Creativity Quote by Peter Hook

Hook is pushing back against a music-industry reflex: treat famous names like a shortcut to meaning. The “supergroup” label promises instant legitimacy, but it also comes preloaded with cynicism - a marketing category that can smother the very thing rock trades on, which is the feeling that something necessary is happening right now. His slightly tangled phrasing (“We don’t to be…”) even reads like the unvarnished voice of a working musician, not a brand manager polishing a pitch.

The intent is defensive and aspirational at once. He’s guarding against the charge of opportunism (“for the sake of being a supergroup”) while setting a higher bar: the project has to justify itself artistically. “Change things” isn’t utopian; it’s practical. In rock, novelty is currency, and Hook knows audiences can smell nostalgia cosplay. The subtext is that pedigree is a double-edged sword. It draws attention, but it also invites comparisons, suspicion, and the sense that you’re trading on past glories.

Context matters because Hook’s legacy (Joy Division/New Order) is synonymous with reinvention: post-punk mutating into synth-pop, basslines that became lead melodies, a band always in dialogue with the future. So when he says you need to “appeal to people as a new group,” he’s arguing for an identity that isn’t a reunion in disguise. It’s a plea for cultural permission to start over - not by denying history, but by refusing to let history be the only selling point.