Joy Division - Written & Compiled by Mike West is published by Babylon Books, Thornlea East, Holme

House Road, Todmorden, Lanes., OL14 8LD, England. Contents copyright c 1984. All rights reserved.
Photography by Kevin Cummins. ISBN: 0 907188 21 4.
 CONTENTS

1. JOY DIVISION 1977-1980: BAND, MYTH AND MAGIC Page 4

2. FROM MACCLESFIELD VIA WARSAW ... TO WHERE? ORIGINS 1977 8

3. NOT A CONCEPT; AN ENIGMA: THE IDEAL FOR JOY DIVISION - 1978 15

4. "THIS BAND IS BUSY DOING THE GROUNDWORK FOR THE MUSIC OF

THE EIGHTIES" - MICK MIDDLES, SOUNDS, 1980 18

5. LIFE AFTER A DEATH - 1980 26

6. THE NEW ORDER: BEYOND 1980 34

7. JOY DIVISION LIVE GUIDE 38

8. EQUIPMENT FILE 41
9. DISCOGRAPHY 42

10. VINYL COLLECTORS CHECKLIST 50

11. ODDS&ENDS 52

12. JOY DIVISION LEFTOVERS 53

i) Studio Recordings
ii) The John Peel Sessions
iii) Bootlegs

13. FILMS & VIDEOS 55

14. INDEX OF SONG TITLES 5~

15. THE STATIS TICS 58

a) On Record
b) The John Peel 'Festive 50'
c) Music Paper Polls
1.
JOY DIVISION 1977-1980:
BAND, MYTH AND MAGIC

4
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 co-
incided 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 compara-
tively small recorded legacy of Joy Division's short
life remains remarkable and memorable. It not only
stands as classic and unique rock, but will undoubted-
ly 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 remain-
ing members of Joy Division. The history of Joy
Division is, therefore, paradoxically a story both with
and without an end.

5
Ian Curtis - Lea Festival, August '79

6
Stephen Morris

7
 2.
FROM MACCLESFIEW
VIA WARSAW ... TO WHERE?

8
ORIGINS -1977
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 ariy 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 any-
one ever needed to rock and roll.
At first it was just three friends who met at gigs
(Bernard and Peter had been at school together in
Manchester) learning guitars and trying to play and
write punk music in the evenings and at weekends.
Even by the time the three began to take on roles -
Ian Curtis as the singer and-occasional guitarist,
Bernard Dicken as the guitarist and Peter Hook as the
bassist - and call themselves a band early in 1977
there was still little to distinguish them from any
other Pistols followers spitting venom in back bed-
rooms all over Britain. With a target set somewhere
between the musical accomplishment of 'London's
Burning' and the urbane sophistication of Iggy Pop
they played hard and obnoxious and - no doubt to
the relief of neighbours - without a drummer as no
one was yet willing to join them in that capacity.
Uke everyone else of their age they had listened
to Bowie in their teens, and when their band became
serious enough to need a name it was to Bowie's most
recent album, 'Low', that they turned for inspiration:
the Germanic instrumental 'Warszawa' seemed to
provide just the right combination of the familiar and
the exotic once amended to plain 'Warsaw' for local
punk consumption.
In keeping with the style of 1977, in which bands
delayed for a minimum length of time between pick-
ing up their chosen instruments for the first time and
making their performing debut, Warsaw played their
first public performance just five months after form-
ation on May 29th at Manchester punk mecca The
Electric Circus. They were bottom of the bill which
also included local heroes the Buzzcocks, who still
relied on the sparks produced across the twin termin-
als of Howard Devoto and Pete Shelley at this stage,
and Penetration. It was a performance of archetypal
punk cockyness and aggression, made all the more
convincing by the fact that the original trio's months
searching for a fourth member to play drums had
only come to fruition on the eve of their public
debut, with the completion of the line-up by Ian
Curtis' old Macclesfield school friend Steve Morris.
Despite the rawness and rough edges - to be
expected in such a new-born band - there was
already evidence that Warsaw might prove to be a
rough diamond and that within the fashionable limit-
ations of the punk format inherited from the Pistols
the band had something of their own to contribute.
It was a debut that created a lot of interest and gave
Warsaw the incentive they needed to continue. Pete
Shelley of the Buzzcocks was interested enough in
9
the band's cause to suggest they use one of his pet
band names 'Stiff Kittens', rather than the less strik-
ing, and distinctly un-punk 'Warsaw', and the band
even found themselves getting entirely unexpected
national press exposure in Paul Morley's New Musical
Express review of the gig, which gave them almost as
much space as the two established bands Morely had
gone to the Electric Circus to report on.
Few new bands, except perhaps Siouxsie and the
Banshees, have had so much press coverage for their
very first public performance, and Paul Morley's
comments on the band he saw that May night in 1977
make interesting reading in view of what was to
happen to Warsaw over the next few years .

"there's an elusive spark of dissimilarity from the

newer bands that suggests they've plenty to play
around with.
I liked them and will like them even more in six
months time."
-PaulMorely,NME 18th June , 1977

Despite this early break Warsaw did not become

over-familiar on the club circuit during 1977 , playing
instead a mere handfull of influential dates at the
Electric Circus - which had become to the 1977
Manchester punk scene what the Roxy was to
London, featuring The Fall, The Worst , John Cooper
Clarke, Slaughter and the Buzzcocks. A severe limit-
ation on Warsaw was the fact that all the members of
the band had day jobs and while there was still no
prospect of a living from the band they were not
prepared to give them up. It was a classic 'Catch 22'
situation - Warsaw could not be developed as a pro-
fessional band until it had professional members and
without the income of a professional band the
members had to remain as part-timers. With no
manager and little notion of the workings of the
music business, Warsaw made rapid musical progress
but could not organise themselves to build upon the
promising take-off the Electric Circus debut had
given them:

"Material-wise everything seemed to be clicking into

place. But at that time we felt very detached from
things. No one was helping us. It was very disillus-
ioning but in fact it urged us to carry on .. . sort of
'we'll show them' ."
- Ian Curtis in an NME interview, 13th January ,
1979.

10
Bernard Sumner

11
 Warsaw were a combination of wide-eyed amateur
enthusiasts and a new band rapidly learning to impose
their ideas and personalities on the music they were
producing. In much the same way as Siouxsie and the
Banshees they soon left the crutch of Punk and devel-
oped a more personal and inventive style. It was
built around tightening repetition, washes of sound
and a replacement of the urban cliches of punk with
Ian Curtis' more natural lyrical leanings towards
mystery and bleak, strangely Russian, neo-Romantic
moods and imagery. In the apparent isolation of
what was actually a lack of gigs and exposure, Warsaw
began to make the transformation from passingly
interesting part-time punks to an excitingly original
new-wave outfit with something to say.
Many people who saw Warsaw in 1977 and Joy
Division in 1978 believed that some miracle had taken
place in which a remarkable butterfly had suddenly
emerged from the rather ordinary grub that had been
Warsaw - it was not a miracle but six months of
virtually no gigs in which creative energies were uni-
fied and refined in comparative isolation and the
process of musical development, usually reduced to
fits and starts by the routine of regular gigging,
accelerated to an unusual degree.
The change coming over Warsaw was evident in
October 1977 when the band were invited to play at
the 'last weekend' of the Electric Circus. The club was
forced to close and as a special wake a marathon 'Last
Days of the Electric Circus' weekend was organised
over October 15th and 16th. As one of the (many)
bands to have made an impression at the club Warsaw
were invited to play on the 16th. In fact it was not to
prove the last weekend of the club, as it was to re-
open in November 1978 for a time, but the passing
of the club was duly marked by the presence of a
mobile recording unit to produce an album in the
tradition of EM I's 'Live at the Roxy'. The fact that
the Manor Mobile taped everything played over the
weekend and Virgin issued an album means that the
weekend of October 15th-16th, 1977 also provided
the earliest recorded example of the work of Curtis,
Dicken (now Albrecht), Hook and Morris: 'At a Later
Date' included on the 'Short Circuit' album eventual-
ly released in June 1978. While Warsaw's riffing
contribution is interesting while undistinguished,
recognisable as the work of the band that was to
become Joy Division, 'At A Later Date' must surely
stand as one of the most unmemorable recording
debuts ever experienced by a band, in the sense that
Warsaw completed their entire set without being
12
aware that they were being recorded - only discover-
ing the fact when they sat in the dressing rooms and
were asked to sign contracts for the use of their
performance on the album!
The closure of the Electric Circus, one of the few
venues Warsaw ever played and where they had built
up a 'home' following, and a legal move by heavily
promoted HM band Warsaw Pakt to prevent them
using the name Warsaw, signalled the end of the
'Warsaw era' and drove the members of the band
further into internal exile from the local rock scene
and consolidation of their musical identity.
Although Warsaw had achieved a great deal during
1977, they may have achieved more if they had found
someone to manage their career at the start rather
than at the end of the year. By their own admission,
Warsaw had not been very good at managing them-
selves before they met up with Rafters DJ Rob
Gretton in December 1977. Having developed a stock
of material by the middle of 1977, Warsaw were keen
to put out a record, but having limited funds allowed
a local record production company to handle the
project for them. Unfortunately when the recording
was made, in October, the band were not happy with
the technical quality and the four songs were shelved.
A major label was sniffing around by November and
putting up money for recording sessions which
seemed to be leading towards an album deal, but
ultimately Warsaw - now trading as Joy Division -
didn't care for the long-term contract deal they were
offered and refused to sign.
The Stiff/Chiswick Test, however, proved to be
the turning point in the band's career. This was a
special showcase for three local bands, in a series held
all over the country, to discover groups ripe for a
recording deal with either Stiff or Chiswick. The
Manchester test was held at Rafters Club, and in the
audience were DJ Rob Gretton and Tony Wilson,
presenter of the North-West ITV local news pro-
gramme 'Granada Reports' and the nationally net-
worked rock programme 'So It Goes'. At the time
Factory records was not even a gleam in Wilson's eye
but he felt that Joy Division "had something to say"
and he did not forget them. The impact on Rob
Gretton was more immediate, despite the fact that
Joy Division played third on the bill and did not
begin to play until 3.00 in the morning, and finding
they were manager-less he offered his services. It was
to become one of the rare band/manager relationships
in which the manager's level of involvement made
him in effect a non-playing member of the band.
Peter Hook

13
When Warsaw re-emerged as Joy Division on the club
scene in January 1978 they were clearly a band that
had made use of the space they had been given over
the past months to organise their approach and refine
their material, and those who had missed them since
the days of the Electric Circus were conscious of an
apparently overnight change : the potential that Paul
Morely had written about six months earlier was now
cashed-up into currency .
The much-needed business skills of Rob Gretton
now provided a firmer base for creativity and the
peanuts recording deal. of the previous Autumn was
finally put behind them. Even so, Joy Division still
presented a curious combination of lethal creative
control and direction and gauche amateurism , as all
the members of the band spent most of their waking
hours in entirely unrelated day jobs in order to make
ends meet.
Disentangling the recording deal freed Joy Division
from a potential millstone but also left them without
anything due on record apart from the Electric Circus
album which was by no means certain of being issued.
Without a record to post off hopefully to the John
Peel programme and the music papers, the name of
Joy Division was unlikely to spread far beyond
Manchester and the North West , and in desperation
the band turned once again to the tapes they had
made the previous October. Although they were
quite satisfied with the material the recording quality
did them no favours. Without the funds to record
the songs again Joy Division reluctantly filled the gap
in their career by packaging them up as the 'Ideal For
Living' EP on Enigma Records.
So it was that Joy Division made their record
debut in May 1978 with an EP they had previously
considered unworthy of release . Fortunately the
technical short comings of 'Ideal For Living' were
generally over-looked and the record judged for its
musical content and as a welcome opportunity to
hear a much-praised new band for the first time . The
hoped-for plays on the John Peel radio programme
and some unexpectedly good reviews in the music
weeklies created a great deal of interest, and the EP
not only achieved the objective of spreading the name

14
 3.
- NOT A CONCEPT; AN ENIGMA:
THE IDEAL FOR JOY DIVISION - 1978

15
 and music of Joy Division to a national audience but
provided a small financial bonus by selling out of its
initial pressing by September of 1978. Joy Division
remained a favourite band to make predictions about
in the music press :
"there are a lot of good ideas here (on the 'Ideal For
Living' EP), and they could be a very interesting band
by now, seven months on"
- Chris Brazier, Melody Maker, 24th June, 1978.
The only negative reaction was - somewhat in-
evitably- to the fashionably 'shocking' Nazi Chic
dressing of the EP. While for the vast majority the
band's name was .merely satisfyingly abstract , those
who picked up on the Nazi allusion of the name were
not particularly appeased by the blatancy of the
picture sleeve's imagery - the band's name spelt out
in heavy Gothic lettering beside the portrait of a
Hitler youth beating a drum! In fact the Joy Division
was a body of prostitutes in Nazi Germany and the
band's choice of this as their name had no political
implications, rather it was a cynical statement by the
band on the 'state of the art'. To read fascism into it,
or indeed in Factory Records, is to mis-interpret.
The overwhelmingly good impression made by the
'Ideal For Living' EP did not, however , convert to the
kind of recording deal that would enable the members
of Joy Division to obtain a living wage and so leave
their day jobs and become fully professional, while at
the same time maintaining the control over their
recording output they felt essential. What Joy With nothing new in prospect the compromise
Division were looking for was not the usual kind of 'Ideal For Living' EP was repressed in September
contract offered to a new and untried band, but it 1978 and reissued as a 12 inch, distributed by Rough
was by no means an impossible dream and in many Trade , with a redesigned sleeve . The showcase spot
respects showed them to be down to earth and practi- on the Virgin Electric Circus album which had eventu-
cal, in not being seduced by deceptively fat royalty ally been released in June proved less of a break-
advances ahead of contracts with no provision for a through than they at one time hoped . Although
living income in future years. Discussions with Radar Virgin put a lot of effort into promoting the album,
Records took Joy Division to the verge of signing a with a big press and in-store campaign to back up the
'conventional' recording contract but this fell through, twin fashionable gimmicks of a 10 inch pressing and
and the band continued their search for a company limited (5 ,000) initial quantity in blue vinyl , the
prepared to take the chance and support them finan- record made less impact than expected in a year glut-
cially and artistically in the way they wanted : ted with similar live albums , and Joy Division's contri-
"Sometimes we felt like finishing but it was because bution - 'At A Later Date' - was a below par version
everyone ignored us or interfered that we kept think- which the band immediately regretted having chosen
ing 'we'll show them' . . . we need to give up work for inclusion in preference to one of the other
to continue .. . but it's not worth signing to a record numbers they had performed that night. Morale was
company unless they can supply you with a living. hardly boosted by the fact that Virgin's pre-release
We'd love to stay on the outside but we can't afford advance on royalties quickly proved to have been
to do it ourselves, which we'd want." over-generous when the sales figures for the album
- Ian Curtis in an interview, NME 13th January , started to come in , and Joy Division actually had to
1979. pay some of Virgin's money back.

16

Despite the unsatisfactory progress of Joy
Division's recording career, the Autumn of 1978 saw
them spreading their live reputation beyond the
North West with dates in Bradford, Leeds and
Sheffield and , in November, a support spot on two
shows of a national tour by the Rezillos which took
Joy Division to such distant venues as Reading Top
Rank and Canterbury Odeon for the first time.
The solution of Joy Division's recording dilemma
came when Granada TV presenter Tony Wilson
decided to try his hand at running an independent
record label. Although best known in the North-West
of England for his work on ITV's local news magazine
'Granada Reports'. Wilson was equally familiar to
rock fans for the adventurous 'So It Goes' and as a
champion of John Cooper Clarke, Ian Dury, The Sex
Pistols and virtually everyone else who was to mean
anything on the British punk and post-punk rock
scene . His involvement had already led him to pro-
moting acts at the Factory Club in Manchester's Moss
Side, and putting out a record featuring local bands
seemed a fairly logical next step . So when a small
inheritance came his way, Tony Wilson used some of
the money to finance a record release. He arranged
with local record producer Martin 'Zero' Hannett to
record several unsigned local bands for a sampler EP/
LP and one of these bands was the group he had
re~embered from the Stiff/Chiswick Test at Rafters
Club - Joy Division. His new label was to be known,
like the club, as Factory (a name not entirely unin-
spired by Andy Warhol's art studio in 1960's New
York) and the directors Wilson and Hannett plus
Wilson's club co-promoter actor Alan Erasmus and
Manchester Poly design graduate Peter Saville.
In October 1978 Joy Division were duly dispatch-
ed to Cargo Studios in Rochdale with Martin Hannett
to record material for probable inclusion in a Factory
sampler record that would also include Durutti
Column, Cabaret Voltaire and comedian John Dowie.
Like Tony Wilson, Martin Hannett had been interest-
ed in Joy Division for some time - he had been
instrumental in getting the original 7 inch 'Ideal For
Living' EP distributed more effectively through his
connection with Rabid Records - and the Cargo
sessions were made particularly successful by the
immediate creative rapport struck up between band
and producer. It was to prove a classic partnership
with Hannett becoming like a fifth member of the
band in every possible respect, and the benevolent
support of Factory from the Autumn of 1978 proved
to be a major turning point in Joy Division's career.
The frustrations and mistakes of the previous eighteen
months began to give way to 'career' success to match
the band's remarkable artistic progress and develop-
ment, and having completed their first wholly success-
ful and satisfying recordings, Joy Division found
themselves invited to record four songs for broadcast
on the highly prestigious John Peel Radio 1 pro-
gramme in the New Year. The 'Ideal For Living' EP,
like so many independent record releases by new
bands had received its only national radio exposure
on th~ John Peel programme and Joy Division had
already joined the long list of bands that owed much
of their initial success to the interest shown in them
by Peel and producer John Walters. The sessions were
a showcase that unrecorded bands like Adam and the
Ants Siouxsie and the Banshees and the Slits had
already used to turn local cult status into national
acclaim and successful record deals.
As 1978 drew to a close Joy Division seemed to be
winning through at last and, one way or another, the
elusive recording deal on their own terms seemed to
be on the verge of becoming a reality.
17
 4.
"THIS BAND IS BUSY DOING THE GROUNDWORK
FOR THE MUSIC OF THE EIGHTIES"

18
-MICK MIDDLES, SOUNDS, 1980
The first Factory release featuring Joy Division was
entitled 'A Factory Sampler' and came in the slightly
unusual format of two 7 inch EP records in a fold-
over sleeve , reasonably priced at £1 .80. Deliberately ,
it was a format that defied categorisation as a single,
EP or album and reviewers were divided on whether
to review it as a single or as an album. A pressing
delay on the first 5 ,000 copies and a lack of national
distribution reduced the initial impact of the record,
but the sampler was into most shops by the time the
Joy Division John Peel sessions were broadcast. With
Joy Division given two tracks , interest in the EP took
it rapidly from modest 'mail-order' beginnings and on
to the Rough Trade national distribution network.
Record reviewers whose previous experience of
Joy Division had been the less than satisfactory track
on the Electric Circus album and the flawed 'Ideal
For Living' were quick to note that, suddenly and
unexpectedly, Joy Division were one of the most
interesting and original bands in the country at the
start of 1979 :
"Joy Division wind their claustrophobic, abrasive yet
precise anger even tighter , a quality only hinted at in
their previous 'Ideal For Living' EP : both 'Digital' and
'Glass' are strong, massive and .. . make you want to
hear more ."
- John Savage, Melody Maker, 20th January 1979
In NME , Paul Morely , who had perceptively seen
the greatness latent in Joy Division long before their
maturity, spoke of:
"more proof of Division's intelligent development."
"this individual group "
and also succeeded in identifying Joy Division's
uniqueness as:
"the missing link between Elvis Presley and the
Banshees."
- Paul Morely, NME, 31st March 1979 .
19
 But by Febraury 1979, the October 1978 contribu-
tion to the Factory sampler was already well out of
date - as the John Peel programme sessions proved.
The sessions, recorded at the end of January, became
one of the most successful ever broadcasts on the
programme, and most listeners, music fans and music
business people alike were struck by the rapid devel-
opment the band were capable of and the inner
power and tension of the music they could now
produce. The four songs recorded at Maida Vale
Studios in London were 'She's Lost Control', 'Trans-
mission', 'Insight' and 'Exercise One' and made
'Digital' and 'Glass' seem like relics from some distant
past. Joy Division's ability to develop over short
periods of time, first demonstrated during the lay-off
from performing in the Autumn of 1977, suggested
that the potential of the band, already regarded as
very great, might be little short of awesome.
Although the Factory sampler had been a one off
project and no contractual ties existed between
Factory and the performers concerned - mainly, of
course, because Factory was not a 'record company'
in the traditional sense - Joy Division resisted some
attractive offers from major record companies who at
last saw their potential, and agreed to make an album
for Factory on the same profit-sharing basis as the
Sampler.
During April and May 1979, Joy Division and
Martin Hannett spent time at Hannett's favourite
Strawberry Studios in Stockport, recording a dozen
songs for an album that was to emerge in July as
'Unknown Pleasures'.
The growth of national interest also enabled Joy
Division to 'rest' the Manchester clubs, where they
had played solidly for two years and felt they were
becoming over-familiar, and play a string of dates
around the country and in London. And just as their
casual contract deal with Factory was out of the
ordinary, so too was their approach" to live work and
touring. Joy Division never undertook anything that
could be described as a 'tour', with the single excep-
tion of a support spot on a Buzzcocks tour in the
Autumn of 1979, but instead played isolated dates or
groups of dates seemingly at random throughout their
performing life mainly under the banner of 'Factory
Nights'.
The fact that Joy Division's recorded output was
very tiny and, by the Spring of 1979 well out of date,
focused a great deal of attention on these live per-
formances and encouraged the circulation of bootleg
tapes of live material and the famous John Peel
sessions. Live Joy Division in early 1979 was already
20
several light years away from the immaturity of 'Ideal
For Living' and the tentative first steps toward great-
ness on the Factory Sampler, as the rave reviews of
Joy Division performances indicate:
"Joy Division . . . sketch withering grey abstractions
of urban malaise. Unfortunately . . . their vision is
deadly accurate."
"A series of spatial constructions based on cyclical
variations on simple melancholy themes. The impact
is stunning and oppressive".
"What makes them unique is singer Ian Curtis. A
slight thin figure, he moves deftly and delicately, his
voice surprisingly strong, in his eyes and face a look
of humility and fear. If this sounds like a mere stage
play on paper, in reality Curtis' transparent humanity
- that of a loser caught in a world only partially
understood is totally credible."
"When Joy Division left the stage I felt emotionally
drained. They are, without any exaggeration, an
important band."
- Ian Wood, NME, 26th May, 1979.
The first Joy Division album took a total of four
and a half days of recording to put at the mixing
stage, as the bulk of the material was already perfect-
ed in live performance, and in a suitably crafted Peter
Saville sleeve became the first Factory album release
in July 1979 as 'Unknown Pleasures'. Few first
albums had been so eagerly awaited as the first from
Joy Division, and while many who had become used
to the power and glory of Joy Division live felt the
album inevitably lacked the intensity and passion the
band was capable of projecting, the direction indica-
ted by the Factory Sampler and revealed by the John
Peel session was satisfyingly explored over the
album's ten songs.
Included were versions of two songs from the Peel
sessions - 'She's Lost Control' and 'Insight' - with
'Transmission', now familiar as a live opener, being
reserved for a single and 'Exercise One' along with
'Auto-Suggestion', 'From Safety to Where?', 'The
Kill' and 'Walked in Line' being recorded but left off
the finished album which presented the bulk of the
familiar live show, including a stunning version of
'New Dawn Fades' at the end of the 'Outside'.
Reviews of the album generally acknowledged that
'Unknown Pleasures' would be remembered as one of
the classic releases of 1979:
"Unknown Pleasures is an English rock master-work,
it's only equivalent probably be'ing made in Los
Angeles twelve years ago. The Doors' 'Strange Days'."
-MaxBell,NME, 14th July, 1979.
" 'Unknown Pleasures' may well be one of the best
white English debut LPs of the year."
- John Savage, Melody Maker, 21st July, 1979.
The NME review by Max Bell indicated one of the
identifiable ingredients of Joy Division's unique
musical concoction: Ian Curtis' melancholy baritone
so often recalled the Doors' Jim Morrison, just as his
wild epileptic dancing conjured up visions of Iggy
Pop: a man who also lapsed into a very acceptable
impersonation of Mr Mojo Rising on occasion. This
undeniable Jim Morrison/Iggy Pop heritage was set
against a musical backdrop that was an electric mix of
post-punk 'free-form' a la Siouxsie and the Banshees'
explorations vf Minor 7th chords, Tangerine Dream/
Neu/La Dusseldorf mood mekaniks, Epic grandeur of
the Pink Floyd/King Crimson school and the sullen
melancholia of the Jacques Brel/Scott Engel/Tim
Buckley /Leonard Cohen faculty of Psychosis
Engineering. Yet to list the elements of Joy Division's
music is to devalue a unique and original experience:
just as a chemical compound takes on an identity that
is uniquely its own and not that of an amalgam of
elements, so Joy Division's music achieved the rare
and elusive quality of originality. So much so that
identifiable similarities with past music soon seem to
be merely surface features when the music becomes
familiar. Much of Joy Division's impact was, for
example, derived from their subtle melodic inventive-
ness and their haunting quality from a remarkable
manipulation of familiar ideas set against lyrical and
instrumental 'obscurity' and uncertainty, which
placed them within the context of late seventies rock
but at the same time quite outside similar previous
experience.
Remarkably, an era dominated by the independent
single, Joy Division had not released a conventional
single during their first two years of operation so for
them releasing a single in 1979 was a novelty. Usual
practice was to fssue one of the outstanding tracks
from an album immediately before putting the album
out, in the hope that a hit single would give the
album an initial sales boost, but neither Joy Division
nor Factory were slaves to industry conventions and
although a single was chosen from the May album
sessions it was deliberately left off the album arid no
one seemed in any hurry to release it, despite con-
siderable demand.
The A side selected was 'Transmission'. The song
had been a highlight of Joy Division live since late
1978 and the January John Peel programme session
version had created a great deal more interest. The
exclusion of the song from 'Unknown Pleasures' had
been a disappointment to many but with deliberate
contrariness Joy Division did not begin to mix the
track for single release until July - when any other
band would have been busy promoting the song as a
hit single - and 'Transmission' did not appear in the
shops until the following November.
The attitude of Britain's notoriously cynical rock
press to Joy Division had been favourable from the
very first and with the release of 'Unknown Pleasures'
began to verge on the dreaded 'future of rock 'n' roll'
overkill. This, combined with heavy play on the John
Peel programme, ensured that the album sold out its
tentative 10,000 copy first-pressing in less than two
months, more than justifying Tony Wilson's personal
investment of the unit trusts he had inherited the
year before.
Although 'Unknown Pleasures' never reached the
British album chart, even during the first two fast-
selling months, Joy Division's unique arrangement
with Factory actually meant that they earned more
real cash money from the album than most of the
groups signed to major labels with records high in the
Top 20. Factory made no advance payment of royal-
ties but merely put up the funds to pay for recording
and manufacture and, once those costs were covered
by income from sales, paid over two thirds of all the
money plus the usual performer/writer royalty
percentages. That kind of deal on 10,000-plus albums
wholesaling at around £2.70 eventually brought Joy
Division a very healthy clear profit as the basis of a
living wage - a great deal more than the usual 4% of
selling price contract would have brought them.
Joy Division's glorious independence with Factory
proved itself capable of profitability to match its
artistic integrity but independence also brought
problems. Income from records is slow to reach
record companies and performers, and with limited
funds and no arrangement for record manufacture
and distribution, each batch of 10,000 copies of
'Unknown Pleasures' could only be financed when the
previous batch sold out, often leaving shops with
customer orders but no copies to sell. It is a well
known fact that customers who find that records are
not readily available will buy something else, so
'Unknown Pleasures' lost numerous sales by being
temporarily off the streets. The lack of mass promo-
21
 t'ion and distribution also limited sales in chart-return
shops, keeping the album out of the sales chart, and
put a ceiling on the number of copies the album could
actually sell over a short period of time: 'Unknown
Pleasures' had to remain an unknown sales quantity -
Factory could not sell 50 or 60 thousand copies of
the album in a week simply because they lacked the
means of putting such large numbers of the album in
the shops at any one time and, in any case, could not
supply the promotional 'push' to win so many custo-
mers at the same moment. It was a dilemma, because
while the hand-to-mouth arrangement worked beau-
tifully for small quantities and gave complete control,
a pressing and distribution deal gave unlimited sales
potential and ultimately much larger profits at the
cost of smaller percentages and the loss of total
artistic control. In fact, Joy Division never took the
'licensing deal' option on any of their records in order
to sell larger quantities, and the fact that their second
and final albums, as well as the 'Love Will Tear Us
Apart' single (which sold a remarkable 160,000
copies) being big hits is a vindication oftheir artistic
integrity and refusal to compromise to achieve
success, and a tribute to the efficiency with which
Factory handled their records, despite minimal
facilities.
By September 1979 and the 'second coming' of
'Unknown Pleasures' into the record shops, Joy
Division live had jumped even further ahead of their
record persona, beginning their set with the sullen,
awesome 'Atmosphere'. It was a choice which set
Joy Division apart from just about every other per-
forming band that has ever been. The straight·
forward, accessible, bright 'limbering-up' opener is
almost obligatory in rock performances and Joy
Division now chose to begin with an entirely new
song of shattering/shattered emotion built around
staggering chords of doom: a choice entirely at odds
with their forthcoming position as support/guests on
a major national tour by the Buzzcocks. But Joy
Division were already beyond being judged according
to 'the rules' - they had joined the thin ranks of
those whose adventures re-define the rules:
"Compared with Joy Division most other bands
working in supposedly left"field areas are like light
entertainers on the Saturday Night special."
- Adrian Thrills, NME.
Similarly unpredictable was the next Joy Division
record release on the heels of 'Unknown Pleasures' -
not 'Transmission' or any other single and not even a
22
Factory record. In their unique contractual position
Joy Division were entirely free to release their
material in one-off deals with any company they
wished and when Bob Last asked them to contribute
music to the second of his Fast Products 'Earcom'
(i.e. Ear Comic) 12 inch EP-based packages they
passed him the tapes of two songs they had complet·
ed the previous Spring at the 'Unknown Pleasures'
sessions but not used on the album - 'Auto-Sugges-
tion' and 'From Safety to Where?'. Giving potentially
valuable material to such a low key enterprise was a
move by now typical of Joy Division's anti-star
attitude toward the music business, and although
'Earcom 2' sold very well, the songs were never to rise
above 'obscurity' status tucked away on such a small
label experiment. The EP's release also helped to
make an already confusing band discography a maze
of mysteries and take Joy Division into a sixth record
release without their having made an ordinary 7 inch
single.
The Buzzcocks' Autumn 1979 tour was a curious
setting for Joy Division, with the band's hard-ecj.ged
and introspective music and sombre presence contras-
ting totally with the bright Pop tunes and ebullience
of Pete Shelley, but the tour actually succeeded
surprisingly well with both bands benefiting rather
than suffering from the sharpness of the contrast.
If joining a tour seemed to suggest that Joy
Division were softening in their defiance of rock
conventions, the fact that they released their long.
awaited first single of 'Transmission' at the end rather
than at the start of their nationwide showcase tour
was enough to reassure any doubters. Such crude
commerciality as using a tour to promote a single
(and vice versa) had no place in Joy Division's scheme
of things and Factory did not release the band's first
entry into the singles market until the middle of
November, the tour having ended on November 10th.
'Transmission', backed by a new song 'Novelty',
came in surprisingly ordinary 7 inch form and presen-
ted Joy Division being about as close as they ever got
to being 'commercial'. Reviewers were certainly in
no doubts about the quality and potential of
'Transmission':
"This is an awesome disc ... could easily be a hit."
"cannot be dismissed as just another good single by a
provincial band on a nice little independent. Joy
Division ... not to mention Factory, are con·
tenders."
-Adrian Thrills,NME, 17th November 1979.
Joy Division, Manchester Cathedral

23
 In fact 'Transmission' was not a hit in November terms become a fashionable and popular band.
1979 nor in February 1981 when it was re-issued in Surprisingly, perhaps, they ended the year very much
12 inch form but, as with all Joy Division's Factory as they had begun it as the darlings of the British
produce, the modest sales and profit targets were music press. New Musical Express rated 'Unknown
quickly met to everyone's satisfaction: the 'success' Pleasures' as third best album of 1979 after Pil's
of a record being ultimately measurable only in terms 'Metal Box' and Talking Heads' 'Fear of Music' in it's
of what it is intended to achieve. staff chart, and Sounds, rather safely perhaps, tipped
After almost five months break from recording, them to 'be big' in 1980. This favour was not restrict-
Joy Division had returned with Martin Hannett in mid ed to the staff either, as the reader polls published in
October to the studio where they had begun their the new year showed: the readers of NME voted Joy
relationship - Cargo in Rochdale - and recorded Division as 5th Best in the 'New Act' category. They
three new songs, 'Ice Age', 'Dead Souls' and the much were on their way ...
praised live opener 'Atmosphere'. It was, as those
recorded versions testify, a particularly creative
session but the outstanding results were treated with
a casualness that was little less than contrary. 'Ice
Age' was to be given away for use on a proposed
Leeds Futurama Sci Fi Festival album (this never
materialised, of course, and the song did not emerge
until the 1981 'Still' album) and 'Dead Souls' and
'Atmosphere' - simply two of the very best things
Joy Division ever achieved in the studio - were
presented to two French conceptual artists who asked
for Joy Division songs to place on a single at the
centre of a 'Total Art' package with a proposed
circulation of a mere 1578 copies - worldwide.
Condeming such a powerful piece of work as 'Atmos-
phere' to the obscurity of a French independent
single of just over 1500 copies is almost psychotic in
its deviant zeal to avoid rock 'n' roll obviousness: Joy
Division had recorded a genuine classic fit to stake
their vinyl claim to be ranked with the Greats and
then acted as if they were ashamed of it, off-loading
it onto an arty-farty project as if it were some one-
take jam no one could be bothered to finish.
The band's final recording date of 1979 was at the
BBC Maida Vale studios for another John Peel
Programme session on November 26th. Joy Division's
closest followers were once again kept in touch with
the latest developments, and in a session of unusual
power produced versions of 'Love Will Tear Us Apart',
'Colony', 'The Sound Of Music' and 'Twenty-Four
Hours'. This session not merely provided a chance to
hear studio versions of new songs, but actually
presented definitive versions of the songs. Once
again, they showed themselves capable of a rate of
expansion and creative development which left many
still clutching at the reference points of the first
album.
In spite of their studied avoidance of conventional
rock career progress, as 1979 drew to its close Joy
Division had undoubtedly 'made it' and on their own

24
25
5.
LIFE AFTER A DEATH
1980

26
 1980 began with Joy Division on the road and
preparing themselves to record a new album in March.
The New Year brought with it a new Joy Division
stage repertoire which abandoned the familiar and
popular like a used skin in favour of all-new material.
It was a transition which compounded Joy Division's
reputation as a 'difficult' band and left no reference
points as a concession to their audience or a sop to
easy popularity. Gone were landmarks like 'Trans-
mission', 'She's Lost Control' and 'Insight' and in
their place were new problems and puzzles to be
solved like 'Ceremony', 'Decades', 'Atrocity
Exhibition' and 'Colony'.
The first Joy Division vinyl offering of the new
decade was French Sordide Sentimentale's 'Atmos-
phere/Dead Souls' package, a furiously obscure
record only available by mail and limited to a tiny
1578 copies with not even the promise of a more
available reissue.
Although the Joy Division contribution was entire-
ly under the control of band and producer, the artist
Jean-Francois Jamoul and writer Jean-Pierre Turmel
packaged and marketed the project as they wished. It
was all an extraordinary notion, which only a band as
indifferent to music business conventions and the
profit-motive would have agreed to, when the two
Frenchmen wrote out of the blue asking them to
contribute two unused tracks for a single to form the
centrepiece of a quality 'total art' package. Certainly
the finished product was unlike any other record
release: the 7 inch single was presented inside a hand-
some folder featurhg an original print by Jamoul and
accompanied by an extensive text by Turmel in which
he attempted rather grandly to place the music of Joy
Division within the context of the history of Euro-
pean Romanticism. To the surprise of no one,
Sordide Sentimentale's limited edition sold out within
only weeks of receiving airplay and publicity on the
John Peel programme and the many were left disap-
pointed after the swift and fortunate few bought up
the precious obscurities.
As a consolation Factory then announced that the
prized item on Sordide Sentimentale's exercise in

27
28
gesamtkunstwerke - 'Atmosphere' - would become
available again within months but, typically, merely
as the B side of a specially re-recorded 12 inch version
of 'She's Lost Control' to be issued only in the USA!
The attitude of Joy Division towards their greatest
achievements took low profile almost to the point of
inversion.
With the material road-tested over the previous
two months, the sessions for a second album took
place in March at the Britannia Row Studios in
Islington, London. This was the first time Joy
Division had recorded in London, but there was no
feeling of adventure abroad in the Joy Division camp
as the shadows now deepening around Ian Curtis cast
furrows in every brow.
Ian Curtis was never the cliched tortured artist in
the Van Gogh tradition that his legend has cast him
as, on the evidence of aspects of his music. He was a
deeply sensitive and creative introvert but also cap-
able of such everyday acts as enjoying a joke, a drink
and following Manchester United FC. Few people are
capable of smiling through the crumbling fragmenta-
tion of emotions and nerves that accompanies the
break-up of a marriage and Ian Curtis was not
exceptional in any way when he joined the ranks of
the sufferers.
Recording what was to become the 'Closer' album
took 13 days and 13 nights in March 1980 and,
despite the brilliant result, no one present enjoyed
the experience very much. The Romantic gloom that
surrounded Joy Division's fractured ballads seemed to
lure Ian Curtis into a claustrophobic dialogue with
himself which drew him ever inward and further
down.
No one who has heard the resulting album can fail
to feel the tensions reverberating around the vast
musical area that Joy Division had created for them-
selves, but even within the darknesses on the album
there is hope and optimism which seem to exist in
contradiction of the realities crushing the owner of
the album's voice. 'Closer' is not an album of gasps
uttered from the end of a rope but the peak of
artistic achievement that everyone had hoped for and
predicted. Even on the rack Joy Division's group
identity and corporate greatness could not be muted.
The tensions which hacked at Ian Curtis during
those album sessions cut ever deeper in subsequent
weeks as he performed his duties with Joy Division
through a sequence of live dates that were to preceed
and warm up for the band's debut US tour in the
middle of May. The tortured figure temporarily
unable to continue at Hampstead's Moonlight Club
on April 4th was no sham-acting James Brown but a
man treading a tightrope across a deeply personal
internal abyss. Yet, paradoxically, even at such
extremity Joy Division could still give hope to the
wretched through the glory and ultimate triumph of
the will that was their musical maelstrom:
"Joy Division convince me that I could spit in the
face of God."
- Neil Norman,NME, 19th April, 1980.
The handful of early April dates at the Moonlight
were in the tradition of the 'Factory Evenings' but
deviated slightly in that Joy Division performed for
four consecutive nights supported by a fly-past of
Factory acts, changing on each night. Section 25, A
Certain Ratio - Joy Division partners on so many
Factory evenings - Durutti Column, X-0-Dus, Kevin
Hewitt, Crawling Chaos, Blurt and the Royal Family
all took their turn to support Joy Division and in
their turn Joy Division took advantage of their stay in
London to support the Stranglers at a prestige Rain-
bow date on April 4th. It seemed hectic and to
outsiders Ian Curtis seemed to be the worst affected
by the heavy work-load in between songs. The Moon-
light shows and the isolated gig, so typical of Joy
Division's date book, on May 2nd at Birmingham
University's High Hall, soon took on a far greater
significance: they were to be the last the band would
ever play.
After playing the Birmingham date, supported by
A Certain Ratio and recorded for a proposed German-
only live album release, as were many performances
over previous months, Joy Division returned to
Manchester to prepare themselves for whatever the
US of A had to offer them. 'Unknown Pleasures' had
been successful as an import album - voted one of
the year's best by 'New York Rocker' - and the dates
booked in New York were already attracting some
interest. In the days before their planned departure
date of Sunday May 18th, Joy Division rested and
made plans for future releases with Factory. The
second album was set for June release, and the song
'Love Will Tear Us Apart' was left off the albttm and
mixed for a single release with accompanying video
(filmed on April 30th) for possible TV exposure if, as
expected, the single became a hit. And as if these
two releases seemed too conventional, Factory also
prepared to take the unheard-of step of releasing an
entirely free single to be given to anyone who asked
for it. Not even the Beatles at the height of their
success gave free records to more people than were
29
 members of their fan club but Factory were planning
to give back some of the 'Unknown Pleasures' profits
via 25,000 free three-track flexi-discs.
Also planned, but with no specific date, was the
live album for Germany, to be assembled from recent
live tapes. In usual Factory style there were no plans
to issue the album anywhere else in the world.
On Saturday May 17th, 1980 - the day before he
was due to fly to New York to play the first of Joy
Division's US dates - Ian Curtis revisited the home he
had shared in Macclesfield with his wife and baby and,
after an evening alone watching his favourite director
Saul Herzog's film 'Stroszek' on BBC2 TV, hung
himself in the kitchen during the early hours of
Sunday morning. His dead body was found by his
wife just before noon on Sunday 18th May and at the
inquest the following week a verdict of suicide was
recorded. The funeral t<;>0k place on June 13th.
During May 1980 the British music press began a
lengthy industrial dispute which kept the familiar
weeklies - NME, Sounds, Melody Maker and Record
Mirror - off the streets so the news of the death and
confirmation of details was slow to spread. At first
it was just a rumour that sounded more like a sick
joke being put about at gigs but on May 24th the
temporary opportunist weekly music paper 'New
Music News' carried a tiny announcement - almost as
if they did not believe the story - that Ian Curtis had
"died at his home" the previous Saturday. Listeners
to the John Peel programme knew by this time that
the story was no hoax, as not for the first or last time
John Peel was given the entirely unwelcome task of
being the first to broadcast the news of a rock death.
When the weeklies began to drift back onto the
streets the details and the tributes began to accumu-
late. The fact that Ian Curtis and Joy Division (the
band that seemed just an album away from their very
own brand of superstardom) were suddenly no more
began to sink home.
For many, the method and circumstances of Ian
Curtis' death seemed an inevitable development of the
gloom and despondency of his music, as if the 'Where'
that he had sung about was inevitably the same des-
tination as the cliche 'tortured artist', in spite of the
plain enough fact that Ian Curtis was no more or less
than a sad and unfortunate man driven into the
ground by private and deeply personal unhappiness.
His was no Romantic martyrdom but still the
necromancers gathered to sob to the sounds of
'Atmosphere' and 'New Dawn Fades' and distort the
critical perspective on what was, on merit alone, one
of the Great bands in the history of rock with a singer
30
of unusual power.
The growth of such a death cult focusing on Joy
Division was doubly inappropriate, for beneath the
melancholy surface of their music lay an undeniable
affirmation of purpose and hope. The apparent
despair and sadness in much of Joy Division's greatest
music was, in context, merely an aspect of humanity
reflected and always accompanied by a sense of ultimate
victory over adversity. The 'message' of Joy
Division's music was not - as so many like to believe
- to lay down and die but to accept the human con-
dition for what it was without self-pity and rise
through that acceptance to the affirmation of
individuality and purpose. The 'gloom' often provid-
ed a smoke screen for the true uplifting nature of Joy
Division's music which, far from being the soundtrack
for suicide, was something that almost by its very
existence proved that determined individuals can
assert themselves against the odds, 'beat the system'
of the music business or anything else.
Ian Curtis' death of course halted the US tour and
put an end to Joy Division as a band. All the mem-
bers of Joy Division had agreed that if any one
member ever left the remainder would immediately
abandon the identity of Joy Division along with all
the material associated with the band and begin again
under a new name with new music. Such devotion to
integrity and principles is extraordinary in a music
business in which bands often tour under once famous
names regardless of the fact that the original members
associated with near-forgotten hit songs may have
left the fold years since. The decision to bury Joy
Division with Ian Curtis was a brave one in view of
the fact that his death had created the myth that the
singer and co-songwriter was the be-all and end-all of
Joy Division's greatness, and far too many people
were prepared to regard the remaining members of
Joy Division as pathetic figures whose ride to fame
and fortune had been halted for good by the death of
their pilot. This was, as events were to prove beyond
all doubt, an extremely inaccurate assessment of Joy
Division's creative mechanism: Albrecht, Hook and
Morris were never merely three satellites of a creative
sun but three quarters of a unique partnership.
Publicly the remains of Joy Division - now name-
less - kept a low profile, writing a new repertoire
while testing out the possibilities existing within the
quartet framework. The whole question of 'replacing'
Ian Curtis was avoided, but at the same time the
possibility of a new member or members if needed
was kept open. Any additions would be part of a
natural process arising from needs rather than the
usual auditions and trials that follow the departure of
a member of a conventional band.
The fact that several major record releases were in
a late stage of readiness at the time of Ian Curtis'
death presented a problem, as cynics would be sure to
accuse the band and label of cashing-in on the death
publicity, while at the same time any change of plans
would not only be false but also be a disservice to the
four living people who had played just as much a part
in the records as Ian Curtis.
The fact that the first Joy Division record to be
released after the death news was an entirely free
flexi-disc did much to deflate the critics but, of
course, the flexi had actually been planned many
months earlier. Although this single of three new

31
32
songs - 'Komakino'/'Incubation' and 'And Then 'Closer' did not represent the last efforts of once
Again More' rapidly 'sould out' its initial 25,000 copy great stars but the start of something new and magnif-
pressing, it did not qualify for the charts as it cost less icent.... a start that was to be over within the time
than 50p and it took the grimly appropriate single it took to listen to a single album.
title of 'Love Will Tear Us Apart' - released a week or Not surprisingly, 'Closer' was warmly reviewed in
so later - to put the name of Joy Division on the the music press and a sizeable hit album.
British charts for the first time during the week
ending June 28th, 1980.
The success of 'Love' and subsequent Joy Division
releases was attributed by the band's few detractors
as a morbid reaction to May 18th, but while it is
likely that many had heard of Joy Division for the
first time through the death news there is ample
evidence - such as the results of the May 1980 Zig
Zag reader poll - to argue that Joy Division's subse-
quent records would have gained mass acceptance
anyway.
'Love Will Tear Us Apart' was an astonishingly
successful record for a company of Factory's modest
resources and rose as far as No. 12 on the BBC singles
chart (Melody Maker took it even higher to No. 8)
eventually selling 160 ,000 copies. The acceptance
(and cash) from the record went a long way to justify
the time and money spent preparing the song for
release. In fact, two versions of the song were actual-
ly put onto record - the 7 inch and the 12 inch -
not for the usual reasons of disco-mix novelty or
marketing gimmick but because the band and produc-
er were never agreed on which of the two alternative
mixes should be used - so they compromised and
used both. The issue was further confused by the fact
that the John Peel session version of the previous
January also had a lot in its favour, however, this
version did not complicate the decision as the BBC
tapes were tied up in a maze of legal difficulties.
When 'Closer' was eventually released after a few
weeks delay in July 1980 it came not in a moment of
triumph or confirmation, but as a premature and
(sadly apt) closer to the chapter on a band that had
entered the realms of what-might-have-been.
Unlike so many 'last albums' - Hendrix's 'Cry of
Love', Lennon's 'Double Fantasy' or The Doors' 'LA
Woman' - 'Closer' gained nothing from the circum-
stances of its arrival. The quality of material and
unity of purpose and texture made even their excel-
lent debut album of a year earlier seem, by compari-
son, flawed by an uncertainty of direction. 'Closer'
was a superb album, with Martin Hannett's absorption
into the band as synthesizer-playing fifth man pro-
viding the vital and crowning cohesive element. The
fact that it had to be a last album is jarring because,
unlike those other final albums mentioned above,

33
 6.
THE NEW ORDER:
BEYOND 1980
With what was not the past so strongly in vogue, the
remains of Joy Division , never keen to give interviews
to the press at the best of times , retreated into
seclusion to rehearse and re-direct , with the US tour
now due in the Autumn. Even the identity of the
new Joy Division remained vague - hints that 'The
Eternal' (after the 'Closer' song) and 'The Hit' were
being considered as names were dropped but nothing
definite announced. Similarly unconfirmed was a
report that Factory singer Kevin Hewitt , who they
recorded with during the Summer, was about to be
announced as their new vocalist. When the band
re-emerged in September at Liverpool's Brady's Club
as support to Skafish, on the first of a string of
entirely unpublicised dates , Kevin Hewitt was entirely
absent and the band traded under the name of New
Order. It was a name which cleverly(?) stated the
obvious and at the same time preserved the Joy
Division connection in its Nazi-chic reference ..
Information about New Order was still sparse ,
despite their emergence. Although interest from the
public and press alike was great, New Order stuck to
their decision to regard themselves as an entirely 'new'
and untried band, shunning the publicity that was
theirs for the asking in favour of creating interest in
their New Order on the merits of their new music
rather than the legacy of Joy Division . This created
some hostility among those of the music press who
regarded the band's attitude that they had yet to earn
publicity as somewhat artificial , in view of the fact
that New Order were Joy Division minus Ian Curtis
and therefore not an 'unknown' band at all.
The practical problem of having lost their 'voice' -
in the person of a very distinctive and charismatic
vocalist - was solved with quiet efficiency. New
Order did not invite comparisons with Joy Division by
employing another individualistic or 'name' vocalist
in the role, but instead grafted Steve Morris' girl-
friend Gillian Gilbert onto the band to free Bernard
Albrecht from the full weight of his former live guitar
and keyboard duties and enable him to become the

34
35
main vocalist, with Peter Hook providing an alterna-
tive voice to compensate for the fact that the band's
vocals no longer had the character and interest of Ian
Curtis' unique voice.
The bravest move of all was New Order's insistence
on not playing any of Joy Division's material despite
their undoubted right to it, and that fact that it was,
at the start, the only common ground with their
audience. Few other bands would have taken this
refusal to trade on their past works as far, but New
Order were determined to be accepted as an entirely
new band with their own music, and presented them-
selves as committed to success on their own terms as
Joy Division did.
New Order make exceptions to their refusal to
trade on the Joy Division legacy in the cases of the
songs 'Ceremony' and 'In A Lonely Place': the last
two songs composed by Ian Curtis and Joy Division.
Although these songs had been performed live during
the last months of Joy Division they had never had
the chance to record them - a live version of 'Cere-
mony' from the last ever Joy Division performance
appears on 'Still' - and rather than lose them in the
transitional zone between Joy Division and New
Order the songs were included as the single point of
continuity between the two bands.
Factory meanwhile laboured to tidy up the
recorded legacy of Joy Division and satisfy the huge
demand for the former band's records. In an attempt
to beat the importers who were making large profits
from the US 12 inch of 'She's Lost Control' a British
pressing was made available, and to beat the pirate
element selling bootlegged copies of the free flexi-
discs for prices up to £5, the money made from 'Love
Will Tear Us Apart' was used to pay for a second
pressing of 25 ,000 with a committment to more if
needed. The Joy Division archives were also due to
be cleared with the release of all finished but unused
Factory material on a 'last gasp' album - which was
eventually to emerge as 'Still'.
The Joy Division 'activity' in Britain gave New
Order the chance to slip away for the postponed Joy
Division US tour in September. The Factory package
(like Joy Division, New Order had A Certain Ratio as
support band) hit the New York streets which had
once provided a home for Andy Warhol's Factory,
and far away from the eager eyes and ears of the
British music press New Order began to state their
case for life after a death.
On stage the immediate impression was the desired
36
one - New Order were not Joy Division II. Bernard
Albrecht's voice carried none of the Jim Morrison
timbre of Ian Curtis and with the main vocalist now
sporting a Gibson 335 at centre stage the whole
appearance of the band was different. The new set
also proved beyond any doubt that the vital spark
that had fired Joy Division's greatness had not died
with Ian Curtis and that, unlike the remaining Doors
who, despite being just as important to the band's
music as the sunken Mr Mojo, were left without a
voice and without a song by Jim Morrison's death,
New Order were able to assert their own music.
Inevitably, the music of New Order had much in
common with that of Joy Division - the rhythmic
interest was a function of the Hook/Morris combina-
tion just as the melodic strength derived from
Albrecht's guitar/keyboards and Hook's forward bass
- but to compensate for the missing vocal distinction
these elements, so often below the surface mood in
Joy Division's music, were brought to the front in
New Order: to the surprise of many, New Order were
a new band with a highly attractive line in melody
and a fortuitously fashionable regard for the dance.
Still retaining a low profile of unannounced ran-
dom British performances and surprise appearances
at such places as Rotterdam, New Order released a
first single in February 1981 - 'Ceremony'. The
critics who still wanted to believe that the cloak of
secrecy around New Order was worn in order to hide
the fact that they had nothing to offer were immedi-
ately silenced by the first real opportunity to hear
what New Order was all about. While still undeniably
retaining something of the aura of Joy Division,
'Ceremony' took the music of 'Closer' nine months of
uneven progress further on, with Albrecht's much
weaker voice almost forgotten as a shortcoming in the
context of a perfect instrumental mesh and prominant
melody more satisfying than could ever have been
hoped for. In context the new voice was a strength
because Bernard Albrecht brought the full warmth of
absolute honesty to his performance, he sang just as it
came, whereas Ian Curtis' richly cavernous tones had
always seemed somehow aloof and created a tension
by so often teetering on the edge of play-acting the
American sonorities of Jim Morrison.
'Ceremony' stated the case for New Order entirely
convincingly and by reaching No. 34 on the British
singles chart satisfyingly became the second biggest
hit single the members of the band had been associa-
ted with (after, of course, Joy Division's 'Love Will
Tear Us Apart'). Perhaps more significant, 'Cere- standable but also worrying. It would be another
mony' was voted second best single of 1981 in the tragedy if the undoubted greatness of their music was
NME Readers Poll published in January 1982 and lost in a mist of sloppy hyperbole, or cut up in the
rated 4th best single of all-time in the December 1981 reaction of an irreverent backlash. Ultimately the
John Peel Radio 1 programme's 'Festive Fifty' poll. monument to Ian Curtis is the fact that the music he
The satisfying acceptance of 'Ceremony' on its made with Joy Division will always be listened to.
own merits did not lead New Order to press their That is remembrance and reverence enough for
case. New Order took 1981 slowly but surely, so anyone.
aware that the wave of acclaim and affection that had
broken over the 'Closer' album in the middle of 1980
could just as dramatically leave them high and dry in
the middle of 1981.
The final Joy Division album 'Still' prolonged the
agony for New Order by not ending the Joy Division
release schedule until the Autumn of 1981 and when
it did come - in its slightly absurd choice of conven-
tional cloth sleeve - belied its title by reviving
interest in Joy Division once again and betrayed its
purpose by presenting yet another rag-bag assortment
of material rather than neatly closing the chapter on
Joy Division's recording career with an assembly of
missing and scattered items to sit beside 'Unknown
Pleasures' and 'Closer'. What it had to offer was
worthwhile nonetheless and the album had its own
claim to finality with the inclusion of two sides made
up from the final performance of Joy Division at
Birmingham University on May 2nd 1980. Inevitably,
'Still' outsold New Order's album 'Movement'
released just weeks after, and did little to help New
Order's attempt to move out of Joy Division's long
shadow in Britain. In December 1981 New Order
returned to the USA where they were able to play to
an audience able to regard them as a new band, and
judge them without reference to a band that died in
May 1980.
Life for the living goes on. Artistic development
in new directions, high-profile commercial success and
the memory-wiping passage of time have been the
ingredients in New Order's four-year battle to
exorcize the ghost of Joy Division. The widening and
diversifying of their audience through chart successes
has sealed off their past and separated their acclaim
from that of Joy Division.
Joy Division existed for a mere two years as a
recording band and have now been gone for far longer
than they flourished. Their complete studio output
would barely fill a half dozen LPs and a complete list
of their live performances barely fills a couple of
pages. Yet they are remembered with reverence.
That Joy Division are now a cult and legend is under-

37
7.
JOY DIVISION
LIVE GUIDE

38
1977
May 29- Debut as Warsaw at Electric Circus
club, Manchester (Steve Morris joined as
drummer 28th May).
June-October - Handful of gigs at Electric
Circus and around Manchester.
October 16- Perform as Warsaw at 'Last Week-
end of the Electric Circus' closing down event
(Recorded by Virgin and one track released
on June 1978 Short Circuit album).
December - First performance as Joy Division
at Rafters Club, Manchester's 'Stiff/Chiswick
Test' - third on the bill and play at three in
the morning!

1978
January.July - Scattered dates as Joy Division
at Rafters and around North West clubs.
August 29 - Manchester Musicians' Collective
September 4 - Band on the Wall, Manchester
September 10 - Royal Standard, Bradford
November 14- Odeon, Canterbury (as support
to Rezillos)
November 15 -Top Rank, Reading (as support
to Rezillos)
November 25 - Check Inn, Altrincham
November 26 - Electric Circus, Manchester-
(Grand re-opening)

39
1979
January - London debut at the Hope and
Anchor, Islington
January-May - Scattered dates around North
West and Northern clubs such as Eric's in
Liverpool, The Limit Club in Sheffield
May 17 - Acklam Hall, London ('Music From
the Factory' with A Certain Ratio, John
Dowie and OMD)
June-October - More random gigs mainly
around North West
July - Mayflower Club 'Stuff the Superstars
Special'
July 27 - Blackpool Imperial Hotel: Benefit for
Year of the Child (with OMD, Glass Torpedo,
Section 25)
August - Prince of Wales Conference Centre
Festival
August 13 - Nashville, London 'Factory Night'
(with OMD, A Certain Ratio)
August 27 - Leigh Rock Festival
August 31 - Electric Ballroom, Camden,
London (with Monochrome Set, Scritt.i
Politti, A Certain Ratio)
October - Buzzcocks Tour (Part One)
2 Mountford Hall, Liverpool
3 University, Leeds
4 City Hall, Newcastle
5 Apollo, Glasgow
6 Odeon, Edinburgh
7 Capital, Aberdeen
8 Caird Hall, Dundee
October 12 - Factory Friday, Factory Club,
Manchester (not on Buzzcocks Tour)
October 19 - Factory Friday, Factory Club,
Manchester (not on Buzzcocks Tour)
October - Buzzcocks Tour (Part Two)
21 Top Rank, Sheffield
22 Assembly Halls, Derby
23 King George's Hall, Blackburn
24 Odeon, Birmingham
25 St. George's Hall, Bradford
October 26 - Electric Ballroom, Camden,
London (Not part of Buzzcocks Tour - with
Distractions and A Certain Ratio)
27 Appollo, Manchester
28 Appollo, Manchester
29 De Montfort Hall, Leicester
30 New Theatre, Oxford
40
November
1 Civic Hall, Guildford
2 Winter Gardens, Bournemouth
3 Sophia Gardens, Cardiff
4 Colston Hall, Bristol
5 Pavillion, Hemel Hempstead
7 Pavillion, West Runton
9 Rainbow, London
10 Rainbow, London
1980
February - Assorted Factory dates:
High Wycombe Town Hall (with Killing Joke,
A Certain Ratio, Section 25)
London University (with Killing Joke, Section
25, Smirks, Fatal Microbes)
Apollo, Manchester
Lyceum, London
April 2 -Moonlight Club, West Hampstead
(with Section 25, Crawling Chaos)
April 3 -Moonlight Club, West Hampstead
(with A Certain Ratio, Blurt, Kevin Hewitt)
(Version of Sister Ray on Still was recorded
at this gig)
April 4-Moonlight Club, West Hampstead
(with Durrutti Colum, X-0-Dus, Royal
Family)
April 4- Rainbow, London (as support to
Stranglers)
May 2 - High Hall, Birmingham University
(with A Certain Ratio) Last ever performance
by Joy Division - recorded and released as
part of Still album
 8. EQUIPMENT FILE

BERNARD ALBRECHT: Guitars (with Joy Division): Gibson SG Standard

(without Vibrola), Shergold Masquerader, Vox
Phantom (with New Order): Gibson 335 semi-
acoustic.
Amplification: Vox UD 30 amplifier driving Vox
cabinet with two Marshall 12 inch speakers
Synths: ETI Synthesiser, Powertran Transcendent
2000 Synthesiser, ARP OMNI 12 Synthesiser.
Effects etc: Woolworths (Bontempi) Reed organ,
Melos Echo unit, MXR Ten band Graphic Equal-
izer, Chorus Flanger, Attair PW-5 Power Atten-
uator (for both guitar and ARP synth), Melodian.

PETER HOOK: Basses: Rickenbacker copy, Yamaha RB 1200,

Shergold Marathon Six String bass (with New
Order)
Amplification: (Early Joy Division): Marshall 50
Watt Bass Amp driving Vox cabinet with two
Marshall 12 inch speakers
(Later Joy Division/New Order)
Amplification: Marshall Bass Amp (later replaced
by Hiwatt Custom 100 Watt amp) driving Vox
Foundation Bass cabinet fitted with two 18 inch
Goodmans 100 Watt speakers OR Alembic Pre-
amplifier with Crown Amcron DC 300 A amplifier
with Marshall Bass cabinet fitted with four 15 inch
Gauss 400 Watt speakers (Choice of amp depen-
dant on venue)

STEVE MORRIS: Rogers Concert kit consisted of:

22 inch Bass drum, 12 inch, 13 inch, 14 inch, 15
inch hanging concert Tom Toms, 14 inch and 16
inch Floor Tom Toms, 20 inclt Earth Ride and
Crash ride cymbals, plus 14 inch Gretch Snare drum,
15 inch Super Zyn Hi Hat, 14 inch and 18 inch
Zildjian Crash cymbals.
Simmonds 2 channel drum synth, Synare 3 drum
synth, Musicaid Claptrap, Roland BOSS Dr 55
Drum machine

IAN CURTIS: Guitars: Vox Teardrop and Vox Phantom

Amplification: Vox UD 30 amplifier driving Vox
cabinet with two 12 inch Marshall speakers

MARTIN HANNETI: (On records only): ARP OMNI 12 Synthesiser

(Producer) (through effects such as MXR Graphic EQ, Chorus
Flanger, Melos Echo unit on Closer album)

41
9.
DISCOGRAPHY

42
SECTION 1: MAY 1978 - MAY 1980

IDEAL FOR LIVING Enigma Records

7 inch EP with picture sleeve (Hitler Youth
with drum).
Side 1: Warsaw/Leaders of Men
Side 2: No Love Lost/Failures
All songs composed by Joy Division.
Personnel: Ian Curtis (vocals), Bernard Albrecht
(guitar), Peter Hook (bass) and Steve Morris
(drums).
Recorded: November 1977
Released: May 1978. (Pressing sold-out September
1978 and deleted)
Sleeve note reads: ''This is not a concept EP it
is an enigma".

SHORT CIRCUIT: The Last Night at the Electric

Circus Virgin VCL 5003
10 inch album (First 5,000 in Blue Vinyl)
Album recorded live at Manchester's Electric
Circus by The Manor Mobile in October 1977
(not, as it turned out, the last night of the
Electric Circus) and featuring The Fall, John
Cooper Clark, The Drones, The Buzzcocks,
Steel Pulse and one song from Joy Division:
At A Later Date
Personnel: (As for Ideal for Living 7 inch EP)
Released: June 1978

IDEAL FOR LIVING Anonymous Records

ANON 1. 12 inch EP with picture sleeve.
All credits as for 7 inch Ideal for LivinQ_ EP
Released: September 1978 (via Rough Trade)
Sold out and deleted.
Note : Picture sleeve on this 12 inch re-issue is
a different design to the original 7 inch.

43
FACTORY SAMPLER Factory Fae 2
Double 7 inch EP with picture sleeve
Six track double EP produced by Martin 'Zero'
Hannett at Cargo Studios, Rochdale with one
side devoted to Joy Division:
Digital/Glass
(Glass re-issued October 1981 as track on Still
double album, Factory Fae 40).
Both songs composed by Joy Division.
Personnel: As for Ideal for Living 7 inch EP.
Released: January 1979 (Delayed until February
1979 by pressing problems).
(Sampler also features tracks from Cabaret
Voltaire, Durutti Column and John Dowie).
UNKNOWN PLEASURES Factory Facl O
12 inch album
Outside: Disorder/Day of the Lords/Candidate/ Produced by: Martin Hannett at Cargo Studios,
Insight/New Dawn Fades
Inside: She~ Lost Control!Shadowplay/Wilder-
ness/Interzone/Remember Nothing
All songs composed: by Joy Division
Personnel: Ian Curtis (vocals), Bernard Albrecht and text by Turmel placing Joy Division in the
(guitar), Peter Hook (bass), Steve Morris
(drums), Martin Hannett (synth).
Produced by: Martin 'Zero' Hannett
Recorded: at Strawberry Studios, Stockport,
May 1979
Released: July 1979
Sleeve design: by Peter Saville, based on graph
of radio waves from an imploding star suggest-
ed by Bernard Albrecht.
EARCOM 2 Fast Products 9b
12 inch EP with paraphenalia
Bob Last Turntable magazine featuring 20
minutes of music from Thursdays, Bascax and
Joy Division. Features two tracks left over from
May 1979 Martin Hannett produced Strawberry
Studios, Stockport sessions for Unknown
Pleasures album:
Auto-Suggestion/From Safety to Where?
All credits: as for Unknown Pleasures album
Released: October 1979
44
Transmission/Novelty Factory Fae 13
7 inch single with picture sleeve (designed by
Peter Saville)
Both songs by Joy Division
Personnel: as for Unknown Pleasures album
Produced by: Martin Hannett at Strawberry
Studios, Stockport, July 1979
Released: November 1979. (12 inch version
released February 1981 with different picture
sleeve).
Atmosphere/Dead Souls Sordide Sentimentale
SS 33002. 7 inch single in folder with essay and
print. Limited edition of 1578 copies only
issued in France.
Both songs by: Joy Division
Personnel: As for Unknown Pleasures album
Rochdale, October 1979.
(Special artistic project of Jean Pierre Turmel
and Jean-Francois Jamoul involving elaborate
folder including Jamoul painting, 7 inch single
context of Romantic art - recording entirely
supervised by Joy Division and Martin Hannett
but packaging entirely the work of Turmel and
Jamoul.)
Released: March 1980 (Limited edition of only
1578 copies worldwide) Sold out and deleted
but Atmosphere later available on US 12 inch
single later issued in UK and Dead Souls
issued October 1981 as track on Still album).
45
 SECTION 2: MAY 1980 - OCTOBER 1981
(THE POSTHUMOUS JOY DIVISION)

Love Will Tear Us Apart/These Days Factory

Fae 23. 7 inch single with picture sleeve
(designed by Peter Saville).
Both Songs by: Joy Division
Personnel: As for Unknown Pleasures album
Produced by: Martin Bannett at Britannia Row
Studios, Islington, London, March 1980
Released: June 1980 (12 inch version in January
1981)
Chart: No. 12 (or No. 8 depending which chart
you believe - sold 160,000 copies).
(Scheduled for release before the death of Ian
Curtis).

Atmosphere/She's Lost Control Factory US 2

US only. 12 inch single with picture sleeve.
Atmosphere: the track originally released in
March 1980 as part of the very limited edition
Sordide Sentimentale package (France only).
Recorded at: Cargo Studios, Rochdale,
October 1979.
She$ Lost Control - A new version of the song
appearing on the Unknown Pleasures album.
Recorded at: Central Studios, Manchester
July 1979 but extensively re-mixed at
Strawberry studios, Stockport prior to
release
Both songs by: Joy Division
Personnel: as for Closer album
Produced by: Martin Bannett
Released: June 1980 (Scheduled for release
before the death of Ian Curtis)

Komakino/lncubation Factory Fae 28

Free 7 inch flexi-single (no picture sleeve)
(Actually includes a third track on the second
side after Incubation: And Then Again but this
is not credited on the label).
All Songs by: Joy Division
Presonnel: as for Closer album
Produced by: Martin Bannett at Britannia Row
Studios, Islington, London March 1980
Released: June 1980 (25,000 copies initially
distributed free to all applicants. Sold out by
July but re-pressed with money from Love
Will Tear Us Apart hit so that all who wanted
it could have a free copy). (Scheduled for
release before the death of Ian Curtis).

46
CLOSER Factory Fae 25 12 inch album
Side 1: Atrocity Exhibition/Isolation/Passover/
Colony/A Means to an End/
Side 2: Heart and Soul/Twenty-Four Hours/The
Eternal/Decades
All Songs by: Joy Division
Personnel: Ian Curtis (vocals), Bernard Albrecht
(guitar), Peter Hook (bass), Steve Morris
(drums), Martin Bannett (synths).
Produced by: Martin Bannett at Britannia Row
studios, Islington, London, March 1980
Sleeve Design by: Peter Saville ('The Dead Christ'
painting).
Released: July 1980. (Scheduled for release
before the death of Ian Curtis).
Chart: No. 8
47
Atmosphere/She's Lost Control Factory US 2
12 inch single with picture sleeve (designed by
Peter Saville).
UK release of US-only 12 inch in order to pre-
vent large scale importation of US copies.
Released: October 1980
Transmission/Novelty Factory Fae 13112
12 inch single with picture sleeve.
12 inch version of November 1979 7 inch single
with re-designed picture sleeve.
Released: February 1981
Love Will Tear Us Apart/These Days Factory
Fae 23112. 12 inch single with picture sleeve.
12 inch version of June 1980 7 inch single with
re-designed picture sleeve.
Released: February 1981
STILL Factory Fae 40 Double 12 inch album
Side 1: Ice Age/Walking in Line/The Kill/Glass/
Exercise One
Side 2: Sound of Music/The Only Mistake/Some-
thing Must Break/Dead Souls/Sister Ray
Side 3: Ceremony/Shadowplay/Means to an End/
Passover/New Dawn Fades
Side 4: Transmission/Disorder/Isolation/
Decades/Digital
All songs by: Joy Division except Sister Ray (by
Reed/Cale/Morrison/Tucker - The Velvet
Underground).
Ice Age -Produced by Martin Hannett and re-
corded at Cargo Studios, Rochdale, October
1979 (with Atmosphere/Dead Souls) for
never-released Leeds Futurama SciFi Festival
LP Walked in Line & The Kill. Recorded
May 1979- out-takes from Unknown
Pleasures
Glass -Produced by Martin Hannett at Cargo
Studios, Rochdale, November 1978 and origi-
nally released in February 1979 as one track
on Factory Sampler double EP
Exercise One & Sound of Music - Recorded
31/1179 and 26/11/79 respectively at BBC
Maida Vale Studios, London. Produced by
Tony Wilson (of BBC) for John Peel Show
The Only Mistake & Something Must Break -
Produced by Martin Hannett and recorded at
Britannia Row Studios, Islington, London,
March 1980 - out-takes from Closer album
sessions.
Dead Souls -Produced by Martin Hannett and
recorded at Cargo Studios, Rochdale, October
1979. Originally released (with Atmosphere)
as part of the very limited French Sordide
Sentimentale project in March 1980.
Sister Ray - Recorded live at the Moonlight
Club, 3rd April 1980 (Number featured as an
encore).
Sides 3 & 4 Recorded live at Birmingham
University High Hall, May 2nd, 1980. (This
was the last performance of Joy Division)
Originally intended as a German-only live
album release. Ceremony is the only song re-
corded by both Joy Division and New Order:
Ceremony and In a Lonely Place were to be
recorded at the time of Ian Curtis' death but
only this live version was completed by Joy
Division
Sleeve Design: Peter Saville. This album released
in two sleeves: a standard cardboard sleeve
and a special very limited cloth sleeve.
(Copies of the limited cloth edition being
priced at considerably more than the 'double
for the price of a single album' price of the
standard album.)
Released: October 1981
Chart: No. 15

48
SECTION 3: MAY 1980 ONWARDS Ceremony/In a Lonely Place Factory FAG 33
(NEW ORDER) 7 inch single with picture sleeve (designed by
Peter Saville).
Both songs by: Joy Division. (Lyrics by Ian
Curtis)
Personnel: Bernard Albrecht (vocals, guitar,
synth), Peter Hook (bass, vocals),
Steve Morris (drums)
Produced by : Martin Hannett
Recorded: In New York, October, 1980
Released: January 1981
Chart: No. 34 (UK)

Ceremony/In a Lonely Place Factory FAG 33/12

12 inch single with picture sleeve.
All credits as for 7 inch version above.

49
10.
VINYL COLLECTORS CHECKLIST
(All are legal UK releases unless stated)

SINGLES/EPs

7 inch

D Ideal for Living (Enigma Records)

With 'Hitler Youth' drummer sleeve and 'This is not a concept EP it is an Enigma'.
Sold out September 1978-Deleted

D Factory Sampler (Factory Fae 2)

Double EP shared with Cabaret Voltaire, Durutti Column and John Dowie.

D Transmission/Novelty (Factory Fae 13)

Picture sleeve single.

D Atmosphere/Dead Souls (Sordide Sentimentale SS33002)

French single with folder, essay and print. Limited edition of only 1578 copies -
sold out and deleted.

D Love Will Tear Us Apart/These Days (Factory Fae 23)

Picture sleeve single.

D Komakino/Jncubation/And Then Again (Factory Fae 28)

Sleeveless flexi-single provided free of charge.

D Ceremony/Jn a Lonely Place (Factory Fae 33)

First New Order single in picture sleeve.

12 inch

D Ideal for Living (Anonymous Records Anon 1)

Re-issue of first (7 inch) EP with re-designed picture sleeve. Sold out - deleted.

D Earcom 2 (Fast Products 9b)

EP package shared with Thursdays and Bascax.

D She's Lost Control/Atmosphere (Factory US2)

US single with picture sleeve.

50
12 inch singles continued

D She's Lost Control/Atmosphere (Factory US2)

British pressing of US single (with picture sleeve).

D Transmission/Novelty (Factory 13112)

Picture sleeve single.

D Love Will Tear Us Apart/These Days (Factory Fae 23112)

Picture sleeve single.

D Ceremony/In A Lonely Place (Factory Fae 33/12)

12 inch single with picture sleeve (original February 1981 version).

D Ceremony/Jn A Lonely Place (Factory)

12 inch single with picture sleeve (January 1982 remixed version with re-designed
picture sleeve).

D Everything s Gone Green/Mesh/Cries and Whispers (Factory /Disques de Crepescule)

Belgian release import into Britain with picture sleeve (New Order)

D She s Lost Control - Grace Jones

B side of Private Life (Island WIP 6629). Limited 12 inch version only.

ALBUMS

12 inch

D Unknown Pleasures (Factory Fae XX)

D Closer (Factory XXV)
D Still (Factory Fae 40) Double album.
10 inch

D Short Circuit: The Last Night at the Electric Circus (Virgin VCL 5003)
First 5,000 copies in blue vinyl.

51
11.
ODDS & ENDS
Private Life/Warm Leatherette/She's Lost Control- GRACE JONES
Island 12-WIP 6629. Released July 1980 (limited edition - sold out)
The first cover of a Joy Division song - and appropriately elusive as Shes Lost
Control was the 12 inch 'bonus' track and the limited edition quickly sold out as
the record became very successful.

Low - DAVID BOWIE

RCA PL 12030. 1977 album.
The source of the name Warsaw was the Low track Warszawa.

Love Will Tear Us Apart - PAUL YOUNG

on the No Parkez album CBS 25521 1983

WARSAWPAKT
Largely forgotten late seventies British Heavy Metal band who forced Warsaw to
change their name. Warsaw Pakt consisted of Lucas Fox, Andy Colquhoun, Chris
Underhill, John Walker and Jimmy Coull and lost out on fame and fortune largely
through making their bid for stardom at the height of Punk/New Wave popularity
in Britain. They are best remembered for their elaborately hyped debut album for
Island, Needle time (ILPS 9515 ), released in November 1977 rapidly after recording
at Trident Studios. The album actually qualified for the Guinness Book of Records
as the band recorded directly onto master discs which were used just hours later to
press copies for sale and publicity as a 'direct-cut' super Hi Fi album and 'instant'
release.

THE NEW ORDER: Not to be confused with New Order.

The New Order was a band formed in Detroit USA in 1975 by former Stooges
guitarist Ron Ashetom (with ex-MC5er Dennis Thompson on drums, Iggy sideman
Scott Thurston on keyboards and ex-Ted Nugent Amboy Duke Dave Gilbert on
vocals) which allegedly took the WWII connotations of the name a little too seriously.
One album, entitled The New Order was released in France (and nowhere else) by
Fun Records in May 1978 - in case the sleeve picture fails to make the point - it has
absolutely nothing to do with Bernie and the boys (and girl).

Devils and Angels - THE PASSAGE

Written as a reply to Heart and Soul

Repetition - PETE PETROL (of Spizz Oil)

on From Brussels With Love cassette. (Les Disques de Crepescule) was produced by
Joy Division manager Rob Gretton.

52
12.
JOY DIVISION LEFTOVERS
I STUDIO RECORDINGS
In November/December 1977 Warsaw recorded early material for a proposed album
that was never released. Although quality is said to be poor these tapes may be of
some interest.
At least three finished Joy Division songs remain unreleased: The Drawback/
Exercise One/The Sound of Music. (The last two were replaced by the more satisfac-
tory John Peel Radio 1 session versions on the Still album so would seem unlikely
ever to find their way onto a record).

II OFFICIAL LIVE RECORDINGS

The· entire Joy Division performance (as Warsaw) at the Electric Circus, Manchester
in October 1977 was recorded by the Manor Mobile but only At A Later Date was
used for the Virgin Short Circuit live album. The band was of the opinion that their
choice of song for inclusion was not a good one so it is likely that something of
interest exists on these tapes in recordings of good technical quality.
Several 1979/1980 Joy Division gigs were professionally recorded for a proposed
German live album and such tapes certainly exist of the 3rd April 1980 Moonlight
gig from which the encore of Sister Ray was taken for inclusion on the Still album.
Many (if not most) Joy Division gigs were recorded in some form and 8mm and
16mm film of several gigs is also in existance - much of this provides the basis of
the Factory Joy Division video (Here are the Young Men).

III 'THE JOHN PEEL SESSIONS'

Joy Division recorded two sessions for the John Peel BBC Radio 1 show during
1979 at the BBC's Maida Vale (London) 8 track studio with staff producer Tony
Wilson:
Recorded 31st January, 1979
Exercise One/Insight/Transmission/She's Lost Control
Recorded 26th November, 1979:
Sound of Music/Twenty-Four Hours/Colony/Love Will Tear Us Apart
Both sessions were broadcast at least three times each and despite the limitations o(
only eight tracks and limited time are of very great interest as all versions are consid-
erably different to any officially recorded. In fact, Factory were keen to release an
album of these sessions but because of complex BBC contractual agreements this
was prohibitively costly and only Exercise One and Sound of Music could be included
on the Still album.
The first New Order recording session after the death of Ian Curtis was with the
Factory protege Kevin Hewitt (two tracks - not used).
In February 1981 New Order made their broadcast debut with a session for the
John Peel programme and the early versions of songs much later to appear on the
Movement album (November 1981) are in some ways more interesting. Once again,
these are unlikely to be released officially.

53
 IV BOOTLEGS
As with all very popular hands with a limited
output of records Joy Division have been boot-
legged. Indeed, part of their popularity with
bootleggers stems from the fairly tolerant
attitude of their management and record com
pany.
Prime bootleg material are the John Peel sessions
as these are unlikely ever to he released officially
and tapes and records of all eight songs are to he
found by anyone keen enough to track them
down and pay the high prices. It is worth point-
ing out that these tapes are very likely to he
broadcast again in the future and anyone paying
bootleg prices could probably record theses-
sions legally for themselves at no cost at some
future date.
Almost every Joy Division live performance has
been recorded in some form and while these
may he exciting to obtain the technical quality
is likely to he poor, the price high and the mater-
ial unlikely to add much to the cheaper and
technically superior legal versions.
Some of the Warsaw unreleased album has been
bootlegged most notably in the form of an EP
The Ideal Beginning which circulated semi-
legally early in 1981.
(Neither Babylon Books nor anyone associated
with this particular book is able to supply boot-
leg records or provide any specific information
regarding the trade in illegal recordings and from
the consumers point of view would advise
against paying the high prices generally asked
for what is almost always a disappointing
product.)

54
13.
FILMS AND VIDEOS
The Factory Flick: No City Fun Factory FAG 9.
16mm documentary film directed by Charles Salem. Low budget 1979 film promoted as a
Factory product. An account of the problems and effects of urban decentralisation in
Manchester. The soundtrack consists of music from Joy Division, A Certain Ratio and Ludus.
Joy Division contribution entitled: No City Fun Music . Otherwise unavailable.

Here Are The Young Men-Joy Division FACT 37

Video release compiled from all available footage of film and video of Joy Division.
Includes live footage and private amateur Smm film of historical interest. 60 minutes.

55
14. INDEX OF SONG TITLES
A E
A Means to An End (Studio version on Closer
album and live version on Still live record).
And Then Again (Uncredited third track on free
flexi - on Side 2 after Incubation).
At a Later Date (Live track recorded at Man-
chester Electric Circus, October 1977
featured on Virgin Short Circuit album).
Atmosphere (Originally a track on the limited
Sordide Sentimentale project but also released
as a US 12 inch single and British pressing).
Atrocity Exhibition (Studio version on Closer
album also featured on live bootlegs).
Auto-Suggestion (Studio out-take from
Unknown Pleasures album released on Fast
Earcom 2 12 inch).
c H
Candidate (Studio version on Unknown
Pleasures album).
Ceremony (One of the last Joy Division songs -
recorded only as part of Still live record but
featured as first single by New Order).
Colony (Studio version on Closer album, also
featured live and recorded at November 1979
John Peel session).
D In a Lonely Place (Performed live by Joy
Day of the Lords (Studio version on Unknown
Pleasures album also featured live).
Dead Souls tOriginally the companion track to
Atmosphere on the limited French Sordide
Sentimentale single but re-issued as a track on
Still album).
Decades (Studio version on Closer album and
live version on Still).
Digital (Studio track originally released on
Factory sampler and rare live version featured
on Still).
Disorder (Studio version on Unknown Pleasures
album, live version available on Still).
The Drawback (Unreleased studio out-take).
56
The Eternal (Studio version on Closer).
Exercise One (Studio version unreleased but
John Peel January 1979 session version
included on Still album).
F
Failures (Early song recorded as Warsaw for
Ideal for Living EP).
From Safety to Where? (Studio out-take from
Unknown Pleasures album released on Fast
Earcom 2 12 inch project).
G
Glass (Early Joy Division studio recording
released on Factory Sampler and re-issued as
a track on Still).
Heart and Soul (Studio version on Clbser album
- also featured live. Manchester band The
Passage have recorded a reply to this song
Devils and Angels).
I
Ice. Age (Studio version originally recorded for
proposed Futurama Festival album but even-
tually released on Still).
Division but not recorded. Featured by New
Order on their first single. Words by Ian
Curtis).
Incubation (Studio version featured on Free
Flexi).
Insight (Studio version on Unknown Pleasures
album, performed live and also featured on
January 1979 John Peel Radio 1 sessions).
Interzone (Studio version featured on Unknown
Pleasures album).
Isolation (Studio version on Closer album also
featured live on Still).
K Sister Ray (The only non-Joy Division song to
The Kill (Early Joy Division song eventually be recorded by the band - exists only as a
released on Still album). one-off spontaneous encore included on Still
Komakino (Studio version featured on Free from a live tape of a performance at the
Flexi). Moonlight Club in April 1980. Originally
recorded by the Velvet Underground, of
L course).
Leaders of Men (Warsaw/Early Joy Division song Something Must Break (Studio out-take even-
recorded on Ideal for Living EP). tually included on Still album).
Love Will Tear Us Apart (Studio version featur- Sound of Music (Unreleased studio version
ed on 7 inch and 12 inch hit singles, the exists, plus live tapes, only the November
November 1979 John Peel sessions and per- 1979 John Peel session version released - on
formed live). Still).

N T
New Dawn Fades (Studio version on Unknown These Days (Studio version on B side of Love
Pleasures album, live version featured on Still). Will Tear Us Apart 7 inch and 12 inch singles).
No Love Lost (Early song recorded on Ideal for Transmission (Studio version on 7 inch and 12
Living EP). inch singles, live version on Still, recorded
January 1979 for BBC John Peel programme
Novelty (Studio version used as B side of Trans- and a live favourite).
mission single).
Twenty-Four Hours (Studio version on Closer
0 album, also featured live and on November
1979 John Peel Radio 1 session).
The Only Mistake (Studio out-take eventually
released on Still album). w
p Walked in Line (Studio out-take eventually re-
leased on Still album).
Passover (Studio version on Closer, live version
on Still). Warsaw (Early Warsaw/Joy Division song
recorded on Ideal for Living EP).
R Wilderness (Studio version recorded on Un-
Remember Nothing (Studio version on Un- known Pleasures album).
known Pleasures album).

s
Shadowplay (Studio version on Unknown
Pleasures, live version on Still).
She's Lost Control (Studio version on Unknown
Pleasures, re-recorded and re-mixed versions
on 7 inch and 12 inch singles, a different ver-
sion on January 1979 John Peel sessions and a
live favourite. The only Joy Division song to
be 'covered' by another artist - Grace Jones
recorded a version on the B side of the limited
12 inch edition of her hit Private Life).

57
15. THE STATISTICS
a) On Record b) The John Peel 'Festive 50'

Joy Division recorded just 48 different songs of For a band such as Joy Division a far better
which 4 7 were composed by the band them- guide to the relative popularity of recorded
selves. These 48 songs are spread over: songs is undoubtedly the BBC Radio 1 John
2 12 inch albums Peel programme's 'Festive 50' - a semi-serious
1 12 inch double album annual poll in which listeners vote for their
3 7 inch singles plus 1 7 inch EP all-time favourite tracks. Since Christmas 1980
3 12 inch singles plus 1 12 inch EP Joy Division have dominated this poll and as the
1 7 inch three track flexi single Peel programme occupies a very special place in
1 song on 10 inch various artists compil- the Joy Division story the results of the voting
ation album give a meaningful reflection of the Joy Division
2 songs on variom~ artists double 7 inch EP tracks most appreciated by the band's most
2 songs on 12 inch various artists EP ardent supporters.
Of the 17 records containing Joy Division mat-
erial released between May 1978 and October 1980 (The figures refer to position in the over-
all Top 50)
1981 5 have sold out or been deleted (7 inch
2 Atmosphere
and 12 inch of Ideal for Living, Factory Sampler
EP, Atmosphere on Sordide Sentimentale and 3 Love Will Tear Us Apart
10 Transmission
US 12 inch Atmosphere).
14 Decades
The most successful of all Joy Division records 20 New Dawn Fades
22 She~ Lost Control
was the 7 inch single of Love Will Tear Us Apart
41 Twenty-Four Hours
which sold 160,000 (and is still available and
selling) reaching No. 12 (No. 8 in Melody Maker (The No. 1 for 1980 was Anarchy in the UK).
chart) in the British singles chart. The best-
selling album has been Closer which reached No. 1981
8 on the British album chart. (All Joy Division 1 Atmosphere
records have been successful in selling out initial 2 Love Will Tear Us Apart
pressings). 4 Ceremony (New Order)
5 New Dawn Fades
Joy Division tracks have appeared on six differ- 7 Decades
ent record labels - Factory, Virgin, Fast, 11 Dead Souls
Sordide Sentimentale, Enigma and Anonymous. 14 Transmission
43 Twenty-Four Hours
44 Isolation

58
c) Music Paper Polls
Music paper polls generally succeed in saying a
lot more about the editorial policy of the maga-
zine than the tastes of the 'average' music fan
but even the most hard-bitten cynic cannot help
but experience a satisfying sense of justice being
done when his favourite band gets a vote of
popularity:
1979
New Musical Express:
(Published January 1980) 5th Best New Act
Sounds:
(Published March 1980) No mentions
Melody Maker:
(Published January 1980) No mentions
Record Mirror:
(Published February 1980) No mentions
New York Rocker:
(Published March 1980) 4th Best Indepen-
dant record of 1979 (The Unknown Pleasures
import album).
1980
Zig-Zag: (Published May 1980)
5th Group
9th Live Group
6th Small Group
5th Male Singer (Ian Curtis)
9th Songwriter (Joy Division)
2nd Unrecorded Song (Love Will Tear Us
Apart)
5th Tip For The Top
4th Album (Unknown Pleasures)
5th Single (Transmissfon)
6th Label (Factory)
(It's worth remembering that this voting took
place several weeks before Ian Curtis died)
New Musical Express: (Published January 1981)
2nd Best Group
3rd Male Singer
3rd Guitarist (Bernard Albrecht)
2nd Drums (Steve Morris)
4th Bass (Peter Hook )
4th Songwriter (Ian Curtis)
2nd Single (Love Will Tear Us Apart)
4th Single (Atmosphere)
2nd Album (Closer)
3rd Best Dressed Sleeve (Closer)
14th Most Wonderful Human Being (Ian
Curtis)
Sounds: (Published February 1981)
9th Band
3rd Single (Love Will Tear Us Apart)
Melody Maker: (Published October 1980)
9th Brightest Hope (Joy Division)
Record Mirror: (Published February 1981)
No mentions
1981
New Musical Express (Published January 1982)
19th Best Qroup (Joy Division)
2nd Most Missed Person (Ian Curtis - Lennon
was 1st)
2nd Single (Ceremony)
2nd Album (Still)
2nd Best Dressed Sleeve (Still)
6th Guitarist (Bernard Albrecht)
3rd Bass (Peter Hook )
4th Drums (Steve Morris)
1982
New Musical Express (Published March 1982)
2nd Best LP (Still)
2nd Best Single (Ceremony)
59
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 K
Thread-sewn binding for extra durability
ISBN: 0 907188 214.