Unknown Pleasures: Inside Joy Division

by Peter Hook

So it was a storming gig, apart from the fact that halfway through a guy climbed out of the audience—a punk who got up onstage. We thought, This guy’s come up to have a dance or whatever, and kept on playing, but he sauntered right past us and went back to where the dressing room was. We were looking at one another, like, What the fuck’s he playing at? but still playing, when a couple of minutes later he reappeared and went to climb down off the stage back into the crowd. I stopped him. Still playing, I said, “Where the fuck have you been?” “Oh, I just went for a piss,” he said. I said, “In our fucking dressing room? You cheeky get,” and kicked him right offstage. Fast-forward to about twenty years later, and this guy comes up to me, can’t remember where it was, and says, “Hello.” “All right, mate,” He said, “I saw you when you were Joy Division, at the Nashville Rooms in London. I was with my friend, who got up onstage and went for a piss in the dressing room, and you kicked him offstage.” “Yeah, I remember him,” I said. “The cheeky bastard.” He said, “Yeah, well, he ended up hanging himself.” I went, “Oh. Fuck. He didn’t hang himself because of that, did he?” “Oh, no, not because of that. It was a few years after that.” I said, “Well thank fuck for that!”