Former Joy Division and New Order bassist Peter Hook has launched a new music industry course which will offer students a degree in management and promotion.
Hook, who as part of the Factory Records story witnessed both the extreme highs and crushing lows of the industry, will act as a mentor to the first students of the course at the University of Central Lancashire, and hopes they will be able to learn from the mistakes of those past experiences.
“What I’ve learned is that life is a balance between idealism and realism,” Hook has said. “One of the great things about education is that it should stop you making mistakes – and I have made a lot of mistakes.”
“The way that Factory worked, it was full of very creative people who never looked after business – and that’s why all those businesses crashed. They were based on very idealistic ideas, very creative, very naive.
“They only rumbled on because Joy Division and New Order’s success paid for all our mistakes. In Factory and the Hacienda – and in many ways in New Order and Joy Division – we never really looked after business.”