| Although they survived
merely five months into the decade, the shadow cast over the music of the Eighties by Joy
Division is unlikely to have faded by 1990. The tragic death of singer Ian Curtis in May
1980 coincided with the release of what was generally agreed would be their artistic and
commercial breakthrough second album (Closer) and, as with so many of rock’s
graveyard of youthful and unfulfilled casualties, it has become difficult to separate the
acclaim justly earned on the merits of some brilliant music from the excesses of the
inevitable death cult that subsequently surrounded the name of Joy Division. The myth and
nonsense that has accumulated about what was a very private death, and anything but a
Romantic artistic martyrdom, has distorted the critical perspective on Joy Division and
come close to obscuring the fact that, behind the unsolicited hyperbole, the comparatively
small recorded legacy of Joy Division’s short life remains remarkable and memorable.
It not only stands as classic and unique rock, but will undoubtedly play its part in
defining the very nature of rock music in the Eighties. Perhaps the most destructive
effect of the Joy Division cult has been the creation of the myth that the haunting
melancholic baritone, obscurist lyrics and marvellous timing of Ian Curtis were the only
significant ingredients of Joy Division’s greatness. It is a myth that unjustly
belittles the importance of the roles played by Bernard Albrecht, Peter Hook, Steve Morris
and producer Martin Hannett in evolving their beautiful moods, melodies and deceptively
danceable rhythms. Joy Division died with Ian Curtis on May 18th 1980 but in a real sense
the band does live on — in the music of New Order, the band formed by the remaining
members of Joy Division. The history of Joy Division is, therefore, paradoxically a story
both with and without an end. The
aggressive ‘Never Mind the Bollocks’ rock of the Sex Pistols now seems to have
very little connection with Joy Division music like ‘Atmosphere’ or ‘New
Dawn Fades’, but like so many bands, Joy Division may well never have existed if the
Sex Pistols had not turned the British rock scene around from its collision course with
Middle of the Road respectability in the summer of 1976, first with live performances of
almost total spontaneity and carefree enthusiasm, and then with a series of singles which
took rock out of the concert halls and back onto the streets.
Ian Curtis, Bernard Dicken, Peter Hook and
Steve Morris were all twenty in 1976 and working in either dull or dead-end jobs. Ian
Curtis pushed trucks in a cotton mill and Bernard Dicken pushed a pen in an office. At
twenty they were old enough, after four years of work, to feel themselves to be in a rut
but still young enough not to have dreams and ambition worn out of them by the daily
grind. The Pistols revolution, which was almost immediately taken up by local Manchester
bands like The Buzzcocks, Slaughter & The Dogs and The Drones, inspired Curtis, Dicken
and Hook, along with so many others, to buy instruments and form a band as a means of
expressing themselves. A year earlier such an idea would have seemed absurd — only
Real Musicians who had ‘paid their dues’ in bands since childhood had any right
to get up on a rock stage — but the Pistols had cut through the mystique of the
‘70s rock musicians’ art and served as a reminder that three chords and a lot of
cheek were basically all that anyone ever needed to rock and roll. |
