‘But then twatto returned . . .’

Looking back with the great benefit of hindsight I can see where things started to go wrong quite clearly.

Firstly, there were the big things, like us bankrolling the Haçienda.

For the opening night me and Iris got an invite through the post just like everybody else. I had been down once before the build and once during it but I hadn’t taken much notice. It was all too big for me to grasp.

On the opening night I gawped and gasped, just like everyone else, oohs and aahs coming from all sides. I was absolutely blown away. It was a great night with free drinks for everyone. The place was packed, every ligger in Manchester out in full force. Tony swanned around for all he was worth. Vini Reilly and A Certain Ratio performed. It was a great night. But it didn’t feel in any way mine. Not yet anyway.

But in a way, it was the little things that were more damaging. Things that gradually moved the band away from being the democracy it had been to the dictatorship it would become.

There was an example during the Peel session we made that June. We were recording in Revolution Studios in Cheadle. While recording the track ‘Too Late’ Rob had an idea for a backing vocal. Barney was out for a butty or something so I sang it. We recorded it and thought it was really good.

But then twatto returned and the first thing he said was, ‘What’s that – that vocal?’ Screwing up his face like he’d smelled something nasty. ‘I don’t like that.’

The rest of us all thought it was good and, remember, up until that moment New Order, like Joy Division, had been run as a democracy, the will of the majority, which would have meant the vocal staying on the track. But Barney had screwed up his face so much and, to make his feelings completely plain, turned on his heel and left the studio on the pretext of ‘going for a walk’, leaving us to stew.

We all looked at each other like naughty schoolkids.

Steve and Gillian liked it but sat on the fence (as ever) and Rob said nervously, ‘Oh well, if he’s not happy, maybe we should take it off, you know.’

I said, ‘Fuck him. Tell him to fuck off, the knob.’

Normal Peter Hook mode.

We took it off. Barney got his own way for the first time and, I tell you what, it was downhill from there on in. Next thing you knew – and this was on the same session – Barney was insisting on doing all his own backing vocals.

That’s a cardinal sin. In my rules of a group: never let the singer do his own backing vocals. To me it sounds weird. When Ian was alive he made sure that the other members had a go because that’s what you do in a group. It’s a group. Not just a bunch of musicians backing the singer. But Barney always did his own from that moment on. He had a wonderful sense of humour and could be great company, but in situations like this he had a seriousness and ruthlessness that I was definitely lacking.

From that session we never properly recorded ‘Too Late’. Barney decided he didn’t like it. So that was the end of that.

June took us off to warmer climes. Italy was a great tour and we loved it. What a beautiful country. It was the only place Barney seemed to like. We were always puzzled for years because we never went back. The audiences were very intense and there were a couple of banners at every gig along the lines of ‘Fuck off Nuovo Ordine, vogliamo Joy Division’ but even that wasn’t enough to dampen our spirits, because aside from that it was dead sunny and every gig was great, the hotels were wonderful and the beaches were brilliant. One of the gigs was in Taranto, in the south of the country. We were staying right on the beach and we literally dumped our clothes in a pile and legged it to the sea where we were entertaining the promoter’s rep, Marina. My God, she was gorgeous! Bronzed, bikinied, slim, beautiful and Italian. She had a bigger stacking circle round her than Heathrow airport. She needed her own air traffic control, this girl. We were all trying desperately to impress her, to get her attention. Human pyramids, push-up contests, arm-wrestling, the lot. Nothing worked.

The gig was in a hotel outbuilding on the beach where, literally, as the sun went down these strange figures all wearing black appeared in dribs and drabs until eventually there were hundreds of them. Goths. We were amazed, and it was a great night.

After the show, Marina was down to two suitors. Guess who? Yep, me and him. Waiting until he went to the toilet, I pulled her outside and, giggling, we ran away, ending the evening with a wonderful kissing session in the moonlight on the beach. Then she disappeared into the night, just like Cinderella. I clutched the glass slipper. I was in heaven.

He wouldn’t speak to me or even look at me at breakfast or all the next day.

It was during that tour that I also ended up meeting this gorgeous older woman who introduced me to some, shall we say, interesting practices involving the minibar champagne and unusual receptacles, and who spent the whole time we were together lounging around my room in stockings and suspenders, being all exotic and, again, Italian.

I remember she went out on the balcony for a cigarette and Corky, who was in the room next door, started chatting her up. I could hear him going, ‘I’m with a band, you know, I’m a technician,’ etc. etc., and I walked out and put my arm round her. He jumped. ‘You jammy bastard!’ he spat, and retreated back into his room.

The next day, when we were leaving, I thought, Oh, there’s still a load of stuff left in the little fridge. Might as well have that, and emptied it all in my bag, thinking that it came with the room. It was the first time I had ever seen a minibar.

Later I arrived in reception to find Rob having some kind of meltdown. ‘Hooky, Hooky,’ he said, as soon as I appeared, ‘what have you done, you twat?’

‘What?’

‘Look at this bill here,’ he said. ‘You’ve had everything out of the fucking minibar.’

And I went, ‘Yeah, so? It’s free, isn’t it? They give it you with the room.’

‘No, you daft twat, you’re supposed to pay for it when you drink it.’

Oops.

I had to get it all out of my bag and put it on the reception desk under the withering gaze of the receptionist. ‘Right’, says Rob, ‘the only thing that’s missing is the champagne. Where’s the champagne, dickhead?’

Double oops.

Next we went to Greece, the first time I ever got drunk on ouzo and also the first and last time that Nick Cave turned into a bat and flew into my room.

It was a three-day event in Athens billed as ‘The Festival of Independent Rock and Roll’, the first in Greece since a new democracy was declared in 1980. Run by a delightful guy, Dimitri. It featured the Birthday Party first night, the Fall the second and booby prize (according to Mark E.) us last. It was big news and we got the biggest headline for our night, ‘image’ or, for the less well-educated among you, me included, ‘THE FASCISTS RETURN’! The build-up was getting quite intense. All three bands and crew were there for five days, enjoying a little holiday, and it turned into quite a party, with all three bands socialising very, very well on the hotel’s rooftop terrace. Terry Mason even fell in love with the Fall’s manager Kay Carroll and was doing the usual lovesick-cow routine, following her round even though she was Mark’s girlfriend at the time. Wow, she was a character, to say the least. Very manly, a real ball-breaker.

So anyway, the Birthday Party did their gig – and we got the shock of our lives to find that despite the fact that they were like wild animals onstage they just sat around beforehand reading books and playing chess, the complete opposite of their stage persona. In a way they were like the mirror image of us: we were dead wild off stage, very composed on it.

It was a good show and the audience were hungry for it and loved the aggression. In a way, it was their first-ever punk gig. There was a lot of missile-throwing and fighting in the crowd.

‘I’m doubling the security tomorrow,’ said Dimitri.

The Fall were next and, despite the security increase, there were more missiles and violence in the crowd. I’m not surprised, though, because the Fall were crap. I felt like throwing things at them myself (only joking, Mark).

‘I’m doubling the security tomorrow,’ said Dimitri.

Later that night this sorry tale begins in a nightclub where the whole touring party, that’s New Order, the Fall and the Birthday Party, are celebrating. Quite a gathering, as I’m sure you can imagine, and we were all getting absolutely twatted on free ouzo. And I mean completely wasted. Every time you went to the bar and asked for a drink, no matter how many you ordered, they would not let you pay. This was fantastic. This club had swimming pools inside and was open-air, absolutely beautiful. Yours truly had spent the night talking to the girl who did sound for the Birthday Party, a real character, a bit of a tomboy and a great friend of Ruth Polsky’s. So it was hardly surprising that by the end of the night, we were so trolleyed that we were heading back to the hotel together. We staggered out of the club and she tells me she is dying for a wee. I push her next to a taxi and she drops ‘em and starts to wee, then the bloody taxi drives off and there she is in all her glory at the front door of the club.

Full fucking moon.

I got her in another taxi and she had her feet out of one window and I had my head out of the other, spewing. I was giving the driver garbled directions in between pukes, going, ‘Hotel! Hotel!’ and him driving me to about four different ones all over Athens, picking my head up to look at it, me going, ‘No! No!’ until eventually we made it back to the right one, and I crawled up the stairs and into the lift, where she made a drunken dive for me.

And then, all of a sudden, as I pulled myself up, I got an attack of guilt. I know. It was ironic considering I had a girlfriend back home, but she was a mate of Ruth’s, you see, and although Ruth and I were in a sort of lull by then, long-distance relationships etc., that didn’t make it any easier. So the only thing I could think to do was get rid of her. I ended up pushing her out of the lift, my hand full in her face.

I know, I know. Not exactly the most gentlemanly behaviour. But I was so drunk and, believe me, I paid for it, spending the next few hours in a nauseous ouzo haze, lying on the cold tiles on the floor of my bathroom, unable to even move until about 5 a.m. when I at last managed to crawl into bed. Having found sanctuary at last, I was just drifting off when I became aware of something happening on my balcony, then the curtains opening and something I took to be a giant bat entering my room.

Except it wasn’t a giant bat. It was much worse than that.

It was Nick Cave, the ghost of Christmas Goth, come to get me, Scrooge Hook.

‘What the fuck are you doing?’ I screamed, sitting up, clutching at my bedsheets like a Hammer Horror heroine.

‘Where is she?’ he demanded, in his Aussie-Goth accent.

‘What are you talking about?’ I said, gathering my wits. ‘I don’t fucking know. Get out of my fucking room, you twat.’

By this time I’d got out of bed and was feeling less like a Hammer Horror heroine and more like a very drunk and pissed-off bassist, so I grabbed hold of him and propelled him back towards the balcony, where the curtains swished behind him as he turned back into a bat and flew away. I hoped. Didn’t fancy cleaning him up off the pavement.

Anyway, Nick seemed infatuated with the gorgeous tomboy sound engineer So thank God I’d left her in the lift, because otherwise, having climbed over the balcony to reach my room, Nick Cave would have drunk my blood for sure!

When I crawled down to breakfast, I was again sick as a dog after wolfing endless glasses of water – turns out ouzo is like its close cousin, Pernod. It crystallises in your stomach as you dehydrate and then, when you have another drink, rehydrates – Boom – you’re pissed again. (See Bernard Sumner Detroit gig cancellation 1988.)

Then, to add insult to injury, Rob shouts, ‘Hey, Romeo, here’s you and your girlfriend’s bill from last night!’

Turns out the reason they wouldn’t take any money was because they were running a tab. She’d gone by now so I had to pay for it all. Bollocks.

We were on that night. The papers had done the usual Nazi-sympathising stitch-up on us, so a bunch of right-wing nutters had come down to see us, as well as a group of left-wing anti-Nazi types.

Needless to say, it all started getting a bit heavy, and we were pleased that the promoter had doubled the security. What we needed was a line of hard-nut bouncers right across the front of the stage.

It was a bit of a shit atmosphere, to be honest. Shit vibe, shit gig. Loads of missile-throwing, chanting and fighting before we even went on. The roadies went and armed themselves with sticks and poles, fearing the worst, and what really didn’t help matters was that someone was being a bit of a twat. For a start, he was drunk. It wasn’t unusual for him to be drunk, and I don’t mean that in a critical way: he needed his Pernod to work up the courage to sing, something that probably any frontman can identify with. However, the trouble with using booze to calm your nerves is that it can so easily go wrong, and this was one of those nights when he’d drunk too much and gone over the edge from blissed-out to pissed-up, which probably explains why he did what he did on ‘Truth’, which was open his eyes (in those days he usually sang with his eyes tight closed), put his melodica down, pick up an apple that was on top of his amp and fling it high into the air. He then closed his eyes again.

My first thought was, Christ, it’s going to hit someone, and sure enough as I watched it arc through the air, I saw it heading towards a big group of Greek kids, most of whom were looking at it – all of them, in fact, apart from one guy, the guy who got hit by the apple on the back of the head. Crunch! Golden Delicious.

Barney had quite a throw on him because this poor apple kid was quite far back. And I’m not kidding. It sparkled him. There was blood everywhere and, of course, this being a New Order gig, the fact that a kid had been hit with an apple signalled the outbreak of a huge fight, so the next thing I knew there was a melee by the mixing desk, with our soundman Ozzy nutting all these crazy Greek kids before the bouncers piled in to stop the fighting and they carted the poor kid off in an ambulance. Barney hadn’t even noticed. An apple a day, eh?

I was glad when it was all over. It was bedlam.

‘I wish I had doubled the security,’ sighed Dimitri.

In stark contrast, the next day he took us on a day trip to a gorgeous island off the coast. The water was crystal-clear and I was enjoying snorkelling until an octopus swam past me and looked straight at me. I swear it even winked. It was huge. I flew out of the water and wouldn’t go back in. This was like being on your holidays.

Meantime, same jaunt, last story. Barney had gone off with the Birthday Party’s tour manageress, a Balinese princess called Minu. She was the actual daughter of a Balinese king and had taken to hanging out with him. Because of a coup on her Indonesian home island of Bali, she told us she had no nationality and just constantly travelled, owning three passports.

Oh, and she was lovely, and we were all dead jealous. So of course we were coming up with all kinds of plans to get him back.

Now, the toilets in this particular hotel were terrible. I was sharing a room with Dave, who kept warning me to be careful because it wouldn’t flush.

‘Why don’t we just deck over into Barney’s room and use his toilet?’ I said. So for two or three days, while Barney was off on a social whirl with his Balinese princess, we were shitting in his toilet and, oh man, it was getting more and more ripe in there, hilariously so. It was like 100-degree heat and the room had a ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign on the door, so by the third day it was honking.

So Barney comes back and swans straight into the hotel bar to rub our noses in what a great time he’d been having with his princess before declaring, ‘Right, I’m just going up to my room.’

We were like, ‘Oh yeah, we’ll come up with you,’ and followed him, with him going, ‘What are you two bastards doing?’ We were acting a little suspicious.

‘Nothing, nothing, we’re just making sure you’re all right,’ we said, laughing behind our hands.

We watched as he opened the door to his room, went inside.

All we heard was, ‘Oh, you dirty bastards,’ followed by the sound of Barney spewing all over the floor.

Poor lad. He always did have a bit of a delicate constitution.

Next stop, Britannia Row. New Order had our second album to make.