Joy Division Record Mirror

FROM MANCHESTER WITH LOVE

Manchester’s most enduring musical export since Freddie And The Dreamers has come of age. With the release of ‘Substance’, Roger Morton takes a wander through the life of New Order, from their previous incarnation as Joy Division to the Pernod-drinking, Bermuda shorts-sporting chart band of today

On the TV screen, brightly costumed bubble figures are bouncing and fighting along in time to a glorious surge of yearning synth-pop. It’s the jolly surreal video for New Order’s chart hit ‘True Faith’, a serviceable piece of coasting techno dance which would do nicely enough for a weekend drive through the countryside.

Once upon a time, when New Order were a different group called Joy Division, Bernard Albrecht/ Sumner, Peter Hook, Stephen Morris and their singer; Ian Curtis made the sort of music which many people thought could only do nicely for driving down a dark tunnel into a brick wall. Anyone old enough or bored enough to remember Joy Division might glance at the sellable, lovable, weirdo face of current New Order and conclude that they’d grown a touch cynical, that they’d lost their commitment to the grim truths of their early days ... that today they mean no more or less than, say, the Pet Shop Boys.

That, of course, would, be silly. Joy Division/New Order’s progression from ‘morbid introspection’ to splendiferous release, from ‘frozen despair’ to dance celebration, from black arm bands to Bermuda shorts, was absolutely inevitable. Even without the suicide of Ian Curtis to push them on to a more affirmative noise, Joy Division would have had to grow up and grow out.

The fact that they’ve been absorbed into the giggling sponge of late Eighties pop, whilst maintaining a measure of belligerence, a few ideals, and even a faint aftertaste of JD’s magnificent misery, can only be welcomed.

With a New Order compilation album, ‘Substance’, all set to re-cap on the band’s brightest moments, a brief reminder of the activities of their darker days seems to be in order.

Ten years ago, with all that punk vitality thrashing about, impressionable young men were daring to take music seriously. On the surface, Joy Division were the most serious of them all. In their earlier incarnation as Warsaw, they’d played fairly extensively on the ‘punk club scene’ in their home city Manchester, but had failed to impress. It wasn’t until they were forced to change their name to Joy Division (because of a clash with the London band Warsaw Pakt) that people began to take notice of their chilly, post-industrial gruff and groan.

At a Stiff Records/Chiswick ‘Battle Of The Bands' in April 1978, two of those taking notice were Rob Gretton, who became their manager and virtual fifth member, and Tony Wilson, head of Manchester’s independent Factory Records, with whom they eventually teamed up.

In June 1978, however, the band themselves put out their own first record, a four song EP of bleak blaring entitled ‘An Ideal For Living'. Already regarded with a degree of uncertainty in Manchester because of their uncommunicative attitude and their predilection for vaguely military, Forties style stage wear, the EP fuelled suspicions about Joy Division’s ‘political’ ideas. The self-designed sleeve depicted a Hitler Youth style drummer boy and a German stormtrooper levelling a gun at a Jewish child. Along with the knowledge that the name Joy Division came from the term used to describe the area where 'prostitutes’ were housed in Nazi concentration camps, the sleeve gave the band a somewhat preposterous ‘fascist’ reputation from which it took them years to escape.

Interviews with Joy Division were few and far between and those which took place revealed little about the band. The process of explaining yourself in print was considered to be pointless, self-glorifying and part of a ‘rock tradition’ which they wanted no part of.

However, through ’78’s grimly interne live performances and a John Peel session in early 79, the band accumulated a powerful image of doomy austerity. By the time they came to record their first album, having chosen Factory as the label most likely to sympathise with their need for artistic autonomy, Joy Division were fast becoming the glum darlings of the long overcoat set.

In May 1978 the band had recorded an album for RCA which was never released due to a dispute over the final ‘mix’ and the terms of the contract. So, without the interference of any big label, their debut album was able to emerge on Factory in June 1979 as a set of uncompromising, haunted wreathes of sound.

Called 'Unknown Pleasures’, it featured Ian Curtis’ leaden vocals dropped onto a grey plateau of noise built from simple, mournful bass lines, anxious rhythms and crumbling guitar. Certainly these are songs of ‘alienation and mental and social collapse’, but there’s far more to it than was suggested in one review, which described the album as “the perfect accompaniment for slitting one’s wrists”.

The slow dive into sweet sorrow of ‘New Dawn Fades’ or “Day Of The Lords’ might deny you the traditional musical/lyrical escape of most ‘rock music’, but only out of a desire to find something more intense.

Painful songs then but, at the same time, seductive enough to allow someone like Grace Jones to successfully cover one of the album’s best tracks, ‘She’s Lost Control’. The spartan black sleeve with its electrograph of a dying star’s scream was designed by Peter Saville, whose austere packaging was to characterise virtually all future Joy Division releases. Despite Factory’s minimal marketing, the album went on to sell over 100,000 copies.

Only two singles, ‘Transmission’ and ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’, came in between the first album and. July 1980’s follow up ‘Closer’, but for Joy Division it had been 12 months of steady live activity including a full British tour supporting the Buzzcocks. During April 1980, Ian Curtis, who was epileptic, had suffered from a period of ill health which caused the cancellation of a number of dates but, by now, the punishing force of Joy Division’s songs, and the semi-possessed stage presence of Curtis had won the band a reputation as mesmeric live performers. With the album already recorded, they were set to leave for an American tour. On May 18, on the eve of the planned departure for America, Ian Curtis committed suicide. At the age of 23, he left behind a wife and child and a legacy of some of the most searching ’rock music’ ever made.

Curtis’ death has inevitably coloured the popular perception of Joy Division as a darker shade of pale, but it’s a mistake to assume that their music contains nothing but despair. ‘Closer’ has moments of poignancy which transcend the supposed gloom, achieving an almost classical beauty: To be sure, the tortured visions and twisted guitars of 'Atrocity Exhibition’, or the restless self-doubt of ‘Heart And Soul’ makes for harrowing listening, but the gliding synthesisers of ‘Decades’ and ‘The Eternal’ have an almost religious sense of spiritual calm about them.

Ian Curtis’ death marked the end of Joy Division as such, but with certain sections of the music press attempting to turn the singer into some sort of martyr for a generation of lost souls (“this man died for you” said writer Dave McCulloch in Sounds), ‘Closer’ went to number six in the album charts. The paradox of posthumous fascination must also have helped the release of a second version of ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’ go to number eight in the July singles chart.

The epilogue to the history of Joy Division came in October 1981 with the release of the double album ‘Still’. Composed partly of unused tracks from previous recording sessions and partly from the band’s last concert at Birmingham University (May 1980), it’s a patchy but valuable record of the abstract fear and glazed longing of Joy Division in the raw.

At times the huffing and puffing of existential angst can be almost laughable, but when the manic anxiety of ‘Something Must Break’ or the towering bass lines of ‘Disorder’ triumph over the poor sound quality, it’s easy to see what all the fuss was about.

The live cover of Velvet Underground’s 'Sister Ray' allows a rare glimpse of the seemingly unlikely but oft quoted ‘practical joker’ side to Ian Curtis. As the somewhat messy version comes to an end the singer deadpans: “You should hear our version of ‘Louie Louie’... Wow.”

Long before ‘Still’ was released, however, Albrecht/ Sumner, Hook and Morris had decided to carry on with the band under the name of New Order. The choice of name, with its ‘master race’ connotations, briefly resurrected a few fascist accusations but, as the band settled into their current, distinctly un-totalitarian shape, the allegations were soon forgotten.

After some initial uncertainty, Bernard ‘Barney’ Albrecht was elected as singer and a fourth member, Gillian Gilbert, an old friend of drummer Stephen Morris, was brought in on keyboards (apparently she qualified for the job by virtue of her ability to play ‘Jingle Bells’).

Although the early New Order singles ‘Ceremony’ and ‘Procession’ and the first album ’Movement’ (November 1981) were largely in the mould of Joy Division, it soon became clear that New Order were heading for less sombre, more danceable soundscapes. By the time of their second album ‘Power, Corruption And Lies’ (May 1983) they had arrived at the groundplan for the digital, disco grandiosity of current New Order.

The shadow electro dance of the ‘Blue Monday1 12 inch which preceded the album hung around the singles charts for the best part of 1983 and sold over a million copies worldwide, firmly establishing the band in the world of big, bold pop.

As New Order have progressed through the awesome, celestial dance music of ‘Low Life’ and ‘Brotherhood’ to a position of comfortable commerciality (an audience of 3-400,000 record buyers worldwide per album) they have nevertheless retained a dignity and an independence rarely found in big league pop. Barney’s lyrics might sometimes seem trite in comparison to Joy Division and the performances less painfully intense, but many of the basic ideals continue to be upheld by New Order.

They’re still on Factory records (ploughing much of the profits back into worthy projects like the Hacienda club in Manchester). They’re still refusing to pander to the press or to live audiences (encores are not obligatory and nightly set changes make for unpredictable live performances) and despite the frequent ‘exposes’ of the four of them as ordinary lads and a lass with an ordinary fondness for fast cars and piss-ups, they’re still weirdo enough to be able to infuse New Order’s music with a swollen echo of Joy Division’s spirituality.

Perhaps the New Order balancing act is best summed up in two of Barney’s reflections on their current significance. On the one hand: “Pop music today is more important than religion. For a lot of people it’s replaced religion because it’s the one area of young people’s lives where they touch on something spiritual... And good pop music has that element. I think our music does.”

On the other hand: “We do what we do for a laugh. If we do a gig, it isn’t ‘to bring our songs to the public’. We do it ’cause we can get pissed, whoop it up and have a laugh.”

Between the laughter and the spirituality, they’re doing quite nicely really.