[ANPPOM-Lista] "unknown pleasures", memórias de peter hook (joy division | new order), por harpercollins

[Carlos Palombini]

We Were Joy Division By PETER HOOK Published: January 25, 2013
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/27/magazine/we-were-joy-division.html

It all started with the Sex Pistols. I saw them twice in 1976 — two gigs
weeks apart at the Lesser Free Trade Hall in Manchester — Bernard Sumner
(our guitarist) and I went together with a couple of friends to the first
gig, and at the second gig I bumped into Ian Curtis, who would become our
lead singer. They were only on for half an hour, but when they finished, we
filed out quietly with our minds blown, absolutely utterly speechless, and
it just sort of dawned on me then — that was it. On the way home that night
we decided to form a band — Joy Division. The name was Ian’s idea.

By 1979, we hadn’t yet even made an album, but because we were being so
productive, talk turned to making one. To be perfectly frank, we weren’t
that fussy about whom we made it with. But in the meantime Martin Rushent
invited us down to the studio to record some demos, just to see if we were
going to jell. He’d produced the Buzzcocks and the Stranglers by this
point, so we were very excited by the prospect.

When we got there, we saw that Rushent had a brand-new Jaguar XJS — and as
it happened I’d been reading this article about how something like 9 out of
10 Jag owners don’t lock the boot of their car. So I thought, I wonder if
that’s true. . . . Tried his boot and, lo and behold, it was unlocked.
Inside, it was full of what I’m sure were stolen car radios; you could tell
they were stolen by the way the wires were dangling off from where they’d
been ripped out. Me and Terry, our roadie, were looking at each other,
thinking, Martin’s got a boot full of stolen car radios. And then, Wonder
if he’d miss a couple. . . .

All day, whenever there was a break in the recording, we’d be daring one
another to go back in his boot and nick one each for our cars — because
they were proper high-end stereos — but I was going: “Oh, no, we can’t,
because he might be our record company. We can’t nick cassette players off
our record company.” We didn’t take any. God knows what he was doing with
them, though. We never asked him.

It was a really nice studio, and he worked well with Ian on the vocals, did
a few overdubs and stuff, nothing wild, very low key. The tracks were
“Glass,” “Transmission,” “Ice Age,” “Insight” and “Digital.” Rushent was a
nice guy; we got on well.

That was the thing about Joy Division, though: writing the songs was dead
easy because the group was really balanced. We had a great guitarist, a
great drummer, a great bass player and a great singer. Ian would listen to
us jamming and then direct the song until it was . . . a song. He stood
there like a conductor and picked out the best bits. Which was why, when he
killed himself a year later, it made everything so difficult. It was like
driving a great car that had only three wheels. The loss of Ian opened up a
hole in us, and we had to learn to write in a different way. We were so
tight, as a group, we didn’t even use a tape recorder half the time. Didn’t
need one.

Back then we didn’t know rules or theory. We had our ear, Ian, who listened
and picked out the melodies. Then at some point his lyrics would appear. He
always had these scraps of paper that he’d written things down on, and he’d
go through his plastic bag. “Oh, I’ve got something that might suit that.”
And the next thing you knew he’d be standing there with a piece of paper in
one hand, wrapped around the microphone stand, with his head down, making
the melodies work. We’d never hear what he was singing about in rehearsal
because the equipment was so terrible. In his case it didn’t matter because
he delivered the vocal with such a huge amount of passion and aggression,
as if he really meant it.

I recently got offered the tape of that session with Rushent. Eden Studios
was taken over by a firm of solicitors, and left in a storeroom, hidden in
the bowels of it, were the Joy Division masters. One of the staff members
claimed to have them and offered me the tape through a third party. He
wanted £50,000 for it. This was in 2006 or something. Even then there was
no way on earth you could make a record and hope to recoup 50 grand. I
offered him a finder’s fee, two grand, but he said no, and I’ve never heard
from him since; it’s never appeared. Ah, well. It’s a funny thing, people
trying to sell you back bits of your own past. But I’m getting used to it,
to be honest.
*Peter Hook is a co-founder of the bands Joy Division and New Order. This
essay is adapted from his memoir, “Unknown Pleasures,” published this month
by HarperCollins.*

http://youtu.be/GVVdEqBbr4k

-- 
carlos palombini
www.researcherid.com/rid/F-7345-2011
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