THE more the short, glorious life of Joy Division is weighed, the more incredible it seems that this tight-knit group functioned so well for so long.

Peter Hook’s Joy Division memoir, Unknown Pleasures: Inside Joy Division, teems with anecdotes about the Manchester band, evoking a near-past when the pinnacle of a band’s ambition was a session on John Peel or the front cover of the NME.

But it was the death of Joy Division’s lead singer, Ian Curtis in 1980, that inevitably haunts this tale about a band that remain one of the most influential and revered groups in British music.

“What gets me sometimes about the deification of Ian Curtis is that it suggests a real division between Ian and the rest of the band that in reality wasn’t there,” said the co-founder of Joy Division and New Order, who will be playing New Order albums Technique and Republic in their entirety at Clitheroe’s Grand Theatre next month with his band The Light.

“He was just one the lads, you know. The first time I got talking to him was at the Sex Pistols show at Manchester’s Electric Circus and he was just a kid with ‘hate’ written on the back of his donkey jacket.

“Ian was happy a lot of the time and was sincerely happy about Joy Division’s success and the hard work that we’d put in.

“He was a very generous person, certainly not a morose man and a very generous individual to work with.

“After working with a lot of people over the years, you don’t meet many folk who have his attitude. I remember him fondly.

“Every time I play Joy Division and New Order, though, I do feel wounded.

“But playing live is still a very healthy drug and my great passion.

“It is about escaping the world because the world can be a bad, bad place.”

A rock and roll mythology grew up around Joy Division, and with Curtis’ passing it seems to have that glossy finish, the same way that Nirvana have.

“That’s what happens to groups when they suffer: they become immortalised. Ian is always frozen in time, Bernard Sumner, Stephen Morris and myself have aged around him, but he’s always the same. That’s a weird feeling.”

Hook added: “While I was in New Order we completely ignored anything to do with Joy Division. The myth was good: ‘The press all thought we were dead arty, intelligent and intellectual.”

Hook recalls recording Joy Division album Closer in Pink Floyd’s Britannia Studios, with Joy Division on a weekly wage of £12 each.

“We played a gig at Preston Warehouse (February 1980) and when the beer pumps packed up it caused all the equipment to break down,” he said.

“It was a debacle. Half-way through Transmission the DJ announced, ‘The last bus to Burnley is leaving in five minutes.’ It’s strange what you remember isn’t it?

“They wouldn’t pay us, so we nicked 30 frozen chickens from a freezer and that’s all we got.”

Hook last played with New Order in 2007, and a protracted legal battle followed, Hook suing his former band mates before they settled their financial differences a couple of years ago.

“Going through that, it felt like I’d split with the missus and come home to find that she’s chopped the dog in half, that’s how entrenched and bitter it became between myself and New Order,” said Hook.

“I think we should have all got together after the court case, Barney, Steve and Gillian, and it was an error that we didn’t talk then.

“Life is far too short isn’t it?

“We have never rekindled a civil relationship and that’s very sad because all our personalities are stamped all over New Order.”

With The Light he will be playing two New Order albums in their entirety.

The dance-influenced Technique, New Order’s fifth album, was released in 1989 and includes the catchy single Fine Time.

And the 1993 Republic LP spurned Regret, New Order’s last top five hit in Britain.

“It’s funny, Technique is my favourite New Order album and Republic my least favourite,” added Hooky.

“The circumstances were very difficult when we recorded Republic because we were all falling out, but I’ve grown to love it.

“I’m not even sure that New Order (original line up with Hook) played a lot of Republic live, so songs like Special and Spooky might be getting their first airing.”

Peter Hook and The Light, Clitheroe Grand, Wednesday, September 26. Details from 01200 421599 or www.thegrandvenue.co.uk