If Love Will Tear Us Apart, Then Mash-ups Will Bring Us Together

Peter Hook / Toronto / 2007

Who’s the biggest fan of New Order? Apparently, the mantle is being carried by Peter Hook, the band’s bassist-turned-(strange as it may seem)-international-celebrity-DJ. I caught his set at Webster Hall Friday night—arriving just in time to hear him play a remix of “Bizarre Love Triangle” that brought the house down.

Peter Hook at Webster Hall / July 3 2009 / Photo by Alvin Ho Young

But wait.

Can we rewind that for a second?

Since when did Peter Hook become a party boy? Isn’t New Order the band that never did interviews? Clearly something shifted, because these days Peter is becoming, more and more, the public face of a once reclusive band. I’ll always remember Peter as the dour soul swinging a bass through those BBC Joy Division sets.

Peter playing with Joy Division, 1979

But that is definitely not the Peter I saw on Friday night. The new Peter Hook is brimming with a bright, almost goofy, energy. It’s the kind of thing that makes you worried that what you’re actually seeing is someone slip-sliding into a mid-life crisis. But then on a closer look you realize… he’s just having a lot of fun.

Peter Hook behind the decks

When I wasn’t dancing on Friday night, I found myself standing there amid the sweaty, joyful, pulsating crowd, with my own goofy smile on my face. There he was, Peter Hook, alone onstage, beaming out at a bunch of 20 year olds, spinning his band’s music, and I thought, wow, I hope I feel this way about my own stuff 20 years from now. I think he sang along to every song, including those of the other artists he mixed in, like Blur and Lady Gaga. One of the most memorable (and eerie) moments was when he played an Ian Curtis vocal over a New Order dance track. He cued the song and stepped back from the DJ panel and crossed his hands behind his back, as if handing the room over to Ian. Who knows if the kids at the party knew what was going on, and who cares, because in the next heartbeat Peter was right back at the mixing board, bobbing his head like everyone else.

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 5th, 2009 at 1:35 pm. It is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.