Among the quirks of this year’s list of Rock & Roll Hall of Fame nominees is that Joy Division and New Order are on the ballot together as a single entry. Speaking with Billboard, bassist Peter Hook, who played in both bands, shares that the joint nod “feels OK to me.”
“We were always the square peg in a round hole as Joy Division and very much a square peg in a round hole as New Order,” Hook says. “[The Rock Hall] is a hell of an accolade, but my God, I think either band has earned it. We are definitely up there without a shadow of a doubt.”
Hook adds that Joy Division and New Order were “always against this sort of thing when we started” — “It was the old punk thing,” he says — but he now feels humbled by the Rock Hall recognition.
“It’s nice, and it’s fun to be appreciated,” he says.
Hook, guitarist Bernard Sumner and drummer Stephen Morris played together in Joy Division along with lead vocalist Ian Curtis. Following Curtis’ death in 1980, the trio formed New Order alongside keyboardist Gillian Gilbert. Hook, however, hasn’t played with New Order since 2007 and was involved in a lawsuit with the band when they reunited in 2011.
“[We] still haven’t spoken, personally in 11 years,” Hook says of his ex-New Order bandmates. “We’re still fighting hammer and tong, tooth and nail … I think we’re going for the record for the longest group fallout in history. It’s very tragic.”
Should Joy Division and New Order be chosen for induction, Hook wonders if that occasion might be the “olive branch that we may need to end the injustices that were done with New Order in the end.”
The 2023 Rock Hall inductees will be announced in May.
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