“Peter’s fell off his chair again”
I hated being the one who drove the van. Apart from making me a suspected serial killer, it meant I had to load and unload the gear all the time. And what do most bands do after gigs? They get pissed and chase girls. Not me. When a gig finished and everybody ran off to the bar I was left to pack the bloody gear. Twinny and Terry might lend a hand if I could collar them before they got a pint in their hands, but they weren’t getting paid so it wasn’t like I could insist. As for the rest of the band, well, Steve would occasionally lend a hand, bless him, but Barney and Ian were always too busy chasing skirt/meeting the fans. I used to have to literally drag them away. Oh God, it used to wind me up so much. Drove me mental! I was always saying to them, “Let’s just get the gear done and then go to the bar,” but it always fell on deaf ears.
As a group you’ve got to have responsibility for your gear: let’s face it, without it you’re useless. But that fact was lost on those two. Even Ian still had a PA to shift. I’m sure they thought it got in the van by magic.
“Well, that’s what we’ve got roadies for, isn’t it?” Bernard would say with a sneer.
“Listen, they’re my mates. They don’t get fucking paid to shift your shit. They don’t get fucking paid at all. Do your own fucking shifting or get your own fucking friends to move it.”
The fact was that Terry and Twinny would do the carrying in the afternoon, no problem. Set it up, sort the sound check, look after it till the doors opened, no problem. But that was because there were no distractions in the afternoon. At night? Forget it. No one wants to do the gear at the end of the night. The only one doing it was the daft bastard driving the van, yours truly.
Some mornings I’d come home from a gig, change into my suit then drive straight to work. There was a pelican crossing outside the docks, right opposite work, where I always used to fall asleep. There was something about reaching that point, eight o’clock in the morning, feeling knackered but nice and warm in the van, and just . . . feeling . . . sleepy . . . My snoozing hotspot, that was.
My work mates would bang on the window to wake me up, laughing. I’d get to work and try to keep going, but after a really late night I’d have to go hide in the file room and fall asleep on the floor. Either that or risk it at my desk, but I’d just black out and go . . .
Thump.
“Oh look, Peter’s fell off his chair again.”
So I was tired. Exhausted, actually.
And I didn’t have epilepsy.
There’s a lot that’s been written about the effect it had on Ian. How he felt embarrassed about the condition, and how the drugs affected him. We saw bits of that: his mood changed a bit; he was quieter, less ready to laugh and more introverted than before, which was understandable. Otherwise he just soldiered on. So instead of taking time off for Ian to rest, and instead of getting together and working out how to adapt to our lead singer’s epilepsy, we buried our heads in the sand, all of us, Ian included, and—and you’ll be hearing this a lot throughout the rest of the book—we just carried on.
Meanwhile, far from slowing, the pace began to pick up.
Rob had jacked in his job at Eagle Star Insurance on Princess Street. His base was his attic flat in Chorlton and with plenty of time to devote to management work he’d come to us with gig offers all the time. We never said no. Wherever it was, whatever it was, we’d agree.
Christ, it must have been exhausting for Ian. (After we found out I eased off getting on at him about not moving his amp, so at least that was one advantage of being epileptic—every cloud and all that.)
But seriously. I mean, if I was that knackered I was nodding off at the pelican and sliding off my chair at work, how did he feel? But because Ian was Ian and didn’t want to let us down, he allowed us to keep on going like nothing had happened, and nobody—not us, Tony, Rob, Debbie, his parents, doctors, or specialists—stepped in to say he should do anything different. All of which suited us fine, I hate to admit, because the discovery of Ian’s epilepsy coincided with a period when the band was really beginning to take off.
Having the An Ideal for Living EP out as twelve-inch had made promotion so much easier. We didn’t have to apologize for it the way we’d had to with the seven-inch. With the twelve-inch out, both Rob and the band had something great to work with—something that represented us really well.
God knows how much time Rob spent in phone boxes. He must have used them like an office, phoning round for gigs and reactions on the records then phoning us. We were easily reachable, so Rob would just grab a load of coins, go to the phone box and ring us up. I’d pick up the phone at work, probably exhausted from a gig the night before.
“All right, Hooky. It’s Rob.”
“All right, Rob.”
“John Peel likes the record. He wants us in for a session.”
I’d put down the phone and I wouldn’t think, Aw, that’s going to be stressful for poor old Ian; I’d think, Fucking hell, we’re going to do a session for John Peel! and go for a run.
We were totally in awe of John Peel and his program, and he’d already played tracks off the EP. Somewhere I’ve still got the tape with the places marked in pen where John introduces our tracks, can still remember listening to it in the car, freezing, taping off the car radio on one of those portable cassette players. Doing the session was mind-blowing. For a start, when you work for the BBC you get paid personally: the money comes to you, not to the group. (Later, in New Order, I used to love doing Top of the Pops because I got a check for £280 when I was getting nothing off the group.) But it was also mind-blowing because John Peel was a hero, a true musical hero. His was the only show on radio for people like us to listen to, so to be offered a session, well, that was like getting a chart placing back then, only better. We didn’t give a shit about chart placings. Right then, success for us was about playing the music we wanted to play: that was that. For us, in Joy Division and New Order, it was always about playing without compromising your music. Doing that was the only success.
When you did a Peel session there was no messing about. It started at two, finished at four, and there was no overrun. Hours overdubbing? Forget it. “Hey, why don’t we try some synth here?” None of that. You were in and out.
Which suited me down to the ground. A great way to do things, if you ask me. Nowadays you’re so spoiled by technology you can spend hours and days and months on the computer perfecting every tiny detail. Of course there’s some great music being made that way. But is it greater than the music being made back then? No.