As in Hooky's previous two books on the Hacienda* and Joy Division**, the first chapter of Substance sets the rip-roaring scene for what's to follow...
...It's 1986 LA, at a post-premiere reception for Pretty In Pink, and Hooky's just done "the biggest line of coke I'd ever seen" with someone from OMD, when, back at the table sat opposite Molly Ringwald, New Order producer John Robie decides to shove a mushroom vol-au-vent in Hooky's face to get him back for a previous prank...
"Robie goes and does that to me at the premiere of Pretty in Pink, right in front of Molly fucking Ringwald..." Hooky recalls. He follows the hapless producer down the stairs, where he's chatting up two girls with Barney... "`Hey you, y'twat' I said, and then, when he turned around, I nutted him. Bang...Total pandemonium..."
OMD leg it, Psychedelic Furs leg it, Suzanne Vaga starts crying, and that poor actress will forever be known as Molly fucking Ringwald. It's classic rock and roll behaviour in what is totally, absolutely, a classic rock autobiography.
Now if it was some American legend going on about all this, it would be a bit removed, a bit `so what?'. But everything in here is Salford and Manchester living the dream and the nightmare. And that gives the book its humour, its attitude, its power...
The Molly fucking Ringwald episode is just the kickstart to a ride around the world a la Hooky, and a ride around the crazy world of New Order and the constant feuding between its bass player and its anti-frontman.
While `the other two' Gillian and Steve contrive to be merely `the other two' throughout the book, every timeline brings a new clawing for Bernard Sumner - the `black cloud' in the room, the `twat', the control freak who tries to lose Hooky's bass from tracks at every opportunity...
"He once said to me `Do you know what it's like to sit in your room and have nobody phone you?'
`No' I said, `I don't and you shouldn't be such a twat, should you. Then someone might phone you.'"
Meoooowww. And that's the nice anecdote. Fuelling it all are lashings of booze, endless lines of coke, endless women...and endless lines of bills from the Hacienda. And, as New Order get bigger, re-defining rock/dance fusion, the behaviour all round gets more and more twatty. Even Hooky, towards the end, describes himself as a "spoilt, obnoxious rock star".
Along the way, however, are also endless hilarious anecdotes about everyone from David Cassidy, to Johnny Rotten, to Ian McCulloch, Liza Minnelli, Robert Plant, Grand Master Flash and the England footy team drinking the bar dry at the World In Motion studio session. It's one of them. You had to be there. And in Hooky's literary company you actually are there, pissing yourself laughing.
Back in Little Hulton, however, Hooky's mum isn't happy when he returns in triumph from the first appearance on Top of The Pops...he'd showed her up in front of all the neighbours by chewing on stage. And yet another time when New Order were even bigger he'd been late for a family meal...
`Sorry, mam, I had to go for a really important interview'...
She turned to me, her face lighting up. `An interview' she said `Hooray! Our Peter's getting a proper job at last everyone!'
`No' I said `it was for a music paper'. Her face fell and she clouted me round the ear, telling me not to be late again.'
Away from LH, in LA, having been told New Order had just sold $350,000 of merchandise in one night Hooky remarks...`You'd be stumbling around a hotel room with all these partially clad women, off your head, knowing you'd just earned a fortune, and you'd think `Bloody hell', in the words of the George Best story, `where did it all go wrong?'.
And wrong it did go, not just with the three New Orders and assorted producers and re-mixers elbowing him out of the musical way, but with the booze and drugs taking their toll, and the arrival of who Hooky constantly calls `Mrs Merton', and their `fucked up toxic relationship'.
Is Hooky right to tell what he believes is the truth about Caroline? Well, Rob Gretton, Tony Wilson and a myriad of others who have also sadly passed on get the not-so-saintly Hooky memories in what is his life story.
Meanwhile, after the cartoonesquely described hell of addiction to drink and drugs there's the redemption of new family life, clean living and a new career of DJing, The Light and writing.
No way does Substance make Hooky out to be Perfect Pete. It is pretty self depreciating, fascinating, page turning, blockbuster stuff, all lined with a Salford cloud. At 750 pages it's getting on for War and Peace proportions which might have been a better title; only without the `Peace' but it flies by, even leaving the reader wanting more.
There's so, so, so much in it, a review just can't do this book justice. The best rock autobiography ever? If you come from the north and you're not Barney, yes. Oh yes!
Substance: Inside New Order
By Peter Hook (Simon and Schuster) £20
The boom comes complete with loads of photos, lists of every gig and record New Order and associated Hooky bands have ever put out, and special `geek alerts' describing music stuff for the unmusical.
* See also previous Salford Star review of The Hacienda: How Not To Run A Club - click here
** See also previous Salford Star review of Unknown Pleasures: Inside Joy Division - click here
Update: 17th October - see also article on Hacienda Classical album launch and Channel 4 documentary - click here
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