November 8, 2007 17:00

Peter Hook: Deborah Curtis 'hated 'Control''

The Joy Division bassist speaks at premiere of new documentary

Former Joy Division and New Order bassist Peter Hook has revealed that Ian Curtis’ widow, Deborah Curtis, “fucking hated" ‘Control’”.

Speaking after the premiere of new Joy Division documentary 'Joy Division' at the Sheffield DOC/FEST film festival last night (November 7), the bassist praised the film's director Grant Gee.

“The fact that you did this before ‘Control’ made this work," explained Hook, adding that the documentary was “the perfect answer” to to Anton Corbijn's recent biopic 'Control'.

He told Gee, who has previously worked with Radiohead on their tour documentary ‘Meeting People Is Easy’, that: "If you'd done it after ‘Control’ we wouldn’t have talked to you about it, to be honest. You got the story before we all went through it over and over and over again. I was a little worried to say the least and thought ‘how is it going to work together?’, but it’s the perfect answer to ‘Control’.”

He added that Ian Curtis' widow Deborah was not fond of the film based on her book 'Touching From A Distance'.

'Joy Division''s producer Jacqui Edenbrow told the audience that she had received an email from Deborah saying how much she liked the documentary, to which Hook responded: "That's good because she fucking hated 'Control'. So well done."

The documentary, written by music journalist Jon Savage, has been criticised for not featuring Deborah Curtis, despite heavily utilising interviews with Annick Honore, who Ian Curtis had an affair with.

Hook added that the film reminded him how good his band were, saying: “When I see things like that it makes me think how fucking good we were. Tell that to the Arctic Monkeys!”