Peter Hook 'Lucky' to Survive Drug-Filled Career

Former New Order and Joy Division bassist Peter Hook is doing a lot of looking back in 2009. Between the recent release of the 'Factory Records: Communications 1978 - 1992' box set, which celebrates the storied history of the U.K. label that inspired the film '24-Hour Party People' and launched both of his bands, and his own upcoming memoir of a famous Manchester venue, 'Hacienda: How Not to Run a Club,' he has a lot to reflect on. And what has Hook learned from his revisiting of the past? "I'll tell you what, doing the Hacienda book it made me realize how lucky I was to survive and come through it because of the hedonistic nature," he tells Spinner. "It really was live fast, die young."

Now 53 years old and able to look back on that time with a distance, he is not proud of his decadent past. "We really did take the rock 'n' roll flag and run with it in a very, very stupid, short-sighted and exhilarating fashion," he says. "I look at [Happy Mondays singer] Shaun Ryder and I think definitely, 'Just say no.'"

Hook -- whose book comes out in the U.K. in October but doesn't have American distribution yet, possibly because of libel concerns -- isn't shy about his past transgressions in the tome, even if he needed some help to recall them all. "When I started putting the material together many of my friends, God bless them, who are still my friends, wonderfully aided me in remembering my most embarrassing moments, which I do catalog," he says. "I'm quite into cataloging my own most embarrassing moments and failures."

Of course, one of the reasons the Factory Records days are still so celebrated is the incredible music born of that time, which Hook had a lot of fun reminiscing about. "The interesting thing is that Manchester was the epicenter for so many musical movements and the Hacienda in itself was like the pivot," he says. "All the bands that were huge in Manchester -- Stone Roses, the Happy Mondays, my god there were legions of them, even down to Simply Red for God's sake -- all gravitated round the Hacienda."

But as much he loved those days, with the book on the way, he is looking forward to closing that chapter. "It was nice for me because it's a very cathartic process to sort of confess and get all your bile out," he says. "I'm looking forward to releasing the book so I don't have to go through it all again to be honest."