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