
Unknown Pleasures
Inside Joy Division
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Narrated by:
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Peter Hook
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By:
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Peter Hook
About this listen
Joy Division changed the face of music. Godfathers of alternative rock, they reinvented music in the post-punk era, creating a new sound - dark, hypnotic, and intense - that would influence U2, Morrissey, R.E.M., Radiohead, and numerous others. The story is now legendary: In 1980, on the heels of their groundbreaking debut, Unknown Pleasures, and on the eve of their first U.S. tour, the band was rent asunder by the tragic death of their enigmatic lead singer, Ian Curtis. Yet in the mere three years they were together, Joy Division produced two landmark albums and a handful of singles - including the iconic anthem "Love Will Tear Us Apart" - that continue to have a powerful resonance.
Now, for the first time, their story is told by one of their own. In Unknown Pleasures, founding member and bass player Peter Hook recounts how four young men from Manchester and Salisbury, with makeshift instruments and a broken-down van, rose from the punk scene to create a haunting, atmospheric music that would define a generation. Peter talks with eye-opening candor and reflection about the suicide of Ian Curtis; the band's friendships and fallouts; the evolution of their sound and image; and the larger-than-life characters who formed a vital part of the Joy Division legend, including Factory Records founder Tony Wilson and producer Martin Hannett. Told with surprising humor and vivid detail, Unknown Pleasures is the book Joy Division fans have awaited for decades.
©2012 Peter Hook (P)2012 AudioGo LtdListeners also enjoyed...
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Story
Thurston Moore moved to Manhattan’s East Village in 1978 with a yearning for music. He wanted to be immersed in downtown New York’s sights and sounds—the feral energy of its nightclubs, the angular roar of its bands, the magnetic personalities within its orbit. But more than anything, he wanted to make music—to create indelible sounds that would move, provoke, and inspire. His dream came to life in 1981 with the formation of Sonic Youth, a band Moore cofounded with Kim Gordon and Lee Ranaldo.
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I feel like I just lost my new best friend
- By David Beale on 11-09-23
By: Thurston Moore
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Autobiography
- By: Morrissey
- Narrated by: David Morrissey
- Length: 12 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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Autobiography covers Morrissey's life from his birth until the present day.
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Just ok. Read if you're a fan. Skip if not
- By AIDA on 05-19-15
By: Morrissey
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Rip It up and Start Again: Postpunk 1978-1984
- By: Simon Reynolds
- Narrated by: Liam Wheatley
- Length: 23 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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In this, the first book to take a big-picture view of the entire post punk period, acclaimed author and music journalist Simon Reynolds recreates a time of tremendous urgency and idealism in pop music. Full of anecdote and insight, and featuring the likes of Joy Division, The Fall, Pere Ubu, PiL and Talking Heads, Rip It Up And Start Again stands as one of the most inspired and inspiring books on popular music ever written.
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great for resources and information, very entertaining too
- By jfkreuz on 06-12-25
By: Simon Reynolds
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Sex, Drugs, Ratt & Roll
- My Life in Rock
- By: Stephen Pearcy, Sam Benjamin
- Narrated by: Stephen R. Thorne
- Length: 8 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Stephen Pearcy was a scrawny, horny, thrill-seeking teenager with an electric guitar who had graduated from backyard parties in San Diego to half-empty dives in Los Angeles before he and his band broke through at Whiskey a Go Go. Cranking out metal just as metal got hot, Ratt was the perfect band at the perfect time, and their hit single "Round and Round" became a top-selling anthem.
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Stephen Pearcy is one sad mf
- By Awkward Frog on 12-28-20
By: Stephen Pearcy, and others
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Our Band Could Be Your Life
- Scenes from the American Indie Underground, 1981-1991
- By: Michael Azerrad
- Narrated by: Jon Wurster, Merrill Garbus, Fred Armisen, and others
- Length: 21 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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This is the never-before-told story of the musical revolution that happened right under the nose of the Reagan '80s - when a small but sprawling network of bands, labels, fanzines, radio stations, and other subversives reenergized American rock with punk rock's do-it-yourself credo and created music that was deeply personal, often brilliant, always challenging, and immensely influential. This sweeping chronicle of music, politics, drugs, fear, loathing, and faith has been recognized as an indie rock classic in its own right.
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Comprehenisve History of Some 1980s Indie Bands
- By Jeff Koeppen on 12-22-19
By: Michael Azerrad
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Paul Simon
- The Life
- By: Robert Hilburn
- Narrated by: Dennis Boutsikaris
- Length: 12 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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Through such hits as "The Sound of Silence", "Bridge Over Troubled Water", "Still Crazy After All These Years", and "Graceland", Paul Simon has spoken to us in songs for a half-century about alienation, doubt, resilience, and empathy in ways that have established him as one of the most honored and beloved songwriters in American pop music history. His music has gone beyond the sales charts into our cultural consciousness. He was the first songwriter awarded the Gershwin Prize by the Library of Congress and is a member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the Songwriters Hall of Fame.
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Missed opportunity
- By Mark L. Berry on 07-22-18
By: Robert Hilburn
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Walking Disaster
- My Life Through Heaven and Hell
- By: Deryck Whibley
- Narrated by: Deryck Whibley
- Length: 8 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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From his earliest days growing up in Canada, Deryck Whibley was a punk who loved music and couldn’t wait to achieve something bigger and better than the humble path that lay before him. Whibley was raised by a single mom and their small family constantly moved from place to place, so he was used to being the new kid, starting fights (or finishing them), and connecting with people who shared his sensibility for chaotic fun and loud music. Sum 41 was born of a group of friends who loved to jam, shared a DIY ethos, and were determined to be rock stars one day.
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Great memoir!
- By habbsy on 07-04-25
By: Deryck Whibley
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Meet Me in the Bathroom
- Rebirth and Rock and Roll in New York City 2001-2011
- By: Lizzy Goodman
- Narrated by: Charlie Thurston, Nicol Zanzarella
- Length: 19 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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In the second half of the 20th century New York was the source of new sounds, including the Greenwich Village folk scene, punk and new wave, and hip-hop. But as the end of the millennium neared, cutting-edge bands began emerging from Seattle, Austin, and London, pushing New York further from the epicenter. The behemoth music industry, too, found itself in free fall, under siege from technology. Then 9/11/2001 plunged the country into a state of uncertainty and war.
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Deeply disappointing.
- By ChicagoRob on 01-18-20
By: Lizzy Goodman
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Good Pop, Bad Pop
- By: Jarvis Cocker
- Narrated by: Jarvis Cocker
- Length: 6 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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From a Gold Star polycotton shirt to a pack of Wrigley's Extra, from his teenage attempts to write songs to the Sexy Laughs Fantastic Dirty Joke Book, this is the hard evidence of Jarvis's unique life, Pulp, 20th-century pop culture, the good times and the mistakes he'd rather forget. And this accumulated debris of a lifetime reveals his creative process—writing and musicianship, performance and ambition, style and stagecraft.
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Jarvis’s voice.
- By jennifer m salvadori on 12-31-24
By: Jarvis Cocker
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Trouble Boys
- The True Story of the Replacements
- By: Bob Mehr
- Narrated by: Mary Lucia
- Length: 20 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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Written with the participation of the group's key members, including reclusive singer-songwriter Paul Westerberg, bassist Tommy Stinson, and the family of late guitarist Bob Stinson, Trouble Boys is a deeply intimate and nuanced portrait, exposing the primal factors and forces - addiction, abuse, fear - that would shape one of the most brilliant and notoriously self-destructive bands of all time.
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Oh Sister!
- By Cherrybomb on 06-29-17
By: Bob Mehr
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It's a Long Story
- My Life
- By: Willie Nelson, David Ritz - contributor
- Narrated by: Christopher Ryan Grant
- Length: 9 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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"Unvarnished. Funny. Leaving no stone unturned"...So say the publishers about this audiobook I've written. What I say is that this is the story of my life, told as clear as a Texas sky and in the same rhythm that I lived it. It's a story of restlessness and the purity of the moment and living right. Of my childhood in Abbott, Texas, to the Pacific Northwest, from Nashville to Hawaii, and all the way back again. Of selling vacuum cleaners and encyclopedias while hosting radio shows and writing song after song, hoping to strike gold.
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An Enjoyable Listen
- By Patrick on 05-19-15
By: Willie Nelson, and others
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Based on a True Story
- A Memoir
- By: Norm Macdonald
- Narrated by: Norm Macdonald, Tim O'Halloran
- Length: 7 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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When Norm Macdonald, one of the greatest stand-up comics of all time, was approached to write a celebrity memoir, he flatly refused, calling the genre “one step below instruction manuals.” Norm then promptly took a two-year hiatus from stand-up comedy to live on a farm in northern Canada. When he emerged he had under his arm a manuscript, a genre-smashing book about comedy, tragedy, love, loss, war, and redemption. When asked if this was the celebrity memoir, Norm replied, “Call it anything you damn like.”
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Bizarre, funny ride
- By Michael Chauvin on 09-25-16
By: Norm Macdonald
Required reading for post-punk nerds.
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Intimate look
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Fantsatic read!
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what a great story.
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Love the band even more now
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Must have!
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Wonderful
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Amazing story, enjoyable narration
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Maybe I just watch too much British television but I did not find the colloquialisms and/or slang to hinder my understanding of what he was saying at all and I'm nestled here in the deep south of the United States.
Peter Hook is natural story teller!
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The Joy Division story here is equally factual and entertaining. In addition HEARING Peter Hook telling it is definitely a plus. A good lesson on Mancunian accent and English expressions. ‘ooky, as it’s apparently properly pronounced by those close to him, does a great job at injecting the right emotion where it is needed, not just a plain reading of the text. He’s very gracious at acknowledging the talent of those who were around at the time this book takes place, also very humble and humorous when admitting the times he f*cked up (something rubbed off on me!). I kept pausing or adding bookmarks to show my son some of the passages I thought were hilarious and my teenage son also had a laugh or found them interesting.
Only thing I think could have done without or with a more summarized version is the timelines. Too extensive and sometimes not very relevant in my opinion.
Definitely worth a listen or more than one!
Nice one, ‘ooky!
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