Peter Hook: 'It feels weird when it's your lives up on screen'

Sep 15 2007 by Liza Williams, Liverpool Daily Post

LEGENDARY musician Peter Hook was not exactly thrilled when he heard the first whisperings of a screenplay, chronicling the rise and fall of doomed rock icon and Joy Division front man Ian Curtis (pictured).

The ex-bassist in the band that went on to form New Order yesterday admitted he thought the film, based on the acclaimed book written by Curtis’s Liverpool-born wife Deborah, would be “one-sided”.

He told the Daily Post of his uncertainty about raking up a past he and fellow Joy Division members had barely spoken about in two decades.

But once Hook knew former NME photographer Anton Corbjin was directing the film about the front man who committed suicide just as his band rose to fame, entitled Control, he said his worries subsided.

“When you have lived with this story, you get a bit blasé about it. You think, oh God, not again and tend to go over it in your head,” he said.

“It is something you don’t talk about – men don’t talk.

“So when the idea started I was not enthusiastic about it encompassing Deborah’s book, I thought it would be one-sided.

“I suppose she saw the pressures he was under and thought the band added to this, making his condition worse.

“She was the wife and had to deal with the fact Ian had a mistress as well as being in a band, which is sort of like having a mistress in a way, it consumes you.

“But Anton was on board and I realised he was going to make it two-sided. He put his heart and his soul into it. It was his baby. He is a mate and he ran things past us. We have been involved all the way and it has been a bit of a searching experience really.”

The film concentrates on the final months of 23-year-old Curtis’ life, before he was found hanging in the kitchen of his Macclesfield family home by wife Deborah in 1980.

The daughter of Bob and Audrey Woodruff, who grew up in Everton, and then lived on Sunningdale Road, Wavertree, subsequently wrote the bestseller, Touching From a Distance, a personal account of her life with the troubled vocalist. The book provided a basis for the film and the script was adapted by respected British writer Matt Greenhalgh.

The film won a host of prizes at the Cannes Film Festival where it was shown in May, including best European film.

Hook said: “When we sat down and saw the film, I didn’t imagine for one moment it would move me the way it did.

“It was the weirdest moment of my life when I sat there in Cannes and everyone started clapping and the actors took a bow. I was like hang on a minute, what’s going on, because it is your life on the screen – it is real to you.”

Hook was involved in choosing tracks for the soundtrack to the film, which includes Curtis’s influences such as David Bowie, but also versions of Joy Division classics.

The late Tony Wilson was also a big influence in the making of the film. Hook said: “He was heavily involved in the film and was happy to do it. It is so sad he is not about to see its release.

“I am still having a difficult time coming to terms with his death; it is the end of an era and you have got to admit you are getting old and things are different.”

After his much-publicised split from New Order band mates this summer, which Hook describes as “that fracas” the musician is embarking on new music project Freebase with fellow Manchester icons, ex- Smiths bassist Andy Rourke and Primal Scream’s Mani.

Control is out on October 5, and its soundtrack on October 1. A remastered version of Joy Division’s back catalogue is reissued on Monday.

lizawilliams@dailypost.co.uk