Joy Division

• 1. Introduction

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  Joy Division, an English band formed in Salford in 1976, began with a single concert. On the 4th of June that year, two childhood friends watched the Sex Pistols at the Manchester Lesser Free Trade Hall. Bernard Sumner and Peter Hook attended separately. Sumner said the Pistols had "destroyed the myth of being a pop star". A musician, he felt, was no longer "some kind of god that you had to worship". Hook acted the very next day. He borrowed £35 from his mother and bought a bass guitar.

  Four years later, the band had recorded two albums and lost its singer, Ian Curtis, who died at the age of 23. What does it take for a group that starts with a borrowed bass to help pioneer post-punk? Why did a producer's choices delight listeners and frustrate the musicians who played the songs? What did Curtis's lyrics say that the people closest to him failed to hear? And how did the survivors turn an ending into a new band?

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• 2. Hired Without Audition

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  A notice in the Manchester Virgin Records shop is how the band found its voice. The founders had hoped to recruit their schoolfriend Martin Gresty, but he declined after taking a job at a factory. By then Sumner had bought a guitar, and Terry Mason, who had also been at the Pistols show, had bought a drum kit. Ian Curtis, whom they knew from earlier gigs, answered the advertisement and was hired without an audition. Sumner said he "knew he was all right to get on with and that's what we based the whole group on. If we liked someone, they were in."

  The Buzzcocks' manager Richard Boon and frontman Pete Shelley have each been credited with suggesting the name Stiff Kittens. The band chose Warsaw instead, shortly before its first show, as a nod to David Bowie's song "Warszawa". That debut came on the 29th of May 1977 at the Electric Circus, supporting the Buzzcocks, Penetration and John Cooper Clarke. Tony Tabac played drums, having joined only two days earlier. Reviews by Paul Morley in the NME and Ian Wood in Sounds brought the group immediate national exposure.

  Steve Brotherdale replaced Tabac on drums in June 1977, while Mason became the band's manager. Brotherdale also played in a punk band called the Panik. He tried to coax Curtis into joining it and even had him audition. On the 18th of July 1977, Warsaw recorded five demo tracks at Pennine Sound Studios in Oldham. The group was uneasy with Brotherdale's aggressive personality and fired him soon afterwards. Driving home, they stopped the car and asked him to check a flat tyre. When he stepped out, they drove away.

  In August 1977, an advertisement in a music shop window sought another drummer, and only one person replied. Stephen Morris had attended the same school as Curtis. Curtis's wife Deborah said Morris "fitted perfectly", and she felt the group had become a complete family. The band recorded its debut EP, An Ideal for Living, at Pennine Sound Studio on the 14th of December. Its last show as Warsaw took place on New Year's Eve at the Swinging Apple in Liverpool.

  In early 1978 the group renamed itself Joy Division, to avoid confusion with a London punk band called Warsaw Pakt. It was still billed as Warsaw to guarantee a crowd. Its first gig under the new name came on the 25th of January 1978 at Pip's Disco in Manchester. The lineup of Curtis, Sumner, Hook and Morris was now complete, and it would not change again.

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• 3. Rafters and Factory

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  On the 14th of April 1978, Manchester's Rafters club hosted the Stiff/Chiswick Challenge concert, and two men in the room changed Joy Division's course. One was Tony Wilson, a television music presenter. The other was Rob Gretton, the venue's resident DJ. Curtis scolded Wilson for leaving the band off his Granada Television show So It Goes. Wilson promised they would be the next act he showcased. Gretton was so impressed that he talked the band into taking him on as manager. His "dogged determination" was later credited for much of the group's public success, and his business skills gave their creativity a firmer base.

  Around the same time, RCA Records asked the band to record a cover of Nolan "N.F." Porter's "Keep on Keepin' On" at a Manchester studio. After writing and rehearsing through late March and April 1978, the members spent the first week of May at Arrow Studios. John Anderson, head of Grapevine Records, insisted on adding synthesiser to soften the sound. The band disliked the idea and asked to be released from the RCA contract.

  In June 1978 the group released An Ideal for Living on its own. Two weeks later its track "At a Later Date" appeared on a compilation album. That album, Short Circuit: Live at the Electric Circus, had been recorded live in October 1977. Chris Brazier of Melody Maker wrote that the band were "no mere drone-vendors".

  The EP's cover carried a drawing of a Hitler Youth member. The band's name came from the sexual slavery wing of a Nazi concentration camp described in the 1953 novel House of Dolls. Together these choices fuelled speculation about the members' politics. Hook and Sumner later said fascism had intrigued them at the time. Morris offered another explanation: a wish to keep alive the memory of what his parents' and grandparents' generations sacrificed in World War II. He said accusations of neo-Nazi sympathies only goaded the band "to keep on doing it, because that's the kind of people we are".

  On the 20th of September 1978, Joy Division made their television debut on So It Goes, playing "Shadowplay" after an introduction from Wilson. The following month, two tracks recorded with the producer Martin Hannett appeared on A Factory Sample. This double 7-inch EP was the first release from Wilson's new label, Factory Records. Paul Morley of the NME called the band "the missing link" between Elvis Presley and Siouxsie and the Banshees. After buying themselves out of the RCA deal, they joined Factory, and Gretton became a label partner to represent their interests. Hannett would go on to produce both of their albums.

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• 4. Hannett's Empty Spaces

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  Strawberry Studios in Stockport, in April 1979, is where Joy Division recorded Unknown Pleasures and where Martin Hannett substantially reworked the sound they played live. The band was displeased at the time. Sumner said the music had been loud and heavy, and that Hannett toned it down, especially the guitars. In 2006, however, Hook conceded that Hannett had done a good job and "created the Joy Division sound".

  Hannett considered punk sonically conservative, because it refused to use studio technology to build space around the instruments. He wanted something more expansive. He called the band "a gift to a producer, because they didn't have a clue. They didn't argue". He demanded clean separation between instruments, and even between the parts of Morris's drum kit. On tracks he saw as potential singles, Morris recalled, "he'd get me to play each drum on its own to avoid any bleed-through of sound". Richard Cook, a music journalist, described "devices of distance" in the production, where "the sound is an illusion of physicality".

  Critic Simon Reynolds argued that the band's originality only emerged as the songs got slower. He wrote that "Hook's bass carried the melody". Sumner's guitar "left gaps rather than filling up the group's sound with dense riffage". Morris's drums "seemed to circle the rim of a crater." The early Warsaw sound, by contrast, was described as "undistinguished punk-inflected hard-rock". Sumner explained in 1994 that Hook played high, lead-style bass for a practical reason. Sumner's amplifier only worked at full volume, so Hook could not hear himself playing low. Sumner also said Morris was not a metronome. He was passive, following the band's rhythm, and that gave the group its own edge. By Closer, Curtis had settled into a low baritone that drew comparisons to Jim Morrison of the Doors.

  The band drew on a wide record collection. Kraftwerk's "marriage between humans and machines" fascinated them. They played Trans-Europe Express through the PA before going onstage "to get a momentum". Bowie's Berlin Trilogy with Brian Eno struck them as "a music looking at the future". They admired the "cold austerity" of the synthesisers on the B-sides of "Heroes" and Low. Morris cited Maureen Tucker of the Velvet Underground and the motorik beats of Neu! and Can. Hook admired Siouxsie and the Banshees, Jean-Jacques Burnel of the Stranglers and the bassist Carol Kaye.

  For Closer, recorded in March 1980 at Britannia Row Studios in London, Sumner used self-built synthesisers and Hook played a six-string bass. Hook was frustrated again. Hearing the final mix of "Atrocity Exhibition", he found its abrasiveness toned down. When he complained to Hannett, he was brushed off. Hannett's production has nonetheless been widely praised.

  Unknown Pleasures came out in June 1979 in a sleeve designed by Peter Saville. Saville would create artwork for later Joy Division and New Order releases. The first pressing of 10,000 copies sold through. Wilson said the success turned his label into a true business and a "revolutionary force" operating outside the major label system. Jon Savage of Melody Maker called the album an "opaque manifesto" and "one of the best, white, English, debut LPs of the year".

  On the 20th of July 1979 the band appeared on Granada TV again. On the 15th of September it made its only nationwide TV appearance, on BBC2's Something Else. A 24-venue UK tour supporting the Buzzcocks began that October and let the members quit their regular jobs. The single "Transmission" followed in November. Their devoted fans were stereotyped as "intense young men dressed in grey overcoats".

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• 5. Curtis's Notebook

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  Curtis wrote his lyrics in a notebook, apart from whatever music would later grow around them. The music itself was largely written by Sumner and Hook as the group jammed in rehearsals. His imagery often circled around "coldness, pressure, darkness, crisis, failure, collapse, loss of control". Paul Rambali of the NME wrote in 1979 that the themes were "sorrowful, painful and sometimes deeply sad". Jon Savage praised Curtis for capturing the reality of a society in turmoil and making it both universal and personal.

  Savage also noted the lyrics' kinship with romantic and science-fiction literature. Critic Robert Palmer named William S. Burroughs and J. G. Ballard as obvious influences, and Morris remembered Curtis reading T. S. Eliot. Deborah Curtis recalled that he also read Fyodor Dostoevsky, Friedrich Nietzsche, Jean-Paul Sartre, Franz Kafka and Hermann Hesse.

  Curtis refused to explain his words, and Joy Division records shipped without lyric sheets. He told the fanzine Printed Noise, "We haven't got a message really; the lyrics are open to interpretation. They're multidimensional. You can read into them what you like." The other members said they paid little attention to the words at the time. In a 1987 interview with Option, Morris said they had found the songs sympathetic and more uplifting than depressing.

  Deborah Curtis recalled that the release of Closer changed things. Only then did many people close to her husband realise that "his intentions and feelings were all there within the lyrics". The surviving members regret missing the warning signs. Morris said he had always assumed Curtis was putting himself in someone else's position. "Of course he was writing about himself," Morris said. He admitted that he never went in and asked what was wrong, and added, "I have to live with that".

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• 6. Seizures on Stage

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  On the 27th of December 1978, Curtis had his first recognised severe epileptic seizure. It happened during the drive home from a gig at the Hope and Anchor in London, and he was hospitalised. Within weeks the band's profile was rising. Curtis appeared on the cover of the NME on the 13th of January 1979. That month the group recorded a session for the BBC Radio 1 DJ John Peel. According to Deborah Curtis, between those landmarks came the realisation that "Ian's illness was something we would have to learn to accommodate".

  Onstage, the band rarely spoke. Paul Morley wrote that during a Joy Division set you would be lucky to hear more than two or three words: "Hello and goodbye. No introductions, no promotion." Curtis often performed what became known as his "dead fly" dance. His arms flew in what one observer called a "semicircular, hypnotic curve". Simon Reynolds noted that it resembled an epileptic seizure. Curtis had been dancing that way for some months before his diagnosis.

  Once the diagnosis came, performing grew harder. Sumner reflected in 2007 that the band used no flashing lights, but a particular drum beat could affect Curtis. He would drift into a trance and then collapse into a fit. The band would stop the show and carry him to the dressing room, where he would cry over what had just happened to him. Some audience members assumed the seizures were part of the act.

  The band toured Europe in January 1980. Despite the demanding schedule, Curtis had only two grand mal seizures, both in the last two months of the tour. Afterwards, too little sleep and long hours destabilised his epilepsy until the seizures became almost uncontrollable. They left him ashamed and depressed, and the band grew worried.

  On the 7th of April 1980, Curtis attempted suicide by overdosing on his anti-seizure medication, phenobarbitone. The next evening Joy Division were due to play the Derby Hall in Bury. Curtis was too ill. At Gretton's insistence, the band played a combined set instead. Alan Hempsall of Crispy Ambulance and Simon Topping of A Certain Ratio sang the first few songs. When Topping returned near the end, some of the crowd threw bottles at the stage. Several other April gigs were cancelled.

  The final live performance took place on the 2nd of May at the University of Birmingham's High Hall. It included the band's only performance of "Ceremony", one of the last songs Curtis wrote.

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• 7. Departure for America

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  The band's first US and Canada tour was scheduled for May 1980, and Curtis had spoken enthusiastically about it. His private life was under strain. His marriage to Deborah was faltering. She had been kept outside the band's inner circle. She also objected to his closeness to Annik Honoré, a Belgian journalist and music promoter he had met on tour in Europe in 1979. Curtis was also anxious about how American audiences would react to his epilepsy.

  On the evening before the band was due to leave for America, Curtis went home to Macclesfield to talk to Deborah. He asked her to drop an impending divorce suit. He also asked her to leave him alone in the house until he caught a train to Manchester the next morning. Early on the 18th of May 1980, Curtis died by suicide in his kitchen. He had spent the night watching Werner Herzog's film Stroszek and listening to Iggy Pop's 1977 album The Idiot. Deborah found him later that day when she came back.

  The death shocked the band and its management. Wilson said in 2005, "I think all of us made the mistake of not thinking his suicide was going to happen... We all completely underestimated the danger." Simon Reynolds said it "made for instant myth". Jon Savage's obituary predicted that Curtis's work would now be seen as tragic rather than courageous. In June 1980 the single "Love Will Tear Us Apart" reached number thirteen on the UK Singles Chart. Closer followed in July and peaked at number six on the UK Albums Chart. NME reviewer Charles Shaar Murray called it a magnificent memorial for both Curtis and Joy Division.

  Morris believed the band would not have lasted even without the death. Long before, the members had agreed that if any one of them left, the rest would change the name. Between July and October 1980, they re-formed as New Order, with Sumner on vocals. They later recruited Morris's girlfriend, Gillian Gilbert, on keyboards and second guitar. She had befriended the band and once played guitar at a show when Curtis could not. New Order struggled early on to escape Joy Division's shadow. It then found far greater commercial success with a more upbeat, dance-oriented sound. Its first single, "Ceremony" in 1981, was built from the last two songs written with Curtis.

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• 8. Long Shadow

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  In 2026, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inducted Joy Division and New Order as one act, after nominations in 2023-2025 and 2026. Back in 2005, both bands had entered the UK Music Hall of Fame. John Bush of AllMusic argued that Joy Division became the first post-punk band to stress mood and expression over anger and energy. He saw it as pointing ahead to the melancholy alternative music of the 1980s.

  Martin Hannett described the sound in 1979 as "dancing music with Gothic overtones", and it foreshadowed gothic rock. The word "gothic" first described a doomy atmosphere in late-1970s music, then attached itself to bands such as Bauhaus. Early gothic bands often featured high basslines that took over the melody, along with deep, droning vocals that blended Jim Morrison and Ian Curtis.

  The story has reached the screen twice. 24 Hour Party People, released in 2002, is a fictionalised account of Factory Records. Sean Harris plays Curtis, John Simm plays Sumner and Ralf Little plays Hook. Wilson said of it, "It's all true, it's all not true," and admitted he preferred the myth to the truth. Control, directed by Anton Corbijn in 2007, follows Curtis, played by Sam Riley. It draws on Deborah Curtis's 1995 book Touching from a Distance. It premiered on the opening night of Director's Fortnight at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival and was critically well received. That year Grant Gee also directed a documentary, Joy Division.

  The influence runs wide. Contemporaries including U2, the Cure and Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark admired the band. So did later acts such as Tears for Fears, Soundgarden, the Proclaimers, Mogwai, Hüsker Dü, Future Islands and Girls Against Boys. Archive material kept appearing as well. Still, with live tracks and rare recordings, arrived in 1981. Factory issued the Substance compilation in 1988. After Factory went bankrupt in 1992, London Records acquired the catalogue and released Permanent in 1995. The box set Heart and Soul followed in 1997.

  The song "Atrocity Exhibition" has had its own afterlife. Its title was partly inspired by J. G. Ballard's 1970 collection of condensed novels of the same name. Decades later, the rapper Danny Brown borrowed the title for an album of his own.

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