New Order and Joy Division's Peter Hook: 'There’s a lot to be said for having freedom and being able to pick and choose what you want'

In fact, the 70-year-old is arguably as famous as the lead singers of his most well-known bands, with post-punk innovators Joy Division, led by the late Ian Curtis morphing into indie dance outfit New Order, where guitarist Bernard Sumner took on vocal duties.

Standing alongside New Order in the Manchester scene were the Stone Roses, who provided a danceable take on psychedelic rock, with Hook producing the band’s single Elephant Stone and its B-side Full Fathom Five, when he met their bass player Gary “Mani” Mounfield, and quickly struck up a friendship.

Mani, who was known for his funk-infused rock and roll basslines on tracks such as Fools Gold, I Am The Resurrection and I Wanna Be Adored, died in November last year, and Hook was among those present at his funeral, at which attendees read like a who’s who of British rock in the 1980s and 90s.

“My memories of him are absolutely legend,” Hook says of his late friend. “He was a real character, and music is going to be so sad for all these characters that we lose. “

I mean, if you watch the outpouring of grief over Mani, and I knew what every one of us were thinking.

"When we were in the cathedral at the funeral, we were all sat there thinking, ‘God, I hope I get them down like this when I die’.

"It was beautiful, and the way (the football team he and Mani support, Manchester) United looked after him was fantastic.”

Despite the sadness, Hook, who played with Mani in Freebass – a band of bass players which was completed by The Smiths’ Andy Rourke and Gary Briggs of Haven, says his late friend’s typical cheeky humour was even present at his funeral.

“I’m sat behind Ian Brown (Stone R oses lead singer) at the funeral, Bez (Happy Mondays’ dancer) comes in, right, Bez, you know, suitably refreshed.

"So he’s there, and he comes up to Ian, and he goes, God’s taking all the bass players’, and Ian went, ‘you what?’, he said, ‘yeah, it’ll be Hooky next’. I thought, ‘you’re a cheeky ******, but I’m not going yet man’.”

Having reminisced that day with his lar gely male counterparts of 1980s and 90s scene, Hook believes the future belongs to numerous upcoming bands of women such as The Last Dinner Party and Wet Leg, saying he is annoyed he cannot perform at Latitude Festival on the same day as the latter, who he describes as “great”.

“When you look at Wet Leg and The Last Dinner Party, and bands like that, I really like that kind of music,” Hook explains.

“That’s why I’m looking forward to being on the road again, I think the boys have had it their own way for too long.

“There’s some fantastic female musicians, and it’s absolutely wonderful when you see them...In many ways, it’s a nicer feel, and it sort of becomes, in a funny way, that it’s not about female or male, it’s just about people who can make great music and rock.”

Hook has been performing with his band The Light since 2010, which features his son Jack Bates, where he performs reworked versions of the songs of Joy Division and New Order.

Asked how he feels about playing exclusively old songs, when many musicians resent the material that made them popular, Hook replies: “You’re rewriting them in the way that they work for live.

"When you record a song for a record, you look at it in a completely different way, because most people are sat there listening to it, they’re not stood in an audience waiting to get their rocks off.

“What happens is, you take the track, and then you make it so it suits an audience… and that’s why a lot of the songs, like even Temptation, Age Of Consent, because they were jammed in the studio, once you played them a bit, you really honed them and got them correct in the right format for an audience, because it is an art.

“There’s two arts, writing for people to sit there and listen to is one, and then writing for them to rock and dance to is another.

"You just learn to do both, and there’s no greater pleasure than to see everybody just having a great time. I must admit, I do live for it now.”

Next month, Hook will be taking to the stage at Scarborough Spa, as part of the ‘Interzone’ event featuring a host of artists including Meryl Streek, Chameleons and The Wedding Present.

Hook and The Light will close the festival, headlining with a set that celebrates some of the most influential music ever created.

Hook says he enjoys the lack of restrictions he has playing in his own band. “The thing is that I do get to revel in what I loved at the start,” he says. “What New Order did was a lot of the stuff we wrote early on, and as soon as it became old… Bernie (Bernard Sumner) wouldn’t play it.

“(He’d say) ‘let’s play the new stuff’, and you know, you’d be going Age Of Consent, great song, ‘oh no, we can’t play that, too rocky, too rocky’, he used to say…

"So there’s a lot to be said for having freedom and being able to pick and choose what you want, because sadly, even at my age, I love to rock…Every morning I wake up, I really do thank my lucky stars.”

Hook will play Latitude Festival with The Light on July 26. He is also due to play a number of other dates with the band including at Scarborough Spa on Saturday, August 15.

For tickets to the Interzone event, visit scarboroughspa.co.uk