Joy Division

Contains very strong language from the start

'O, God, grant us a vision of our city, fair as she might be.

'A city of justice where none shall prey on others.

'A city of plenty, where vice and poverty shall cease to fester.

'A city of brotherhood, where all success shall be founded on service.

'And honour shall be given to a nobleman alone.

'A city of peace where order shall not rest on force

'but on the love of all for the city.

'A great mother of the common life and weal.'

I don't see this as the story of a pop group,

I see this as the story of a city that, once upon a time,

was shiny and bold and revolutionary and then suddenly,

30 odd years later, is shiny and revolutionary all over again.

And at the heart of this transformation

is a bunch of groups, and one group in particular.

'Go further back in time. Further back through time

'to another set of memories.

'Tell me what you see.

'Five, four, three, two, one.'

I can remember very precisely what Manchester was like in the mid-70s.

It felt like a piece of history

that had been spat out.

This had been the historic centre of the modern world.

We invented the Industrial Revolution in this town

and yet, even though we did, we also invented these conditions.

It was really grimy and dirty.

Dirty old town.

You were always looking for beauty because it was such an ugly place.

Whether, again, on a subconscious level.

I mean, I don't think I saw a tree till I was about nine.

'Here are your playgrounds, your porches and sunloungers

'and whatever else you can use them for.'

I just remember factories, nothing that was pretty, nothing.

I remember the first time in Manchester

seeing all these houses...

End-to-end terraced houses.

And then the next time you went, there was just a pile of rubble.

Then the next time you went, it was sort of like all this building work

and then by the time you were in your teens, it was this big

concrete fortress. Quite futuristic at the time.

And then, of course, concrete can set in and it looks horrible.

I was born in 1956.

I lived in my grandparents' house

and they used to talk about the war all the time.

My grandparents, since we'd been bombed... House had gone.

I remember we had a room there and it was full of like gas masks

and tin helmets, British flags, you know, old radio sets,

paraphernalia for the war.

Er, I met Bernard in Salford Grammar School when we were 11.

You get less for murder, don't you?

I guess, living in Salford, you're a bit of a nobody, really.

You know, you didn't have much chance of progressing

in the world, really. You were thought of as factory fodder.

So, erm, we just sort of wasted our time together.

We were really, really normal daft beer boys,

I suppose you'd have to say.

I had to have myriad distractions while I was working

and basically it was reading the Evening News.

When I was going through the little adverts and the classifieds

and just scanning them for anything of interest.

The Sex Pistols, 50p, Lesser Free Trade Hall.

I thought, "That looks interesting."

MUSIC: Pretty Vacant by Sex Pistols

Er, I thought it was shite. It was like a car crash.

It was like, "Oh, my God!" I'd never seen anything like it in me life.

I mean, I'd been to see most groups. You know, Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin

but I'd never seen anything as chaotic

or as exciting and as...

rebellious.

It was how I felt.

You know, you just wanted to trash everything.

It was a right racket, you know, and you just thought, "Fucking hell,

"I could do that." You know, "I could just about do that."

We'd formed a band, then, that night. There and then, we formed a group.

It's easy to form a group.

It's all the rest that's difficult. We went to see the second

Sex Pistols gig when the Buzzcocks supported them.

And we were in it then.

We had a meeting with them on Friday evening because they said,

"But we'd like to start a band but we need some help,"

and because, like I say, punk being an inclusive thing and we needed

all the similar-minded people that we could have,

you know, to make it a growing concern.

-We advertised for a drummer and singer.

-PHONE RINGS

One guy rang up and he didn't sound mad and I said, "What's your name?"

He went, "Ian." I said, "Ian who?" "Ian Curtis." I said

"Oh." Because there was two guys called 'the two Ians'.

We advertised for a singer and Ian answered it

and we met in the pub in Sale.

To look at him you think, "Christ, you know,

"quite frightening looking guy."

Leather pants and combat jacket with HATE on the back getting

daggers from the locals saying, "What the hell is this? What's he?"

Pretty dangerous thing to do in 1976 in Manchester.

I said, "Oh, the two Ians? Right, we met you

"at the Clash gig the other day,"

-or whatever, you know.

-And I was going, you know, the punk ideals...

I went, "Being married? Boring." He went, "I'm married."

You know, he shows me his wedding ring.

We thought, "He's such a nice guy."

We thought, "Oh, yeah, it doesn't matter."

Like, "Yeah, that's me, that's me." I said, "All right.

"Yeah, yeah, all right, you've got the job."

And that was it, over the phone.

The first set of material we wrote was just us aping punk, really.

Completely aping it, doing it really badly.

MUSIC: You're No Good For Me by Warsaw (Joy Division)

# Don't know what I'm doing Don't know where I'm going

# Leading me to ruin I should have traded you in

# Yeah, you think you're something but you're no good for me. #

# Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, fuck off, fuck off!

# Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, bollocks, bollocks. #

You know, these really dreadful...

Dreadful, dreadful songs.

# No good!

# Na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na

# No good! #

I get on the phone expecting some sort of oafish...

-..punk type...

-HE GRUNTS

..and it was a very mild-mannered,

very chatty Ian.

The first gig that I had with them,

was the last night of the Electric Circus.

The Electric Circus was one of the places that we hired

from bemused hippies on their quiet night

to put on emerging punk rock.

'Can you explain to me why you come to the Electric Circus?'

Cos it's the best place where they put punk rock bands on.

Cos it's got a great atmosphere.

He looks like he's just come out of Risley for the day, don't he?

He wouldn't go and see it, I tell ya.

-..bottles for plastic punks...

-LAUGHTER

I wanted to do something for me,

because look at me now, I'm nothing.

That's what punk is.

You can sort of go in and really enjoy yourself,

you know, jump about a bit, let yourself go. Why not?

It became a punk club

and absolutely a very important part of the whole landscape.

And then suddenly we were saying goodbye to it

in an emotional weekend do, that was recorded

rather pitifully by Virgin Records.

CHANTING

And, yeah, the Warsaw

and the 'remember Rudolf Hess' thing,

and all that kind of nonsense.

At the time, whenever any of that happened, those of us within it

had not a moment's doubt

that it was anything dicey.

You know, you just sort of trusted somehow

the instincts of locals that it was not dicey.

# Can't buy everything, that's true

# Only one thing wrong with that

# What it don't buy I don't use. #

Some guy at work gave me a couple of books.

One was called House Of Dolls

and I knew it was about the Nazis

but I didn't read it.

And I just flicked through the pages.

It was the brothel that the soldiers went to,

and I thought, "Well, it's pretty bad taste

"but it's quite punk".

And everyone I told the name to

went, "That's a great name".

It sounds too neat and tidy,

but it almost seems to be that it all came when they had the name.

It was like Roxy Music or Velvet Underground, you know,

you knew instantly from the moment it happened, it was one of those names.

At that stage, when we made our first record,

An Ideal For Living,

we just were making this music

and we wanted people to hear it.

And it was very much a punk ethos of do-it-yourself, independence,

forget big labels,

just small, you know, cottage industries.

I'd actually forgotten that Ian borrowed the money.

God, if I did it now, my wife would kill me.

So, how he got away with it then

is unbelievable, you know.

So, we banged it down, heard it in the studio,

we thought it sounded great.

You know, a couple of weeks later, we got the vinyl.

You know, An Ideal For Living,

I'd drawn the sleeve and that.

"Right, I know what we'll do, we'll take it to Pips,

"that local club that we go to."

Went to the DJ, "Here you are, mate, play our record.

"It's us, you know, us."

So, he said, "No, fuck off."

We were like, "No, come on, it's us.

"We've been coming here for years, play it."

So, there's loads of people on the dance floor,

puts it on and we're like that,

"Listen to it."

And the pressing was so bad

it was like completely muffled.

So quiet that you wouldn't believe it.

And it just cleared the dance floor.

Everyone just walked off

and he took it off halfway through.

We were like, "Oh, shit.

"What have we done?"

We didn't play for six months, we couldn't get a gig.

Nobody would give us a gig as Joy Division.

It was really difficult.

I think they thought we were yobs, which we were.

It spurred us on to rehearse and rehearse and rehearse,

and write and write and write, and get really, really tight,

so that when we did get a gig,

we would show the bastards.

We used to rehearse twice a week,

and in those three and two hours,

you'd invariably get a song, you know.

One!

We had an enormous factory floor to ourselves.

In the winter, we used to just brush all the rubbish

to one end of the room and set fire to it to just keep warm in it.

We were all on our own island,

what we were doing,

and we just really made sure that what WE were doing sounded great,

and sort of didn't pay any attention to what the others were doing.

When I played low, I couldn't hear anything at all.

When I played high I could pick it out, cos of the row,

cos Barney's amp was really loud.

Then Ian just latched onto you playing high

and he'd say, "That sounds good when you play high

"and Barney plays guitar," you know.

We should work on that,

that sounds really distinctive.

Just a happy accident like that gave us our sound, you know.

Ian always had a box of words

and he would just pull some words out

and start signing them, so he already had them, really,

cos he would be at home writing every night anyway.

They had like a battle of the bands night for young bands

that were just starting out, you know.

I remember Paul Morley being there in a band,

Kevin Cummins was in his band,

I think Richard Boon was in it.

It was like a joke band, you know, they were having a laugh.

And everybody, including Joy Division, turned up to be...

You know, to win, like some weird prototype X Factor.

This was when I first the other side of Ian.

Ian was a really lovely, really nice, polite, intelligent guy,

but if he didn't get what he wanted through being like that,

he would explode into this kind of frenzied, "Argh!"

You know, frenzied thing,

because that's the only way he could get what he wanted.

I remember him kicking the door down to their dressing room

and going to Paul Morley and Kevin Cummins,

they were going, "You're not fucking going on."

"Right, you're not fucking going on. We'll kill you.

"If you go on, we'll bottle you."

"We're going on."

Ian had previously gone up earlier in the night

to Tony Wilson to complain.

Called him a "Cunt", you know,

he says, "You're a cunt, you."

Tony was like, "Why, darling?

"What have I done, darling?"

And he'd be like, "Well, you won't put us on your..."

Tony had a TV programme then.

I didn't answer him, but I know I remember thinking, you know,

"You're next in the list, you fucking idiot."

I spend a lot of my days working out how

I could possibly explain to people how bizarre this is

that this man would suddenly come to be involved.

'Tony Wilson reports.'

The Southwark, Lambeth and Lewisham area health authority

is the largest single health authority in the country.

Welcome to the circus.

He was like seeing an alien with tentacles and eight eyes,

really, when I first met Tony Wilson, he was just like from another planet.

He was showbiz, wasn't he, you know? He was a star.

Tony had So It Goes,

one of the only platforms

that championed punk and the new wave.

And that was wonderful.

And, strangely, a champion within the establishment.

There's nothing more establishment,

particularly to young people, than television.

Every other band that night at Rafters

was on stage because they wanted to be on stage,

they wanted to be rock stars,

they wanted to be in the music business,

but this lot were on stage

cos they had no fucking choice.

The next day, I remember being in a phone booth

in Spring Gardens in Manchester,

just outside the post office there.

There was a knock on the booth,

I opened the door, "Yeah?"

This guy stood there and it was Rob Gretton.

I knew Rob Gretton because he was one of the other DJs at Rafters.

I just have this picture in my mind, I can still see,

of him ranting at me ecstatically

about how wonderful he thought they were,

and, "Weren't they the best band you'd ever seen in your life?"

And he was going to manage them,

and he was going to take them

to all sorts of places you wouldn't believe.

One of the first things that Rob Gretton did when he came along...

..was he said, "That fucking record you've done..."

He said, "Get rid of that fucking cover,

"everyone thinks you're Nazis cos of it.

"Get rid of that fucking cover.

"Whose idea was that, you tosser?" You know.

"So, we're going to do a new cover

"and were going to press it as a 12 inch so it sounds loud."

So, he did it and we played it,

and then it was like, "Wow! He's right, yeah, it sounds fantastic."

# No love lost

# No love lost. #

When he was DJing, I mean, he was playing soul music, I think,

but his ideology was really punk.

We'd met a guy called Richard Searling from RCA records.

Ian was a regular visitor to the RCA offices.

The main reason for that was that he adored Iggy Pop,

and they wanted a punk band.

A punk band.

I didn't know anybody other than...

"Oh, Ian's got a band."

He wanted us to do a cover version of this Northern Soul record

called Keep On Keepin' On,

which when he played it to us, we were quite impressed with actually.

It had a really stonking guitar riff in it.

MUSIC: Keep On Keepin' On by Nolan Porter

I think the engineer must have been pretty good.

I can always remember he tried to get Ian to sound like James Brown.

Telling him to sing like James Brown.

He just got a bottle of whisky and... Plying him with whisky

and telling him to belt it out like James Brown,

and it's not the way really.

He just kind of got very fractious and started yelping like a dog,

and decided we best take him home.

Punk enabled you to say, "Fuck you."

But somehow, it couldn't go any further, it was just a single,

venomous, one syllable, two syllable phrase of anger,

which was necessary to reignite rock and roll.

But sooner or later,

someone was going to want to say more than "fuck you."

Someone was going to want to say, "I'm fucked."

And it was Joy Division who were the first band to do that,

to use the energy and simplicity of punk

to express more complex emotions.

Seeing as how this is the programme

which previously brought you

first television appearances

from everything from The Beatles to the Buzzcocks,

we do like to keep our hand in and keep you informed

of the most interesting new sounds in the North West.

This - Joy Division - is the most interesting new sound

we've come across in the last six months.

They're a Manchester band, with the exception of the guitarist,

who comes from Salford. Very important difference.

They're called Joy Division. This number is Shadowplay.

# To the centre of the city where all roads meet, waiting for you

# To the depths of the ocean where all hopes sank, searching for you

# Moving through the silence without motion, waiting for you

# In a room with a window in the corner, I found truth... #

When Tony started doing the Factory nights, there was

always this kind of void.

There was the band, then there was nothing

and then there was some people, sort of lurking.

Second time, the sort of void was getting sort of narrower and

narrower, so that eventually there was even the odd person dancing.

Wahey, we've got an audience now.

I saw them and I was just absolutely astounded. It was unbelievably good.

And I felt so in awe of somebody I knew.

Ian's just there and he starts that dance.

Which I'd seen the very, kind of, like, seize of.

And it was otherworldly.

And I'm thinking, "This is Ian, who kind of buys flowers for his wife."

And he's up on stage and it's...

..totally inspirational and hypnotic. And I am...

I'm sold to it. I've bought it. Totally.

# To the centre of the city where all roads meet, waiting for you

# To the depths of the ocean where all hopes sank, searching for you

# I was moving through the silence without motion, waiting for you

# In a room with a window in the corner, I found truth... #

You would just be drawn into it.

It functioned like those shaman things do.

You're just kind of pulled into the moment.

A very interesting band about time,

because they're very informed by the past,

but also you're always propelled into just a moment of present with them.

Time sort of stops.

# In the shadowplay, acting out your own death, knowing no more... #

They were just absolutely stunning. I couldn't believe it.

I'm getting real goose bumps now,

because I can remember it,

but not in my head, in my stomach.

This just got me there, you know... Just BOOF!

# But I could only stare in disbelief as the crowds all left... #

We were only originally going to have two songs.

And then do a short film about what was happening within Manchester with

Anderton, who was a very right wing and very vociferous Chief Constable.

He believed he spoke directly to God every night.

He believed that God sent him messages.

And it felt really, genuinely threatening.

It felt like there was a bad moon rising.

It felt like there was bad shit on the way.

Well, there was, actually. The sewers were up at the time.

A great metaphor for whatever the fuck was going on.

And then you had the looming Thatcher thing creating this

consumerist/fascist society.

And then we cut to, if you like, the underground

feel of the rehearsal rooms, where it's almost like a resistance group.

That was the idea to get across, that this was a resistance.

Through art and culture.

When Tony sat with Alan and I for Christmas '78, and said...

"I think we might...or we could do a record from the club for the

"bands that haven't got contracts yet." This was just like...

..terribly, terribly exciting.

Suddenly we had a producer, and his name was Martin Hannett.

Why?

Oh, right.

So what was the first thing you did for them... Ideal for them?

# Feel it closing in

# Feel it closing in

# The fear of whom I call

# Every time I call

# Feel it closing in

# Feel it closing in

# Day in, day out Day in, day out

# Day in, day out Day in, day out

# Day in, day out Day in, day out... #

The lyrics of Digital are actually digital.

There's on-off, day in, day out, day in, day out. They're switching.

There's also, somehow...

Weirdly related to

Curtis's persona itself.

Which, as we know now, is bipolar.

On the one hand, we have the lad going down the pub with his mates,

fooling around.

On the other hand, we have the aesthete who's reading poetry

and imbibing himself with all kinds of highfalutin ideas

that he's going to be a romantic pop star hero.

Ian just looks straight into the camera while he's smoking.

It's the eyes, like, the translucency of his eyes

looking into the camera that sends a chill through people.

16, 17, 18, 20 and 21 - we are getting there.

One was in silhouette and there was one

when they came slightly out of the passageway and we got some sidelines.

Already, by then, I've shot two thirds of a roll of film

and I'm conscious of the fact that I didn't really think I had anything.

I'm walking up the bridge and they're waiting for me.

And I just felt it looked so bleak and they were

so un-rock 'n' roll-like

that I took two frames and then took an upright shot

of the same thing. And that's all I did of that picture.

And that's, I guess,

become probably the most recognised Joy Division image.

The whole idea was to get your band signed to a major.

And I was sitting in The Band On The Wall

one Sunday night with Gretton,

who suddenly turns to me and goes...

"Why don't we do our first album with you and then

"go to Warner Brothers?" I remember far from being,

"Wow," it was like, "Are you sure? How much is that going to cost?"

"Martin says it will cost 10 grand." It cost 25, the bastard.

With Unknown Pleasures, I think we had three weekends.

Could be wrong, but I think it was three weekends to record

and mix it.

So we'd played them all live, so the first thing

we did with Martin was to just get them recorded in the studio.

And then it would be experimentation time

and he'd start putting wacky noises on it.

Like, he recorded a lift shaft.

It was kind of like you were going on some sort of strange

science fiction-based journey.

There was a lot of pot smoked.

He wouldn't say to you, "I want you to do it like this."

It was kind of, "Oh, do it again, but a bit more cocktail party."

Or, "A bit more yellow."

-"Magnificent but humble."

-"Faster but slower."

Whether it was pot

or whether it was the Zen school of production, I don't know.

-'Are we all ready?'

-'Let's try one!'

LAUGHING: 'You fucking prick.'

-'He's a United fan.'

-'Fuck off, Ian.'

Memorably, he had the AMS - a digital delay line.

You press the button and then hit the snare drum. You go... Oh!

There's my snare drums in the box now. How have you done that,

Martin? That's amazing.

It was using that machine that Martin changed drum sounds forever.

But I never knew that Martin was significantly

involved in creating the machine.

These two strange whizz kids from AMS,

Burnley, Lancashire, England, had discovered Hannett and...

once a month, they would meet him

in a car park on top of the moors in between Manchester and Burnley.

And this lunatic...

GUNSHOT

..stroke drug addict would clamber out of his old Volvo,

into the back of their car, and would rabbit on for 30 minutes

about the sounds he was imagining in his head.

Now this is possibly heresy.

I think Martin

proposed a way to understand Joy Division.

He heard something, he saw something,

he felt something from them...

..and was able to project in his mind what it could be.

Well, the songs were great anyway.

Martin didn't write them. He only produced them.

He started, you know, chipping in when we needed him,

but that's the job of a producer anyway, really.

I just remember the whole...

The sleeve, you know,

it was just an uncanny moment,

because it did belong in your collection,

next to Roxy Music, next to Velvet

and it didn't look wrong next to, you know, Diamond Dogs.

It was a great piece of work,

but it didn't borrow any of that language, any of that visual language.

It was totally itself and it couldn't work out how, where it had come from.

I made the cover

that I would've wanted

had I found it in a record rack.

And nobody, um...

obliged me to do otherwise.

Hadn't heard the music.

They'd given me the elements. I mean, the wave pattern is astonishing.

I mean, I mean, what an amazing image

for something called Unknown Pleasures.

HEARTBEAT AND DISTORTED SOUNDS

I took it to Rob's house.

I took the artwork to Rob...

..and he said, "I have a test pressing."

"Do you want to listen to it?"

I didn't know if I could sit through 40 minutes of Joy Division.

Especially in front of their manager!

Um...

but I couldn't really say no.

And within moments,

I knew that I had a part in a kind of life-changing experience.

Minute after minute was beyond anything...

I could've expected.

It was just...

beyond.

It was astonishing.

Just as soon as it started

and the drums sounded like no drums had ever sounded

and everything seemed to belong in its own space

and not quite connecting somehow, something amazing had happened.

MUSIC: Disorder by Joy Division

# I've been waiting For a guide to come

# And take me by the hand

# Could these sensations make me Feel the pleasures of a normal man?

# These sensations barely interest me For another day

# I've got the spirit Lose the feeling

# Take the shock away. #

When Unknown Pleasures came out, it was sort of like,

this is the ambient music from my environment.

My thing about Joy Division - they're an ambient band, almost.

You don't see them function as a band,

it's just the noise around where you are.

It was almost like a science-fiction interpretation of Manchester.

You could recognise the landscape, the mindscape and the soundscape as being Manchester.

It was extraordinary that they'd managed to...

make Manchester international, if you like, make Manchester cosmic.

# It's getting faster Moving faster now

# It's getting out of hand

# On the 10th floor Down the back stairs

# It's a no man's land

# Lights are flashing Cars are crashing

# Getting frequent now

# I've got the spirit Lose the feeling

# Let it out somehow. #

Unknown Pleasures is also of course a very iPod-ed kind of world.

It's urban, but it's not.

It's about a landscape.

But that landscape is primarily an interior landscape,

and so what is very, very important about it now

is to see where we've travelled from since then

and exactly why it still sounds so bloody contemporary.

# Who is right and who can tell and who gives a damn right now?

# Until the spirit new sensation takes hold, then you know

# Until the spirit new sensation takes hold, then you know

# Until the spirit new sensation takes hold, then you know

# I've got the spirit

# But lose the feeling

# I've got the spirit

# But lose the feeling

# Feeling, feeling, feeling, feeling

# Feeling, feeling, feeling. #

When Unknown Pleasures came out, it got universal, critical acclaim.

It must be only me and Bernard in the whole bleeding world

that don't like Unknown Pleasures,

which is quite ironic.

-The only thing we agree on.

-HE LAUGHS

I mean, Unknown Pleasures, I admit, even after we recorded it,

I found it quite difficult to listen to it myself cos it was so dark.

I don't think the production helped, cos that made it darker.

Even darker still.

But I felt, "Well, no-one is going to listen to this.

"It's too bloody heavy!

"It's too impenetrable."

SONG: I Remember Nothing

# We were strangers

# We... #

I think, also, in our lives, we'd all had very dark experiences.

You know, we were only, like, 21, but I would say, for me,

I'd had a lot of death and illness in the family.

To experience such things at a young age

makes you quite a serious person.

Ian, I guess, in his line of work, what he did was quite serious.

She's Lost Control was about a girl

that he worked with at a disability centre that came in to see him.

I think he really liked her, thought she was a nice girl.

He was trying to get her work at different places.

One day, she didn't come in. She'd died from a fit.

He was quite shocked by that.

This was before he had epilepsy himself.

So he wrote She's Lost Control about her.

You can see them now

as Ian Curtis sings the brilliant She's Lost Control.

# Confusion in her eyes that says it all

# She's lost control

# And she's clinging to the nearest passerby

# She's lost control

# And she gave away the secrets of her past

# And said she's lost control again

# And of a voice that told her when and where to act

# She said, I've lost control again... #

In September '79, we turned over to BBC Two

and I'd never seen a TV performance like it.

Ian Curtis's performance and the band's performance

just totally broke through the plastic of the medium -

going from musicians who couldn't even play their instruments,

suddenly they were a super group.

I was just astonished to see this.

# Dance, dance, dance, dance, dance to the radio

# Dance, dance, dance, dance, dance to the radio

# Dance, dance, dance, dance, dance to the radio

# Dance, dance, dance, dance, dance to the radio

# Well, I would call out when the going gets tough

# The things you've learnt are no longer enough

# No language, just sound

# That's all we need know

# To synchronise love to the beat of the show

# And we could dance

# Dance, dance, dance, dance, dance to the radio

# Dance, dance, dance, dance, dance to the radio

# Dance, dance, dance, dance, dance to the radio

# Dance, dance, dance, dance, dance to the radio... #

They must have had a sense within the unit

that they'd done something special.

Ian's ambition, obviously, was the one, ultimately,

that created the great catastrophe.

But I think the others had their own ambition within that,

even if it was just to be the greatest bass player on the planet.

I just wanted us to be how we sounded live.

It was purely that.

I didn't want it to sound melancholy,

I didn't want it to last,

I wanted it just to lop people's heads off like Iggy Pop live.

I wasn't interested in depth or anything,

I just wanted to, you know, kick 'em in the teeth.

DISTORTED / MUFFLED MUSIC

Joy Division sounded like no-one else.

Very, very powerful onstage. Ian onstage was something fascinating.

He sang and he danced in a unique way.

Plan K, that was... That was kind of like...

Ian had met Annik.

They never travelled much, I think, as teenagers.

When they first went to Europe, yeah, I think,

something really happened for them.

It's a major milestone.

You're leaving home turf for the first time.

We were playing a gig at Plan K.

Cabaret Voltaire was on the bill.

It was a converted sugar refinery.

It was pretty arty.

We went over there and we thought,

"Right, you know, we're big-time Charlies."

The big attraction was that they actually had William Burroughs.

"Pay it all, pay it all, pay it all back!

"Play all your reports back."

The bands would play the concert space.

The other floors, there was performance art.

Then one room where they just showed movies.

"School, showers and swimming pools."

It was such an arty do. Everyone was so arty, wandering around.

"Oh, God. Joy Division. They're so wonderfully sublime, darling."

In French.

The hilarious one there was

when Ian decided he was going to get a free book off William Burroughs

because he felt that he'd read all William Burroughs' books

and bought them, so for some strange reason,

he thought that this time

William Burroughs would give him a free book.

Bernard and I was most amused.

We went with Ian to William Burroughs,

where William Burroughs was reading first, then he was doing a signing.

He went over. We were pissing ourselves behind the pillar.

I can't remember what he said.

Then all I heard was William Burroughs,

"Ah, fuck off, kid."

"We have had enough of your con and bullshit."

Oh, we didn't stop laughing for hours.

Ian was so embarrassed.

Ian was a big Burroughs fan,

because his writing

was very much

a post-Industrial nightmare.

It was about the bigotry

and lack of ethics.

Cynical, hate-filled, totalitarian

greed of Western society gone mad.

The secret nature of perception... The cut-up. It all seemed to fit...

and suggest that there was a way to integrate that more artistic

and literary idea into what was otherwise

a rather paltry glam rock,

prog rock wilderness.

As we became more popular and started doing more and more gigs,

we just went, "Right... We'll have to give our jobs up now.

"Stop being semi pro. Fully professional." The Buzzcocks tour

was our first real sort of experience

of proper rock and roll, you know,

and...roadies and all that.

And of course, their crew and the Buzzcocks crew got up to all

kind of stupid roadie mischief, as did members of both groups.

He was pissing in the ashtray, the dirty bastard!

-A big lump of draw, like that.

-The caretaker came in...

-There you are, eat that.

-..and he grabbed hold of him,

while he was pissing in the ashtray!

-Felt like my head had fallen off.

-And he went, "Oh, oh, oh!

"You tell me what you want me to do and I'll do it!"

-He would show you his tattoo.

-Bucket of maggots.

And coming out of his backside were two hands...

-Live mice and put them in...

-Yeah, keys in the van.

So I opened the thing up and it was just full of beer.

-You must have these...

-He's robbed the bar...

-And these two red stars.

-I'll have them.

-And the barman came out with about five bouncers.

-I was like, "You fucking twat!"

-Off his fucking nut,

hallucinating - inane, laughing grin on his face,

like a lunatic. He couldn't speak.

He's French, right? He doesn't understand "fuck off".

He went, "All right, then. Fuckee offee!"

Once Joy Division really found their seam,

they'd almost always start with Dead Souls.

Now, that track has a very, very progressive, intense build-up.

It's nearly three minutes before the vocal comes in.

Now, this gives Ian a chance both to calibrate...

Position himself to start to read what the atmosphere is,

coming off the audience,

to feel how the band behind him are locking in with each other

on that particular evening and to decide how far he wants to travel.

A lot of people thought he was off his head on drugs. He wasn't.

Never ever, ever.

And... Cos he looked like he was on drugs.

But he was just... Music seemed to just put him in, like, a trance.

He'd just start dancing away and he'd go to, like, another world.

# They keep on calling me

# They keep calling me... #

That's Joy Division and it's called Dead Souls.

Always choose cheery subjects, don't they, these boys?

Tens of thousands of you are going to sit down and write letters to me

here at the BBC asking about that.

I can't really give you a great deal of information,

except that it's on the Sordide Sentimental label.

That's sordid with an E added to the end of it to make it look French,

because indeed, it is French.

It is available in one or two shops

and it comes in a sort of folder, which makes it obviously

larger than a record, and more book-like, in a sense.

He loved that record. He was so proud, so proud...

Of the sleeve, of such a beautiful object.

It was quite funny, because when it did come out in an edition of 1,578,

Rob was down in London and he was handing them out.

You know, like, "Have one of these.

"Just got this over from France. Have one of these."

And then, you know...

Two days later they were gone. Disappeared forever.

And it had been widely distributed on cassette,

because Peel played it all the time.

Because he was, you know, feeling sorry for all of those

who couldn't get a hold of a copy.

And I promised to play the other side of it tonight. And indeed I shall.

In fact, I shall do one now.

FAST: # Walk in silence

# Don't walk away... #

Oh, curses, I've forgotten... Sorry, just... Oh, how irritating.

I'd forgotten that it was a 33 1/3.

I've remembered about half the times I've played it.

'French, you say? They flood the country with millions of apples

'that taste like cardboard and then send us records

'that play at the wrong speed.

'Anyway, I was talking about...'

It's these four young guys, who are standing there smoking, shaking...

Like this. Yeah, OK. You know, underdressed, malnourished.

You know, that's what...what I always thought of

the north of the England.

It was quite a shock if you came from Holland, where,

socially, you know, everybody was...taken care of.

You come to England and it was incredible - extreme poverty.

And, you know, people drinking and smoking.

And having just a little shirt on and a thin coat.

And they stand outside in the winter.

It was hard to believe these four guys... They are making jokes.

They were really lads, very young.

That they could have such a deep, heavy sound...

And, certainly for Ian, when he was on stage,

he was coming out of himself.

He was a different person, possessed by some very strong power.

He looked like he was coming from another world

and himself in another world.

And very, very emotional.

He looked at the same time very strong and very fragile.

Very vulnerable, you know?

I think he was very brave to sing and dance like he was doing.

We all live very boring, ordinary lives,

and with our great lead singers, we look at them

and for that one hour, we live life through their eyes.

He walks on and he seems a little shy and quiet.

And he just takes command of the stage.

The light comes on to him and he goes inside.

# So take a chance and step outside

# Take a chance and say you tried... #

'It was very much as if he was plugged into some kind of huge,

'electrical voltage

'that was creating this twitching,

'jerking...

'..tranced-out

'symbol for a human being.'

# Say you tried

# Say you tried

# Say you tried

# Say you tried

# Say you tried

# Say you tried

# Say you tried

# Say you tried

# Say you tried... #

Once he'd done that thing where he shook himself into a frenzy,

you just didn't know where it was going to take you.

He was like a kind of puppet

and you felt his vulnerability in that puppet-like movement.

It was a bit like watching performance artists

who deliberately lacerate themselves, cut themselves.

Except, with Ian, he didn't bleed,

but he sacrificed something of himself for you.

# Say you tried

# Say you tried... #

We've played in Europe already, in Holland and Germany.

And we are going to America.

We're only going for about two weeks, three weeks.

But I'd hate to be on the, you know, usual record company,

where it's sort of... You do all the Odeons.

I just couldn't do that at all.

That experience of our supporting the Buzzcocks, it was really...

Yeah, soul destroying.

We played a concept at the Hope And Anchor in London.

I remember Ian being in a weird...

kind of a little bit childish mood.

Not quite himself, you know? This was in the morning.

We drove down, we did the concert

and only about three people turned up.

It was about two in the morning, we were driving back up the M1,

you know, and I had the sleeping bag over me.

Ian just was moaning about the gig, moaning about the sound

and moaning about this.

He said, "Give me that sleeping bag."

It was just not like him, because he weren't a selfish person at all.

He turned around, grabbed the sleeping bag off me.

I said, "Stop pissing around, give it me back."

And I pulled it, so he pulled it back. I pulled it back

and then held on to it, so he just wrenched it out of my hands.

But put it over his head this time and wrapped himself in a ball,

and then just started making this weird growling sound,

just growling, you know...

Growling like a dog.

The next thing, a hand comes out the sleeping bag,

bashes out at Steve,

the other one comes out and punches the windscreen,

and then he just starts punching,

and that punching turned into a fully fledged grand mal fit...

..in the car,

while Steve was driving.

So, it was like, "Pull over, pull over, pull over!"

Dragged him, for his own protection, out of the car

and held him down flat on the hard shoulder,

and, you know, dark, middle of the night,

and just pinned his limbs down

while he basically had a fit.

After that, really,

he just got diagnosed with epilepsy

and they just started getting more and more frequent.

Those with epilepsy are going to have a much more difficult life,

because of the age-old stigma attached to the word epilepsy,

and the real fear which people have of it.

We didn't know what to do.

You know, it's not one of those things that you're used to.

I mean, we'd certainly never come across people

who'd had fits before.

You know, we were there and...

You know, we didn't know what to say to him.

Plus, we're men - men don't talk,

and we certainly didn't talk to each other.

So we just kind of carried on the way with we were carrying on,

which was working a lot.

And didn't give him much quarter, really,

in which to recover,

because basically his doctor's advice was...

..don't drink,

go to bed early,

you know, avoid flashing lights.

Well, he was 22 or something.

Everything that boys join a band to do...

..you know, the drink, the drugs,

the women...

All of that is sort of

written out of Ian's script.

You know, he did have epilepsy, very suddenly it occurred,

but he also had a very, very, VERY strong...

Big, you know, grand mal fits.

It wasn't... No messing about.

It was very strong.

Very strong, you know.

He couldn't pick his daughter up,

he couldn't drive a car.

He had to be careful at railway stations

that he didn't stand too near the edge.

As I witnessed a few of his fits, you know,

I can tell you it was really, really frightening.

It was like he was being possessed by the devil,

I know it sounds silly to say,

but he was literally raising from the ground.

That's how I remember it.

Nowadays, in the mentally normal patient,

it should be possible to control fits in at least 85%...

You've got to take lots of drugs and the drugs that he had to take,

they were really, really heavy.

One day he'd come in

and he'd be laughing his head off and totally happy.

The next day he'd come in

and he would be depressed and in tears.

And he wasn't like that before,

before the drugs that he was on.

He wasn't like that, he was much more, didn't have the mood swings.

The other thing is,

he obviously had problems with his relationship

with his girlfriend Annik and his wife,

that he had to make a life decision there,

that was very, very, very difficult for him.

He had a child.

I don't know what was going on in his mind,

I really dread to think what was going on in his mind.

I think he could see limits to the way...

..he was possibly going with the band,

and I think the band were about to change,

because they were becoming much bigger

and they were on the verge of becoming absolutely huge.

And creatively and psychologically,

that must have been a real challenge for him.

He felt that he was holding us back.

And he... Which is probably one of the reasons

why he drove himself so hard...

..was because he didn't want...

Because he knew we all wanted it so badly

and we were all enjoying it so much.

I think that his problem was that he didn't want to let anybody down.

People started writing about them in...

..February 1980 as if they were the Second Coming.

The weight of expectation upon them

to come out with, you know,

the most amazing gig ever,

every time they played, was enormous.

I remember standing in the audience at the London University

and thinking, "Oh, fuck, now they've got us...

"Now they've got a single."

MUSIC: Love Will Tear Us Apart by Joy Division

You would first hear Love Will Tear Us Apart live,

and you would go,

"Oh, my God", you know,

because you did have enough about you to think,

"That is a fucking great pop song."

"That could be number one."

You know, that kind of moment, because it was catchy.

# Love

# Love will tear us apart again

# Love

# Love will tear us apart again

# Why is the bedroom so cold?

# You've turned away on your side

# Is my timing that flawed?

# Our respect runs so dry. #

Possibly one of the greatest songs written in the 20th century

by anybody,

because the way it can, in a Shakespearean sense,

take a Calexico

or, you know, a Susanna,

or a fucking Paul Young, or...

You know, it can take into multiple interpretations

and constantly releases meaning.

It was an extraordinary piece of writing,

just the words,

let alone that somehow

these young Northerners managed to find a way

to sonically piece together music

that matched the quality of the words.

None of them realised

how strong and powerful the music was.

You know, it's just like a love story.

Each individual is nothing on their own,

and when they click together,

when they are together,

it's enormous

and that was Joy Division.

They just had the light, the spirit.

When Ian said that he had "the spirit", that was exactly it,

you know, he was something...

Some light

burning inside him.

He was gifted in a way that he would know

that this wasn't going to last forever.

He rang up once and said,

"Oh, you know, I want to leave the band.

"I'm going to move to Holland

"and open a bookshop."

"Great, that's..."

Then the next minute, he's like,

"Oh, we're playing in Bradford on Saturday."

"I thought Ian was...?"

"No, no, no, he's changed his mind."

"Oh, right. OK."

We would talk about ideas and writers...

But most of all, he talked about his emotions and about himself,

and how he was feeling.

How, every week, he was becoming more and more

shut off from what people perceived him to be.

That there were these two people that were Ian Curtis,

the one that was the media figure and the singer in the band,

and the actual Ian Curtis, who was hurt, angry, lost...

..very lonely...

..and didn't feel that people would treat him with respect

if he explained who he really was.

There's no doubt that there is

something of the 'end point' in Closer.

Unknown Pleasures is the...

Is, "Wouldn't it be great to be an artist?

"Wouldn't it be great to be like Burra and Bowie,

"and Ballard and Iggy?

"Wouldn't it be great to be like that?

"I might have a chance to be like that. Oh, my God," you know?

And then Closer was the artist.

That was where he joined those ranks,

and therefore pulled Unknown Pleasures with him,

because that was the first step towards becoming that kind of artist.

If you were,

at this time, of an inquisitive nature,

Joy Division was like an advent calendar.

You'd open up a window and you'd see, you know,

a gateway to another place.

You know, there'd be all of these routes out of the world

into other worlds, parallel worlds.

The obvious example is Atrocity Exhibition.

I mean, you want to know, what Atrocity Exhibition?

And then you find out, "Oh, it's a book by JG Ballard."

And, erm, it opens up a whole other universe.

You take some of the references,

for example, Colony, which is Franz Kafka.

You take tracks like The Kill

and see the references to Dostoyevsky or something.

It's like an education in itself.

SONG: Atrocity Exhibition

# This is the way

# Step inside

# This is the way

# Step inside

# This is the way

# Step inside

# This is the way

# Step inside... #

I thought Closer got closer to the sound that I particularly wanted.

Erm, I also enjoyed the experience because we were away in London.

We were living in two flats.

Again, there was this kind of hoi polloi...

sort of party flats

at one end, and intellectual flats at the other end.

I was staying with them in that apartment, I remember.

And I think I was the only girl around.

She was just sort of...

..sophistication...

..to someone from Macclesfield, you know.

Someone who used to ride pigs for entertainment,

suddenly confronted with...someone who works in an embassy.

We were just taking the piss out of them all the time.

You know, putting cornflakes in their bed, and....

Just japes. Daft, stupid things.

But she used to get so wound up, you know.

There was one night, I remember they had a glass pane in the door.

And we'd been taking the piss out of them, throwing beer at them

while they were in bed or something. Something daft.

And he come, fucking chased us out and we ran in our flat,

hold the door shut, and she was fucking kicking the door with her...

With her dressing gown on. Like a fucking bloke would do, you know.

It was horrible. I thought that was a horrible time.

Ian had Debbie on his case cos...

And Hooky had Iris on his case because Ian had Annik there

and Iris thought that was all wrong.

We got treated well at the studio at Britannia Row.

I remember them bringing sandwiches in.

And tea and stuff. We were like, "Wahey!"

Posh, you know.

We used to drive Martin mad, Bernard and I.

Bernard in one corner, me on the other.

"Oh, Martin?" And he'd go, "It's your go."

I'd go, "It's your go. I asked him about the..."

He'd go, "What are you fucking whispering about?"

"Nothing, Martin. Nothing."

Whilst they were there at Britannia Row, Rob had the foresight

to think, well, we better go and see Peter about a cover.

Who knows? It could take him weeks.

It could take him months, so let's go and get him on that now.

I was very nervous.

I didn't want to take something from a book or the shelf and say,

"I like this." And them kind of look at me and think,

"Well, you're just... You're just hopeless."

And there was something. There was something I was very excited about.

It was a body of photographs by a man called Bernard Pierre Wolff.

And I opened the magazine and put it on the drawing board

and stepped away.

And I think they just pointed at one and said, "We want this.

"We want this for the cover."

I came to pass that it was going to be called Closer.

And it was interesting. Closer. Close-er.

I'd no idea that it was going to be the last thing

that he did. It's better than Unknown Pleasures.

The songs are better, everything.

You know.

It was a good laugh most of the time.

The only thing that sort of was sad about it was Ian's illness,

but he hid that so well most of the time.

I remember talking to him one night.

Ian was saying to me that, erm...

..doing this album felt very strange

because he felt that all these words were writing themselves.

And that he'd always, in the past, struggled to complete a song.

Like, he'd have the start, but he'd always struggle to complete it.

But he just had the whole song straight off.

Erm, but he said that, at the same time,

he had this terrible claustrophobic feeling that he was in a whirlpool.

And drowning, and he was being pulled down in this whirlpool.

He was always recording on his own.

You know, the group would be recording the music

at a different time.

The image I would have in mind was Ian was very tired...

and very, very quiet.

And every time he would sing,

he would turn his back and put his hand...

on his head or on his eyes...

and he would turn around from the others, just to be in himself.

SONG: The Eternal

All the lyrics on the CD are really depressing and sad. Mmm.

And it's surprising nobody would pay attention.

We never really talked about his lyrics.

In fact, we never really listened to his lyrics that much.

It's only years on, when you see them wrote down,

when Debbie published them...

you know, "Oh, my God, is that what he was singing?!"

Maybe for the others it was more like literature.

You know, Annik expressed how worried she was,

how fearful she was.

And I'm all kind of, "No, no, no, it's just art, it's just an album,

"for God's sake.

"It's wonderful, I know, but it's nothing to be frightened of."

But she said, "Don't you understand, Tony?

"When he says, 'I take the blame,' he means it."

And I went, "No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. It's just art."

How fucking stupid can you get?

When he cut himself up with a kitchen knife,

and, you know, he said he was pissed.

And when he took his first overdose, you think he'd have stopped

and sorted it out, and it seems, you know, a complete...

..unbelievable to me that we didn't stop and sort him out.

I think he was actually in a hospital.

But we'd already had a gig booked, right?

And if we'd booked a gig, it never got cancelled.

So Tony actually brought Ian down to the gig,

and he was in no fit state to play.

I got a phone call, and it was Bernard, and he just said,

"Oh, Ian's ill, and we've got a gig tonight.

"We were wondering if you'd like to stand in for him."

"Alan can go on, sing a couple, and Ian can come and sing a couple."

But it didn't go down too well with the audience.

There was a big Victorian glass chandelier suspended above

the stage, and somebody threw a bottle or a glass,

and it hit the chandelier square on.

Bottles started flying, and equipment got trashed.

Hooky fancied a bit of a fight, I think, at that point.

So we just kept going, "Right, come on, second assault,"

and they'd all go out and try and fight the audience.

But it turned into, you know, a complete fiasco.

It was horrible and of course not great for Ian,

cos he immediately thought, "Oh, right, all this is my fault,"

and he just burst out in tears.

He just took the blame himself, you know.

SONG: Isolation

He said that he was standing in the wings of the stage watching

the band play without him and he just had this feeling that he was

looking down and they were carrying on without him...

and that they were going to carry on without him, which is kind of eerie.

The Bury gig was on a Tuesday,

and I said to Tony, "Maybe you should suggest that he come and stay

"at our house in the country," cos we lived in the country.

And Ian drove back with us that night after the gig.

We just sat in the lounge smoking and listening to music.

That was all we did.

He stayed at my house for a week. I think he fell out with Debbie and...

Well, he had fallen out with Debbie.

He needed somewhere to stay, so he stayed with me for a week,

which wasn't great for him, cos I was still an insomniac,

I was staying up till five in the morning.

I remember coming back from rehearsals one day,

and we took a short cut through the graveyard, and I said to him,

"You're lucky, your name could be on one of those stones if you'd have

"succeeded the other week." And he was like, "Yeah, right. Yeah.

You know?

No sort of connection in the response.

He'd made his mind up...

I think.

We read a book on hypnotic regression that...

Sometimes if you've got problems in the present,

the regression could unlock, erm...

..problems that had occurred either in your childhood or,

if you believed in it, in previous lives.

And Ian was like, "Oh, that sounds interesting. I'd like to try that."

So I said, "Why don't we try it now and record it on a cassette?"

TAPE HISS

SONG: Decades

It's not difficult to realise that he was seriously destabilised

by the whole matrix of things that was going on at that time.

But he was also on the cusp of exactly what he wanted...

which was to get out...

..of Manchester, to travel and see the world, to go to America,

the land of some of his heroes.

Why would he want to do himself in the night before that?

You know, it's 24 hours from Tulsa, isn't it?

24 hours from the plane to America.

Going to America on the Monday.

Ian had gone back to live with his mum and dad by Thursday,

or something, and he just phoned me on the Saturday or the Friday night

and said, "I can't come out tomorrow.

"I'm going to go and see Debbie before we go away."

That kind of thing. "Uh-oh..." A little bit, you know?

"It's going to end in tears, at least,

"or they're going to have an argument."

So I said, "Are you sure, like? Just come out and have a drink.

"We'll have a laugh." He was like, "No, I've got to see her."

I was probably in Belgium for about five days before I was due to

return to go back to England.

The last time we spoke together was on the Saturday night.

It was very short, and I couldn't hear him very well.

I was in the backstage with lots of people around.

And he said that it's imperative

that we have to meet before they go to America,

otherwise it would be seven or eight weeks without seeing each other.

And basically, we just agreed that he should call me

at home the following day, and he told me he was listening to the

record and was going to watch a film, and he was alone.

I was the first one that they told.

It was really weird, because I was sitting down, just about to have

me Sunday lunch, me and Iris, and the phone rang, literally like that.

And I went on the phone, and they said, "Oh, this is the police.

"We're trying to get in touch with Rob Gretton."

And I said, "He should be at home." They said, "We phoned him at home,

"he's not there." I said, "What's the problem?"

And he went, "Oh, well, I'm sorry to tell you this,

"but Ian Curtis has committed suicide."

And I went, "Oh, right, OK." And he went,

"Right, well, OK, if you speak to Mr Gretton, could you get him

"to call us?"

And I went, "Yeah, right, OK," and put the phone down

and went and sat back and had me dinner.

And then Iris said to me, "Oh, who was on the phone, by the way?"

I went, "Oh, it's just Ian. He's killed himself."

And that was it, then. That was the shock of it.

It was really weird. Horrible.

When he first tried to commit suicide,

when he took the overdose, it was a COMPLETE surprise.

In fact, when he actually did commit suicide and Rob told me,

I said, "What, he's tried again?" You know, I can't believe it.

"He's tried again?" And he said, "No, he has. He's dead."

I was like, "What, he's tried...?"

He said, "No, he's dead. He's done it."

Everything then seems a blur after that, really.

Spent most of the time in the pub.

Just spent most of the time together, all of us.

Me, Tony, Terry, Barney, we'd all go and sit together,

just sit in the pub together. Just couldn't take it in, really.

It's hard to say, sort of...

50% sad and 50% angry...

really.

Angry at HIM, really,

a) for being stupid...

..and doing that

and angry at myself for not doing something.

Yeah.

-ANNIK:

-I arrived in London.

He never rang, so I thought, "Maybe there's a problem.

"I should call his parents, at his parents',"

because that's where he was staying...

where he was supposed to stay, and when I called...

..his father just said, "Ian is dead," and he put the phone down.

And that was it.

I came home from work and there's this piece of paper.

I looked at it, and it says,

"Singer kills himself on eve of tour".

You think, "This isn't true"...

and then you get a feeling of anger, where you say, "You twat.

"Why have you done that?" You know?