I'd much rather consume that in song form :)

Well, i've searched around for this new updated version of Bernard's book and can't find it anywhere.I tried Amazon, Waterstones, Hive, Guardian books .... the lot.Can't find any trace of it.I'm stumped.


Seriously though, i've been meaning to look at Bernard's book again for a while to see exactly how much of it he devotes to the Hooky issue.Had a look last night - Bernard devotes one 17 page chapter (chapter 21)to it out of the whole book. So just one single chapter out of 22 (i haven't included the 2 appendixes, one of which is about Bernard's hypnosis session with Ian Curtis and the other one Bernard's chat with Alan Wise) .Bernard devoted just 17 pages out of 300.That's not an awful lot at all in my view.Having a flick through i can't find any other areas of the book where Bernard talks about the feud with Hooky but if anyone cares to point me to chapters other than chapter 21 that Bernard talks about the feud then please do let me know.

Honestly, some people make out Bernard spends half the book going on about Hooky.By my maths 17 pages out of 300 is a long way off half the book.

Might have made it more interesting if he did. I mean, it's an OK book and by his own admission Sumner doesn't like disclosing stuff about himself BUT at the beginning he says he's going to tell all and, in my opinion only, he still keeps it vague. Of the two authors Hooky is still winning for me but not for the JD book because I felt there was too many swipes at Sumner in that. For me, the Hacienda book Hooky wrote was the best as it was written just before stuff got really bad so it didn't influence his writing as much. I can only imagine how bitter the forthcoming NO book will be....

IMO the childhood stories are the most interesting part of the book. They give a real insight into Barney's background, and where JD & NO first came from. Like everyone else says he seems to skim over the music stuff rather quickly and actually I think the second half of the book is quite weak.

Didn't think he really overdid the Hooky stuff though, like others have said it was only a chapter and it would've been odd if he'd left it out?

I enjoyed the book.It's a year or two since i read it as i bought it immediately upon its publication.It was quite a big event for me (and quite a few other people i should think) as Bernard had been, you could say, a big idol of mine since the 80s and to finally get his view on things in his own book was of big interest to me.

Yeah i can understand people wanting more details of how they recorded such and such album but i always get the feeling Bernard finds recording albums bloody hard work so he probably would rather forget about the details.I think he approached the book more as a chance to give his story and his view, rather than detailing the mixing techniques they used on P,C&L and Low Life etc!

A few of the stories i already knew or knew but had long forgotten .The tale about him having a fight in the street with some bloke who had almost ran over in a car his girlfriend and kids; i remember reading that in an interview in Melody Maker in about 1991 but had long forgotten.But stories like the incident in a restaurant in Japan when Hooky lost the plot was new to me.

Overall i got the feeling Bernard cares a lot about the music he makes but isn't the sort of artist who wants to bore people rigid talking about how he makes that music.He wanted to focus on a bigger picture - the fun that comes with being in a band that made that music, his relationships with people, his upbringing, his opinion on everything from football to yachting, a fair bit of Bernard's sense of humour thrown in and his ending the book with a positive note.