When Peter Hook talks about New Order’s 2001 album Get Ready, he doesn’t begin with the songs. He begins with the people.
For fans, New Order’s 2001 record Get Ready marked a return to guitar-driven rock after years of increasingly electronic experimentation. For Hook, it represented something much more personal: a brief moment when his relationship with Bernard Sumner felt genuinely creative again. As Peter Hook & The Light prepare to perform the album in full across Australia, Hook reflects on an era that was filled with optimism in the studio, only for old tensions to resurface almost as soon as recording ended.
“My recollection of most of these records is the recording process,” he says. “A lot of them were made in difficult, unhappy times”” Get Ready, however, was different. “It was just me and Barney working together because Steve and Gillian were busy. It was the first time we’d really worked together like that since 1976.”
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That takes Hook right back to the earliest days of the band, before Joy Division, when he and Sumner were simply two teenagers inspired by punk and figuring things out together. “It was quite strange to come back to that,” he says. “After Factory went bankrupt, after The Hacienda, after everything we’d been through, it felt like we were finally moving in the right direction again.” Listening back to the record today, Hook hears that renewed energy. “The songs reflect a very positive attitude to playing our respective instruments.”
That wasn’t always guaranteed. During parts of New Order’s career, Hook says there were attempts to minimise the role of bass altogether. “We’d been through a phase where they were desperate to get rid of the bass,” he recalls. “It goes against every physical and mental aspect of being in a group.”
Working closely with Sumner again restored some of that lost chemistry, helped further by collaborations with guests including Bobby Gillespie and Billy Corgan. “It really filled us with hope for the future.” Unfortunately, that hope proved short-lived: when it came time to tour, the enthusiasm disappeared. “We’d spent three years making the record. We’d talked all the way through about playing it live. Then suddenly he didn’t want to play.”
Looking back now, Hook wonders whether stubbornness on both sides prevented conversations that might have changed the band’s trajectory. “Maybe instead of saying, ‘You twat,’ I should have asked, ‘What’s happened?'” It’s an unusually reflective moment from someone who’s never been shy about discussing New Order’s internal conflicts.
Thankfully, time has given Hook something he never expected: the opportunity to reclaim these records on his own terms. “I thought I’d love playing Technique. I thought I’d hate playing Republic. As it turned out, I enjoyed them both.” Now it’s Get Ready‘s turn. “This album has really benefited from being played live. The Light are brilliant at taking records that were made for LP and turning them into something immediate.” Songs are tightened, arrangements sharpened and, in Hook’s words, made to “smash people in the face.” At only 37 minutes, Get Ready also makes for a surprisingly punchy live set. “It doesn’t bore anybody to death,” he laughs.
That instinct for immediacy has defined Hook’s playing since the very beginning. His famous high-register bass style wasn’t born from some grand musical philosophy. It was born because he couldn’t hear himself. “I had no idea what a bass guitar was supposed to do,” he says. Inspired by seeing the Sex Pistols, Hook bought a bass the next morning before rehearsing with Sumner that night. “There were no rules.”
The breakthrough came thanks to Ian Curtis. “My amplifier was crap. I couldn’t hear it live.” Whenever Hook played higher up the neck during rehearsals, Curtis would encourage him. “‘Play higher,’ he’d say. ‘It sounds good.'” That simple suggestion became one of the defining sounds of post-punk. Later influences helped refine the approach. Jean-Jacques Burnel inspired Hook’s aggressive tone, while Paul Simonon inspired another trademark: wearing his bass impossibly low. “I wanted to be lower than Paul Simonon.”
Some of his most iconic basslines arrived just as instinctively. Take ‘She’s Lost Control’. Many players have marvelled at its unforgettable melodic movement, but Hook laughs when I mention how perfectly it follows the fretboard position markers. “I’d love to tell you why I wrote it,” he says. “But I have no idea.” Perhaps that’s fitting. Hook believes songs almost have lives of their own. “My assets are my songs,” he says. “But they don’t actually exist.”
Every recording, every live performance and every listener creates another version. “I can’t carry ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’ around in a box. Every time I play it, it’s another version.” That philosophy extends to the instruments themselves. Remarkably, almost every classic New Order bassline was written on the same Yamaha BB1200S. It took more than three decades before Yamaha realised the significance of that instrument and approached Hook about a signature model. Ironically, the connection happened through his son, whose work with the Smashing Pumpkins led Yamaha’s Scott Marceau to discover the story. Now Hook can finally leave the irreplaceable original safely at home while touring with faithful reproductions. “I’m very proud of them,” he says.
Despite embracing digital convenience through a Line 6 Helix, Hook’s essential sound remains surprisingly simple: an Electro-Harmonix Clone Theory, Ampeg amplification and the unmistakable attack that’s influenced generations of bass players. That influence still surprises him. “Whenever someone tells me they picked up the bass because of me, I always ask, ‘Did it work?'” His answer reveals the mindset that’s sustained a career spanning five decades. “You have to have utter self-belief.”
That belief, he says, came largely from Curtis. “He’d tell us, ‘We’re going to be big. Everybody will know us.'” Whenever the rest of the band doubted themselves, Curtis was the one pulling them back together. Before our conversation, Hook had visited Curtis’ grave for the first time this year. Playing Joy Division’s music now, he sees himself less as its owner than its caretaker. “I suppose I’m the custodian now.” Every successful tour, every audience singing along, becomes another conversation with the friend who believed it would all happen. “I can say, ‘Look, Ian. We’ve done it again. You were right.'”
For Australian audiences, that’s exactly what Hook will be doing once more this July: not recreating New Order or Joy Division, but celebrating the music that continues to evolve every time it’s played.
PETER HOOK & THE LIGHT July 2026 Australian tour dates
Monday 13 July: Hindley St. Music Hall, Adelaide
Thursday 16 July: The Tivoli, Brisbane
Friday 17 July: Palais Theatre, Melbourne
Saturday 18 July: The Enmore Theatre, Sydney (SOLD OUT)
Monday 20 July: Astor Theatre, Perth
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