The video
When Joy Division made their only national TV appearance on the BBC
On September 15, 1979, Joy Division made their only nationally broadcast TV appearance, as guests on the BBC's youth programme "Something Else". The occasion proved memorable: the Manchester band delivered a blistering rendition of the single "Transmission".
The episode, filmed right in their home city of Manchester, brought together several voices deeply tied to the North of England: the Jam, Joy Division, and punk poet John Cooper Clarke. The latter was shown reciting verses while walking through the city streets, before the camera cut to the bare studio where the band performed. Ian Curtis (vocals), Bernard Sumner (guitar), Peter Hook (bass) and Stephen Morris (drums) tore into "Transmission" with a nervy, magnetic energy. That footage would later become the song's official music video (watch it below).
Besides "Transmission", Joy Division also played "She's Lost Control". At the time, their debut "Unknown Pleasures" had been out for only a few months, and that television performance marked their first contact with a wider audience.
The broadcast, still viewable in full today, also includes an interview with drummer Stephen Morris and Factory Records co-founder Tony Wilson. With their usual sarcasm, the two discussed how hard it was to get the band any radio play, aside from John Peel's show on BBC Radio 1, which was already championing them wholeheartedly. It was on that occasion that Wilson made his now-famous remark: "Because Joy Division's music is unsettling, slightly sinister and gothic, it will never get played on the radio".
While "Something Else" remains Joy Division's only national television appearance, the band had already been on the small screen the year before: in 1978 they played "Shadowplay" on "So It Goes", a Granada TV programme also produced by Tony Wilson, marking their very first time in front of the cameras.
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12/02/2026
This article is an English translation of the original Italian text by Claudio Fabretti, published on OndaRock.it. It was translated with the help of artificial intelligence, under the editorial responsibility of OndaRock's editor-in-chief, Claudio Fabretti.
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