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"Everyone's living in their own little world. When I was about 15 or 16 at school, I used to talk with me mates and we'd say: 'As soon as we leave, we'll be down in London, doing something nobody else is doing.' Then I used to work in a factory, and I was really happy because I could daydream all day. All I had to do was push this wagon with cotton things in it up and down. But I didn't have to think. I could think about the weekend, imagine what I was going to spend me money on, which LP I was going to buy ... You can live in your own little world." Ian Curtis, July 1979. AN IDEAL FOR LIVING An History of Joy Division From Their Mythical Origins as The Stiff Kittens To Their Programmed Future as New Order Mark Johnson - Outside David Lees - Background Paul Morley - Faces & Masks Jon Wozencroft - Inside Proteus Books London New York PROTEUS BOOKS is an imprint of The Proteus Publishing Group United States PROTEUS PUBLISHING COMPANY, INC. 9 West 57th Street, Suite 4504 New York, NY 10019 distributed by Cherry Lane Books Company, Inc. P.O. Box 430 Port Chester New York, NY 10573 United Kingdom Proteus Books Limited Bremar House, Sale Place London W2 1PT distributed by J. M. Dent & Sons (Distribution) Limited Dunhams Lane, Letchworth Herts. SG61LF ISBN 0 86272 165 4 (paperback) ISBN 0 86276 166 2 (hardback) ISBN 0 86276 247 2 (cloth) First published in US 1984 First published in UK 1984 Copyright © 1984 Mark Johnson All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems without permission in writing from the Publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review. Cover photography: Robin Roddey at PGF Design (outside): Peter Saville Associates Design (inside): Garry Movat at Ai Frontispiece: "Unknown Pleasures" by Anton Corbijn Filmset by SX Composing Ltd, Rayleigh, Essex Cover reproduction by Aragorn Colour Repro Printed and bound in Great Britain by Blantyre Printing and Binding, Scotland INTRODUCTION This is an eclectic history of Joy Division, a band which have gone through as many (or more) faces as they have names. Whether they were called Warsaw, and played a distinctive industrial punk in cellar clubs supporting groups now-forgotten, or New Order, with their ethereal, soaring "music of the spheres", the band are Joy Division, because that is the point from which they are invariably considered. Like a significant part of Britain's independent music, even New Order are a post-Joy Division group. They may call it irrelevant, they may rise above it, but they cannot escape their past. Obviously, numerous errors will creep into a project of this type and for these I heartily apologise. Factory Records' release dates for Joy Division and New Order vinyls are approximate at best, primarily due to Factory's record-keeping system. I welcome all corrections, which may be addressed to me in care of the publisher. Also, considerable information (including set-lists) was deleted due to space considerations, and I will happily answer any questions I can. A short note about bootleg cassettes and albums: those events where bootlegs are available are marked *. If you are searching for them, just ask about when you go to your next New Order concert and you will surely find other fans more than willing to accommodate. An Ideal for Living is, I hope, food for thought. Reviews of the band's vinyls have not been included because the recordings are all available in one form or another, and each time we hear them new meanings emerge. Concert reviews, on the other hand, help return a past moment to life — keeping in mind that they but reflect the mood of the reviewer at the time. There is an 'outside' and an 'inside' to life as well as this book, and my aim has been to leave all myths unexploded and all reality undisturbed. Mark Johnson London THE NAME CHECK What you are about to read is really a culmination of the contributions of fans from Britain, the United States, and Europe who have, over the past almost six years, saved every scrap of information they could find about Joy Division. I have been very lucky, indeed, to have been given both their trust and their help. To these fans (many of whom wish to remain anonymous), and to the music professionals in Manchester and London who have also assisted, I express my gratitude: Mark Standley and Kathryn; Tim and Steve at-Bonaparte Records, Kings Cross; Paul Briden; Steve Brotherdale of The Earwigs and Gill; Kevin Millins, Hugh Jones, Sharon Maconie, and Colin Faver at Final Solution; Stuart James; Dave Kitson at Red Flame Records; Pete Fulwell; Debbie Cannon (US); Sylvie Gibory (France); Karen Pierce; Gary Thompson; Mike Eastwood; Mick O'Driscoll; Andrew Dawson; Craig S. Wood; Dave Pils; Jed Duffy; Nick Wraith; John Keenan; Alan Wise; Malcolm Whitehead at IKON FCL; Gordon Charlton; Richard Boon at New Hormones; The Bedford N'd; Nigel Bagley; Bernard Connor and Gary Desmond in Liverpool; lain Thomson; Kathy Kelly and Kate at New Musical Express; Martin Hannett and Susanna O'Hara; Tony Wilson and Leslie at Factory Communications Ltd; those of the band and their management who assisted with corrections and suggestions; and, certainly not last, Jim Van Tyne who first led me into the atrocity exhibition. To The Lady In Hawaii: Aloha nuiloa. Au-ia-oe. Keiinineiau oe ku me a'u. PRE-FACE I left my memory to play its tricks, rather than fight it. It's only in our artificial and fearful times. recently that I've been reminded that Warsaw were waiting for me In a way, and I say this a lot to myself as my memory plays with in the Manchester city centre before they drove off to an its tricks, my connection with Joy Division and their particular underground bunker in the mourning Pennine wilder/ness, to halo is that of a minor character in a minor Beatles biography: record. To-days exaggeration considers that they waited four I tell my story to a dim researcher, I went to school at 14 with Pete hours for my baby blue presence, but they probably paused for Best, I once almost asked out George Harrison's cousin or, in this minutes before hissing open cans and hitting the silver road. case, I talked with Ian in ranches circuses and factories about I think that they wanted me to produce - a loose term covering glueing our personalities to the world through words and pauses. four bald sins, I expect- their first recording, seriously called 'An Nothing much, I wasn't there, but in the end I wasn't far away. Ideal For Living.' Who knows how my life would have been Somehow, reminding us how much the pop writer was viewed changed if I'd managed to squabble through a hangover out of my disproportionately, I gained small time fame as the one who took a bed and keep that Sunday appointment. (How drunk could I have torch to this dark Division: shined a light on this. . . un-usual been when I made the promise, suggesting I could conjure up the commitment to living. People will approach me at Rainbows and Odeons to say that if it hadn't been for my support... I blush, and crystalline mystique of Spector, Brod, Eno and Czukay combined?) might even boast, because I don't tell good jokes. But it was all so A change in my life? Probably none at all: things were blinking slight-what else? I mentioned Joy Division often enough for in and blanking out lazily and fast in those 77-heaven days, everyone nearby to know of them, and maybe look for themselves. causing no effect that would stick fast. We were all pale hysterical I never said anything about the group: I did little more than talk ghosts of anything we were to become. I would have produced about the weather, hoping that readers knew their Oscar Wilde Warsaw, the record would have been no different because if the and would be certain that I meant something else. (This also time isn't right the trees don't joke, and it would have been as applies to the best ever interview with a member of Joy Division, important in my life as a stone in a date, and for Joy Division my when I asked their guitarist what he wanted to drink.) I was as association would have settled into social blandness. You see, and quiet as I possibly could be allowing for my former urge to babble I knew this the time we all sprang up in our places at the Free bouncily given the flimsiest encouragement, because what I feel Trade Hall to see Buzzcocks and Sex Pistols, it was all about Joy Division is no business of yours. What New Order are to predestined what we were going to get up to. Even if I'd started me is nothing, really, to do with you. What I let leak out may give out as a Stiff Kitten I would still have threaded my way into the you a clue, it may be a joke; when I use the word 'impatience' I'm position as top pop writer of the post-modernist times: and showing you a glimpse of one of my biggest secrets. nothing except a real fine joke would have stopped Joy Division So, they won't name any streets after Joy Division. At least they never tried to help anyone. They just took their chance, as alighting on that empty space which stretches between person and person, between ignorance and knowledge, between one hand everyone can, to reinvent the things around them. Until we are and another, and shocking those who were awake with what it was stopped. I think we're all aware in our own private ways that we can only respond, in public, to what spun out from what they did, they did. What it was they did. . . all those creeping inside here hoping to to what surrounds what it is they do. The Division, the order, is all embrace the essence, the essential sinful pleasure, of what it was guessing, luck, wishing, indifference, impatience.. . to a point, and past that point we're forced to disentangle and wipe away our they did - a minute or a century past 'An Ideal For Living' - should fade away: Back Off Boogaloo! as Ringo said, aptly. No habitual conceptions of reality. We can never talk sensibly in such luck: not much luck is left. All the luck of the century is public of'the inside.' No words reach that deep. I've often felt that those on whom the group's effect would be most beneficial are greedily snatched at and soaked up by young people like Joy Division, searching for nothing to do so that they might do repelled, and on those on whom they most fascinate their effect something. Joy Division were drunk on luck before anything else, may be dangerous, even harmful. And then, when I reach this far pernod or bitter. Joy Division were lucky, lucky that they turned in, somewhere between patterned leaking and plain spilling the the damned whore rock language back into a virgin, lucky that out beans, I just have to tell a joke. Heard the one about the tragicjew of their common sense blossomed a peculiar beauty, lucky that and the lucky scholar . . . ? amidst it all they were quite stupid, lucky if you assume that what I am inclined to believe that one should only listen to Joy Division when one is in an eupeptic state of physical and mental they wanted to do was create something rich and better than some health and, in consequence, tempted to dismiss any scrupulous fucking decorative abbreviation. And we should thank our lucky stars that they were so lucky, if not think about what it was they did heartsearching as a morbid fuss. When one is in low spirits, one should possibly keep away from them, for, unless introspection is every other minute of the day. To look straight at luck, head on into the glare, is to have it disappear, twitch away, like a black spot accompanied, as it always is with New Order, by an equal passion on the eyeball: it hovers, in vision but out of it, irritating and for the good life, it all too easily degenerates into spineless enthralling, restless and nowhere, here and then. Luck; just like narcissistic fascination with one's own sins and weaknesses. Now Joy Division, in vision but out of it. A grasp that can be found even we wouldn't want that, would we? GLASS : MESH "The only alternative to the spectacle becomes the spectacle of the alternative" -Factory Newsletter, Sep 79. "Who is right, and who can tell, and who gives a damn right now. " Until the spirit, new sensation takes hold, then you know." -"Disorder". "Don't wait for the Last Judgment. It takes place every day." -Albert Camus, The Fall, 1957. Broadcast. Here it is, and was as it were, no design -1 knew the tone the image effect of the project-1 had that: the mood, the colours and a fear of the REactions - There is and is no plot, only the soundtrack to market machine, counterfeit ticket to the high- peep show. That is, this thing has the morals that you invented for it after the event, and the character is exactly what it is in the confines of the film. The talk between the scenes .. . The open reels seem twisted - inverted - but they were like that when they found them at the outset - there is no meaning in the story, and it seems that there was no story when they filmed it - what you see in that direction is your own invented coating -1 have no control over it. Let's say this story was aborted by reason. (Film) the bloody thing I did not make! It constituted itself. .. while I watched -1 have enough difficulty determining the contents, certain that isolated scenes will conflict with the already-fuzzy subtitles. This is the film I saw. . . "A mass of harmless attitudes Attack them or subside. No matter what they say you do. Your heart meets you, late at night." - "Procession". STIFF KITTENS & WARSAW The histories of many bands which began in 1976 and 1977 start with The Sex Pistols, and this is no exception. The youth of Manchester were strongly affected in June of 1976 when Howard Devoto twice brought the Pistols to the North to play the Lesser Free Trade Hall with his new group Buzzcocks. No matter what opinion one holds of The Sex Pistols, they proved once and for all that anyone could start a band, whether you could play or not. New bands sprang up almost overnight all over England. By the time the Anarchy Tour (The Sex Pistols, The Heartbreakers, and The Clash) rolled into Manchester, school friends Bernard Dicken of Salford and Peter Hook, and Terry Mason had formed their own group. They were on hand when the Anarchy Tour played The Electric Circus on Thursday, 9 December 1976, and received their first mention in the press: "The sentiments were echoed by most every kid I spoke to-they were certainly all in the process of forming bands, Stiff Kittens (Hooky, Terry, Wroey and Bernard, who has the final word) being the most grotesque offering" (Pete Silverton, Sounds, 19 Dec 76). Although Sounds listed Bernard's neighbour, Wroey, it was not really anticipated that he would join the band when they began playing