1990 05 19 Joy Division NME

DIVISION ON

• Ten years ago this week IAN CURTIS took his own life on the eve of Joy Division’s first American tour. Since then, his place in rock’s pantheon of doomed poets has been assured by a stream of imitators and admirers and, of course, the subsequent success of New Order. Here, Len Brown talks to Factory boss Tony Wilson and examines the myth, the legacy and the legend of ‘the greatest live performer of his generation’. Pictures: Kevin Cummins

"Funny. I was in the car with Barney the other day and I just hit‘Unknown Pleasures’ into the CD. And Barney shouted, ‘Get that f--------in’ thing off, man!’ I had to find an Italian House album before he was happy.”

Anthony H Wilson sits opposite me in the controlled chaos of Factory HQ on Palatine Road, Manchester. He puts his boots up on his desk and scratches his legs beneath Pavarotti-sized khaki shorts.

Telephones ring incessantly. Calls investigating the whereabouts of Happy Mondays mastertapes; queries about Revenge; someone from the Football Association with an interest in the New Order-penned England World Cup song. Yes, there have been quite a few changes since Ian Curtis took his own life a decade ago.

“But he’d have loved what’s happened,” says Wilson, reverently. “All the American stuff ... and he’d have loved The Hacienda. Which is why my dominant feeling is just, ‘You daft bugger!’ For ten years I’ve remained in a state of constant mild annoyance that he isn’t around.”

It's a complex business, assessing the place of Joy Division in the manifold of popular music. Is it possible to forget ‘the death' and evaluate their greatness (or glumness) on the strength of the 30-odd real songs Curtis sang on?

Should success be measured in terms of record sales before the suicide? Is it reasonable to regard New Order as a separate entity, who’ve achieved worldwide fame despite their tragic past? No, no and, er, with difficulty.

“Musically there’s been no change in direction,” declares the Factory boss. “Something Barney would tell you is that Ian would’ve been singing with the England team, that Joy Division would've recorded ‘True Faith’.

“Lyrically it would've been different but by ‘Closer’ you could already hear the synthesisers coming in and, to be honest, there’s no song that pleases New Order audiences in American stadiums more than ‘Ceremony’, which is a Joy Division song.

“Ian would certainly have been singing on ‘Blue Monday' but I don’t think he would've been able to write lyrics to the England football song either. He'd have had the same problem Barney’s had.”

I find it hard to imagine any of this. The idea of Ian Curtis crooning along with John Barnes and Steve McMahon, or doing his famous dead-fly dance with Peter Beardsley, seems too far removed from the wild man flailing desperately at the climax of ‘Transmission’ on Beeb TV’s Something Else. Still, we can dream can’t we?

“You bastard. You put Buzzcocks and Sex Pistols and Magazine and all those others on the telly, what about us then?” (Ian Curtis introduces himself to Tony Wilson, April 14, 1978)

TONY WILSON surveys his office - the Mission Control of his empire, decked with posters, trophies and Stockholm Monsters souvenirs - and says, “to think it all came about because of Joy Division and Rob Gretton’s attitude was, ‘Let’s do it with Tony .. .we won’t have to sign nothing to nobody and we don’t have to get on the train and talk to c---s in London’.”

Looking back, the earlier material - ‘The Ideal Beginning’ and ‘In The Beginning’ bootlegs, the coveted ‘An Ideal For Living’ EP, the RCA-aborted ‘Warsaw’ album, that rag-bag of out-takes that turns up on ‘Substance’ - was, let's face it, a bleeding racket.

But with Martin Hannett at Strawberry Studios in April 1979, Joy Division achieved real greatness by creating ‘Unknown Pleasures’ over a year before Curtis’ demise. (“Dancing music with Gothic overtones,” was how Hannett described it.)

“I’ve been playing ‘Unknown Pleasures’ a lot on my CD," claims Tony Wilson. “It’s more of the moment than perhaps ‘Still’ or ‘Closer’. What still startles me is that the band themselves were never really pleased with the sound of ‘Unknown Pleasures’. I think it’s an amazing sound that Hannett created, and one of the great achievements is that there's another unique, individual and markedly different sound by the time you get to ‘Closer’.”

Hannett's aural landscapes raised Joy Division above all their post-punk contemporaries, even U2. “Private music forced out into the open,” was how Paul Morley described ‘Unknown Pleasures’ in these pages. And it was this personal, honest combination of Curtis’ voice above uplifting rhythms that really set Joy Division apart.

“All the great groups and great artists have brought together different traditions and taken pop music a step further,” Wilson suggests academically. “Presley put C&W and R&B together and got rockabilly. The Beatles put Tin Pan Alley and R&B together and got Pop. Bob Dylan put folk and Beatles together and so on.

“But I couldn't figure it out about Joy Division until Barney made the point that they came out of punk; that punk meant expressing simple emotions within a simple rock format, whereas in '78 Joy Division were the first ones to express more complex emotions with that format. There was soul, there was complexity, there was depth, and it was removed from the pomposity of what happened in the early’70s.”

“If it was ever Joy Division’s intention to glorify despair then I’ve underestimated them quite seriously.” (Paul Du Noyer, NME, June 1980)

MUCH OF the soul, complexity and depth came from Ian Curtis. Where it’s possible to unravel the vocals from the impassioned sounds of ‘Unknown Pleasures' or ‘Transmission’ or ‘Atmosphere’, you’re left with some of the most alarming lyrics in the history of pop.

Isolated, they're often as disturbing or depressing as Joy Division’s detractors would have you believe: “Guess your dreams always end/They don't rise up, just descend/But I don t care any more/l've lost the will to want more"(‘Insight’). And yet, amidst all this turmoil, Curtis was always “hoping for something more.. . directionless, so plain to see/A loaded gun won’t set you free/So you say”(' New Dawn Fades').

“ I think he was a stunning lyricist,” says Wilson. “If you asked anyone, even a f------ing poetry don at Oxford, to write pastiches of T S Eliot that were also original, I'm sure they wouldn't have a voice.

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WORDS FOR THE DYING

INSIGHTS

“On Sunday night I was turning up my trousers; on Monday morning I was screaming.”

                                                                Stephen Morris, June 1980

“I will never be able to cope with |an's death. It will affect me for now, and forever. I will never be able to forget it. He was a really good friend.”

                                                                Bemard/Bamey Albrecht/Sumner, June 1980

"Invariably he was mixed too far back for us to get really involved with the language. There was little pleasure in it. Such determinedly humourless music is spooky, for more than any human sound what this voice intimates is silence itself.”

                                                                Barney Hoskyns on Ian Curtis, January 1985

“I saw Joy Division just before 'the death’ and I was astonishingly unmoved. As were the audience, I might add. To me it’s all just... legend. I never ever understood New Order. I don’t feel hate, anger, jealousy or anything strong for them. But that’s the problem. They just passed over my head. Or under it."

                                                                Morrissey, March 1990

“What New Order do is far stronger than Joy Division but if you’re talking about importance to people, they put more importance on Joy Division, which is finished, than on New Order which is happening now.”

                                                                Peter Hook, December 1987

“We were four guys who used to get pissed a lot, then we were three guys who used to get pissed a lot. And then all of a sudden you find out that this guy who used to get pissed a lot is some sort of intellectual genius.”

                                                                Stephen Morris, December 1987

“In my dream it’s May 1980, and Ian Curtis is late for a Joy Division practice. Hands buried deep in the pockets of that baggy mac, his purposeful walk comes to a sudden startled stop. From the rehearsal room he was headed for comes a music of awesome rhythmic power and dizzying contrasts between shining light and impenetrable dark; it is both irresistably physical and delicately beauteous, a muscled arm in a crystal gauntlet; it is the sound, Curtis realises, that Peter Hook, Bernard Sumner and Stephen Morris would make without him. Faced with this stark truth, he turns and runs. Away from that music and into the murk of the Manchester night. Forever.”

                                                                Danny Kelly, January 1989

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“And the problem with ‘Movement’, the first New Order album, was that the lyrics were Barney trying to write like Ian."

Great music remains always relevant and affecting. Months and years later you should feel the same emotion, the same spine-tingling sense of total awe you experienced the first time the music moved you. ‘Unknown Pleasures', ‘Transmission’and ‘Atmosphere’ still get to me like that.

With hindsight, listening again, it's as if Curtis changed after ‘Atmosphere’; as if his depression was under control until late '79 when epilepsy began to attack him more frequently and his marriage began to breakup. Then he inflicted knife wounds on himseif; spent three days in hospital after taking an overdose; even failed to keep appointments with his psychiatrist.

In ‘Twenty Four Hours’ on ‘Closer’ (recorded late March 1980), Curtis seems to be confessing the seriousness of his condition: “Now that I’ve realised how it’s all gone wrong/Got to find some therapy/This treatment takes too long/Deep in the heart of where sympathy held sway/Got to find my destiny before it gets too late”.

"Because he was an epileptic, when he worked hard and got tired the pills probably had less efficacy,” says Tony Wilson.

“Certainly it was prominent in the last year, at the Lyceum and Moonlight gigs. You could always tell when he wasn’t well because, when he was going wild onstage, Hookie, Barney and Steve would be looking centre-stage, worried and thinking, ‘Is the kid alright?*”

“Bad news lads. Ian Curtis of Joy Division has died."(John Peel, May 19 1980)

WHEN POP stars die there’s always plenty of critical wailing, teeth-gnashing and pretentious huffing ’n’ puffing. It seems to bring out the worst in us - Ian Curtis’ demise more so than most.

“That man cared for you, that man died for you, that man saw the madness in your area, ” gushed the Sounds eulogy. And even Morley and Thrills in this organ got a touch carried away: “The threatening nature of society hangs heavy; bleak death is never far away; each song is a mystery, a pursuit”.

But going over-the-top in our grief isn’t quite as bad as soiling the newly dead’s reputation with a few ill-chosen words. Tony Wilson still gets angry when you remind him of comments made by Clive Gregson of Any Trouble to the effect that Ian Curtis was, always had been, “a loonball”.

“That’s the only thing he’s famous for,” snarls Wilson. “Clive Gregson got more credit and fame for being a complete dick and being extremely unpleasant about a dead rock star than for anything else.”

And yet if you check The Face earlier this year, you’ll read of Nick Kent asking Tony Wilson if he’s got any worries about those drug-quaffing Mondays dying on him. To which, Kent quotes, Wilson replied; “I have absolutely no problem whatsoever with any of these guys dying on me. Listen, Ian Curtis dying on me was the greatest thing that’s happened in my life. Death sells.”

Did you or didn’t you say that, Tony?

“No. It was offensive to Mr and Mrs Curtis and Debbie (Curtis’ wife) and Natalie (his daughter). And it was indicative of the whole article, the most insidious hatchet job on the kids.”

Why don’t you take legal action?

“I could take legal action but I’ve told The Face I don't want to. I’ve registered my objections, I asked The Face for a copy of the cassette two months ago but they haven’t replied. I can’t understand why they’ve behaved so badly about it...”

“Everyone thought Ian Curtis was incredibly deep. He wasn't. Most of the time he was a complete tosspot... well, not a tosspot, but an average bloke.” (New Order, November 1985)

IAN CURTIS was no more by the time ‘Closer’ and ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart' reached us, which makes it more difficult to measure their true merit objectively. During his lifetime Joy Division colonised only the Independent charts. After he’d hanged himself, in the early hours of Sunday May 18 1980, ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’ reached number 13 in the UK singles charts, selling 160,000 copies; ‘Closer’ reached six in the album charts.

“But the week before he died there was a massive demand from shops for ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’,” argues Wilson. “It was going to happen. It had blossomed maybe a month before Ian’s death. Strange... to think he was just 24 hours from America, just 24 hours.”

Not that record sales and chart positions are the right criteria by which to judge great music; too often the opposite is true. But Curtis’ posthumous adoration, the myth that’s been woven around him, perhaps says more about the vicarious nature of the consumer than about Joy Division’s music.

“Ian’s leaving gives his words and his images a final desperate, sad edge of clarity,” co-wrote Paul Morley and Adrian Thrills in their NME tribute. “It’s a perverse way for Joy Division to get their deserved attention.”

According to Tony Wilson, it’s impossible to separate Ian Curtis’ life and death from the music.

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THE EFFECTS CAN LAST FOREVER

Hiya, Lenny, long time no see hear speak. This is the letter where it all began, the start of it all, where will it end, where will it end. I start on a tow point. Ian Curtis is dead. lan Curtis is no more. No more the hollow tones of Joy Division. . ’(Don Brown, May 1980)

THIS IS the painful bit. If honesty Is the order of the day then I must explain my love-hate relationship with the life and death of Ian Curtis. In May 1982 my brother Don took his own life, In a room like a Rothko painting with ‘Closer' on the turntable. He was 21.

The final reasons were, inevitably, varied and complex; collapsing relationships, lack of confidence, health worries, pressure of work, fears for the future - all those everyday things that burden some people more than others. But, as an ardent Joy Division (and later New Order) fan, he recognised in Ian Curtis a fellow traveller, someone who was single-minded in his pursuit of truth.

Don wrote to NME in July 1980, in response to a letter describing Ian Curtis as a failure: “Such a statement would have been fair if it had said he was a failure like the rest of us. Ian struggled with emotions that the vast majority of people spend most of their time suppressing.” He continued, “as a person of what could be described as a melancholy obsession I regard Ian Curtis’ lyrics as being totally consistent with a realistic outlook on life.."

In the light, or dark, of this revelation please feel free to question my critical objectivity; obviously this must have affected the way I perceive Ian Curtis and Joy Division, but I’d like to think that passing time has allowed me to view the music and the man from a healthy distance.

As I’ve said before, Unknown Pleasures', ‘Transmission ’, ‘Atmosphere’ even, these are the creations that still move me. ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’ is magnificent but... maybe in another ten years. I don’t think I’ll ever really come to terms with ‘Closer’. It’s too cold, too funereal, too painful; Atrocity Exhibition’ is appalling in the truest sense of the word. The only light remains in Isolation’: “But if you could just see the beauty/Such things I could never describe.. "

As we approach “the anniversary”, I suppose I can only echo Tony Wilson’s immediate feelings after Curtis’ death: “He obviously decided he’d be happier somewhere else... but at least we had the opportunity of meeting him, getting to know him.” Let’s all hope those troubled souls who leave us are happier somewhere else. Maybe Sam “I can’t go on, I go on” Beckett was right: “Although I do not go there gladly I go perhaps more gladly there than anywhere, astonished and at peace.”

Rest well, Ian Curtis. Rest well, Don Brown. How I wish you were here with me.

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“There is no doubt that since about 1880 the life and death of the artist has played a strange role in the art itself. They should be separate but the artist’s life has, from the onset of Romanticism, been available as part of the art experience. Be it Keats or James Dean, and by and large we’re talking early deaths.

“Although you should separate Frank Sinatra’s ability to sing from his life, really you don’t. Frank Sinatra the friend of The Mob is somehow part of hearing him sing.”

So when we play ‘Unknown Pleasures’ or Tiransmission’, when we watch Here Are The Young Men, or focus on that face in photos, we’re experiencing the “average bloke” as well as the Pop Icon. But what we sometimes choose to forget in our glamourisation of youthful death is that Ian Curtis’ suicide, like most, must have been a desperate, sad, and lonely affair.

“It was an altruistic suicide,” says Wilson. “A very emotional and stressed, Romantic thing, meant to help people. How he thought it was helping is perhaps a moot point, but somewhere in that very wild Romanticism you’ll find the seeds of why he f-ed off.”

And in the aural landscapes of New Order you’ll find the seeds sown by Ian Curtis and Joy Division; in everything from ‘Ceremony’ through ‘Low-Life’ to ‘Technique’... maybe even on this bloody England football song.

There’s always something there to remind us, sometimes good, sometimes ghastly: versions of ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’ by Paul Young or Swans; Grace Jones’ ‘She’s Lost Control’; Ian McCulloch singing ‘Ceremony’ with New Order at Factory’s Festival Of The Tenth Summer; Revenge cranking out Joy Division songs at a Factory party; ‘Something About Joy’, a whole album’s worth of covers by Italian bands on Milan’s Vox Pop label...

How does Tony Wilson choose to remember Ian Curtis?

“That moment on the crappy old Here Come The Young Men video, where he goes back and stands by the drums and does the dead fly dance. He was the greatest live performer of his generation, even Bono admitted that. That’s what people should remember, not the dead rock star. They weren’t a miserable group to watch, he went wild, it was f----ing frenzied.

“Mister Curtis, a great live performer.”