Joy Division - L’atrocità dell’esistenza

The story of Joy Division begins like that of dozens upon dozens of other bands born in England around the explosion of punk. It begins with three young men putting together a group when they could barely even play their instruments. It will end up, in less than four years, a world away from those beginnings. It will end in legend, and therefore tragically. But let's take things in order.

It's December 9, 1976, when at the Electric Circus in Manchester three twenty-year-olds – all from the same city, having met on the benches of Salford Grammar School – make their debut with the band they'd formed a few months earlier, Stiff Kittens. They are Bernard Dicken (born Bernard Sumner, guitar and vocals), Peter Hook (bass and vocals) and Terry Mason (drums and vocals).

The spark that pushed the three young men to form a band was, of course, a Sex Pistols gig at Manchester's Lesser Free Trade Hall – alongside the Buzzcocks, legends of the Manchester punk scene – on July 20, 1976. Watching that same show that night was another twenty-year-old the three had already come to know: Ian Kevin Curtis, a native of Macclesfield, who from a very young age lived for two passions: writing poetry and listening to rock music (he was a devoted fan of Iggy Pop, David Bowie, the Velvet Underground).

Savaged by the magazine "Sound" the day after their Electric Circus show, the three Stiff Kittens were approached by Curtis, who in the early months of '77 joined the group. He himself had long been trying to put together a band, following in the footsteps of his friends in Buzzcocks (whose manager was the same as the Kittens').

The chance to get back on stage came on May 27, 1977, again at the Electric Circus, this time opening for Buzzcocks themselves. On that occasion the group, without Mason (who nonetheless stayed on as manager) and with Tony Tabac on drums, changed its name to Warsaw (a tribute to Bowie and his masterpiece "Warszawa", from the album "Low"). Once again the reviews were negative, but it was following that gig that the future Joy Division came into contact with the leading figure of the Manchester music scene of those years, Martin Hannett (who had just produced Buzzcocks' debut EP at the time), the man who would help them become legends.

Having soon replaced the "stand-in" drummer Tabac with the far more experienced Steven Brotherdale (who also drummed for another local punk band, Panik), Warsaw entered the studio for the first time in July 1977 to record early demos of songs such as "The Drawback", "Warsaw" and "Leaders of Men" (the latter two genuine classics of the Manchester punk scene). These demos, however, would remain just that, staying unreleased for a long time. Right after these sessions, drummer Steven Brotherdale left the group (even trying, on top of it, to convince Ian Curtis to follow him into Panik). It seemed like yet another setback clipping the band's wings, but instead it turned out to be a real stroke of luck when Stephen Morris, like Ian a native of Macclesfield, took his place, and the band finally found the chemistry it had been looking for, with things suddenly falling naturally into place. In October '77 Warsaw appeared on record for the first time with the track "At A Later Date", recorded for a compilation in "memory" of the historic venue Electric Circus, which was about to close, and in December they recorded four of their most representative songs ("Warsaw", "No Love Lost", "Leaders Of Men" and "Failures") for the EP "An Ideal For Living". Curtis's lyrics were growing increasingly bleak and introspective, the punk energy beginning to dissolve into more rarefied, gloomy and oppressive atmospheres. People were starting to talk about Joy Division proper. The name "Joy Division" (which in the concentration camps designated the female prisoners forced into sexual servitude for Nazi officers) was chosen by the group in January 1978, to avoid confusion with the London band called "Warsaw Pakt", who had just released a record; Ian Curtis had come across it in a novel titled "The House Of Dolls", which had also inspired the lyrics of "No Love Lost".

The band's name, combined with the cover artwork of the just-released EP (the work of Bernard Sumner) and the look adopted by the band, naturally brought the usual, insipid accusations of pro-Nazi sympathies from the English "mainstream" press (which, after the Sex Pistols' swastika, needed no further excuse to tear a band to shreds).

Far more serious than these ridiculous controversies were the band's first shows as "Joy Division": the very first took place on January 25, 1978, at Manchester's Pips Disco, followed by a performance on the TV programme "Granada Reports", hosted by Tony Wilson, and the opportunity offered by RCA to record their debut album in the studio with producer John Anderson. The sessions took place in May 1978 and the final tracklist included classics from the Warsaw repertoire plus new songs (among them "Transmission" and "Shadowplay"), but Anderson's final mix left the band unsatisfied. The record would, however, never see the light of day: beyond Anderson's work, the band also felt inadequately supported by RCA, which suddenly seemed to have lost interest in the project. Nothing more came of it: Joy Division's debut album became a "ghost" record, only released in 1994 on a semi-official compilation (though it would be more accurate to call it what it really is: a bootleg) which also includes the early Warsaw demos. More bad luck, but their date with well-deserved success was only postponed.

It's thanks to Tony Wilson, who in September had them back on his TV show, that Joy Division found a label seriously interested in their music: Wilson had in fact just founded Factory Records ("Factory" was the name of the nights Wilson himself organised every Friday at Manchester's Russell Club: Joy Division took part in one of these nights, and it was there that they first worked with designer Peter Saville, who created their promotional poster). "A Factory Sample", the compilation launching the fledgling label, featured two Joy Division tracks: "Digital" and "Glass". Musically still fairly tied to punk conventions, but these are two hugely important songs because they mark the birth of the band's true "symbiosis" with producer Martin Hannett. "His" sound, combined with the group's ever more pronounced leaning towards "dark" atmospheres, became an unmistakable trademark: Joy Division's sound became the prototype, the essential reference point for "post-punk", forging an icy, geometric sound that seems to echo through a void, punctuated by guitar echoes and simple, pulsing rhythms (and the rhythm section of Hook and Morris is perhaps the one that, more than any other, turned simplicity into its greatest strength). Launching the band beyond the narrow confines of the local scene proved premature, though: their December 1978 London show was in fact a disaster, with a tiny audience and all four members completely disoriented and off form. Curtis, moreover, was struck by a violent seizure after the gig. The group's singer and lyricist suffered from epilepsy (what he himself called, in his teenage diaries, "the great illness"), and thanks to the NME, which put Curtis on its cover in January '79, audiences came to understand that the frantic movements with which Ian accompanied his stage performances were not dancing, but the singer's way of exorcising his "great illness". Despite the London flop, though, attention around the band finally began to grow, their name started to circulate, the single "She's Lost Control" was recorded in late January and began getting radio play thanks to the legendary BBC DJ John Peel, who in February hosted Joy Division for the first of their "Peel Sessions".

The band's status as a cult act of the emerging "dark" scene was officially sealed on March 4, 1979, when, at the historic London venue the Marquee, Joy Division played alongside the Cure.

It seemed to be falling into place; even misfortunes, like Ian's illness, were turning into useful publicity, and the time was finally right to record the debut album. At Strawberry Studios in Stockport they recorded several songs (the single "She's Lost Control", but also legendary tracks such as "Disorder", with its anguished lyrics and one of the most incisive, evocative "attacks" ever committed to tape). Martin Hannett's production elevated every single riff laid down by Sumner and Hook, Morris's drumming drove the songs forward with geometric precision, and Curtis's vocals were at once robotic and vibrant. Completing the picture was Peter Saville's stark, cryptic artwork, which for the occasion produced one of the most famous album covers in rock history.

Unknown Pleasures, Joy Division's debut album, was released in June 1979. The band's punk roots are stretched out across ten songs that form a single, compact whirlwind of intense emotions and anguished nightmares. "Disorder", "Day Of The Lords" and "New Dawn Fades" are compositions that seem to materialise out of nowhere, and Ian Curtis's words seep like a poisonous liquid into the perfect geometries of the music. Words that paint an existential tragedy without precedent, and yet melodramatic emphasis is something entirely foreign to Joy Division's music and to Curtis's lyrics. Their music is icy, icy is the voice singing words that express utter solitude, words annihilated by fear and by distrust of everything and everyone. But never self-pitying: Curtis simply accepts his own total defeat as something perfectly logical, normal, natural, and it is precisely because of this that his words carry such devastating inner strength. It's this that gives Joy Division's songs the power to completely demolish the listener's emotional defences.

The music does nothing more than express all this with that same, icy emotional "distance". The epoch-making significance of this album lies entirely in this interplay of frozen, almost nullified emotions that are nonetheless truly shattering. The balance achieved by the band borders on the miraculous, and Hannett's production brings out every single facet of it. None of the four ever overpowers the others; everything is exactly where it should be.

The album finally received positive reviews and sales were more than satisfactory, considering the extremely limited resources of a small, practically brand-new label like Factory. But above all, the record cemented the band's status as a genuine cult act. From here on, Joy Division's activity grew ever more intense and frantic, and the very first singles following the LP stood as true masterpieces in their own right: first (July '79) the unforgettable "Transmission", a relentless, irresistible dance track, and then (October '79) the apotheosis of "Atmosphere" and its b-side "Dead Souls": the former as celestial and evocative (simply one of the most disarming, poetic, beautiful and sad songs ever written) as the latter is menacing and unsettling (both tracks are genuine solo showcases for guitarist/keyboardist Bernard Sumner), later covered by Nine Inch Nails in 1994, in a highly risky and thoroughly successful version.

A tour alongside their longtime hometown friends Buzzcocks was a great success, as were the two consecutive dates in October 1979 at Manchester's Apollo Theatre, later immortalised in the video document "Here Are The Young Men". November brought their second "Peel Session". Growing success finally allowed the band to break out of Britain: 1980 opened with a tour of northern Europe (including the famous show at the "Paradiso" in Amsterdam). This intense live activity, marked by both critical and public acclaim, took its toll on Ian Curtis's health; around that time, too, his marriage to his wife Deborah Woodruffe was falling into crisis, a crisis that inspired Curtis to write another immortal song: "Love Will Tear Us Apart". The singer's difficult psychological and physical state, his deepening depression, would be reflected in the lyrics and atmospheres of the new album, which in March 1980 the band prepared to record at Britannia Row Studios in London, once again with Martin Hannett.

Closer is the album's title. For the cover, the band chose a photograph taken by Peter Saville in the monumental cemetery of Staglieno, in Liguria: Ian Curtis's lyrics make up a chilling mosaic of the ghosts that imprisoned his mind. The music grows ever more funereal, from the menacing, tribal-rhythmed opener "Atrocity Exhibition" through to the closing "Decades". Curtis observes and reflects, laying his thoughts bare with a candor made all the more chilling by the fact that everything - from his voice to the music - is even more distant, slowed-down and linear than on the previous album. These are "absolute" songs, songs that make up a journey of no return, songs that beneath their apparent calm conceal an unbearable psychological torment. It's Ian Curtis's own torment, and the way he manages to put such suffering into words is genuinely moving: Curtis doesn't perform songs, he bares his heart and confesses, telling his listeners exactly what he intends to do and the reasons driving him to do it.

Curtis makes his torment perfectly understandable, makes his despair "universal", and leaves us alone before his immense inner strength, the strength he could only express through his art. Ian Curtis stages his own epitaph, complete with a funeral march ("The Eternal"), and speaks with the serenity of someone who has already made his decision - indeed, of someone who has already carried it out. He observes and reflects, observes himself and others, observes his incompatibility with life, observes his own total defeat. He observes and reflects, and draws the conclusion that, to him, feels most logical and natural. And his bandmates go along with him with a composure that is almost too perfect, and painful to witness because of it.

The perfection of "Heart And Soul" and "The Eternal", of "A Means To An End", of "Passover" and of "24 Hours". "Heart and soul, one will burn" and "This is the crisis I knew had to come, destroying the balance I'd kept", says Ian Curtis.

But, one step away from consecration (an American tour was in the works, and a deal with a major label like Warner was being negotiated), Ian throws in the towel: in early April, three London shows in a row prove too much for his health, and during the third of these concerts the singer suffers an epileptic seizure on stage. On April 7th, the day before another show, he's knocked out by an overdose, and yet, despite everything, he goes on stage again the following night. But things can't go on like this, and the band is forced to take a break to allow Ian to recover: in the meantime they shoot the video for "Love Will Tear Us Apart", and on May 2nd they play a live show in Birmingham (later released under the title "Still"), featuring an unreleased track, "Ceremony".

But Ian has not the slightest intention of recovering: on May 20th the band was due to begin its American tour; on May 18th, Ian Curtis took his own life, hanging himself at his home in Macclesfield, not yet 24 years old. From the very start of their adventure, the four members of Joy Division had made a silent pact among themselves: if one of them were ever to leave the band, the others would no longer be allowed to call themselves Joy Division, but "New Order" instead. Clear proof of how essential each of the four was, as if theirs were a true case of "strength through unity", an unrepeatable alchemy.

In the wake of his death, Ian's three bandmates honor the pact, and in 1981 release, as New Order, "Movement" - though it's only fair to regard it as Joy Division's third album. Produced by Hannett, it shows a far more pronounced use of synthesizers and keyboards (a direction New Order would fully embrace starting with their next record, which would turn them into one of the flagship bands of synth-pop, earning huge success). On vocals, Sumner and Hook seem to be trying to summon Ian's ghost. The music is still Joy Division's music, the atmospheres are still Joy Division's atmospheres, if anything even more spectral. The record feels frozen, and deliberately so, because Ian is missing, because his loss is irreparable, because the three former Joy Division members know full well that the "new order" must rise from the ashes of the old one. And "Movement" is, to all intents and purposes, part of Joy Division's story, because it's the final farewell to Ian Curtis, the way chosen by his bandmates to take their leave of his memory, so they could turn the page and carry on down a different path - rightly a different one - without him. But the story of Joy Division ends here.

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