Peter Hook on the Cure, selling out, and that Sunkist ad

Peter Hook has been on a whirlwind promo tour for his newly released memoir Unknown Pleasures: Inside Joy Division. The memoir includes some controversial comments Hooky made about the Cure, claiming they resented New Order/Joy Division because the Cure had, in Hooky's words, "sold out a bit." Last week former Cure drummer/keyboardist Lol Tolhurst posted a statement on Facebook indicating the Cure actually liked New Order and "wanted to help them out" and said the Cure were "the LEAST sellout band possible." Cure fansite Chain of Flowers also called Hook/New Order to the carpet for being sellouts themselves, pointing to the band's Sunkist ad featuring reworked "Blue Monday" lyrics. Which leads up to the following...

During a recent interview on California's Moheak Radio host Lina Lecaro point-blank asked Hooky about his Cure sellout comments. He joked a bit about it with Lecaro, at one point claiming not to remember what he had written, but then ultimately defended his original statement by pointing to the Cure's signing to a major label, insisting, "I do consider that a punk sellout." Then Lecaro asked him about the Sunkist ad. Here's Hooky's response:

"It's very interesting actually because the Sunkist commercial, we got offered 350 thousand dollars to do a lyrical version of "Blue Monday" that mentioned Sunkist...what happened was the guy came down with the lyrics and he was a very nice guy actually and he persuaded Bernard --we were really against it--he persuaded Bernard to have a go at it, so Bernard sang it, we all pissed ourselves laughing and sent the guy on his way...we didn't do the Sunkist advert--we turned it down, the 350 thousand dollars--and the guy went on his way. 

"What happened was at that moment we were recording "Blue Monday" for Quincy Jones to remix, so the tape then got sent to Quincy Jones in L.A. to be remixed, but the guy--the engineer--hadn't wiped the Sunkist vocal...so that when the engineer heard it in L.A. he gave it to a friend with this Sunkist vocal mix on it. So Sunkist actually got their advert for nothing and I think that that's punk...so you can tell the Cure we did it for nothing...we didn't get paid for it, we did it out of stupidity."

Listen to the interview with Peter Hook (Cure/Sunkist comments start at very beginning)



Incidentally, years ago Bernard Sumner told his version of the Sunkist drama during an interview for a documentary.  His comments:

"We got offered--I think it was 200 thousand dollars--to use the music for "Blue Monday" but change lyrics with ones that were flattering towards a particular soft drink, Sunkist...so what we did in the studio was I had the lyrics on the lyric stand, but on the mixing desk I had a big piece of cardboard with "200 thousand dollars" painted on it right in front of me while I was singing the lyrics but I just couldn't stop laughing."

Reportedly the Sunkist ad concept was axed by Sunkist and New Order's management, and the campaign never aired (the video circulating was just a demo for the campaign). However, the audio of "Blue Monday" with pro-fizzy lyrics was indeed released (as Hooky mentioned) in 1995. Interestingly enough, a You Tube commenter claiming to have been involved in the legendary Sunkist campaign posted additional info about the drama recently, indicating that the client didn't end up wanting to use New Order anyway:

"I was the vp and manager of the Sunkist account at their ad agency when this demo was created I think twas 1988. I am still heart broken to this day that we could not get our client to use this music in their campaign. It wasn't about the money, they just had really conservative taste."

Bernard Sumner interview about Sunkist ad



Related stories:

- Brass knuckles! Joy Division dildos! Peter Hook sets New Order drama aside
- The Cure's Robert Smith performs breathtaking impromptu acoustic set
- Joy Division: Interviews