Unknown Pleasures: Inside Joy Division by Peter Hook Page B

which – after a couple of disastrous practice sessions – we didn’t. But still, we were a band.
    ‘Right, the Cockneys are here,’ said Rossi. ‘We’re having the Cockneys, we’re fucking having them.’
    And this was the support band. So there was a hell of an atmosphere right from the beginning and, true to form, there was as much fighting as there was pogoing and moshing, everyone rolling around the room. It was more good-natured than you might have expected, but, even so, pretty chaotic and, because it was all going off, a lot more exciting than the first gig. At the first gig it all went off on stage. At the second gig it all went off in the audience
and
on stage.
    Looking back, I don’t know which of the gigs was the most important in terms of the influence it had. A lot of people say the second because there were more people there, the Pistols were better known and punks had started to get going in the city, but for me and Barney it was the first because that’s when we decided to form the group. Overall I think you’d have to say they were both as important as each other. I mean, after those two gigs, bands had formed and venues were putting them on and there was a group of us who soaked up whatever punk we could. That autumn we saw the Stranglers at the Squat on Devas Street; in September, Eater played the first-ever gig, at Houldsworth Hall on Deansgate. Eater were supported by the Buzzcocks, who played at just about every gig in Manchester and were also doing a lot to help other punk bands find their feet. They’d encouraged us; their manager, Richard Boon, had come up with our first name, the Stiff Kittens, and later we found out that Ian had been in touch with them too. Together with the Drones and Slaughter & the Dogs they were the backbones of the punk scene and helped make Manchester the major punk city after London. They all played regularly at the Squat and at a gay bar on Dale Street called the Ranch, owned by Foo Foo Lamar, as well as at the Electric Circus in Collyhurst Street, which quickly became the city’s main punk venue.
    Debbie Curtis remembers Ian talking to me and Barney at that second Pistols gig. (He wasn’t there for the first one, which he was always a bit pissed off about, but he brought Debbie along to the second.) Maybe we did share a few words that night but he certainly didn’t really register with me then. The first time I remember Ian making an impact was at the Electric Circus, for the third Pistols gig. He had ‘Hate’ written on his jacket in orange fluorescent paint. I liked him straight away.

‘He was just a kid with “Hate” on his coat’
    The Electric Circus was an older, normal rock venue, in that it was a redbrick building, with a pointed roof like a church. The front door opened into one big, dark room with a high ceiling. The bar was on the right-hand side and there was a balcony, which I never saw open. In fact, the only reason I knew it had a balcony was that I was mooching around one night – this was later, when we were Warsaw – and somehow we got on to it, and there sat the Drones’ PA.
    By that time the Drones were like Slaughter & the Dogs – real fucking mouthy, football-hooligan types, and we hated them. I mean, with the exception of the Buzzcocks, who were like the father figures of Manchester punk, all the bands hated one another and were forever trying to get one over on each other, and Slaughter & the Dogs and the Drones were the worst of the lot. The second time the Pistols played the Lesser Free Trade Hall, Slaughter & the Dogs had their own posters made up that had their name above the Pistols’ and missed out the Buzzcocks altogether. That’s the kind of thing I’m talking about. Horrible twats. They made us look like angels. The Drones were just as bad. So . . . Well, let’s just say something happened to their equipment. Something nasty.
    All of which is a roundabout way of saying that, once we’d put our knobs away, I knew