There's plenty of information I'd not heard about before and the writing style flows well through a story where (you'd imagine) everyone knows the ending. Where it scores best is the tales of being in a band on the make: there's the off-told tale of Hooky buying his first bass the day after seeing the Sex Pistols at the Lesser Free Trade Hall, but also plenty of the struggles of writing material, finding the right people and then scraping for gigs in the ultra-competitive Manchester punk scene.

The fascinating aspect of Joy Division is how everyone fell in place in the manner it did. Hook and Sumner are both struggling nobodies in 1977, self-taught and fired up. Within two years, they end up with an enigmatic frontman, one of the best drummers around, the perfect manager, the perfect producer and the one label who'd let them all get on with the job.

It's not just the band and the other well-known figures who Hook regales. Friends Terry Mason and Twinny act as roadies and mischief makers, figures from Hook and Sumner's Salford roots there to keep their toes on the ground when the plaudits start rolling in.

The figure of Ian Curtis looms large over everything, understandably, and Hook is at pains to point out the man he knew, in contrast to the bad husband of his widow's only account, Touching From a Distance. As many have done, Hook questions who the real Curtis was, and whether all the people in his life were players in some grand piece he was conducting.

A little note from the ending also tells its own tale - in the list of those mentioned no longer with us (sadly way too long) is "New Order". Hook's conflicts with his former bandmates have been all over the media for a while now, but one point from the Joy Division history backs him up: the surviving three never considered continuing under that name as they had long understood that if anyone left, the name would be scrapped. You may wonder why New Order weren't the same, and that they had best been left in the past after their initial split in the mid 90s.

Unknown Pleasures is a more than worthwhile read, then. Some great pics too! The question is, how do the others remember the same events?