Unknown Pleasures

“We finally got on stage, about twenty minutes late, looked out at the crowd—if you can call it that—and there, right at the front, were all my mates, shouting at me: ‘Heeey, Hooky. How’s it going, Hooky?’ They were grinning at me and giving me the thumbs-up. I thought it was nice of them to show up, but they could have done without the smiles and thumbs-up. We in Joy Division were very serious. We much preferred to scowl.” This is how Peter Hook, the bassist and author of this book, describes Joy Division's first concert. In his autobiography, the reader will, of course, also learn what came before and what followed—how the band Warsaw Pakt was formed and why it was renamed Joy Division, what the subsequent concerts were like, and what led to Ian Curtis’s death.