Plenty of New Order fans are disappointed that founding bassist Peter Hook, who left the band in 2007, isn't taking part in their 2012 world tour, but frontman Bernard Sumner for one insists that he's "glad" Hook is no longer around.

''He's not been very nice," Sumner tells British rag The Guardian, referring to the beef that was started in 2007, when Hook basically announced that New Order were done as a band -- a claim that the band's management denied. "To boil it down to its basic elements, if someone's horrible a lot of the time, you're not sad when they're gone, you're glad," adds Sumner.

When New Order returned to the road last year, Hook had been replaced, and Sumner insists it was for the best. "He wasn't happy in the band -- primarily with me but also, it seems, with almost everyone else," he says.

New Order kick off a fall 2012 North American tour on Oct. 5 in San Francisco, Calif., and will be crossing the continent through an Oct. 23 concert in Toronto, Ontario. The band's current lineup features founding members Bernard Sumner, Stephen Morris and Gillian Gilbert, plus ’00s-era guitarist Phil Cunningham and Bad Lieutenant bassist Tom Chapman, who joined for this latest incarnation.

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