Creativity Quote by Peter Hook

Hook’s irony lands because it’s the opposite of the band-myth we’re sold: the “chosen family” that conquers the world on pure chemistry. He’s describing the more common arc of groups that begin as mates and end as co-workers with shared trauma, competing needs, and a public story to maintain. The punch is in the faux-casualness - “quite ironic I suppose” - a shrug that disguises a verdict. He’s not lamenting friendship’s collapse so much as diagnosing the machinery that grinds it down.

The line “invariably end up hating each other” is blunt enough to sound like experience, not theory. It frames bitterness as structural, not personal: creative partnerships, money, authorship credit, ego, and control don’t just test relationships; they reorder them. Hook’s most cutting move is the mock-formal phrasing: “labouring under the apprehension.” It’s bureaucratic language applied to intimacy, implying that once you’re deep into a band’s later stages, friendship becomes a kind of outdated contract someone forgot to terminate.

Context matters: Hook comes from the famously fractured orbit of Joy Division/New Order, where grief, reinvention, and success tightened the stakes and sharpened resentments. His “they needed telling” isn’t a confession; it’s a power play. He positions himself as the one willing to say aloud what everyone performs around: you can keep touring the brand, but don’t pretend the original bond still exists. The subtext is less “we fell apart” than “stop gaslighting yourselves - and the audience - about what this is now.”