Hooky

Former Joy Division and New Order bassist Peter ‘Hooky’ Hook, on the best advice anyone’s ever given him:

The best bit of advice anyone’s ever given me was ‘shut the f—k up’. This was back in about 1990 when I was on a panel at some new music conference in New York. I was f—king off my trolley, spouting off at the mouth about bootlegs or something else I knew nothing about and Barry White leaned into the mic and went (adopts an earth-rumblingly low voice) ‘OK, shut the f—k up!’ I thought to myself, ‘Wow, I’ve just been told to shut the f—k up by Barry White. Class.’

That was quite an eventful conference actually, because Ice-T and Ice Cube were there and it was all kicking off between their respective posses. They were running around with guns and all that, it was f—king wild. Ice Cube was actually supposed to be on our panel but he stormed off and some journalist put his hand up in the audience and said, ‘Excuse me, is Ice Cube coming back?’ Again, I was off me trolley and quick as a shot I said, ‘No mate, he’s f—king melted!’ It went down like a lead balloon…

The interview also mentions his fondness for practical jokes. If you listen to the original 12-inch version of ‘Temptation’ you can hear Bernard Sumner shouting at 0:50 when Hook and Stephen Morris shoved a snowball down his shirt during the recording.

- NME, 29 November 2008