The Adaptive Musician: The Case Study of Peter Hook and Graham Massey

Abstract

This chapter examining the careers of two musicians from the North West of England, Peter Hook, known best from his work in Joy Division and New Order and Graham Massey, co-founder of 808 State, whose music careers spans over forty years. The authors try to establish how they managed to sustain such long careers, given the changing fashions in music and the crisis in the recording industry which began in the late 1990s. They pay particular attention to the context in which they started their musical lives, namely the late 1970s-early 1980s in the North of England: time of punk explosion and Manchester becoming a centre of music production, largely thanks to the work of the founder of Factory Records and the club the Hacienda, Tony Wilson. They draw attention to the skill with which both artists and especially Hook exploit their musical legacy, which allow them to have more than one stream of income. While they point to the fact that while Hook and Massey have a competitive edge thanks to their cultural as well as monetary capital, they have to conform to the current ‘rules of the game’. This is reflected, for example, in long concert tours undertaken by Hook in the recent years.