Praise for the series:

All six books revel in the distinct shapes and benefitsof an album, its ability to go places film, prose or sculpture can't reach, while capable of being as awe-inspiringas the best of those mediums—Philadelphia City Paper

Each volume has a distinct, almost militantly personaltake on a beloved long-player . . . the books that haveresulted are like the albums themselves—filled with moments of shimmering beauty, forgivable flaws, and stubborn eccentricity—Tracks Magazine

At their best, these books make rich, thought-provokingarguments for the song collections at hand—The Philadelphia Inquirer

Praise for individual books in the series:

Dusty in Memphis

Warren Zanes ... is so in love with Dusty Springfield'sgreat 1969 adventure in tortured Dixie soul that he'swilling to jump off the deep end in writing about it—Rolling Stone

Zanes uses Dusty in Memphis as a springboard to ruminate eloquendy on the history of Atlantic Records andthe myth of the American South—Tracks Magazine

Forever Changes

Hultkrans obsesses brilliantly on the rock legends' seminal disc—Vanity Fair

The Kinks Are The Village Green Preservation Society

This is the sort of focus that may make you want tobuy a copy, or dig out your old one—The GuardianThis detailed tome leads the reader through the oftenfraught construction of what is now regarded as Davies'smasterpiece—and, like the best books of its ilk, it makesthe reader want to either reinvestigate the album orhear it for the first time—Blender Magazine

Miller makes a convincing case for the Kinks' 1968operetta of English village life as a heartbreaking workof staggering genius—Ray Davies' greatest songwritingtriumph and an unjust commercial dud—with deep research and song-by-song analysis—Rolling Stone

Meat is Murder

Full of mordant wit and real heartache. A dead-on depiction of what it feels like when pop music articulatesyour pain with an elegance you could never hope tomuster. 'Meat is Murder' does a brilliant job of capturinghow, in a world that doesn't care, listening to yourfavorite album can save your life—The PhiladelphiaInquirer

Pernice hits his mark. The well-developed sense of character, plot and pacing shows that he has serious promiseas a novelist. His emotionally precise imagery can bebluntly, chillingly personal—The Boston Weekly DigThe Piper at the Gates of Dawn

John Cavanagh combines interviews with early associates of Pink Floyd and recording-studio nitty-gritty tovividly capture the first and last flush of Syd Barrett'spsychedelic genius on the Floyd's '67 debut—RollingStone

Packed with interviews and great stories . . . will certainly give you a new perspective on Pink Floyd—Erasing Clouds

Unknown Pleasures

Also available in this series:

Dusty in Memphis by Warren ZanesForever Changes by Andrew HultkransHarvest by Sam InglisThe Kinks Are The Village Green

Preservation Society by Andy MillerMeat Is Murder by Joe PerniceThe Piper at the Gates of Dawn by John

CavanaghAbba Gold by Elisabeth VincentelliElectric Lady land by John PerryUnknown Pleasures by Chris Ott

Sign Vthe Times by Mchaelangelo MatosThe Velvet Underground and Nico by Joe

HarvardLet It Be by Steve MatteoLive at the Apollo by Douglas WolkAqualung by Allan MooreOK Computer hy Dai GriffithsLet It Be by Colin MeloyLed Zeppelin IV by Erik DavisArmed Forces by Franklin BrunoExile on Main Street by Bill JanovitzGrace by Daphne BrooksMurmur by J. NiimiPet Sounds by Jim FusilliRamones by Nicholas Rombes

Endtroducing... by Eliot WilderKick Out the jams by Don McLeeseLow by Hugo Wilcken

In the Aeroplane Over the Sea by KimCooper

Music from Big Pink by John NivenPaul's Boutique by Dan LeRoyDoolittle by Ben SisarioThere's a Riot Goin' On by Miles

Marshall LewisStone Roses by Alex GreenBee Thousand'by Marc WoodworthThe Who Sell Out by John DouganHighway 61 Revisited'by Mark

PolizzottiLoveless by Mike McGonigalThe Notorious Byrd Brothers by Ric MenckCourt and Spark by Sean Nelson69 Love Songs by LD BeghtolSongs in the Key of Life by Zeth

LundyUse Your Illusion I and II by Eric

WeisbardDaydream Nation by Matthew

StearnsTrout Mask Replica by Kevin

CourrierDouble Nickels on the Dime by

Michael T. FournierPeople's Instinctive Travels and

the Paths of Rhythm byShawn Taylor

Aja by Don BreithauptRid of Me by Kate SchatzAchtung Baby by Stephen Catanzarite

Forthcoming in this series:Pretty Hate Machine by Daphne CarrLet's Talk About Love by Carl Wilson

and many more . . .

UnknownPleasures

331

Chris Ott

A continuum• • • N E W Y O R K • L O N D O N

2007

The Continuum International Publishing Group Inc80 Maiden Lane, New York, NY 10038

The Continuum International Publishing Group LtdThe Tower Building, 11 York Road, London SE1 7NX

www.continuumbooks.com

Copyright © 2004 by Chris OttAll rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced,

stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by anymeans, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, orotherwise, without the written permission of the publishers.

Printed in the United States of America

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Ott, Chris.Unknown pleasures / Chris Ott.

p. cm. — (33 1/3)ISBN 0-8264-1549-0 (pbk. : alk. paper)

1. Joy Division (Musical group). Unknown pleasures.2. Joy Division (Musical group) I. Title. II. Series.

ML421J696O88 2004782.42166'092'2—dc22

2003027593

Contents

Preface. 18.05.03 xi

Chapter 1. Suffer No Fiction 1

Chapter 2. The Illusion Vanishes 31

Chapter 3. The Record is Alive, as That Which ItRecorded is Alive 61

Chapter 4. His Very Flight is Presencein Disguise 85

Chapter 5. The Helena 105

Postscript. 115

Preface. 18.05.03.

I'm listening to a cover version of "Disorder", thefirst song on Joy Division's debut album, Unknown Pleasures. It was recorded in the auditorium of a Dallas,Texas Community Church in March of 1994 by a bandcalled Bedhead, using a single, carefully positioned microphone. Bedhead wrote monastically austere musicand clothed it in increasingly minimal album sleeves,willfully remaining in a shadow cast in large part by theshort-lived Manchester, England band they pay tributeon this track. Yet there is no opportunism in their proximity: Bedhead's rendition of "Disorder" communicatesthe internalization of a past they can only lament, andwithout crass or naive appropriation of Joy Division'ssignature sound. In nostalgic recognition of the song'senduring power, "Disorder" was only performed a fewtimes over the Dallas band's five-year existence, andalways as a concert finale. As a farewell to their lead

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singer's adoptive home, "Disorder" was the last songBedhead ever performed in Boston, on a frigid springnight in 1998.

Twenty-three years ago today, twenty-three year-old Ian Curtis committed suicide. His singular voicecoated Joy Division's harrowing music in wondrous infinity, but relative to his lamented legacy, Curtis wasunknown in his lifetime, performing only eleven concerts outside his native England, and barely fifty beyondthe city limits of Manchester. His lyrics revealed amounting, innate gift for poetic exposition that—although it was barely realized—could only be calledgenius. Initially naive, stoic observations on societal failure gave way to a crushing fatalism as Curtis turned hisunwavering, unforgiving gaze inward. This flagellantself-analysis brought forth anguished verse so nakedlyhonest, it was impossible for those closest to him—distracted by possibility or alienated in its wake—torecognize his words as a literal cry for help.

Decades later, we continue to pine for so tragic aloss. As online communication exposes the true desiresof pop music fans—allowing them to talk amongstthemselves—Joy Division are more and more revealedas one of the most significant and renowned bands ofall time. No longer the elitist herald of critics andtastemakers, their music has become a rite of passagefor anyone even casually interested in the histories of

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punk and alternative rock. Though this fame is due inno small part to the eternally romantic allure of suicideand the latter-day mainstream success of New Order,Joy Division's music has defied imitation, and continuesto confound listeners with its unparalleled gravity andgrandeur.

Acknowledgments

Unknown Pleasures began as a brief essay titled AnIdeal For Listening, originally published by Pitchforkme-dia.com and subsequently reprinted without my permission (or complaint) by the comprehensive Joy Division/New Order fan site Worldinmotion.net (they inexplicably re-titled the piece "His Story"). Written in a fewdays, the essay was intended as an overview of Joy Division's career, but was not at all comprehensive of mythoughts. All the same, it was exhausting, as the historyat hand has been retroactively filled with so much misdirection, exaggeration, and marginal journalism—oftenby authors prohibitively taken with the band's mystique.Perhaps that's contentious, but one thing invariablymissing from discussions of Joy Division's work is perspective, and only time can lend that. However objectiveone aims to be, and however distant they are from

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

the story, Joy Division's music is potent as any drug:overwhelming, stupefying, and certainly addictive. I haddoubts about the toll a longer examination would takeon me, but I couldn't turn down the invitation of Continuum's expert, corralling editor, the ever-supportiveDavid Barker.

Chapter 1.

Suffer No Fiction

The dramatic, distant work of Joy Division enduresas one of rock and roll's most challenging curiosities.Forming in the wake of England's punk rock explosion,Joy Division were known for a few minutes as the StiffKittens, for a few months as Warsaw, and for an eternityas the authors of spectral anthems like "Love Will TearUs Apart", "Transmission", and the sonorous "Atmosphere". Their beginnings aren't particularly extraordinary, but the band's furious evolution over the courseof just three years is testament to a fearless imagination,purposeful single-mindedness and innovative spirit aspotent as any in the history of popular music.

The daring of Jim Morrison and Iggy Pop pointedup rock's ability to challenge more than just a concert

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hall audience: young New Yorkers embraced their abandon and found freedom in a sneering disregard for deluded, detached pop stars. Frustrated by malaise and byAmerica's bi-polar postwar conservatism and paranoia,a tattered, Bowery-bred poetry of futility flowered inthe mid-1970s. Andy Warhol's Factory band the VelvetUnderground had split, but their depressed anthemsprovided a much darker template for rock and roll,inspiring Richard Hell, the New York Dolls and—moredirectly—Television, but it was the all-energy Ramones,with their leather jackets, dirty jeans and postmodernrock and roll irony that came to define punk in thepopular consciousness. The sped-up, zoned-out BeachBoys and Ronettes covers on their self-titled debut album arrived in the UK in 1976, and acted as an instruction manual for both the Sex Pistols and the Clash. ButThe Ramones' tongue-in-cheek, way-oh pop had graveimplications when mixed with politics and screamed inBritish dancehalls, where there was literally no futureto hope for.

Punk rock instantly divided England, simultaneouslyidentifying and embodying the nation's economic failure. Armed with outrage and their minder MalcolmMcLaren, the blushing brats in the Sex Pistols hastenedto celebrate ideological anarchy. As Todd Rundgrensuccinctly put it in the documentary series The Historyof Rock AT Roll, their "Cash from Chaos" ethos fanned

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from spark to inferno because "England was a) muchmore fashion conscious than America, and b) poor."With nothing to lose, they had everything to gain.

The future members of Joy Division were raised ina decaying industrial landscape of vacant chemical plantsand mild-to-severe poverty, and though the Sex Pistolswere equally if not more impoverished, in London theyhad access to a social network of wealthy backers. Theirmetropolitan locus lent them a sense of urgency: thesustaining, center-of-the-universe belief that what theywere doing could change their world. Excluding low-grade celebrity supporter Tony Wilson, the players inJoy Division's story lived relatively disconnected livesin Manchester, a city that bred self-sustenance and prideas virtues. To Mancunians, what went on in Londonwas fit for critique, not sacrosanct; the very first Londonpunk groups overcame this ingrained doubt thanks tofury, originality and bombast. Before infamy would tainttheir initially untouched, anarchic light, the Pistolsbrought hope to audiences the same way their predecessors had in America. Their obnoxious, exuberant decon-struction of rock and roll inspired peers who wouldcreate even more remarkable music.

Like many anecdotes in this famous story, it's endlessly retold that Peter Hook bought a bass guitar for£35 the day after the Sex Pistols' fabled June 4th 1976concert at the Manchester Free Trade Hall, having no

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idea how to play it. Though we still marvel at the noisehe made with the instrument, the tale endures not onlybecause of his work in Joy Division, but because itunderscores an event so significant, it not only introduced the Factory Records biopic 24 Hour Party People,it spawned its own book, / Swear I Was There, lateradapted for a Granada TV documentary. (Approximately 42 people were at the Pistols' first ManchesterFree Trade Hall gig, though thousands would laterclaim attendance.) "It was absolutely bizarre, the mostshocking thing I have ever seen in my life," recalledHook in the New Music Express. Included in the spottycrowd: Bernard Sumner and Peter Hook, their futuremanager Rob Gretton, sound engineer and fledglingproducer Martin Hannett, Manchester's Granada television reporter Tony Wilson, and his then-best mate,actor Alan Erasmus.

The Pistols, just weeks into their career and not yetmedia pariahs, returned the next month, allowing theband that brought them to Manchester in the firstplace—Pete Shelley and Howard Devoto's underdeveloped Buzzcocks—to officially debut, on July 20th (exactly one week after the publication of the first UKpunk 'zine, Mark Perry's Sniffin' Glue). It was the firsttime Ian Curtis saw the Sex Pistols, and like Sumner

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and Hook, he was irrevocably altered (and perhaps fordifferent reasons: the gig descended into a Cockney v.Mancunian row, sides charging at each other duringand long after the Sex Pistols' set). Where surprise andshock greeted a few dozen curious and/or clued-in musicfans (and probably an equal number of clueless punters)on June 4th, the July 20th gig was an event, a propositionthat divided and energized Manchester's youth.

Punk as a national movement didn't gel into an undeniable, palpable phenomenon until a month later, inAugust 1976. The Damned, Nick Lowe, and proto-punk pub-rockers Eddie & The Hot Rods all performedat the Mont De Marsan Punk Festival on the 5th, aconcert Ian Curtis and his wife Deborah—both teenagers—journeyed to see three weeks before their first wedding anniversary. Deborah Curtis details their trip inher memoir Touching From a Distance (required readingfor anyone interested in Joy Division's history), butthat French festival was eclipsed by what's become thedefining event in punk rock's developing year, the August 29th 1976 Screen On The Green gig in Islington,featuring the Clash, Buzzcocks and Sex Pistols. By thetime Bernard Sumner and Peter Hook met Ian Curtisat the Pistols' triumphant Electric Circus shows in December, those tattered London maniacs had shocked

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all of Manchester on Tony Wilson's So It Goes varietyprogram, and "punk rock" was becoming a fire threatening to burn down British society.

Simplicity, suspicion and selfishness were implicit inpunk rock, and proved its undoing, as the primary players descended into stubbornness and absurdity atbreakneck speed; around them, bands jumped on thespiked leather bandwagon, using this new freedom asan excuse to exploit, smashing at their instruments ina self-absorbed bid for fame, money and girls. The bandthat became Joy Division grew disinterested in suchuncreative chaos and aggression; whatever fame theystrove for would be justified in their music.

Sumner and Hook had been practicing together fora few months, Bernard having fashioned a makeshiftamplifier out of his grandmother's phonograph. Curtisjoined their nascent "band" as singer after their December 1976 meeting, but they wouldn't find a properdrummer or even settle on a name until the day of theirfirst show, a full six months later.

The potential early moniker Stiff Kittens has perhapsbeen taken too seriously over the years by fans andcritics, thanks in large part to joking references fromFactory Records and the band itself. As the story goes,a woman living above the Buzzcocks supposedly shouted"This room's full of stiff kittens!" after her cat delivereda lifeless brood; front-man Pete Shelley and Buzzcocks'

UNKNOWN PLEASURES

manager Richard Boon found it hilarious, and sworethey'd use it, offering it to Ian Curtis, who had beenpoking around the studio during the December 28thsessions for their learning Spiral Scratch EP. Curtisdidn't even have a band yet, so it's entirely possiblethe whole thing was a joke Boon and/or Shelley wereplaying, a way of—as the British say—taking the pissout of their young friend. Peter Hook recalls their debt:"We had a meeting with Pete Shelley in a pub inBroughton to ask him how we should form a band. Andhe told us."

The fledgling group, with untrained friend TonyTabac on drums, were billed as Stiff Kittens by Boonin advance of their support slot for the Buzzcocks' May29th 1977 Electric Circus gig. The day of the gig, thegroup indignantly demanded Boon change the marquee,disgusted with such an unserious name that, more importantly, wasn't their own creation. They had alreadydecided to take the name Warsaw, which at the veryleast "wasn't 'the' somebody," as Bernard later put it.

Mancunian musician, critic, author and journalistPaul Morley was a fervent listener and passionate consumer of all things pop in his youth, and wrote an even-handed (if not generous) critique of Warsaw's first gigfor Britain's premiere rock weekly, the New MusicalExpress. Already hugely involved in the Manchester music scene—he'd been running his own fanzine and had

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played with a few wanting punk acts like the gimmickyNegatives (before forming the commercially and creatively triumphant Art of Noise in 1982)—Morley's encouraging, step-by-step dissection of Warsaw wouldhelp the band move beyond their limited beginnings.He had yet to succumb to the band and singer he wouldbecome inextricably linked with over the years, butwhen compared with other reviews of the gig, commentsof Morley's like "There's an elusive spark of dissimilarityfrom the newer bands that suggests they've plenty toplay around with" are positively beaming. As can beexpected, reaction from mainstream writers was lessforgiving, and far outweighed Morley's curiosity. IanWood's bitterly dismissive article in Sounds has beenquoted most often, referring to Bernard as a "refugeefrom a public school" and noting that Curtis had "noimpact." In fact, the only compliment he paid the groupwas a nod to Peter Hook's leather biker cap.

Ian Curtis would come to intimidate audiences withhis frantic, burning stage presence, but his understandable early insecurity and Warsaw's Nazi-era outfits—leather pants and 1940s moustaches—are embarrassingin retrospect. Friend and initial drummer Tony Tabacwas at odds with these poses and left in late June, instantly replaced by Steve Brotherdale, who improvedthe band's power hugely, though his punk whirlwindstyle limited their dynamic.

UNKNOWN PLEASURES

Warsaw played repeatedly at two Manchester pubsthroughout June of 1977: Rafters, and The Squat, adilapidated University hovel located on Devas St. offOxford road (today, Devas St. is little more than a driveway leading to the Contact Theatre and its Deluxe Bar).The band's evolution from naive, politically bent punkwas rapid: of their earliest material, "Failures"—whichoriginally included the parenthetic appendix "(of theModern Man)"—is the band's most egregious musicaldebt, a dead ringer for the first-ever punk single, "NewRose" by the Damned. Still, a focused, barreling energymakes up for the similarity, in contrast with most ofthe other, comparatively rote Warsaw tracks from thisera. The almost hardcore stomp "At a Later Date" isthe only memorable song from their first batch, andwound up being their first released recording. Like allof Warsaw's early tracks, the first studio recording of"At a Later Date" is widely available on a suspect butsomehow ubiquitous compact disc, featuring a baby'sface on the cover.

The Portuguese record label Movie Play Gold hasbeen steadily repressing a Warsaw CD since 1994.Though the sub-amateur artwork runs contrary to Factory Records' design legacy, the recording informationand track list are entirely accurate, down to the inclusionof Steve Brotherdale, who was ejected from the groupright after their first sessions. By all accounts this is

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a bootleg, exploiting loosely defined European rights:Zomba took charge of the global rights to Joy Division'scatalog once they signed to Factory, but these no-fidelitydemo tracks were never retroactively absorbed into theirholdings. It's not known whether they were sold toIntermusic SA before Zomba knew of them, but certainly, the members of Joy Division would not havereleased such incongruous material, and even FactoryRecords—who've released a fair share of questionablepost-mortem "archives" from their roster—would haveto concede these tracks are commercially unmarketable,even as history. For Joy Division's most dedicated fans,however, Warsaw is an invaluable document, combiningthe two unreleased sessions recorded under that name:the May 1978 demos for RCA—which we'll come toshortly—and their first session, five songs they producedthemselves on July 18th 1977 at Pennine Sound Studiosin Oldham.

Warsaw DemosRecorded July 18 1977 at Pennine Sound Studios,Oldham. Self-produced. [Never officially released. Available on the Movie Play Gold compactdisc Warsaw]

At a Later DateGutz

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Inside the LineThe KillYou're No Good For Me

The performances here are totally amateurish. BernardSumner's guitar tracks benefit from distortion, maskinghis inaccurate playing, but Peter Hook's bass work issloppy and behind the beat, sounding as though it wasrecorded direct to tape from his amp. Though thesetechnical failings can be blamed on an urgency born offinancial limitations, no manner of sonic finesse couldhelp Hook's playing at this stage—he'd yet to developthe high-fret style he's now known for, and his clumsylow-end lines on this demo are a muddy mess. Critiquing these run-throughs is needlessly severe: the sessionlasted just half a day, and was only intended to help thenascent group get gigs. Each member walked out withhis own cassette copy, and no one's sure what happenedto the badly damaged master reels they recorded on.Deborah Curtis is sure the Warsaw bootleg is takenfrom a cassette copy, not the masters, and in all likelihood she's right: a no-name band in Warsaw's financialsituation was probably relegated to loaning out frequently recycled "economy" reels at the studio, andthese could have been recorded over within days. Fortheir marginal empirical worth, these songs document

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the heavy metal sound Warsaw began with, and thoughthey were all shelved—indefinitely—within a fewmonths, they point toward two of Joy Division's mostpowerful songs, "Shadowplay" and "Dead Souls".

"Gutz" was originally intended as the band's show-starting anthem, Curtis screaming "Warsaw!!" at thetop of his lungs, calling the band to action for one oftheir most thuggish Motorhead/Sex Pistols hybrids.The lyrics are a grotesque, sexist hodgepodge of condemnation, savaging everyone from female pub-goersto his wife as controlling maternal figures and "chictarts." Curtis's ego and arrogance comes to bear in lineslike, "Blame bad things on me/ Whatever you do/ WhenI come home/ My world is different from you." Youhope that a measure of third-person imagination is atwork here, but—as detailed in Touching From a Distance—Curtis's teenage marriage proved to be a frequentsource of tension and hostility, though by Deborah'saccount this was his doing. A dramatist to the last, Curtisoften espoused a dour home life when out with hismates, somewhat cruelly objectifying his unknowingyoung wife as the embodiment of stations he consideredbeneath him: the domestic role-playing of marriage andan unremarkable working class life.

Vague and paranoiac, "The Kill" is only notable forits heavily staged and pub-baiting chorus: "It's a-nother,'nother, 'nother, 'nother kill!" The song would be re-

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worked to an unrecognizable degree with all new lyrics,and though it audibly evolved from its earlier namesake,the April 1979 Strawberry Studios recording of "TheKill" could have been called anything. Hardly a successeven when revamped, that second version of "The Kill"wasn't released until the posthumous Still double-LPof August 1981.

The direst moment in Warsaw's formative catalog isunquestionably the head-bobbing pub metal dud "Insidethe Line", featuring macho Oi chants of "Hey! You!"after each verse. It's a level of standard rock riffingdifficult to reconcile for anyone familiar with the band'sbrilliant later work, but it's also the strongest evidenceof just how dramatically Joy Division would change overthe next year.

Warsaw had spent the better part of six monthsworking up a set of by-the-numbers punk material fortheir demo, but soon after laying down their learningtracks, the band became fed up with the genre's stiflingboundaries, and the increasing fraternity of other bandsout to enjoy status more than music. Having played toa few relatively large pub audiences, they met with moreexperienced musicians and fans, and started concentrating on new sounds rather than the rock and roll clichessomeone like their drummer was out to enjoy. Immediately after recording the Warsaw demo, Steve Brother-dale joined a second local band, The Panik, today

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notable only for their manager: local DJ Rob Gretton.Brotherdale attempted to lure Ian Curtis away fromWarsaw during August of 1977, having him sing alongto The Panik's single, but unsurprisingly, baritone vocals didn't work over post-pub rock. Soon after, Brotherdale was quite literally ditched by Warsaw, when theyasked him to check on an ostensibly flat tire. A glamrock hangover, a braggart and namedropper who regaled pub-goers with tall tales of life on the road inAmerica—claiming he'd opened for Kiss—Brotherdalenever fit in with Warsaw, and once he'd tried to stealIan Curtis away, his boorish behavior wasn't so easilylaughed off. Still, his acquaintance with Rob Grettonwas an inroad for a band with few connections, andthough Warsaw weren't in a position to take on management in 1977, they were making a name for themselvesin the tiny Manchester scene.

For most of the summer and fall of 1977, Curtisholed up in a triangular room of his and Deborah'sMacclesfield apartment, which he'd painted sky blue.He smoked Marlboro Reds and wrote constantly. Hislyrics began to move toward more nostalgic, linearstorytelling, but, passionate as they were, his ideas werestill born of a naive, black and white view of the world:his condemnations, reproaches and preaching are shallow and obvious. Barely into his twenties, however, hismelodrama is forgivable: artistic divinity was unspoiled

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in the heart of this record collector, and his first flightswere buoyed in equal part by adoration of his heroes'egomaniacal conviction, a desire to attain their success,and the fear he'd fail in this mission.

Curtis had the brio and drive to impress peoplewhose wisdom he envied. Never obsequious or fawning,he shot his mouth off and stuck to his guns, and if hisopinions were occasionally too brash—or flatly wrong—his directness, earnestness and fervor always intriguedhis elders, even if it meant laughing him off. Demandingto be heard, refusing to accept that anyone else shouldbe talked about when he was obviously more talented,Curtis accosted or offended a number of musicians asWarsaw climbed the stunted ladder of Manchester'slate-70s music scene.

"I just thought he was a pretty sort of intelligent,happy, funny guy," recalled Bernard Sumner. "Hewasn't depressive at all; he could get on a soapbox aboutthings though, if you got him on the right subject.He'd go off and he'd rant and he'd be like—dare sayit?—Hitler making a speech. That was the only thing,you had to be careful not to light his fuse."

Recalling an occasion when he approached Gus Gangrene of bland Mancunian also-rans The Drones (anact initially backed—and produced—by Paul Morley),Curtis summarized his overzealous campaigning: "Ithought I would easily be able to ingratiate myself. I

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mean, I was very naive ... I didn't know whether thatparticular band was really any good or not, but theywere up there, onstage, doing it. I was really in awe ofthat." By all accounts, Curtis wanted to make his mark,but he was a know-it-all who knew very little by thestandards of many chic contemporaries. Insecure aboutany possible ignorance, he read constantly—heavy philosophical and literary works sure to lend severe opinions—and listened to the most challenging soundscoming out of the hyperactive late-70s underground.

Throbbing Gristle formed in London at the start ofthe 1976 punk explosion, but they've been comparatively overlooked in the wake of the Sex Pistols' moreaccessible tunes and media-friendly daring. Essentiallyresponsible for Industrial music as it came to beknown—and it wasn't so much music at that point asgrating, overpowering noise—Throbbing Gristle incorporated prostitutes, pornography and images of the holocaust in a detached all-is-art debacle. Celebrated bythe "Bromley contingent" (who would go on to formSiouxsie & The Banshees and Generation X),Throbbing Gristle released their debut LP Second Annual Report in the wake of a politically decried October18th 1976 concert at the ICA in London, featuring allmanner of "unseemly" imagery. The troupe broke moraland artistic rather than political or social boundaries;they were barely real, impossible to figure, and were

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often dismissed as mere shock art by confounded, closeted observers. (To be fair, they were more simplyconsidered "shit" by an equal number of disinterestedwitnesses.) The Sex Pistols tapped into the understoodimage of a rock and roll band—guitar, bass, drums,superstar lead singer—which excited Ian Curtis (andthe rest of Britain's youth) immensely, but as he exploredmusic further, Curtis became deeply fascinated by thebutton-pushing bravado of Throbbing Gristle's inargu-ably vile, controversial imagery. Warsaw's early flyersowe much to Throbbing Gristle's stylized postwarnihilism.

Diving headlong into shock art and frequently donning a wartime trench coat, Curtis penned the overt"Novelty", which trumpets the band's shift in focus:"Can't rest on your laurels now/ Not when you've gotnone/ You'll find yourself in a gutter/ Right back whereyou came from." The next verse begins too honestly:"Someone told me being in the know is the main thing."Curtis is pushing himself to contend with the present,to confront his fears, but the verse quoted here resonateseven more personally with regard to Joy Division'sguitarist.

The street where Bernard Sumner was raised in "old"Salford (Lower Broughton) had been collapsing in onitself for years, engulfed by a huge chemical plant andlittered with its waste. Yet amid the environmental squa-

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lor, he enjoyed "a strong sense of community" that waseventually demolished along with the neighborhood:his family was moved to a tower block, like so manyduring the depressed 1970s. Around the time Joy Division were getting together, he was already stuffing envelopes, wasting away his teenage life for a meagerpaycheck. Perhaps even more than Ian Curtis, Sumnerhad a real insight into the bleak possibilities that layahead, and the dashed happiness of his adolescenceproved a powerful motivator. Aside from acknowledginghis mutable surname—Sumner has steadfastly refusedto comment on this formative hobby beyond citing "personal reasons"—"Barney" (as he's known to familiarsand cloying journalists) is foggy on Joy Division's origins. He often refuses to acknowledge that Joy Divisionwere ever known as Warsaw, which is perhaps thestrangest contradiction in any account of the band'spast. Flyers, master reels and his other band membershave all been quoted—even in interviews dating fromthe 70s—referring to the group as Warsaw, until theirlate 1977 name change. Sumner was posing with theTeutonic stage name "Albrecht" during the Warsawand early Joy Division eras; it "sounded German," whichmeant it sounded intimidating to late-70s England, butit was altogether harmless: he had worked in an officewith a printing machine named for Albrecht Pfister,

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the Bavarian who produced the very first illustratedbook, Edelstein.

Warsaw found new and instantly permanent drummer Stephen Morris through adverts in August 1977,just weeks after kicking out Steve Brotherdale. With hisfamously recounted inspiration to "be a drum machine,"Morris would prove a catalyst for the band's maturation.Unlike most drummers, Morris was quiet between songsduring rehearsals, which meant the band could hearwhat they were playing, not to mention what they werethinking. Morris had a wicked sense of humor, and hadattended the same school as Ian Curtis (he was a yearor two Ian's junior). Curtis remembered him as part ofa group of troublemakers briefly suspended for drinkingcough syrup—an activity he could readily identify with,as Curtis too had a history of teenage experimentation.This culminated in a stomach-pumping overdose ofchlorpromazine hydrochloride, or Largactil. Phenothi-azines like Largactil—including the more recognizableAmerican drug Thorazine—are used to treat extremeemotional disorders such as schizophrenia, and even atprescribed doses can cause seizures and facial ticks. It'stempting to link this to Curtis's later bouts of cripplingepilepsy, but in Touching From a Distance, his wife Deborah recalls a few minor incidents that would indicateIan had low-grade, undiagnosed epilepsy since his early

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teens (out of body sensations, and one specific collapsein 1972 after a concert featuring a strobe light).

The solidified lineup of Curtis, Sumner, Hook andMorris played some early dates—most notably on August 27th at Eric's in Liverpool, their first concert outside Manchester—but these were really warm up gigs:Warsaw's new intentions were officially announced during the closing weekend of Manchester's most important punk-era nightclub, the Electric Circus. On theevenings of October 1st and 2nd 1977, just about everyband in Manchester played a set at this weekend-longfarewell to the Circus, an event recorded for posterityand released on Richard Branson's Virgin imprint. Onlya select handful (including The Fall and The Drones)made it onto Short Circuit: Live at the Electric Circus, a10" compilation of these performances released longafter the fact. Warsaw were supposed to play on thefirst night, but they were bumped at the last minute, asthe gig was overbooked. Their version of "At a LaterDate" from October 2nd benefits from the tension andfrustration of this delay, and as a stand-alone track nicelysums up the band's formative "punk" year. Sumner (asAlbrecht) famously bellows, "You all forget RudolfHess!" at the beginning of the track, in reference to theenfeebled Nazi war criminal then languishing withoutproper medical attention in a Spandau prison followinga massive heart attack. Sumner's intention was to chide

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people, to remind postwar Europe and England of theircruel treatment of Hess as a scapegoat, a lazy pat onthe back assuring them that at least one man was payingfor the crimes of his peers. But Sumner's political jabwas misconstrued as sympathy, when—thanks to delays—Short Circuit wasn't released until eight monthslater, hitting the shelves in June 1978 just as the bandwere mailing out their controversially sheathed debutEP, An Ideal for Living.

In November 1977, a shaggy, fame-hungry band ofLondon rockers calling themselves Warsaw Paktflooded shops and posted bills with their gimmick LPNeedle Time. With the considerable financial supportof Island Records, the album was recorded, mastered,produced, packaged and distributed in one day, from10 p.m. on Saturday, November 26th to 7 p.m. onSunday. Thanks to advertising saturation, it sold over5000 copies in its first week of release, but in a blatantdisplay of Island's intent to set a Guinness Book WorldRecord, Warsaw Pakt were unceremoniously droppeda week later. Guitarist Andy Colquhoun remembers,"We were warned it was all experimental. They treatedus well, but they didn't hear us. It was a bit like beinga contestant on a game show."

In the wake of this fiasco, Warsaw—already debatingnew directions—changed their name to Joy Division.It was an appalling choice given the term's definition,

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and it's only thanks to the strength of their later workthat the band's use of Nazi imagery can be forgiven.To many people, the new name implied that Warsawcould only have referred to the European capital wherePolish Jews were massacred after rising up against theirtormentors. It's an unfortunate coincidence, as the bandalways said they got the name from "Warszawa", anatmospheric instrumental track off of David Bowie'scritically adored 1977 album Low. (Erroneous releasedate information has led a few recent authors to speculate that this story is a cover-up, but Low was availablefrom January 14th 1977, well before Warsaw tooktheir name.)

The phrase Joy Division—as well as a spoken wordpassage Ian Curtis recites during "No Love Lost"—comes from Yehiel Dinur's House of Dolls, a deeply disturbing account of the buildings where subjectivelyselected, "racially pure" women were held near concentration camps and military outposts, and abused unspeakably at the command's leisure (the racialqualification was of course a complete fiction: manyJewish women were held in the same sort of barracks).While the band may have felt they were empathizingwith, or calling attention to perhaps the greatest atrocitythe Nazis committed, the name Joy Division referredto an aberration so offensive, it probably shouldn't have

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been associated with something so slight as pop music.Such is the conviction and intensity of youth.

Bernard Sumner: "There was a bomb shelter in ourbackyard. There were underground shelters at the endof our street where we used to play. All the films onTV when we were kids were about the war. So whenyou grew up and understood what had gone on, you werenaturally pretty interested in it. It was unfashionable totalk about it—you had to drop the subject—but I didn'tthink it should have been dropped and I think that waswhere our interest came from. It had been a decadebefore we were born—not that long ago."

In David Nolan's / Swear I Was There, Peter Hookis a bit less revisionist in his nostalgia: "Me and Bernardused to go buy Scout shirts and paint swastikas on themand put SS badges on and all that crap. God, youwouldn't be allowed anywhere near it now!"

In 1977, Ian Curtis was firing stern political salvosat the tall shadows of WWII. He preached damnationfor the nation's head-in-the-sand retreat into mod cons,and a postwar conservatism that proved to be England'sdownfall. The first proper Joy Division release, a seven-inch EP called An Ideal for Living, was designed to offendthese ostriches: emblazoned with a Nazi-era Germanicfont and extraneous umlauts over the vowels of theirinstruments (e.g. Peter Hook: Bass), its cover image of

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an Aryan Youth drummer boy was taken from a vintagepropaganda poster. Designed by Bernard Sumner/"Albrecht", the interior foldout featured a grainy, blackand white photograph of a Nazi foot soldier pointinghis automatic rifle at a small Jewish child whose handsare raised in surrender. While hardly as grotesque asanything Throbbing Gristle purported, this morose,grieving invocation of the holocaust was hard to distinguish from the twisted crosses worn by Sid Vicious andthe Pistols' shock troops.

Nazi imagery was already falling out of favor withinthe punk community as a racist National Front beganmarching in the streets of England's major cities, butJoy Division's early dares were only intended to raiseeyebrows. Without becoming an apologist for their boyish viciousness, it's easy to see these romantic, dramaticyoung men were—like the original punks who co-optedthe more blatant swastika—concerned with the forbidden aspect of Nazi Germany, the terrible specter ofthe fascist engine that threatened to lay waste to theirhomeland. These poses offered the press a bleedingcutlet, but the band weren't prepared with a conciseexplanation, and came out the worse for it in interviews.Of course, they sheepishly blamed this on the "idiotsin the press," which only made writers more eager torip them to shreds. Reviewers condemned Joy Division'scareless, blatant employment of Nazi memes. It's one

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thing if your entire aim is to shock, but Joy Division'srelatively straightforward music was hardly so theoretical or conceptual as to suggest heady academic subtext.To critics, their looks and layouts reeked of affectation,a juvenile misappropriation of something they couldnever understand well enough to trumpet as inspiration.

An Ideal For Living was financed by a faked £400furniture loan Ian Curtis divined from his and Deborah'sbank manager. Everyone concerned—including Ian'swife—helped assemble the sleeves in their Macclesfieldhome, but the boxy, dry sound on this initial, self-produced run of 1000 7" EPs was a crushing defeat for theband. In October 1978, when the first printing wasalmost sold out, the band remastered and repressed theEP on 12", in part prompted by the discovery that thename they'd chosen for their first "record label"—Enigma—was in use by a legitimate American imprint(bands were long in the habit of inventing phony recordcompanies to stamp on their self-released material inorder to lend a more professional look). Once the trackswere remastered properly, the band were elated to findthat clear, if not excellent sound was buried beneath thebotched, muddy mastering that dulled the original 7".

An Ideal For LivingRecorded December 1977 at Pennine Sound Studios, Oldham. Self-produced. [7" vinyl pressed

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January 1978, released in June 1978. Remastered12" reissued in October 1978. Included in full onboth the 1988 Substance compilation and 1997Heart and Soul anthology.]

WarsawNo Love LostLeaders of MenFailures (of the Modern Man)

The brief "Warsaw" serves as nominal recognition oftheir recent past, and along with "Failures" marks thebest and last straight punk tracks the band would record."3-5-0-1-2-5 Go!" Curtis shouts, using a concentrationcamp identification number as a morbid alternative to"1-2-3-4!" House of Dolls—the novel that inspired somuch of Ian's reproach at this time—was based on thediary of a captive Jewish woman, and written undernovelist and holocaust survivor Yehiel Dinur's "Kazet-nik" or "inmate" number, 135633; Curtis got the number used in "Warsaw" from elsewhere in the book. Aswith all the tracks on An Ideal For Living, "Warsaw" isstill lyrically bound to simple observations—accusationsof external falsity, declarations of internal integrity—butit's melodically much darker than initial tracks like "Ata Later Date" or "The Kill", thanks to the Sabbath-style

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heavy metal riffs that informed Joy Division's evolvingsound. For whatever relative inequity the song weathersalongside their later catalog, the bleak and contemptuous energy of "Warsaw" is more exciting than most ofthe pedestrian and topically poppy punk tracks otheracts were peddling in 1978. Its pulsing tempo pointstoward "Digital", the first song they'd record for FactoryRecords and the definitive bridge between Joy Division's punk roots and a more captivating future.

"Leaders of Men" is less appealing, and is certainlythe weakest of these four tracks, bogged down by fatuouscouplets typical of Curtis's earliest lyrics: "When youwalk down the street/ And the sound's not so sweet/And you wish you could hide/ Maybe go for a ride." Itdoes offer his most powerful, tonally accurate singingto this point, during the much better last verse. Thea typically open major guitar chords in the chorus soundsomething like a younger, ascendant London band, TheCure (whose records Rob Gretton refused to play whileDJ-ing at The Squat: see Tony Wilson's excellent 24Hour Party People for fond remembrance of his stubbornness). Joy Division would go on to open for TheCure a handful of times over the coming months, andhad an immeasurable influence on Robert Smith.

The second track on An Ideal For Living is really thebeginning of Joy Division proper. As much they cameto be known for funereal dirges and morbid, despondent

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anthems, the swerving, almost funk tempo of "No LoveLost" is a perfect example of how their more drivingpost-punk songs snapped tightly on the beat. Much ofthis is due to Stephen Morris's precise drumming: unlikeplanted players, Morris's entire frame drove into eachbeat, casting off pints of sweat and striking from theelbow with remarkable power from such a rail thinphysique. Sounding something like Wire, but not asstrictly bound to the blues scales of Pink Flag, the song'sintroductory measures also point up another frequentcomparison leveled against Joy Division: their similarityto The Doors, in this case, "Riders on The Storm". Ina September 1979 interview recently made available asan appendix to The Complete BBC Recordings, StephenMorris laughs off the comparison—or at least the notionthat it should be damning—revealing that "Barney an'Hooky ain't even 'eard The Doors!" While there's noreason to doubt this, it's undeniable that Ian Curtis washugely influenced by Jim Morrison's stage presence,and loved The Doors' music. Moreover, Peter Hookhas since admitted that the band covered "Riders onThe Storm" in rehearsals, though in their inexperienceit never sounded anything like the original.

Disregarding minutiae where influence is concerned,"No Love Lost" deals most directly with Ian's holocaustobsession with its passage from House of Dolls, but hisbookend lyrics—like most from this period of work—are

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about impatience, expectation and disappointment, condemning: "You've been seeing things in darkness notin learning/ Hoping that the truth will pass." There'sa specifically fascinating moment of pentameter immediately following this line, when Curtis sings "No lifeunderground/ Wasting never changing/ Wishing thatthis day won't last." The first three words are deliveredwith such darting, barked breath as to highlight thefunk rhythm underlying Bernard's triplet guitar accent,mixed hard left. It's also the first moment of real sonicexploration, with double-delay on Curtis's vocals andBernard's harmonic slide down the strings. Joy Divisionhad taken their punk phase to its limits, and "No LoveLost" is the first hint of where they'd take things in thecoming months.

By this time, the political nerve was already beingpinched down in London. The band were, for the mostpart, unaware of the company with which they werebeing compared, and wisely opted to abandon such distractions in favor of perfecting their monolithic decon-struction of rock and roll. As they retreated into bleak,amorphous anonymity, Curtis began to focus on morephilosophical, expressive lyrics. The more the band appeared to succeed—the more positive press and popularity they garnered—the more seriously Curtis tookhimself and his work.

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Chapter 2.

The Illusion Vanishes

To the considerable frustration of Manchester'sManpower Services Commission, Ian Curtis oftenmissed work. As it happened, his absenteeism workedto his advantage, when the record store owners he'dbeen skipping shifts to pump for Iggy Pop posters calledwith a proposition for his struggling band.

The events surrounding Joy Division's brief flirtation with RCA Records have been inaccurately reportedfrom the beginning, perhaps in an attempt to glossover the disastrous pairing, an utter embarrassment foreveryone involved. UK music industry fixture and latter-day Lisa Stansfield manager Derek Brandwood was running a northern RCA promo office in Piccadilly Plazain the late 70s, and often entertained Curtis on his

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illegitimate days off, in all likelihood humoring theslightly skewed up-and-comer (at least initially). In early1978, Curtis had given him a pre-release copy of theIdeal For Living EP, which although far too rough toreally excite Brandwood, put Joy Division in his line ofsight. Soon after, Brandwood's chief employee, northern soul DJ Richard Searling, brought him a strange butprobably lucrative offer from his friend John Anderson.Anderson had just started a new soul label called Grapevine with Bernie Binnick, the owner of a classic American rock and roll imprint, Swan (a label with manyclaims to fame, foremost among them the U.S. distribution of The Beatles' first single "She Loves You"). Bin-nick was quixotically looking to break a British NewWave band in America via a cover of Richard Flowers's"Keep On Keepin' On", most famously recorded byN.F. Porter. Brandwood thought Joy Division, withtheir singer's deep voice, was the best option in hisregion, and put Anderson and Searling together withIan Curtis.

Curtis ignored the overtly Mephistophelian intentbehind their offer, and though Peter Hook thought itridiculous, RCA was the home of Iggy Pop, Lou Reedand David Bowie. Joy Division could hardly refuse thechance to join such ranks, and all but blindly leapt atthe opportunity to record on someone else's tab, atManchester's most professional 24-track studio, no less.

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With a £1500 initial investment divided equally betweenAnderson, Searling and Brandwood himself, Joy Division began preparing for a weeklong session at ArrowStudios with Searling set to produce.

While rehearsing and writing in late March and April1978, Joy Division grew closer as a unit, enjoying theabsurdity of their task and mutilating the N.F. Portersingle they were given. For their playful attitude, theydid come up with "Interzone" using some key progressions from "Keep On Keepin' On". But it was an April14th concert performance that became the turning pointin Joy Division's career, where they would demonstratetheir intense onstage presence for the two most important figures in their future. Still promoting the IdealFor Living EP, they were frantic for a break at the Stiff/Chiswick Challenge, a Manchester battle of the bandsorchestrated by those two up-and-coming London record labels, held at Warsaw's old stomping ground,Rafter's. In the name of equity, the bill was determinedthrough a hat drawing, and almost predictably, Joy Division pulled the last, or "headlining" slot. Headlining inthis case, though, was a disaster, since—if the band evengot to play at all—it would be so late by the time theywent on that the significant audience members (labelpersonnel, photographers and reviewers) would eitherbe exhausted or long gone. Throughout the night, JoyDivision threatened the other bands and complaineq1

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bitterly, accosting Paul Morley, Richard Boon and whoever else they could corner. Ian Curtis even sat downnext to Tony Wilson and called him a "cunt" and "bastard" for not having put Joy Division on his short-livedTV program So It Goes. Curtis and company finallymade it onstage just before 2 a.m., and as might beexpected after this long night of anxious paranoia, theirperformance was furiously over the top. Curtis behavedas if touched—he didn't have a seizure—and althoughthey only managed a few songs in the brief time theyhad left (the club was closed down around 2:30), theyhad unknowingly accomplished as much that night asin the entire year prior to it.

It turned out that Tony Wilson and Rob Grettonhad, for the most part, attended the Stiff/Chiswick Challenge to evaluate Joy Division as a potential investment.Thoroughly taken with their live set, Gretton becametheir manager only weeks later, as the group laboredthrough sessions for RCA. Tony Wilson also took themunder his wing, inviting them to headline the openingof his Factory night at the Russell Club in June. InSeptember, when he had the opportunity to book localtalent for the Granada Reports segment What's On,he remembered Ian Curtis's foul-mouthed request andbrought them on. As is the case with every great band,the moment Joy Division perceived a sympathetic audience and potential backers, their previously untapped

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creativity exploded—fostering a unity, hope and beliefthat produced three of their best songs in a matterof weeks: "She's Lost Control", "Transmission" and"Shadowplay" dated everything they'd recorded tothat point.

On May 1st, Joy Division entered Arrow Studioswith John Anderson and the vastly experienced producerBob Auger overseeing Richard Searling. The sessionswere produced directly for Derek Brandwood. Amidthese seasoned, occasionally slick industry types, Searling can be excused as the overexcited, hopeful agitator,eager to make his name on a band that, by mid-1978,was one of very few plausible investments in Manchester. (The Buzzcocks had signed to United Artists backin November of '77, and The Fall were, to put it kindly,unmarketable in their spitting, abstract obtuseness.)After a few tentative days of vocal treatments and planning with Bob Auger at the boards, Joy Division hita major wall with John Anderson, who had come todominate the younger Searling and had the final say overAuger's mix. Anderson didn't take the group seriously atall, and in fact felt they weren't technically capable ofrecording a proper album. He'd thought about gettingsession men in to correct their still audible imprecision,and of course, the band was livid at the idea of this.When Anderson suggested putting synthesizers overthe tracks to lend them a more polished sound, Joy

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Division exploded in a litany of expletives and umbrage,and—in a moment of massive retrospective irony—lambasted the use of synths as a demeaning manipulation of their raw sound.

Searling called in Derek Brandwood to negotiatethe stalemate, whereupon the band pointed a finger atAnderson, moaning, "He can't produce shit!" The older,wiser (and admittedly commercial-minded) Andersoncalmly explained the dilemma to Brandwood: "Theyjust can't play." His dismissive treatment of Joy Divisionbetrays a staid expectation of airtight, virtuosic materialaimed at the radio, but in his defense the group werestifled by the unfamiliar, imposing situation, andsounded tentative working outside the comfortable, self-determined world of their rehearsal room.

A band's first time in a professional recording studiois usually exciting and often revelatory, but beyond theirbad case of nerves and mistrust, Joy Division—especiallyCurtis—had set themselves very high standards, considering their inexperience. Their dream of turning outthe next Low or Heroes was pitted against a rush job:although they recorded an album's worth of material,the RCA underlings were only interested in getting asaleable version of "Keep On Keepin' On" for BernieBinnick. Aside from two promising brand new songs,Joy Division were still running through the same set ofBlack Sabbath punk they'd been playing as Warsaw.

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From the sound of these tapes, or at least the mixesthat have survived to bootleg, Auger made no effort toembolden the group's sound with heavy panning ormultitracking. Apart from slight reverb, the tracks areas unexceptionally dry as those on An Ideal For Living.John Anderson only ended up tainting two tracks withpost-production synthesizer before the sessions collapsed, inserting Genesis-caliber blips into "No LoveLost" and a nascent, sluggish version of "Transmission"with the subtlety of a blunt axe. The three best tracksfrom the session were included on the 1997 retrospective box set Heart and Soul, but in light of the laterversions the band would polish with Martin Hannett,these only serve as honest evidence of this acrimoniouslyaborted disaster.

RCA Demo SessionRecorded May 1-5 1978 at Arrow Studios, Manchester. Produced by John Anderson, Bob Augerand Richard Searling. ["The Drawback", "In-terzone" and "Shadowplay" were released as partof the 1997 Heart and Soul anthology. The entiresession is available on the 1994 Movie Play Goldcompact disc Warsaw.]The DrawbackLeaders of Men

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Walked in LineFailuresNoveltyNo Love LostTransmissionIce AgeInterzoneWarsawShadowplay

Of the songs they hadn't previously recorded, "IceAge" is a notable standout, and was a concert favoritein 1978. It's one of the earliest tracks to illustrate howStephen Morris's jittery tempos and preference for tornrhythms turned the band's basic progressions into morebeat-driven, undulating dirges. His stuttering but totallyaccurate command of the kit was a huge component ofthe evolving Joy Division sound, and helped tightenup Bernard Sumner and Peter Hook's playing considerably.

The brief "Interzone"—written around the basicmelody of the N.F. Porter tune they were hired by RCAto cover—is one of the best punk tracks Joy Divisionever recorded, and survived to make the cut for UnknownPleasures just under a year later. In the final UnknownPleasures version—which definitely stands out as simpler

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than the rest of the album—Hannett and/or the groupwould choose to de-emphasize its most curious andenergetic component: Ian's choked, rattling yodel. Hisyelps sound uncannily like the whirring Dies Irae ghostsStanley Kubrick would use just a year later over theopening shot of The Shining. The actual lyrics—evenin the final version—are somewhat rudimentary: it's afrustrated first person account of walking around thedecaying city, "looking for some friends of mine," and"trying to find a way to get out."

"The Drawback" is one of the band's earliest tunes,very simple in its chugging progression and overreaching, world-weary lyrics ("I've seen the troubles and theevils of this world/ I've seen the stretches between godliness and sin"). What's most interesting about the song,beyond Curtis's exceptionally smooth, velvety delivery,is the line, "I've had the promise and confessions oftrue faith," which looks forward to New Order's hugelysuccessful single of 1987. That single was about youngboys growing up together, then succumbing to drugaddiction and self-destruction: it was a clear nod to theirfrantic younger days, a time the band always lookedback on, though usually with a greater degree of subtletythan in this case.

"They Walked In Line" and "Novelty" were bothpounded out as contentious, barking pub-punk tunesat this stage, but were recent compositions, and stuck

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around long enough to be fleshed out and reworkedduring the Unknown Pleasures and "Transmission" sessions with Martin Hannett in 1979. Those subsequentversions would strip away the anger and preachy certainty, hollowing the songs out nicely, but never makingthem exceptional enough to rise above their status asB-Sides.

"Shadowplay" is the finest of Joy Division's metal-influenced anthems—which makes sense, as it's the lastsong they wrote in this vein. Sumner's three-note, descending lead carries the hollowed out passages aftereach verse as Hook's warbling, low bass line rumblesmenacingly in the background. As a fairly straight rocksong, it suffered little for these stiff recordings, alwayscommunicating the craven, echoing desolation of 1970sManchester in the dead of night. That Martin Hannettwas able to improve the song so hugely for UnknownPleasures is testament to his unique skills.

The real glimpse of change in these RCA sessionsis "Transmission", which—although it was written justthe week before—was fully realized. Structurally identical to its later incarnation (if much slower), it was obliterated by nonmusical, superfluous synthesizer soundsadded only for their chic "production value" by JohnAnderson. When the band came around to synths andelectronic sounds in early 1979, they would redefinetheir purpose with Martin Hannett's help, layering

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tones like strings behind Hannett's already cavernousreverb and digital delay.

When Rob Gretton came on board as manager soonafter the RCA session, the band began negotiating muchbetter gigs, thanks in large part to Tony Wilson's support (he had them headline many of his Factory nightsat the Russell Club). But it was Gretton's protective,dedicated managerial zeal that saved Joy Division fromfalling victim to their exasperated, recognition-starvedantics. With an increasing fan base garnered from Manchester-area gigs and Paul Morley's attentive coverage(and indirect tutelage) in the NME, the band were flushwith possibility, driven by the notion that what theywere doing could matter: artistically, socially, and perhaps even economically (who wouldn't prefer wealth asa guilty rather than unknown pleasure?). Rob Grettonallowed them to concentrate on these possibilities. Hisfriendship with local music industry magnate TJ Davidson paid off when Joy Division were able to securethe top floor of his imposing new rehearsal warehouse,capped by cathedral roofing and shot through with massive lead windows.

This enormous, elongated penthouse of warpedwood, brick and hazy light was the perfect—the absolutely ideal—location for Joy Division to nurture theirincreasingly potent songwriting gift. The band's mounting creativity and originality translated into increased

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isolation from their comparatively basic peers; they retreated, resolute, from the cold shoulders of their neighbors at TJ Davidson's space, and pressed on. As theyenjoyed a summer of practicing and mucking aroundas a very real force on the shrinking Manchester scene,their manager voraciously fended off RCA with outrageous demands, requesting an unheard of, unrealisticadvance—between £10-15,000—and a stratospheric15% royalty rate. With or without Gretton's grandstanding (which was actually effective in staving offRichard Searling), the pitiful 3.5% publishing contractRCA had offered Joy Division in the midst of the Arrowsessions was carelessly backdated from May 3rd to 1st,when recording began, and was therefore illegal. Additional minutiae in the contract—based on Americanlegal standards—worked in contrast to British copyrightlaw. Gretton had a solicitor friend detail these actionableitems in a letter to John Anderson, and Derek Brand-wood soon conceded the situation was untenable.Though Searling had hoped to make the band his success story, the embittered disappointment with the RCAsessions left a bilious taste in Joy Division's collectivemouth, and Gretton constantly pressed on RCA to finalize their situation. Though they didn't physically handthe check over until January of 1979, by the latter halfof 1978 Joy Division were legally free of RCA, and hadagreed to repay the initial £1500 investment of Searling,

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Anderson and Brandwood. The band's calamitous dalliance with the majors set them up for a wonderful fall:they were easily wooed by the bombastic, philosophically saturated advances of their most recent and captivating convert, Anthony Wilson.

After a brief flirtation as the A&R man for Eric'sRecords—a label run by Roger Eagle, owner of Eric'sin Liverpool—Tony Wilson decided to partner withAlan Erasmus and take their Factory from the club onto vinyl. Relatively wealthy after a £12,000 inheritancefrom his mother's passing, Wilson looked to launchFactory Records with just under half that figure. AlanErasmus would act as conductor, officiator, and cop,while Peter Saville—a Manchester Polytechnic studentwho'd designed the poster for Factory's first night atthe Russell Club—was given a shot as the imprint'sart director.

Wilson gave Joy Division a chance of exposure onGranada's Whafs On segment, for which the band recorded a sedate, slightly bored, slightly nervous rendition of "Shadowplay" on September 20th. Static,negative footage of monotonous highway traffic andindustrial cityscapes played behind them on blue screen.The group were aghast: the utterly pedestrian subjectmatter of these World In Action documentary reels reminded them of the "production value" synthesizerswith which John Anderson had ruined their RCA ses-

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sion. Sure, Joy Division had just performed on television, but they were soon to reissue An Ideal For Livingand were concerned about the impact these cheap effectsmight have on their image. Forgiving the technical limitations of late 70s British television, the imagery isn'ttotally incongruous with the band's most overtly industrial track, and though the performance is subdued, itsurvives as a glimpse of Curtis in a more controlledmode, quietly snapping his fingers and shuffling his feet.

Preparations were soon underway for A Factory Sample, an impractical double-7" EP to debut Wilson andcompany's new label. It would feature two tracks eachfrom Joy Division, Vini Reilly's effects-driven guitaroutfit the Durutti Column, industrial/electronic innovators Cabaret Voltaire, and, oddly enough, Mancuniancomedian John Dowie, "England's answer to LennyBruce." Dowie was a friend of Wilson's from GranadaTV who enjoyed minor celebrity in the 1980s (andreturned in 2001 with a popular monologue called Jesus,My Boy)—but, we can safely say that original copies ofA Factory Sample don't fetch hundreds of pounds becauseof Dowie's brief shtick "Hitler's Liver".

Having persuaded Martin Hannett to split time between Factory and his own imprint—the quickly fadingRabid Records—Wilson finally had a producer on theFactory board, and—more significantly, as it turnedout—on the Factory books. An infamously impractical

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visionary, Hannett defined the notion of a creativerather than reflective producer, bringing new ideas tobands rather than documenting theirs. Over the years,the sonic depth of Joy Division's music has been controversially laid at the altar of this second genius in theirmidst, and though the first two tracks they recordedwith him aren't as obviously influenced by his designs,one of them is named for a brand new device whosepossibilities Hannett would explore via Joy Division'smusic, creating sounds and shapes unheard before orsince.

A Factory SampleRecorded October 11 1978 at Cargo Studios,Rochdale. Produced by Martin Hannett. [Re-leased December 24 1978]

DigitalGlass

The surprising, almost shockingly upbeat "Digital"bounces into action with Peter Hook's elated bass line,spurred on by Stephen Morris's binary drum patternand a wall of guitar reverb. But it's in the frigid musicalechoes and warped, warbling effect that Hannett's delaywould have on Ian Curtis's voice that "Digital" reverber-

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ates as a conflicted, frustrated rock and roll masterpiece.The chorus harks back to classic Stax tracks, like theslow, steady burn of a Sam & Dave chorus, though theR&B influence has been filtered through the maudlinrock and roll of the Velvet Underground. Curtis continues what he started in "Ice Age", thinning out his verses,and removing the unwieldy, overflowing sentences ofhis punk tunes for simpler, more evocative lines. "I feelit closing in/ Day in, day out, day in, day out" may notresonate as well in print, but with fewer syllables toforce out, Curtis is able to concentrate on melody, eachsyllable ringing with a previously unheard power andtonal command. His vocal track clips to static with Hannett's reverbed delay, crackling during the harrowingfinal plea "Don't ever fade away/1 need you here today."

"Glass" is another leap forward, marking the firstappearance of the exasperated croon Curtis became synonymous with from this point forward. It's also redolentof Hannett's involvement: he employs his new digitaldelay box in a left-to-right stutter, prominently mixessynth chimes and alarms in the right channel, and fillsthe left channel with heavily flanged guitar feedback.Peter Hook resents how easy a case "Glass" makes forthe arrival of Martin Hannett as an ordering, polishinginfluence and developer of their monolithic studiosound: "A lot of people [say] that was the moment thingsturned, that Hannett [changed] us, found our secret

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weapon. I don't see it that way at all. Hannett wasOK—we were a bit in awe of him—but he didn't writethe songs." Indeed, Hannett's new toy is superfluouson Stephen Morris's snare, and the guitars are still mixedup front. "Glass" is the bridge between the raw, combative Warsaw material and the momentous, assured tracksof Unknown Pleasures, the point where Hannett is stillfiguring out how to construct the sound he heard underneath Joy Division's dark chords, anxious drummingand booming baritone vocals.

Peter Hook recalled meeting the irascible Hannettin a December 1997 issue of the NME: "Bernard andI were very down to earth, and he was, like, from anotherplanet. He was just this really weird hippy who nevertalked any sense at all—at least, I never knew what hewas talking about anyway. Still, you had a rapport withhim." He used to say to Rob, 'Get these two thick stupidcunts out of my way.' In the studio, we'd sit on the left,he'd sit on the right and if we said anything like, 'I thinkthe guitars are a bit quiet, Martin,' he'd scream, 'Oh myGod! Why don't you just fuck off, you stupid retards!' Itwas alright at first, but gradually he started to getweirder and weirder."

In his brief and legendary tenure as the genius producer of Joy Division's music, Hannett's mania andincreasing drug abuse make sense. As Factory swelled,so did Martin Hannett. In the fall of 1978, he was very

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taken with the nascent promise of Factory, and hadglowed about its future with Manchester's almost comically omnipresent music industry overlord, DerekBrandwood. Soon, however, the Factory players wouldusurp his status: in just over ten years, with a few hugelysuccessful pop bands, they would be competing on anequal footing with the likes of RCA. All in good time—and good times—but sadly, Hannett wouldn't enjoymuch of it. Or, if he did, he certainly wouldn't remember it.

The week after their first and most economical session with Hannett, Joy Division re-released An IdealFor Living as a 12" with all new, formless artwork (theentire cover is a single image of scaffolding) and animproved remix. The reverb on Steve Morris's drumswas increased, and Bernard's guitar tracks were pannedmore dramatically, clearing out more "space"—a qualitythe band would come to define with Hannett's help.The disc was handed out to reviewers after the band'svery well received set at Tony Wilson's Factory clubon October 20th. Joy Division were fast becoming oneof the most important bands north of London, and hadyet to record a proper single, let alone an album.

On dates throughout northern England in November and December, crowds were inconsistent but theyfrequently locked in on the band's energy. After a brieftour in support of the Rezillos—during which the head-

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lining act broke up—A Factory Sample was released onChristmas Eve, and Joy Division finally made their London debut on December 27th 1978, at The Cure'sstomping grounds, the Hope & Anchor in Islington.Whatever the cause—weather, exhaustion from traveling to so many gigs outside Manchester, or simplygerms—Bernard Sumner was suffering from a terribleflu that night, and had to be packed in a sleeping bagfor the drive down, as the idea of missing their inauguralLondon concert was unthinkable. Expecting to converta large, eager audience, Joy Division were shocked todiscover the Hope & Anchor was a small pub, and—totheir further dejection—only a few dozen young fanshad turned up. During the miserable ride home, Sumnerand a depressed Curtis fought for the sleeping bag:during the tussle, Ian lapsed into a major seizure. Theband pulled over and, once the fit had subsided, droverecklessly to Luton Hospital, where Ian was given Phe-nobarbitone tablets and sent home. (Now referred toas Phenobarbital, it is still one of a very few medicationsavailable to treat epilepsy.) It would be almost a monthbefore Curtis was clinically diagnosed, on January23rd 1979.

A Factory Sample sold respectably during its first twomonths, and would soon sell out thanks to continuingsupport from Paul Morley in the form of a late-MarchNME review, but at the time of its release, all of the

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contributors were unproven, and the record didn't travelfar from the already established, isolated audience ofspotters and critics. On January 8th, Joy Division finallypaid back Richard Searling, John Anderson and DerekBrandwood their investment in the RCA demos, andwith a renewed sense of freedom, looked forward totouring and recording their new material.

On January 13 th, Ian Curtis appeared on the coverof the NME for the first time, after months of lobbyingfrom Paul Morley. The Kevin Cummins image of Curtisin his olive overcoat—wintry complexion, cigarette inhand—remains as one of very few staged portraits, andrevealed a beautifully sculpted Roman countenance. Upto that point, Curtis had predominantly been knownfor his panting, wide-eyed flailing onstage, an image theNME cover countered. Though Anton Corbijn becamemore widely known for his photo and film work with JoyDivision, Cummins was Factory Records' first dedicatedphotographer and, as of this writing, is negotiating torelease a fine art book of his prints from this era.

Two weeks after the NME feature, Joy Division wereinvited to record a session for Radio One DJ John Peel'srenowned program, the launching pad for nearly everycritically acclaimed UK rock act of the last threedecades.

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Peel Session 1Recorded January 13 1979. Produced by BobSargeant, engineered by Nick Gomm [BroadcastFebruary 14 1979. Released as a stand-alone EPin November 1986 by Strange Fruit. Compiledfor Strange Fruit's Peel Sessions Album in 1990and reissued in 2000 as part of The Complete BBCRecordings. "Exercise One" was also released aspart of the 1997 box set Heart and Soul.]Exercise OneInsightShe's Lost ControlTransmission

This session was effectively the first opportunitylarge numbers of people outside Manchester had to hearJoy Division, and even clued-in fans hadn't heard anyof these songs outside small clubs and booming concerthalls (where sound quality varied greatly to say the least).To their loyal but tiny legion of raincoat-wearing fans,Joy Division were still a screeching cacophony of punkguitars and frantic drumming, which, for their power,were pushed to the background by the increasingly possessed performances of their lead singer. During this

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Peel Session, fans and casual listeners were treated tofour new songs, including future singles "She's LostControl" and "Transmission". "Exercise One" and "Insight" were both recorded for Unknown Pleasures, butthe former was kept off for some reason, and wouldn'tsee release until Factory's posthumous 1981 compilationof Joy Division rarities, Still.

"Exercise One" boasted fantastic lyrics, including theicy first verse used for the introduction to the gorgeousbooklet which accompanies the Heart and Soul anthology: "When you're looking at life/ Through a strangenew room/ Maybe drowning soon/ Is this the start ofit all?" Its central guitar riff was a bone chilling minor-note clash—even without the ghostly delay Martin Hannett would add during the Unknown Pleasures sessions—but it was compositionally weak at just over two minutes,and proved too simple to lead either side of their debutalbum. Opening a record with feedback was alreadyterribly gauche in 1979, so that was right out; whereverelse you could sequence it, the long introductory passagewould disrupt the flow from one song to the next. Butit's unlikely there was much debate about this, as theband apparently never cared much for "Exercise One",only performing it at a handful of concerts over thenext year and a half.

The other three tracks from the Peel Session weremuch more accomplished and proved tantalizing teasers

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for fans, record labels and critics. "Transmission" isnude in comparison to its eventual, awe-inspiring Hannett production, but in this raw, twanging take—as ina Granada TV performance later in 1979—Ian Curtis'svocals aren't as smoothed by effects. In the final verse,his now famous scream "And we could dance!" is morecaptivating and unsettling for it, a furious performanceof a track that would take on a more majestic, eternalglimmer when recorded as a single six months later.

"Insight" began with the kind of liquid, high octavebass line that became Peter Hook and Joy Division'strademark. He attributes his signature sound to necessity: "If you played higher up the guitar, it was easierto hear yourself, 'cos your equipment was so crap." Theincessant double-tap beat from Stephen Morris includeda new electronic drum pad they'd acquired; this wasmore noticeable in the industrial echoes of "She's LostControl", a future single that—along with "Love WillTear Us Apart"—would endure as one of Joy Division'smost popular tracks. It was an early indication of howelectronic sounds were coming to the fore in the wakeof punk rock's boxy, all-guitar squall. Though Wirewere clearly leading the way in this capacity with 1978'sChairs Missing—and both the Human League and Orchestral Maneuvers in the Dark were just months awayfrom bringing it to the mainstream—Joy Division's attachment to the pop song format set their dark dirges

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apart from the titanic dub instrumentals John Lydonwas screaming over in Public Image Limited. Of all thepost-punk contenders, Joy Division split creativity andthe desire to communicate in their favorite mediumright down the middle. The Peel Session evidencedtheir rapid evolution over the few months since they'dsaid goodbye to the Electric Circus, pointing towardan almost accessible but serious sound. It elevated theirstanding hugely within London.

In many ways, John Peel has been doing the legworkfor lazy (or—more forgivingly—less-attuned) LondonA&R men for over thirty years now. On Valentine'sDay 1979, the major labels were handed a taste of JoyDivision on a platter. This resulted in a chaotic Springfilled with opportunities, but the band couldn't capitalize on the interest with live shows: between Januaryand March, Ian Curtis's recently manifested epilepsymounted and—beyond the reasonable expectation thathe might take a few months off to rest and test out newmedications—his wife was in the final stages of herpregnancy. In the wake of their Peel Session, Joy Division wouldn't play until March 1st, and only seriouslyentertained one record label. Immediately after hearingthe broadcast, Buzzcocks producer Martin Rushent puttogether a deal with an advance of around £40,000, for

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a two-album contract with Radar Records (a WarnerBrothers imprint masquerading as an independent). Inthe 1980s, Rushent's production company Geneticwould do for sequencing what Hannett did for digitaldelay, making superstars of the Human League, but atthis stage he wasn't yet known as an ingenious wunder-kind. He was a respected producer in the punk community—especially in Manchester—for his work with theBuzzcocks and Generation X, but as much as he wantedto produce Joy Division, he was out to break an excitingnew band to further the standing of his productioncompany. After a better-attended, if not triumphant,return to London's Hope & Anchor on March 1st, JoyDivision returned to the capital three days later to record demo versions of five songs with Martin Rushent.

Genetic DemosRecorded March 4 1979 at Eden Studios, London.Produced by Martin Rushent ["Insight", "Glass","Transmission" and "Ice Age" were made available for the first time anywhere as part of the 1997Heart and Soulanthology: "Digital" never surfaceduntil much later, appearing on a beautifully packaged European bootleg called PerformancesOl inearly 2003.]

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InsightGlassDigitalIce AgeTransmission

A rote run-through of some of their newer materialin a single day, these tracks are wholly unexceptional,and from Curtis's uninvolved delivery one can assumehe was either rushing through recording or already disinterested. In fact, by the time they recorded these demos just weeks after hearing from Rushent, it mighthave already been a foregone conclusion that the groupwould stay with Factory for their debut full-length. Factory was still using that tasty 50/50 profit split as manifesto, and as the band's audience continued to growwith London now paying attention, the 8% royalty rateoffered by Genetic/Radar/Warner Brothers seemed likea losing proposition. Generic's offer was fair, and withthe advance possibly gracious, but there has always beena Mancunian distrust of London, and Rob Gretton inparticular loathed its stately pomp; he detested fashionvictims and the effusively positive outlook major labelemployees seemed to be infected with. Joy Divisionwould rather not involve themselves with so uncaring

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a business, and, as Peter Hook put it, for Gretton "itwas better to work with someone you could get holdof. Factory, for all its failings, if you had a beef, youcould yell."

The group had developed a close relationship withtheir manager, lobbyist, defender, brawler and—mostimportantly—believer Rob Gretton, though it tooksome time for Ian Curtis to accept his guidance. StephenMorris remembered a particularly explosive incident inthe NME in December 1997: "He was like Basil Fawlty.He'd just boil up, boil up, boil up and then go mad andrun around the rehearsal room with a bucket on hishead. At the time we all thought it was dead funny, butin retrospect I suppose it was quite bizarre."

Bernard expanded on the incident in the liner notesto Heart and Soul: "I remember him having this argument with Rob Gretton at our rehearsal room [at] TJDavidson's. He got so frustrated that he picked up thegarbage bucket, stuck it over his head and started running up and down the room, screaming at Rob, and hewas just completely mad."

As Deborah Curtis put it, Ian "made up his mind toaccept Rob Gretton," but as she further states, "Ian hadno interest in learning anything practical at all." Totallycerebral and often self-absorbed, Curtis was also bornclumsy and ashamed to the point where he made noeffort to learn a simple task like driving. He would

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always have trouble understanding how financesworked, and without Gretton for guidance, his confusion would have been a serious detriment to Joy Division's success, especially once contracts and concertguarantees came into play.

In late 1978, after listening to a heady speech fromTony Wilson about artistic ideals, equal shares and a50/50 split of the profits after Factory recouped overhead costs, Gretton prodded the dramatist Svengali forhis credo in writing. According to legend, Wilson wroteon cocktail napkins in his own blood, "The musiciansown everything, the company owns nothing. All ourbands have the freedom to fuck off." Whether he wroteall of that in blood, or inked it and signed in blood,Wilson's bravado nevertheless impressed Gretton andcertainly Joy Division, who were starving for some credibility, embarrassed by the gauche industry they hadrecently brushed up against. The only hesitant party inthe room was a somewhat confused Alan Erasmus, whohad discussed the meeting with Wilson beforehand andintended to draw up a proper contract (and in fact, therewere more words than those on the napkins, to theeffect that the master tapes would revert to the bandafter six months). Wilson, swept up in one of his signature pontifications, ruled the room as if directing a show;Erasmus looked on, likely amused, and decided that dayto follow Wilson's lead. For all his graceful and grand

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salesmanship, Wilson was leading with the advantageof a sizeable inheritance and appreciable income as atelevision personality. Though he wouldn't regret ituntil years later, Erasmus might have behaved differently if given the chance to do it again; he has totallydropped from the pages of the Factory story, a willfullyanonymous contributor from the start, who left with abitter hatred for Tony Wilson (who has since beenaccused of cynically using Erasmus's long-standing votewithin Factory to get his way in the out of control 80s).In 1978, Wilson could only be accused of unrealisticoptimism and idealism, but his charm went a long way.Twenty years, in fact.

The decision to remain with Factory was not rootedsolely in philosophy or comfort: Joy Division and Cabaret Voltaire weren't bankable names at the time, yet thedouble-7" EP A Factory Sample nearly sold out its 5000-copy run. It happened almost entirely on word of mouth.With the fair, if not cheap £2.99 cost to consumers,the EP proved that affordability and image alone—therecord's image, not necessarily the group it documented—could attract buyers. In the appropriately slick1993 documentary neworderstory (produced by PaulMorley), Peter Saville—the graphic designer responsible for the gorgeous record sleeves, and the look ofnearly every item in the Factory Records catalog—points to a New York Times article by Jon Pareles entitled

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"How Cool Is Coldness?" In the article, Pareles discusses the idea of a mass-produced secret, somethingthat 250,000 to half a million people are aware of, butthat has never been discussed or advertised in mainstream media. It's a proposition that had, on a muchsmaller scale, already played itself out in 1979. Withonly one notable radio appearance, no national television exposure—yet—or even much in the way of advertising, Joy Division's independently produced debutalbum Unknown Pleasures sold 5,000 copies in its firsttwo weeks of release, and another 10,000 within sixmonths.

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Chapter 3.

The Record is Alive, as ThatWhich It Recorded is Alive

In April of 1979, Joy Division finally committed totape the frantic performances on which they'd built amodest but critically impressive reputation. At the posh,36-track Strawberry Studios in Stockport—lined withgold records—Martin Hannett produced the set of fifteen songs they'd built up during months of rehearsalsat TJ Davidson's. It was during these sessions that theband first realized the depths of Martin Hannett's mercurial personality, increasing drug use and impatient,cerebral hyperactivity. While his temper was bearableduring the single day of recording for A Factory Sample,Factory had hired out Strawberry Studios for threeweeks to record and mix Unknown Pleasures. Joy Division

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endured Martin's inexplicable recording techniques,drug-fueled irrationality and inherently abusive personality for five straight days, then fought for weeks to bepresent for the off-hours mixing. On the third day ofrecording, Hannett famously disassembled StephenMorris's drum kit down to its metal rims, searching fora rattle that was bleeding through due to his brilliant,if hilarious, technique: the output from the drum roomwas lined down to an Auratone speaker that sat perchedon the seat of a tiny basement toilet, removing allreverberation.

In the kind of dead silence you'd only find in abasement, Stephen Morris was playing to ghosts, whoin the form of a single microphone breathed back hismuted wooden thuds to Martin Hannett's fantastic littleblack box. Just weeks before recording "Digital" and"Glass", Hannett had gleaned a prototype of a digitaldelay rig from friends within AMS Neve, a cutting-edgeelectronic audio company based in Burnley, Lancashire.Though the digital delay line had been invented inthe 60s and large technology companies were alreadyworking with it, binary digital delay hadn't yet beencaptured in a separate device that could be selectivelyapplied—post-effected—to live sound. Wah-wah anddistortion pedals were already commonplace in rock,but they modified sound as it traveled from the guitarto the amp. Digital delay was the first device that could

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reproduce that sound exactly. Reverb was a series ofreflections, with limited and diminished frequency response: it had a uniform sound and any tracks using itwould bleed together in a Joe Meek racket. Charge-coupled (CCD) analog "tape echo" had been available,but it produced unmanageable line noise and increasingdistortion with each bounce. Binary digital delay translated its input into electronic data—l's and O's—beforebouncing it back, completely intact, as frequently as theoperator chose. Hannett chose a miniscule report time,as Factory staple Vini Reilly of the Durutti Column—who were inextricably linked with guitar delay—laterexplained: "Martin used that digital delay not as a repeatecho delay but to make a tiny millisecond that came soclose to the drum it was impossible to hear. I wouldnever have thought of doing that. Nobody else would.I don't know how he could have possibly envisaged thefinal sound."

The urgent, alien thwack of Stephen Morris's processed snare drum as it bounced from the left to rightchannel was so arresting, one could have listened tothat opening bar for hours trying to figure how onearth someone made such sounds. Like John Bonham'sludicrous, mansion-backed stomp at the start of "WhenThe Levee Breaks"—only far less expensive—the crisp,trebly snare sound Martin Hannett would make hiscareer on announced Unknown Pleasures as a finessed,

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foreboding masterpiece. Peter Hook's compressed,somewhat flat bass line rides up front in the mix, andit's not until the hugely reverbed, minor note guitarline crashes through that you can understand the needfor such a warm, analog treatment. Layering a few trackstogether to create a six-string shriek on par withSiouxsie & The Banshees' The Scream, Hannett's equalization cuts the brunt of Sumner's fuller live sound downto an echoing squeal. In search of vocal clarity and spacefor delay and reverb to ring out, Hannett relegates theguitar to hard-panned stereo placement in later tracks,and thins the robust double-humbucker sound of Sumner's Gibson SG. And that's what Bernard Sumner'shistoric dissatisfaction boils down to: in 1979, he stillheard guitar attack and fury. From the Heart and Soulliner notes: "We played the album live. The music wasloud and heavy, and we felt that Martin had toned itdown, especially with the guitars. The production inflicted this dark, doomy mood over the album: we'ddrawn this picture in black and white, and Martin hadcoloured it in for us."

As Sumner often says, the band were always moreaggressive in concert, but Ian Curtis was very impressedwith the icy, evocative sound of Unknown Pleasures. Hisapproach to lyrics had been steadily evolving, and bythe time the group entered the studio he had movedbeyond storytelling and condemnation into expression-

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ist pleading: "I've been waiting for a guide to come andtake me by the hand/ Could these sensations make mefeel the pleasures of a normal man?" The album's opening lines, from "Disorder", suggest Curtis is lamentinghis depression and alienation. The song's very nameseems to invoke the epilepsy that was, along with thepowerful medications he had to take, preventing Curtisfrom pursuing the late nights, casual alcohol intake andcathartic stage shows he enjoyed so much with Joy Division. The booming, climactic finale spins out of controlas Curtis bellows "I've got the spirit/ But lose the feeling." "Disorder" is so arresting, cathartic and novel, it'shard to fathom there are even more potent momentsbeyond its collapsing explosion of snare drum andcymbals.

Few lyric poets are as readily dissected as Ian Curtis,whose every word seems to have layered meanings entwining personal struggles—his disease, ensuing success, possible failure and the ultimate futility ofeither—with more universal pleas for honesty and conviction. Regret and self-doubt would rule the rest of hisshort life, but on Unknown Pleasures he's still askingquestions, wondering if his affliction would subside, andwhether he'd find happiness as Joy Division continuedto make bold strides. "Where will it end?" he screams,during the surprisingly laconic dirge "Day of the Lords"(named for a discarded early lyric sheet that included

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the phrase). By this point, Joy Division have clearlylaid punk's quickly-consumed fire to rest, concentratinginstead on atmosphere and the severity of slower tempos: hammering chords ring out into stretched silence;during lulls, there's space for more complex guitar progressions, menacing feedback and eerie, monotonouskeyboards. Like all the material written in advance ofUnknown Pleasures, "Day of the Lords" confronts uncertainty, the onset of adulthood and the death of youth'sromantic abandon, building to a pulsating crescendowith each despondent, imploring refrain from Curtis.

"Candidate" is even more subdued, a barely-therebackdrop of repetitive bass broken by drum fills. Haphazard, creeping guitar squeals rise and fall in the distance, swirling between both channels; Hannett's snaretreatment is at its most exposed, punching with firstcontact and quickly dispersing as controlled, shimmering high-end decay. In "Disorder" and "Day of theLords", Curtis's voice is sonically flush with the song'spalette, a mostly realistic recreation of their performance, but on "Candidate", Hannett increases the treble to the vocal track, creating a throaty, tremuloustimbre shattered by hissing consonant inflections. Thelyrics are perhaps the album's most egregiously morose:"Corrupted from memory, no longer the power/ It'screeping up slowly, that last fatal hour."

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Sumner and Hook's instant dissatisfaction with Hannett's production is easiest to appreciate during "Insight", which is hugely diminished on record incomparison to the song's in-concert power (and evencompared with the Peel Session performance in January). Hannett's focus on drums, vocals and electronicnoises to the exclusion of guitars reduces this driving,climactic composition to a nervy, tame mid-tempo ballad, staging the electronic drum breakdown toward theend too dramatically. Lyrically, the song is perhaps themost telling document of Curtis's fermenting internalresignation and fatalistic outlook:

Guess the dreams always endThey don't rise up just descendBut I don h care anymoreVve lost the will to want moreVm not afraid not at allI watch them all as they fallBut I remember when we were young

His debilitating epilepsy and impending fatherhood—Deborah gave birth to a daughter as Martin Hannettwas finishing the mix for Unknown Pleasures—weighedheavily on such a dramatic young soul. The shift in tonefrom the band's simpler first wave of punk songs was

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undeniable, but it was art, and so artistic, so outstandingthat Curtis's fellow band members were excited by theseriousness it lent their already brooding music. Knowing he was suffering through frequent seizures and wasaffected by the heavy medication he was taking, it seemsobvious that someone should have pried into his mentalstate right away, but as Deborah Curtis would laterwrite, "it was too incredible to comprehend that hewould use such a public method to cry for help." Indeed,photographer Kevin Cummins has dozens of printsfrom early 1979 of Curtis laughing and messing aroundlike schoolboys with his band mates outside their rehearsal space. To people who knew him, Ian Curtis wasa fun if explosively temperamental character. Whateverself-obsessed fatalism he was beginning to harbor waskept secret, revealed only in his lyrics and denied outsidetheir context as poetry and art.

Though Unknown Pleasures remains a debut albumof unparalleled drama and scope, the central passagefrom side one (titled "Outside") to two ("Inside") iswhere it makes its most powerful first impression. "NewDawn Fades" closes the first side at a faster tempo than"Candidate" or "Day of the Lords", but it's definitelyof the same monolithic, stately stock as these newertracks. Sumner plucks a series of notes through thefirst half, distantly chiming behind Hook's hard down-strokes before the song's explosion at the 2:45 mark,

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Curtis bellowing in a cracking, full-torso scream, "Thestrain's too much/ Can't take much more/ I've walkedon water, run through fire/ Can't seem to feel it anymore/ It was me/ Waiting for me/ Hoping for something more."

Deborah Curtis was rightly unsettled by such gravelyrics and their depressed delivery—especially audiblein "Insight"—and questioned her husband about themorbid, flailing finale of "New Dawn Fades". Her justifiable consternation only drew protestations and slightdenials: the pair fell into a fight, and Ian stormed offin a frustrated huff. It's an incident that betrays Curtis'sincreasingly solipsistic, self-absorbed outlook after acquiring a disease he had studied just over a year earlier.While working as the Assistant Disablement Resettlement Officer at Macclesfield's Employment Exchangein late 1977, Curtis was required to take a course onepilepsy to better understand its impact on the peoplehe was helping. That he could then succumb to such adramatic case of the disease was a bizarre coincidence.But, using the anomalous adolescent incidents and Ian'sdescription of feeling "flashbacks" as a teen—most likelypre-seizing "auras" that never fomented, or only culminated in easily ignored "absence seizures"—it seemsobvious epilepsy was lurking in the background, waitingto manifest itself until Curtis reached his twenties, whenso many neurological maladies assert themselves.

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Ian's experiences with the mentally ill informed theband's defining track to this point: "She's Lost Control",the band's first ever hit with audiences. It was writtenabout an epileptic woman who would often turn upat the Macclesfield Employment Exchange looking forwork; when she stopped coming in, Curtis wrote thecomparatively normal, descriptive lyrics about her, butas his own epilepsy took hold, the song grew to haveawful implications, especially after he learned she'd died.Joy Division would glossily re-record it in 1980 as Curtishimself spiraled out of control; a side-by-side comparison of his vocals just nine months apart reveals defeated,desperate slurring, made all the more unsettling by delay, which only accented the inaccuracies of his delivery.

The Unknown Pleasures recording of "She's LostControl" is far superior in its compact, tense drummingand demented vocal effects, but neither studio versioncaptures the overwhelming volume of Bernard Sumner'sbarre chord progression as it blared in concert. Theanalog, muted treatment of the bass is also a problem,as without the slight distortion—or at least the treblyring—of his live rig, Peter Hook's lead line is disconnected, too isolated from the rest of the tracks. Thoughit approaches in-concert intensity toward its end, Hannett's production again defers to the electronic percussion elements and the subtly mixed but complex effectson Ian Curtis's vocals.

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For punk and heavy metal fans, "Shadowplay" wasthe gateway track that sold them on Joy Division's jet-black album. A swelling, churning industrial portrait—Morris even accents the beat with an electronic percussion hit that approximates gasping machine valvesopening and shutting—it's the one moment on UnknownPleasures where Bernard Sumner is given his due, allowed to dominate the song with two huge, deafeningtracks of guitar, ringing out over all else. "Shadowplay",like "Interzone", was a more familiar, older track, andas such the lyrics are notably less morose, appreciable fortheir narrative beauty rather than any morbid revisionistanalysis. Still, "Shadowplay" hides one of Curtis's mostsalient first-person lyrics: "In a room with no windowin the corner, I found truth."

"Wilderness" shoulders the most overt use of Hannett's digital delay, Stephen Morris's snare ricochetingfrom speaker to speaker like a heavy dub reggae track.A precursor to their later masterpiece "Dead Souls","Wilderness" is the weakest track on Unknown Pleasures,with obvious religious lyrics based in fantasy and mythology, and a guitar progression that's too repetitive. Butit's quickly forgotten when the surprisingly traditionalrock riffing of "Interzone" starts up, a holdover fromthe band's 1978 RCA session. For the Unknown Pleasuresversion, Ian adds a second track in the right channel, aspoken word counter to his surprisingly high-pitched,

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smooth main verses. His fluttering, whooping choralyodel is still audible, but it's nowhere near as arrestingor up front as on the original RCA demo, which—forits raw performance and flat sound—is of huge interestto fans and was wisely included on Heart and Soul.

Following what—relative to the surroundings—amounts to a lull, the album's finale serves as a devastating rejoinder to the more easily absorbed, instant anddanceable pair of songs that precede it. "I RememberNothing" uses the same hollowed out template previewed on "Candidate", ripping a hole in its own tensefabric with the jarring sounds of breaking glass andshrill electronic crashes, all disintegrating rapidly insideHannett's box. Like the earlier dirges on Unknown Pleasures, "I Remember Nothing" props up Ian Curtis'salternately timid and commanding voice, belting outa message almost certainly aimed at his wife, cruellyfocusing on the line "We were strangers/ For way toolong." As with "Disorder", the very tide refers to hisaffliction: epileptic seizures occur because of chemicaland/or neuron disruptions in the brain, sometimes referred to as "electrical storms". As a result, sufferersnever remember them. The violence Curtis intimatesin his rasping, barked delivery is also tied to his seizures:"Violent, more violent/ His hand cracks the chair/Moves on reaction, then slumps in despair." His pregnant wife tried to stifle these attacks so that he wouldn't

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hurt himself: the image is too painful to envision, butwith Ian's unflinching use of his tumultuous home lifeas a source of poetic inspiration, he left his spouse nochoice but to replay these incidents. Devastated, Deborah Curtis was forced to ask herself agonizing questionsabout her husband's intentions, even at this early stage.Her memoir Touching From A Distance is uncomfortably,brutally honest in places, but owing to love, respect,and her laudable awareness of its impact, she put morethan a decade of distance between her feelings and herhusband's emotionally devastating death before writingabout their life together. While his band mates andproducers heard drama, potent lyricism and mountingvocal talent, the person closest to Ian Curtis heard theactual words.

Unknown Pleasures sessionsRecorded April 1-17 1979 at Strawberry Studios,Stockport. Produced by Martin Hannett [Unknown Pleasures released June 14 1979. "Autosuggestion" and "From Safety to Where . . . ?"released October 1979 as part of Earcom 2: Contradiction (FAST Records). "Exercise One", "TheKill", "The Only Mistake" and "Walked in Line"released October 8 1981 as part of Still. "Autosuggestion" and "From Safety to Where ... ?" re-

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released June 1988 as part of Substance. The entiresession is included in the 1997 Heart and Soulanthology.]

DisorderDay of the LordsCandidateInsightNew Dawn FadesShe's Lost ControlShadowplayWildernessInterzoneI Remember Nothing

AutosuggestionFrom Safety to Where ... ?The Only MistakeExercise OneThe KillWalked in Line

To this day, the surviving members of Joy Divisioncomplain about Hannett's hand in the sound of Unknown Pleasures, which they immediately felt weakenedtheir deafening live sound. Of the recording process,

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Bernard Sumner later recalled: "Martin didn't give afuck about making a pop record. All he wanted to dowas experiment; his attitude was that you get a load ofdrugs, lock the door of the studio and you stay in thereall night and you see what you've got the next morning.And you keep doing that until it's done. That's how allour records were made. We were on speed, Martin wasinto smack." Joy Division still identified with punk'surgency, having seen every first-wave British punk bandin person and performed with many of them. Hannett'sforward-thinking obsession with digital delay and thedistant, warehouse guitars he favored created a soundtoo studio-processed, too close to the excesses theirgeneration was still burning at the stake. "She's LostControl" and "Insight" incorporated an electronic drumpad from the beginning, but both songs were driven asmuch by Bernard Sumner's overblown guitar and PeterHook's unforgettable treble bass riffs. Though all parties would come around to Hannett's approach and theuse of more ambient and electronic sounds, much ofJoy Division's music was, at this point, still in line withpunk rock's evolution. Bernard Sumner summarized hisand Hook's initial feelings in the Heart and Soul boxset: "We resented it, but Rob loved it, Wilson loved it,and the press loved it, and the public loved it: we werejust the poor stupid musicians who wrote it! We swallowed our pride and went with it." Oddly, Stephen

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Morris has never complained much about the production, considering his performance was the most affectedby Hannett's techniques.

"I mean Martin did teach us a lot—he taught us tolook at music and our songs and our sounds in a totallydifferent way. We had a very narrow vision of them,we'd just turn our amps on and that was it. Whenwe got in the studio we couldn't understand why themonitors didn't sound like our amps. He taught us tomake allowances for certain things like that," admittedPeter Hook in Charles Neal's Tape Delay, but he alsocomplained that Hannett "took it right down"; one wonders how their newer, slower tunes like "Candidate"and the majestic "I Remember Nothing" could havebeen "rocky," as he put it, even in concert. If not asgrievously tortured as the anthems they'd record forCloser, they were romantic, bleak tunes. Bernard Sumnerhas been humbly forthcoming about Curtis's centralrole in Joy Division: "He was a catalyst for the rest ofus. We would write all the music, but Ian would directus. He'd say 'I like that bit of guitar, I like that bassline, I like that drum riff' He brought our ideas togetherin his own way, really."

As such, Curtis loved Unknown Pleasures. Hannetthad taken their dark rock and roll and infused it withthe kind of confrontational, novel soundscapes Ian soadmired in groups like Throbbing Gristle and Kraft-

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werk. Hannett had made Joy Division's debut as formidable and unique as the records Curtis admired. It seemsclear that Joy Division was changing again, in Ian's mindif not Hook's and Sumner's, and Hannett shepherdedthat change at a speed that left the guitarists feeling therecord was taken away from them a bit. Which, inone literal sense, it was: Hannett didn't want the bandmembers present while he mixed Unknown Pleasures,and would head to Strawberry at all hours of the morning hoping to avoid them. Peter Hook: "The scene wasstupid from the word go. Martin never understood thathe was working for us. We were paying him and so heshould have done the mixing when we said so ... heshould have done what we said at all times."

For his part, Hannett later claimed they ran out oftime at Strawberry and that he would have changedsome aspects of his mix if he had more time, and thisis backed up by the post-production recording and remixing of "Walked In Line" for Still in 1981. Thatversion was a little over the top in the midranges—somuch so that it would be released in its original statefor the Heart and Soul anthology—but even in the original mix from the Unknown Pleasures recordings, Hannettused distorted electronic squeals to approximateclapping.

True to Hook's and Sumner's fears, the synthesizers,electronic percussion and smashing glass would leave

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the most immediate impression on critics and listeners,though these effects only featured notably in the firstand last songs on Unknown Pleasures. And the noisesthemselves weren't Hannett's idea: the group were becoming increasingly fascinated with Kraftwerk, whoseTrans-Europe Express and Autobahn LPs were alwaysaround, and they'd also taken some cues from RoxyMusic and Brian Eno's solo work. But they were onlytoying with keyboards and electronics at this stage, asaccents; it was down to Hannett's hollow mix and digitaldelay box that the electronic and industrial noises hadsuch an impact, and changed the perception of Joy Division instantly.

Hannett's most extreme use of the nascent AMSdelay technology wouldn't even end up on UnknownPleasures: the six minute "Autosuggestion" was as closeto dub as Joy Division ever came on record, althoughHook later claimed that Hannett had done dub mixesof "Digital" and "Glass" as a way of learning the device.(In a rueful instance of neglect, Peter Hook's partnerin Suite Sixteen—they had purchased Cargo Studiosand renamed it—sold all the master reels when he left,including these dub mixes, at 50 pence each.) Thesprawling, experimental "Autosuggestion" would indicate Hannett had a sustained interest in dub productiontechniques at the time, so we can only regret the lossof those artifacts.

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Something of a jam, "Autosuggestion" is nonethelessengaging—a slow, echoing anthem in the vein of "Dayof the Lords" and "New Dawn Fades", if somewhatsparser. Unlike the more bleating tracks on UnknownPleasures, "Autosuggestion" bursts to a frenzied double-time finale of rare and inspiring hope. Much like thesuperlative single "Transmission" that would follow inthe album's wake, "Autosuggestion" appears to be awork of self-reprimand, Curtis fighting his new fearsof unpredictable seizures and his much older habit ofliving within his mind. He urges himself (and, moreuniversally, anyone) to "take a chance and step outside,"to "lose some sleep and say you tried."

The upbeat "From Safety to Where ... ?" is decorated with brighdy flickering beams of delay and brilliant—if subtly mixed—acoustic guitars. Though onlytwo slight minutes of liquid strings (and the earliestprecursor to New Order's sound), "From Safety toWhere ... ?" contains the most explicit, direct discussion of Curtis's sense of paralysis, debating his futurefame—"I got this ticket to use"—and the domesticpromise he'd made at eighteen: "Just passing through,'til we reach the next stage/ But just to where, well it'sall been arranged/ Just passing through but the breakmust be made/ Should we move on or stay safely away?"With the exception of "Walked in Line", any of thediscarded tracks could have been released to acclaim,

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but it's this pair that were made available to Scottishnew wave label FAST, who included "Autosuggestion"and "From Safety To Where ... ?" on its Earcom 2:Contradiction 12", released in October 1979.

"The Only Mistake" was unfortunately sequesteredin the vaults—like all but two of the April 1979 tracksleft off Unknown Pleasures—until the posthumous, May1981 rarities collection Still. Alongside the band's mosthaunting tracks—"Atmosphere", "Heart and Soul", and"The Eternal"—"The Only Mistake" is among the mostsonorous compositions the band ever recorded. Sumner's doubled guitar tracks are layered with an almostbreathing delay that calls the listener deeper into itshypnotic, swirling gaze. Morris has a few drum fills tobreak up the oppressive bass line, climbing the samefour notes over and over. Repetition, meditation andatmosphere come together in a wintry, defining moment of gothic austerity. Lyrically, the song is from thefirst spate of self-loathing that produced "Autosuggestion" and "Transmission"; not yet resigned to his fateor failure, Curtis condemns his selfishness: "Made thefatal mistake/ Like I did once before/ A tendency justto take/ 'til the purpose turned sour."

The band perfected "Exercise One" with Hannett,but except for its excellent guitar line and Curtis'spointed lyrics, it never evolved beyond a single progression. In many ways, it's a precursor to the more accom-

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plished, impossibly honest "Passover" from Closer. "TheKill" is barely recognizable in comparison to the Warsaw tune of the same name, though some of the melodiesare similar enough. Dominated by keyboards, the songis a frantic, coursing dart, overtly indebted to Siouxsie &The Banshees. The song features one of Curtis's moresimple verses, its refrain "through it all I kept my eyeson you" a potential nod to his possessiveness. Recyclingthe title "The Kill" may have had nothing to do withtheir earlier punk tune: for Ian Curtis's dramatic lyricsand their powerful music, Joy Division usually paid littleattention to song titles. Later, Bernard Sumner wouldreveal: "We did a concert in Berlin with Joy Divisionin an old cinema, and in the dressing room there wasthis old, old film poster on the wall. And we stole it,and took it back to our rehearsal room and it listedevery film that was gonna be on for, like, the next fiveyears at this German cinema. And every time we wanteda title, we'd look at this film poster and pick two orthree titles. Like 'The Eternal' came from a film calledThe Eternal Flame."

The famous Unknown Pleasures sleeve design of aFourier analysis on a black background was done byPeter Saville. Bernard Sumner is reputed to have foundthe image "100 consecutive pulses from the pulsar CP1919" in a textbook, but in From Joy Division to NewOrder: The Factory Story, author Mick Middles recalls

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that, after he picked up the prints of the artwork forRob Gretton in exchange for one of the closely-guardedpromo copies, he asked Bernard where the cover imagecame from. "Fucked if I know" was his response. Whatever the source, this framed industrial line drawing ofthe sound of a dying star is perfectly emblematic of thedigitally precise, spiraling music inside.

The title Unknown Pleasures in all likelihood refersto Proust's Remembrance of Things Past, a divisive, drawn-out autobiography of the author's willful, self-absorbedyouth. While Remembrance of Things Past is widely considered an embellishment if not egomaniacal revisionism, the series invariably appeals to self-determinateyoung men, who savor its unapologetic solipsism.

As personal and emotional as Curtis's lyrics were,the sense of despair and frustration they conveyed hadbroad implications in the England of the late 1970s,where hopelessness was a very real sensation. The economic downturn resulted in labor strikes ranging fromgarbage workers to nurses to gravediggers. The workingclass boys in Joy Division found decent jobs—and keptthem, never unrealistically leaping for the indenturedservitude of a major label advance—but Manchester wasin a state of economic stasis, and—as in London—towerblock living and dole queues were a grim reality formost.

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Adding to this stagnation, the promising fire of punkrock was almost totally consumed, and disco still ruledthe radio in its fourth straight year of saturation: Blond-ie's "Heart of Glass" and Amii Stewart's remake of theEddie Floyd classic "Knock on Wood" were chart-toppers while Joy Division recorded Unknown Pleasures.As hope for real musical progress began to fade, theSex Pistols disintegrated into farce and pretention, whilemany of their contemporaries became darker andmore distant.

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Chapter 4.

His Very Flight is Presence in Disguise

Ian Curtis developed a lofty romantic idealism in hisyouth, obsessed with the notion of dying young at theheight of public adoration, a la Jim Morrison (thoughthis particular hero didn't die in so grand a display).Curtis took Bowie's "Rock and Roll Suicide" and "AllThe Young Dudes" to heart. Bowie gave the latter songto Mott the Hoople, who took it to No. 3 in the UK:"Well Billy rapped all night about his suicide/ How hekick it in the head when he was twenty-five/ Speed jivedon't want to stay alive/ When you're twenty-five." Asreenacted for 24 Hour Party People (and one of fewaccurate exchanges in the film), Curtis considered Bowiea traitor to his art for outliving those lyrics (Bowieperformed the song in concert throughout the 70s). As

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much fun as Ian had with his band mates, he was hangingon to some dangerous absolutes and held himself accountable to what in most people's eyes were clearlyromantic fantasies.

In one sense it's foolish to discuss poets, as their artis at once a biography of thought, albeit draped in veilsof dramatized emotion. Lyric poetry in particular tendsto reveal more of its author than perhaps is intended,inviting simple, direct couplets—this is especially sowhen tied to pop music's basic four-bar structure. AsJoy Division's technical and compositional skill improved on the simple pace of punk rock over three years,so too Ian Curtis transcended teenage contention inhis lyrics, which—like the band's image—leapt fromsimplistic postwar imagery to an existential dread arguably unparalleled in the history of their chosen field—afield ruled for the most part by pure ego and/or desire.

Lovingly referred to as the "dead fly dance" (afteran NME quip), Curtis's famous stage presence is a deadgiveaway for the affliction that contributed so hugelyto his collapse. Paul Morley: "The first time anyonesaw him do it there were only about four people there,so he had the entire floor. He leapt off the stage andwas doing it all over the place. I thought it was cracking.I didn't get any feedback that anyone thought it wascomical, because it was so obviously intense." Ian'smovements were always mechanically precise, snapping

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on a beat; Deborah Curtis recalls, though, that he hadalways danced with such quick motions, even at theirengagement party in 1975.

As much as the music drove Curtis to emotionallyagitated states, it also, in the later days, provided a meansof coping with the constant synaptic explosions hecouldn't control, allowing him to incorporate them intohis unique style of dance, using the structural guide ofthe four-bar pop song. Playing guitar helped even more,and in his later days his cream-colored Vox guitars—aPhantom VI and a Teardrop—were increasingly slungover his shoulder, an anchor keeping him terrestriallybound. This was never an overt consideration: the bandsimply liked his sound, as Bernard Sumner recalled:"He hated playing. We made him play. He played inquite a bizarre way and that to us was interesting, because no one else would play like Ian. He played in avery manic way. We thought it was good."

In January 1979, Curtis started had started taking thestandard combination of Phenobarbital and PhenytoinSodium (brand name Dilantin). Dilantin is an accelerator—it increases and stabilizes Phenobarbital blood levels—but notably, Curtis wasn't initially prescribedCarbamazepine (Tegretol), which is a favored counter-agent to the considerable side effects of Phenobarbital.Only one contra-epileptic drug has been widely accepted since the time of Curtis's diagnosis, the highly

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touted Valproate (also known as Depakene). But Valproate is not so dramatically superior to Phenobarbitalthat we could reasonably assume Curtis would havebenefited right away (he did start taking it later in 1979);though Bernard Sumner has consistently blamed thebarbiturates Ian was taking for the depression and confusion that ultimately led to his suicide, Ian Curtis suffered from such a serious case, his life would have beenruled to obsolescence by his severe epilepsy withoutsuch powerful medications.

Joy Division started using white, constant lights forshows, which the press considered "stark," "Teutonic"and "gothic," when in reality the flashing and/or redlights were the only epileptogenic aspect of concertsthey could readily remove. Curtis continued to drink,smoke and stay up late, all contraindicated behaviorsin an epilepsy maintenance program. Doing what heloved—pursuing the fame and drama he wanted outof life—made the seizures worse and more frequent.Immediately after the birth of his daughter and thecompletion of Unknown Pleasures, Joy Division set outon weekly dates throughout England. The day after agig in Altrincham, at home with his wife, Curtis sufferedthe most serious seizure of his life, on May 24th 1979.A. status epilepticus grand mal is defined as any prolongedtonic-clonic (rigid/lashing) seizure lasting upwards ofthirty minutes, and is considered a life-threatening

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event. Curtis's violent, sequential attack lasted until unconsciousness, but—after only a week in the hospital—Joy Division pressed on.

Epilepsy is a notoriously unpredictable affliction, andJune 1979 proved to be an easy month at home andwith the band, though Joy Division were still laboring inthe doldrums as Unknown Pleasures trickled into stores,their independent label doing its best to sell the album.Peter Hook: "At the Good Mood Club in Halifax [June22nd 1979], we had one person in the audience. Andhe lasted two numbers. It felt like the end, like we werejust wasting our time, that nobody wanted to knowat all."

After abortive sessions at Central Sound Studios inManchester, Martin Hannett and Joy Division retreatedto the comfort of Strawberry Studios to record whatmany consider their defining moment, "Transmission".Certainly their most accessible song aside from "LoveWill Tear Us Apart", it was the first indication of thegrand Joe Meek/Phil Spector sound Martin Hannetthad possibly imagined for Unknown Pleasures but nevercompleted. "Transmission", like the later "Atmosphere", defines the zenith at which Joy Division'sunique music and the incredible talents of Martin Hannett as a producer meet. The snare is delayed in timewith the beat, so that the echo acts almost as a sympathetic second beat, reporting in the seemingly endless

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distance. But the explosive wall of guitar that entersexactly halfway through the song would redefine "distance" as it relates to the spacial limits of stereophonicpop music. In many ways, it plays as a wizened "fuck-you" from Hannett to Sumner and Hook, in responseto their public dissatisfaction with his guitar work onUnknown Pleasures. The full-chord lead is, to this day,without parallel in its beauty, resonance and terrifyingvolume. Just seconds later, this astonishing moment isoutdone by Ian Curtis's most famous utterance: thescream "And we could dance!" leading into the song'sfinal, immemorial chorus of "Dance! Dance! Dance!Dance! Dance to the radio!" Behind this refrain is anindecipherable cacophony of twinkling, frantic keyboards and guitars screaming from miles away.

"Transmission" extended the shelf life of UnknownPleasures, which had stopped selling and was clutteringthe Factory office and co-founder Alan Erasmus's apartment: the album went on to sell out the initial 10,000copies within weeks, and more in subsequent pressings,generating roughly £50,000 profit for the label and theartist—to be, theoretically, split down the middle. ButWilson would famously spend most of Joy Division andNew Order's profits on projects like The Hacienda—aswell as the Factory offices, and later the Dry Bar.

Unknown Pleasures continued to sell in the followingmonths, thanks to local adoration of "Transmission",

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word of mouth fueled by critical praise, and their singer's increasing renown as a not-to-be-missed attraction:"Live, he appears possessed by demons, dancing spas-tically and with lightning speed, unwinding and windingas the rigid metal music folds and unfolds over him,"wrote Jon Savage in a July 1979 issue of Melody Maker.The same month, Mick Middles wrote in Sounds, "During the set's many 'peaks' Ian Curtis often loses control.He'll suddenly jerk sideways, and, head in hands, he'lltransform into a twitching, epileptic-type mass of fleshand bone." It was so obvious, there was no other wayto describe it, but Curtis rarely fell into full-blown seizure at this stage. Things would change as 1979 wore on.

Curtis had two systemic patterns. In the most famous, his right arm crosses his hips as the left swirls inan arc past his face: this movement gives the impressionof a man swimming desperately for shore, trying to getthe leading edge of time itself behind him. The secondpattern is more disturbing to behold, a less-orderedflailing at the elbows, like a child swatting at a swarmof mosquitoes. It's not seen as frequently, but it appearedintensely during a September 1979 BBC2 televisionperformance of "Transmission" during the programSomething Else. A third indication of pre-seizing activityis subtler, documented in that same performance: asIan's head darts from side to side, like a spinning top,you can see his eyes are staring straight ahead, locked

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onto some object that kept him rooted in the moment.In hindsight, with some knowledge of epilepsy, theseindicators are instantly apparent, but during the punkrock years, all manner of outrageous behavior was encouraged and acted out. In fact, on this occasion a number of viewers called in complaining about the wild-eyed, "drug-crazed" singer they'd just seen on television.Bernard Sumner has always maintained that Curtis wasstraight, and just "needed a couple of Carlings" to getexcited for the performance, but Deborah Curtis noticed Ian withdrawing into silence and irritability oncethe press latched on to Unknown Pleasures. It seems agrotesque assumption, but it's clear that Curtis felt hishome life was an embarrassment—at the least a hindrance—to the lone wolf superstardom he'd fantasizedabout his entire life, and was beginning to enjoy, albeiton a small scale. He would later reveal his own embarrassment and guilt for falling into this easy trap.

Wives were shunned and rock star self-absorptionwas promoted: this has always been Deborah Curtis'sprimary contention about the frantic last year of herhusband's life—but Tony Wilson has explicitly deniesfostering this environment. Of course, he's also tiredof being asked to bear any responsibility for Curtis'sdecision. Joy Division were the biggest band on hislabel, and they made everything that Factory Records

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accomplished possible, but they had their own manager,their own wives, their own responsibilities, even at thatyoung age. As Peter Hook put it, "[Ian] had a lot ofresponsibilities. I wouldn't count myself as any differentnow .. . but youth is blind. We thought, 'Why doesn'the just shut up and get on with it?' That's what you dowhen you're young. You don't think about the ramifications." Wilson, until recendy, wouldn't answer the"Why?" questions, and after prodding would say thingslike, "People die. What, are you gonna blame me?"But lately he has been more candid about the eventssurrounding the death of Ian Curtis, as well as hisenvy—of Joy Division's music, and of Curtis's intensity.Curtis's death created legends of both the band andFactory Records: the unassailable purveyors of pure will,high art, ano commercial success, together at last. Thosethings are predicated on mystery and allure, and ingeneral can't bear the weight of truth.

Ian Curtis's lyrics were crushingly honest: he relentlessly drew from his own failures, never able to get outfrom under them. In the last year of his life, he carefullyorchestrated his suicide, penning increasingly resigned,morbid reflections on regret. It's perhaps too easy—tooromantic—to view his death as design, since so manyof his lyrics seem to call back from the grave, but it'scertain that, in making his death as melodramatic and

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emotionally volatile as possible, Curtis achieved immortality as the late twentieth century's version of JohannWolfgang von Goethe's infamous creation, Werther.

Heralded in his lifetime—in his early twenties noless—Goethe was a writer whose instinct for lyricalbeauty reigns for the most part unchallenged over theRomantics who flowered in his wake. Opinions vary onhis position in the literary canon: harsh critics considerGoethe an indulgent, bourgeois diarist, but his mostpassionate and perhaps lucid follower Ralph Waldo Emerson defended his life as transubstantiation: "A manexists for culture, not for what he can accomplish, butfor what can be accomplished in him."

Inasmuch as Curtis was a lyrical genius, he was certainly ushered along by a wider admiration for that role,and was recognized as such almost instantly by his peersand by the press. Curtis never stumbled for his self-awareness, because he believed utterly in art and romance as ideals, the way only the very young can. Hewas uncannily perceptive of the human condition. Heread famous and fashionable works of history, philosophy and fiction, but was never an academic. His talentwas an innate empathy for the human condition, a starkinability to look away from hypocrisy, failure and stagnation that allowed him to see in the shadows—yet hecouldn't bear the weight of the revelations he foundthere. Increasingly blind to reality, Curtis saw the world

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as an almost ordered if not decipherable collection ofsignifiers and fated occurrences, regarding humanityitself as a single, evolving personality.

Goethe's chief works—the partially autobiographicalThe Sorrows of Young Werther and Elective Affinities—arein one sense morality plays, detailing the exasperatedpassion of youth and the death of its unrestrained, crystallized feelings at the hand of marriage. Far from condemning marriage, Goethe offers cautionary advice: inthe first title, Werther commits suicide rather than livewithout his married inspiration. The book is widelyconsidered a biting commentary on its main character'sselfishness, a message from an older, somewhat wiserGoethe to his more impulsive younger self. In manyways a sequel to The Sorrows of Young Werther, ElectiveAffinities deals more specifically with temptation, andcontrasts the idyllic notion of marriage as a sacred institution with the more immediate satisfaction of new experiences. The book was branded immoral whenpublished for suggesting love could be a chemical reaction, but the author's use of physiology as evidence ofdestiny has, as science evolved, gained significant favorwith Western literary audiences. The impassioned ram-blings of Werther are replaced by a near mystic fatalismthat frequently borders on predetermination; writtenmuch later in Goethe's life, this more longing, ruefulwork looks down on its fated spouses from above in

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measured tone, detailing their descent into emotionaladultery.

Ian Curtis's adultery is—at least to his most earnestfans—a distasteful topic to broach, but it's a massivefactor in his emotional collapse, which was not entirelythe result of epilepsy, preventative medication or hisignoring medical advice. After refusing to discuss thesubject for two decades, Tony Wilson wrote about afew poignant moments in the twilight affair that Curtisbegan with a Belgian girl, Annik Honore. (You can readthese in his editorialized script for 24 Hour Party People,wherein he phonetically refers to her as Aneek.) I'lldefer you to Wilson's loving recollections on that score,but—as detailed by Ian's widow Deborah—infidelitywas nothing new: like many young "alpha" type men,Curtis was both possessive and extroverted. In TouchingFrom A Distance, she details a number of transgressions,his impatient and often rude behavior, and even a fewuncomfortable moments of physical intimidation athis hand.

Married at 18 and a father at 20, Curtis led a conflicted double-life. In the end, the reputation he solonged for—the actualization of his fantasies about JimMorrison, Iggy Pop and David Bowie—won out. Hisself-absorption and ego were spurred on by cheerlead-ing followers—"the raincoat brigade"—and the understandably excited members and managers of Joy

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Division, all of whom were focused on the band's success. His advisors could only act on what Curtis toldthem, and as Deborah Curtis put it, he "painted a bleakpicture of his home life." She feels that much of hismoaning about their life together was in aid of his desirefor attention, and in many warm moments she shareswith readers, it seems clear there was a serious case offace and mask with Ian Curtis. More than willful, Curtiswas will in action, a manipulator of events generatinga storm of confusion and need all around him. Whenwith his mates, he was carefree and cool, even if heoccasionally lashed out; at home, he confronted thereality that would await him when his empowering roleas the leader of a critically lauded, increasingly popularband came to an end—as he was quite certain allthings would.

Throughout July and August of 1979, his seizuresincreased as—in addition to his day job—heavy touring,litde sleep, and the extended "Transmission" sessionswore away at his stamina. By late August, UnknownPleasures had cemented its reputation as a critical favoritefor the year, and rave reviews for Joy Division's performance at the massive four night post-punk festival—held at the Prince Of Wales Conference Centre onTottenham Court Road in London—ran in MelodyMaker and the NME (one of their least impressionablewriters, Adrian Thrills, called the band "phenomenal").

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Joy Division finally gave up their jobs and prepared fora major tour in support of the Buzzcocks, trying tobreak through to the largest audience possible. Owingto the massive relief of leaving his job behind him,Curtis suffered only one major attack during Augustand September, before their farewell set to the Factorynights at the Russell Club on September 28th. The gigwas remembered more for Peter Hook's row with agroup of skinheads, during which he snapped the neckof his heavy Rickenbacker bass in two.

Joy Division dominated most reviews of the Buzzcocks' October tour dates, upstaging the headliners inprint as they did in concert. During a mid-month break,they capitalized on the chance to play at Plan K inBrussels on October 16th, with the more experimentalCabaret Voltaire, both groups supporting a readingfrom idolized American author and poet William S.Burroughs. (Ian was rebuffed by Burroughs, which hithim hard as he was a great fan.) At Plan K, Ian eithermet or reacquainted himself with Annik Honore; it'sdebated whether they first met at a secret, one-off London gig in late August played for only a few dozenteenage German exchange students and never advertised. Whatever the case, from October forward, Ianwas seriously involved with Annik.

Stephen Morris: "Annik. Talk about getting deeperinto it. It didn't help at all. I think he just wanted to

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change something about his life, but he didn't reallyknow what it was. I know he felt very guilty about it,and we didn't help because we just gave him grief allthe time. She was a vegetarian, so we'd try to get himto come for a kebab if she was around."

By the end of the Buzzcocks tour in early November,audiences were requesting encores from the openingact, booing when Joy Division left the stage after theirmeager half hour timeslot, often wandering off immediately after Joy Division's set, shell-shocked. Birmingham on October 24th was an exception to this norm,but Curtis goaded the cadre of bored Buzzcocks fanswith "Sorry we're not UK Subs." They were won over.Critics, already intrigued and mostly converted were,by late 1979, fawning over the band's power. Most weremere witnesses to Ian Curtis's channeled stage presence.He had a conviction and severity that few critics couldfend off, though Dave McCullogh tried after a frustrating interview with the uncommunicative band: "Noamount of windmilling obscurity will convince me thatJoy Division's static, murky militancy is real... the music is too supercilious (like the people) to ring true." Butthere was no question of the band's status: Buzzcocksmanager Richard Boon filmed their sets on both triumphant nights at the Manchester Apollo in late October(the footage was later compiled for the IKON/Factory

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Communications Limited film Here Are The YoungMen).

Once the tour was over, however, Joy Division, andespecially Ian Curtis, found themselves in dire financialstraights. The winter was spent in almost abject poverty,Ian drawing a bare minimum £15 wage from Factorywhile Martin Hannett and Peter Saville entertained anoffer valued in excess of $1,000,000 from Warner Brothers' VP of A&R, Bob Krasnow (who went on to headup Elektra/Asylum—home of The Doors—and signedThe Cure). At the time, "Transmission" was sellingfine—5000 copies—though considerably less than Factory's unrealistic expectations. Unknown Pleasures wasapproaching 15,000 in total sales, and the vast majorityof proceeds from all of this were split between less thanten people. Joy Division, like New Order after them,never saw a dime of the money they earned their backers,and it's sad to think Warner Brothers' offer—which farexceeded what the band merited, having released justone album and a pair of singles that hadn't even chartedin the UK—was rejected outright by Hannett, who idiotically told Krasnow that they were only looking forhelp distributing the album in America. Hannett proposed to Bob Krasnow, in all seriousness, that ratherthan acquire his label's best property, Warner Brothersshould act as a distributor for Factory Records inAmerica. We must assume that Krasnow laughed in his

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face. After realizing what an opportunity they'd missed,Joy Division were scheduled to negotiate an even morefavorable offer in May 1980, but it wasn't to be. NewOrder would eventually capitalize on Warner's loyalinterest, thanks to the intercession of Quincy Jones,who signed them to his WEA imprint Qwest (Factorywould continue to suck the band dry in the UK).

After a long winter spent in near-poverty, and knowing Curtis was pining for another woman and emotionally abusing his wife, Factory plotted a convenientEuropean Tour for January. Ian left in a hurry, withoutsaying goodbye to his wife, as he continued to tell hisband mates how horrible his married life was. Howeverselfish Curtis tried to be, he was still sidelined by epilepsy, and did not find a sympathetic nursemaid in theyoung, fashionable Annik Honore. She was uncomfortable with his seizures and couldn't understand them;according to soundman Terry Mason, she behaved cruelly toward him in these moments of need. "That oneat the Moonlight... he was crushed and she didn't wantto know. He was gutted that night." Bernard Sumnerrecalled of this concert, before which Ian had a seriousseizure, "We did some gigs that we shouldn't have fucking done. He had a fit... we did the Moonlight and hewas really ill and he did the gig. That was really stupid."

Curtis was pulled apart by the pressures he had takenon. In love with a cold but crystallized "other self," he

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was ignoring his wife and child both temporally andemotionally, wishing he could simply start over. There'sno doubting Curtis's presence of mind during the affair,nor his awareness of its impact. The songs he composedin late 1979 and early 1980 lay his feelings bare. "Passover" is particularly succinct: "This is the crisis I knewhad to come/ Destroying the balance I'd kept."

It's no surprise that Ian Curtis wanted to commitsuicide, but it's stupefying that he actually managed to;ignoring the lyrics he wrote, there was—as there usuallyis—a failed suicide attempt in February 1980. Immediately upon returning from the January European tour,Curtis downed a bottle of Pernod and slashed at theBook of Revelations' passages about Jezebel. He madecuts on his arms that could have been seen as incidentalgiven the flailing about. Stephen Morris explained Curtis's reaction: "He talked about it as though he'd gonethrough some strange religious experience, where I'dsay he just got blind-drunk and cut himself up. Theway he told it, it was just one of those stories ... wethought he was sorting it out."

After a few well received but noticeably darker, moresedate gigs in February, Deborah Curtis found AnnikHonore's name in Ian's notebook, and confronted him.Though he said he'd call things off, Annik and Ian wererented separate quarters in London for the recordingof Closer at Pink Floyd's Britannia Row.

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Stephen Morris: "Annik thought it was terrible. Shekept saying, 'It sounds like Genesis.' Ian was frantic, hethought we were going to have to remix it all."

"I remember being at Britannia Row," recounts Bernard, "and asking Ian whether he was feeling alrightbecause he'd been acting strangely for days, and he said,'It feels like I'm caught in a whirlpool and I'm beingdragged down and sucked under water.' I think... hehad dark thoughts about committing suicide, which henever shared with us. It was like he felt this was hisdestiny."

Deborah Curtis, alienated, hadn't heard the morosesongs her husband had composed for Closer, and in theignorance imposed by Ian, she continued to believe hislies. After calamitous Moonlight and Rainbow gigs inLondon over the Easter weekend of 1980 marked byrepeated seizures, Curtis returned home on EasterMonday, April 7th. His wife understood instantly fromhis behavior why he'd stayed on an extra night, butshamed him with silence. That evening, he came toher and told her he'd overdosed on his Phenobarbitaltablets. She called an ambulance and Curtis had hisstomach pumped. He had left a suicide note.

The next morning, Alan Erasmus, Tony Wilson andhis wife Lindsay took Deborah to the hospital to see Ian,who was judged fit for release after a brief observation.Wilson, in an effort to assuage Deborah Curtis, sug-

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gested she might want to start looking for anotherman—and while that sounds instantly reprehensible,Deborah later realized that Wilson was discounting Ianas a deserving investment of her time. His problems,as well as his confusion, were the result of his childishdesire to rediscover first love and artistic synchronicitywith Annik Honore.

While at Ian Curtis's bedside, Lindsay Reade madeperhaps the most touching gesture of anyone in themidst of this agonizing situation, inscribing a briefsketch with a passage by the British playwright DavidHare: "There is no comfort. Our lives dismay us. Wehave dreams of leaving and it is the same for everyoneI know." Within the pages of Hare's play Skylight liesa powerful summary of Deborah Curtis's predicament,spoken by the female lead: "You don't value happiness.You don't even realize because you always want more.I love you, for God's sake ... but I'll never trust you,after what happened. There's no peace in you. I knowthis. For me there is no comfort. The energy's wonderful, but with the energy comes the restlessness. And Ican't live in that way."

Deborah Curtis filed for divorce in April of 1980.Ian Curtis committed suicide on May 18th 1980.

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Chapter 5.

The Helena

"Digital", "She's Lost Control", "Transmission","Atmosphere", "Love Will Tear Us Apart" ... it wouldseem difficult to locate a turning point in a career ofsuch extraordinary and sustained creative growth. Butif any point in Joy Division's history can be seen as themoment they crossed over from their intense, boyishbravado to the monolithic austerity and grave, poeticromanticism they're remembered for, it's the SordideSentimental single Licht und Blindheit (Light and Blindness), recorded in late October/early November 1979.From the moment Joy Division recorded "Atmosphere"and "Dead Souls", Ian Curtis had tapped into something—there's no other word for it—eternal. His voice

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had recently improved after technical examinations(urged by Tony Wilson) of Scott Walker and FrankSinatra, and—coupled with this improved expressiveness—he turned his ever-increasing fatalism and self-loathing into poetry as economic, evocative and harrowing as anything in the history of pop music. PaulMorley once referred to "Atmosphere" as "the end ofpop," and he was correct. Aside from its inherent beauty,the song turns its back on ego, succumbing to the defeated realization that success holds shallow rewards.Curtis could see that the long-awaited audience he nowenjoyed could no longer empower him; he'd lost thestrength required to sustain their embrace, or to convertfurther masses. Each accomplishment was a disappointment for Ian Curtis, as reality could never approach hisfantasies. His resignation in "Atmosphere"^ is audible,and to this day it's overwhelming to behold.

The record was released in a gothic gatefold sleeve,containing a melodramatic essay byJean-Pierre Turmel.If not for this essay—with its overreaching, awkwardprose, and its somewhat embarrassing effort to insertJoy Division into a philosophical tradition includingeveryone from De La Croix to the Marquis de Sade—the single is flawless. The music is powerful enough towithstand or validate the lofty scripture, depending onyour view; unsheathed, Licht und Blindheit is easily one

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of the most expressive pieces of vinyl ever released."Atmosphere" employs the ghosts of American rock androll, specifically Phil Spector's wall of sound singles andthe hearty baritone of the Righteous Brothers. Thesong seamlessly integrates these nostalgic echoes withmodern electronic chimes; the result is an unsettling,monastic anthem that ushers the most despondent lyricsIan Curtis would ever pen. It is impossible to abbreviate them.

Walk in silenceDon V walk away, in silenceSee the dangerAlways dangerEndless talkingLife rebuildingDon't walk away

Walk in silenceDon't turn away, in silenceYour confusionMy illusionWorn like a mask of self hateConfronts and then diesDon't walk away

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People like you find it easyNaked to seeWalking on airHunting by the rivers, through the streets, every cornerabandoned too soonSet down with due careDon V walk away in silenceDon V walk away

Martin Hannett's glistening treble and subtle, waterytorn delay lap perfectly beneath Curtis's voice. The cathedral organs of its chorus crest in sympathy, each aperceptible wave of memory and time breaking overyou in breathtaking slow motion. "Dead Souls" is lesspolished—an intentionally raw, screeching dirge fromwhich the caterwaul "They keep calling me!" rises againand again. The lyrics, overt in their politico-religiouscondemnation, draw from Curtis's young fascinationwith "eternals," a proposition Nazis used to defend therise of the Aryan race. Bernard Sumner had once hypnotized Ian, who spoke of dying in a previous life, andCurtis often told his wife he felt he'd lived before. "DeadSouls" is the only clear indication that Ian may haveliterally believed he had lived before. At the very least,the song documents a commonplace fantasy, but whendelivered with such shrill, barking certainty, it's hardto argue with. Curtis reincarnates history for three

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minutes, dancing with ghosts and shadows. Eleanorwould have knighted him.

Sordide Sentimental sessionRecorded in late October/early November 1979at Cargo Studios, Rochdale. Produced by MartinHannett ["Atmosphere" and "Dead Souls" released as Licht und Blindheit in a March 1980 runof 1578 numbered copies. "Ice Age" released October 8 1981 as part oi Still and on the 1997 Heartand Soul anthology.]

AtmosphereDead SoulsIce Age

In March of 1980, four months after recording Lichtund Blindheit and a number of radio sessions—includinga second Peel Session previewing the classic "Love WillTear Us Apart" in a more urgent, drum-driven state—Joy Division completed their last three sessions withMartin Hannett. The first two were for "Love WillTear Us Apart", as smooth and universally accessible asong as the band ever produced, and one of their onlyrecordings to employ acoustic guitars. Like the 12" version of "She's Lost Control" recorded at the same time,its subdued, medication-affected midrange is eerily dis-

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placed when compared with the rest of the band'scatalog.

Immediately after completing those sessions, theband moved to the state-of-the-art Britannia Row,which was to Pink Floyd what the lesser-equippedStrawberry Studios were to Joy Division. Martin Hannett, at the urging of the band, radically changed hisproduction approach for Closer, tempering digital shapeswith more live echo in the form of playback from speakers in other parts of the studio. The drum tracks andguitars benefit from this more analog treatment,and—in contrast to Unknown Pleasures—subjugate theelectronic flourishes, which are more subtly layered.

In the midst of a personal breakdown (though notnecessarily demonstrative about it during the sessions),Ian Curtis unloaded months of self-torture in the album's lyrics. The pallor cast over the proceedings isonly audible in retrospect, as the sessions barely lastedmore than a week and were as much a retreat for Ianand Annik as they were anything else. No one had anytime to process what was ending up on tape, nor werethey operating as the unified troupe that blared in unisonfrom concert stages. Nobody was thinking about Closeras the last album they would ever record because, inonly a month, Joy Division were set to take on America,the dream of every British teenager who ever picked

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up a guitar. Ian had been busily buying new clothes forthe trip with Deborah. Heads were spinning.

Immediately after recording Closer, on April 4th1980, Joy Division played at the Rainbow Theater inLondon, at a benefit for The Stranglers' singer HughCornwell, who was in jail for drug charges. Though JoyDivision generally had the house lights up during theirperformances to prevent Curtis from lapsing into seizure, the Rainbow used strobes and turned them ontoward the end of the set. Curtis spun completely outof control and crashed headlong into the drum set.He recovered from the episode, but was devastated byAnnik's embarrassed inability to cope with his affliction.

Tony Wilson decided that the best solution wouldbe a Joy Division concert with a rotating cast of singers,so that Ian Curtis could rest and avoid the stress ofsinging the more energetic numbers. It sounded as ridiculous then as it does now, but Wilson called Alan Hemp-sail, singer for Joy Division imitators Crispy Ambulance(Hempsall had also interviewed Joy Division for a fanzine in January). Wilson asked Joy Division to build aset around the songs whose lyrics Hempsall knew best.The April 8th gig at Derby Hall in Bury dissolved intoa full-on riot during a laborious run through "SisterRay" with Hempsall on vocals. Peter Hook and managerRob Gretton both brawled with outraged audience

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members, who had been egged on by a few obnoxious skinheads.

Weeping uncontrollably at the sight of this mayhem,feeling responsible for it, and having attempted suicidebarely hours earlier, Curtis in all likelihood crossed aboundary on the night of April 8 th from which he neverreturned. Though Joy Division played three more gigswithout incident, both band and label realized theyneeded to take a break before leaving for America, fortheir singer's sake. Their last show, on May 2nd atBirmingham University, was recorded for posterity byMartin Hannett, and would eventually be released ashalf of the memorial 1981 double album Still. It wasthe only time Joy Division ever performed "Ceremony"in concert.

"Ceremony" and "In a Lonely Place" segue into NewOrder's catalog, and were the first two songs recordedby Sumner, Hook and Morris once they decided tocarry on without Curtis. They were the last two songsCurtis completed with Joy Division, and both play aspostcards from the grave, the lyrics a series of statuesqueimages with detached, departed refrains. "Ceremony"culminates with "Avenues all lined with trees/ Pictureme and then you start watching/ Watching forever,"while "In a Lonely Place" more desperately pines "HowI wish you were here with me now." As with almost

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everything Curtis wrote from Unknown Pleasures forward, his state of mind is all too clear in retrospect.

The last months of Ian Curtis's life were as melodramatic and horrifying as "Twenty Four Hours", the mostbrutal and unyieldingly morbid song Joy Division everrecorded. Curtis describes the futility hanging over himin its third verse:

/ never realized the lengths Td have to goAll the darkest corners of a sense I didn't knowJust for one moment I heard somebody callLooked beyond the day in hand—there's nothing there at allLooked beyond the day in hand—there's nothing there at all

Yet he counters this fatalism with a final verse:

Now that I've realized how it's all gone wrongGot to find some therapy—this treatment takes too longDeep in the heart of where sympathy held swayGot to find my destiny before it gets too late

"The Eternal" and "Decades"—the back-to-back dirgesat the end of Closer—are restrained, forgone conclusionsin which Curtis has accepted his situation, and seemsresigned to ending it sooner rather than later. It's onlyin "Passover", "A Means to an End" and "Twenty FourHours" that he shows any desire to fight his circum-

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stance. But, as concert breakdowns mounted, and as thedrugs stopped working (or worked too well), Ian Curtisfaded away, weathering his final days with dazed resolve,observing the world with a pitiful eye.

As with all suicides, it's easy to say the departed "gaveup" or "quit". Surely it's fairer in this case to say thatIan Curtis lost. He lost to a disease no doctor couldcure—one that kept him from living the life he haddreamed about. That he considered those dreams moreimportant than the people who loved him betrays hisyouth and naivety. His epilepsy took a huge physicaltoll on him, and he felt shame at leading such an indulgent life, while his affair with Annik became less a romance than a monument to his dashed idealism. Thepoetry that Curtis created from his obstinate observations and idyllic dreams all but validates his conviction,making it hard for those as passionate about music as hewas not to deify this confused genius. However casually,critically or romantically we approach Joy Division'smusic, we can only mourn the overwhelming, frustratedagony that Ian Curtis could not bear.

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Postscript.

At the close of his spiraling memoir Nothing, PaulMorley—without a doubt the most significant personin this story who was not directly involved with JoyDivision or Factory Records in the late 1970s—offereda brief soundtrack to his labor of love. In tribute, hereis a list of music I listened to regularly while writingthis book:

Before ... but Longer by The Czars"Sparkwood and Twentyone" by Aix Em KlemmLC and Another Setting by The Durutti Column

Whatfunlifewas by BedheadSweat ln' Soul: Anthology by Sam & DaveThree Imaginary Boys by The Cure

Fight Songs by The For CarnationOn Fire by Galaxie 500Lustwandel by Roedelius

Marquee Moon by Television"Second Dark Age" by The Fall

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Minor Shadows by 1 Mile North

Barely Real by CodeineMonday at the Hug and Pint by Arab StrapSlattery For Ungdom by Alva"Pur" by Cocteau TwinsBoom in the Night by Bush Tetras"Walk on Water" by RideConstantines by The Constantines

"Spangle" by SeefeelThe Final Cut by Pink FloydLive at KROQ by MorrisseyThe Good Earth by The Feelies"Final Solution" by Pere UbuA Different Kind of Tension by Buzzcocks"Loose Fit" by Happy MondaysII by The Sonora Pine

"Jealous of Youth" by The TheCome on Die Young by Mogwai"Trem Two" by Mission of Burma"Get The Message" by Electronic

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Dummy by PortisheadSpirit of Eden by Talk Talk154 by Wire"Love Spreads" by The Stone Roses"Discreet Music" by Brian Eno

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