by Peter Hook
“Ian and Steve were really thrilled about this gig because Suicide were a pretty avant-garde group and those two, being the most musically forward-thinking of us all, loved them. I got into a lot of music through Ian and Suicide were one of the bands he introduced me to. I love how all their songs sound like intros.”
29 August 1978
Joy Division play Band on the Wall, Manchester, with Stage 2 and the Elite.
4 September 1978
Joy Division play Band on the Wall, Manchester. The gig is promoted by Rob Gretton, who also designed the poster.
9 September 1978
Joy Division play Eric’s, Liverpool, supporting Tanz Der Youth. (Andy Colquhoun of Warsaw Pakt was a member of Tanz Der Youth for a time.) Admission: 60p members; 90p guests.
10 September 1978
Joy Division play the Royal Standard, Bradford, supported by Emergency ‘and disco’. Admission: 80p in advance; £1 on the door.
“It was full of National Front skinheads. That was a terrifying evening. We had to pretend to be Nazis to get out alive. How ironic.”
20 September 1978
Joy Division appear on Granada Reports, introduced by Tony Wilson; they play ‘Shadowplay’, overlaid with negative offcuts from World in Action.
“They put those cars on it because they thought we were boring to look at, but that was what Tony liked about us – that we were reserved. Maybe Ian took it to heart, I don’t know, but it was around then that he started doing his dancing more often, which became his trademark.”
22 September 1978
Joy Division play the Coach House, Huddersfield.
“One person turned up. It was diabolical.”
26 September 1978
Joy Division play Band on the Wall, Manchester, with Dust and A Certain Ratio.
“ACR had a guitarist whose hair was like a chunk of cheese. So we used to call him Cheesehead.”
2 October 1978
Joy Division play the Institute of Technology, Bolton, supported by the Curbs.
“I remember going to that gig, because I remember parking outside (which is always handy). I don’t remember anything else about it, though.”
10 October 1978
The An Ideal for Living twelve-inch EP (Anonymous ANON1) is released. This is a twelve-inch reissue, 2,000 copies only. Recorded at Pennine Sound Studios, December 1977. Cover design by Steve McGarry. Photography by D. B. Glen. Track list: ‘Warsaw’, ‘No Love Lost’, ‘Leaders of Men’, ‘Failures’.
11 October 1978
The A Factory Sample session, Cargo Studios, Rochdale. Produced by Martin Hannett. Engineered by John Brierley. Tracks recorded: ‘Digital’, ‘Glass’.
12 October 1978
Joy Division play Kelly’s, Manchester, with the Risk, for Rock Against Racism. Admission: £1 on the door.
“This was in aid of a great cause. We were proud to support it.”
20 October 1978
Joy Division play the Factory, Manchester, supporting Cabaret Voltaire and the Tiller Boys. Admission: £1.
The intensity, the passion of this music completely eclipsed anything the audience had seen in a long, long time.
Mick Middlehurst, writing in the Face, 1980
The poster for the event was given the catalogue number FAC 3 (FAC 1 was Peter Saville’s Factory-club poster and FAC 2 was the A Factory Sample EP, not yet released).
“The first time we played at the Factory there were, like, fifteen or twenty people there but by this stage we had two or three hundred turning up. It was great to play with Cabaret Voltaire, too. Mal and Richard, lovely lads. And it was a great poster. I still have a lot of the posters, but people borrow them for exhibitions and whatever and never give me them back. I’ve lost loads.”
24 October 1978
Joy Division play the Fan Club, Brannigan’s, Leeds, supporting Cabaret Voltaire.
“Come to think of it I don’t think any of the Cabs were under investigation for being the Yorkshire Ripper. Hm . . .”
26 October 1978
Joy Division play Band on the Wall, Manchester (possibly a Manchester Musicians’ Collective gig).
4 November 1978
Joy Division play Eric’s, Liverpool (matinee and evening shows), supporting Ded Byrds and John Cooper Clarke.
“Ded Byrds had a female saxophonist, and Terry and Ian did something to the reed on her saxophone that I can’t possibly repeat here. I’m sorry, but I’m just going to have to leave it to your imagination – but judging by her face it tasted vile! Meanwhile, Barney and Twinny were also up to something unrepeatable round the back of the car park. An action-packed gig, that one, on stage and off.”
14 November 1978
Joy Division play the Odeon, Canterbury, as part of their tour with the Rezillos and the Undertones.
“The Undertones – they were so young. They’d bought an air pistol and were having target practice backstage, shooting cans off the stairs. Then someone brought in letters from home because they’d been away touring for a while, and next thing they were all crying in the dressing room reading letters off their mums. Me and Ian were looking at each other like, Aw, isn’t that sweet?”
15 November 1978
Joy Division play Brunel University, Uxbridge.
Unfortunately the set was cut very short; there can’t have been any more than four or five numbers. The reason being that a part of the audience was still into the spitting thing and took a big dislike to Ian. They covered the poor man from head to foot. At the end of ‘Digital’, Ian had clearly had enough and said quite politely to the audience, “I see you are not educated down south,” and promptly walked off. He was quickly followed by Sumner and Hook. Steve Morris realized it was over and scrambled from his drums, unfortunately he had to walk past the front of them to exit the stage and he tripped on a speaker cable, the crowed jeered and heckled him, he picked himself up, hurled some obscenities and walked off.
Martin (fan), on joydiv.org
19 November 1978
Joy Division sound-check but don’t play Locarno, Bristol.
The last time I saw Joy Division was at the Locarno in Bristol. They’d travelled down from Manchester to be told that The Rezillos had split up and instead John Otway and Chelsea were to headline that night, with us on stage first. No room on the bill for Joy Division. That’s showbusiness, that is.
Mickey Bradley, bassist, the Undertones
20 November 1978
Joy Division play the Check Inn, Altrincham, supported by Surgical Supports and Bidet Boys. Admission: £1.
Joy Division were okay and could well prove to be to next year what The Fall have been to Manchester this year and what Buzzcocks were to last year.
Record Mirror
“We’d been told all the posh girls lived in Altrincham and Hale, and we thought, Wow: yes! for that reason. Otherwise we had the feeling that the Check Inn wasn’t going to be very wild and (lo and behold) when we played it, it wasn’t. It was a dreadful gig and a dreadful audience, no girls at all. The only redeeming factor was that we didn’t have far to go home.”
26 November 1978
Joy Division play the New Electric Circus, Manchester, supported by the Passage.
“This was an Alan Wise promotion, I think, but I don’t remember the gig. It’s nice to say that we’d eclipsed the Passage by then, though.”
1 December 1978
Joy Division play the Salford College of Technology; they are second on the bill, with Ed Banger (Ed Garrity) headlining and Fast Cars (with Steve Brotherdale on drums). Admission: £1.
22 December 1978
Joy Division play the Revolution Club, York, supported by Cabaret Voltaire.
27 December 1978
Joy Division play the Hope & Anchor, London. Admission: 60p.
“This was, I suppose, the first time that we thought, It’s not all perfect.”
Nick Tester’s Sounds review of the Hope & Anchor gig was scathing:
Joy Division try to be a g
rim group, but I just grinned. This retracted grimness is alienating, but not for intended provocative or creative reasons. I found Joy Division’s “tedium” a blunt, hollow medium, comical in its superfluous angst [ . . . ] They may have gathered a tight following in home town Manchester but they failed to ignite a similar impression in front of a new (though not necessarily more objective) audience. An off-night maybe, but Joy Division’s lack of an enlivening approach could be improved by an all-round sharper articulate stance and musical method. Joy Division could be a good band if they placed more emphasis on poise than pose.
PART FOUR
‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’
‘Peter’s fell off his chair again’
I hated being the one who drove the van. Apart from making me a suspected serial killer, it meant I had to load and unload the gear all the time. And what do most bands do after gigs? They get pissed and chase girls. Not me. When a gig finished and everybody ran off to the bar I was left to pack the bloody gear. Twinny and Terry might lend a hand if I could collar them before they got a pint in their hands, but they weren’t getting paid so it wasn’t like I could insist. As for the rest of the band, well, Steve would occasionally lend a hand, bless him, but Barney and Ian were always too busy chasing skirt/meeting the fans. I used to have to literally drag them away. Oh God, it used to wind me up so much. Drove me mental! I was always saying to them, ‘Let’s just get the gear done and then go to the bar,’ but it always fell on deaf ears.
As a group you’ve got to have responsibility for your gear: let’s face it, without it you’re useless. But that fact was lost on those two. Even Ian still had a PA to shift. I’m sure they thought it got in the van by magic.
‘Well, that’s what we’ve got roadies for, isn’t it?’ Bernard would sneer.
‘Listen, they’re my mates. They don’t get fucking paid to shift your shit. They don’t get fucking paid at all. Do your own fucking shifting or get your own fucking friends to move it.’
The fact was that Terry and Twinny would do the carrying in the afternoon, no problem. Set it up, sort the sound-check, look after it till the doors opened, no problem. But that was because there were no distractions in the afternoon. At night? Forget it. No one wants to do the gear at the end of the night. The only one doing it was the daft bastard driving the van, yours truly.
Some mornings I’d come home from a gig, change into my suit then drive straight to work. There was a pelican crossing outside the docks, right opposite work, where I always used to fall asleep. There was something about reaching that point, eight o’clock in the morning, feeling knackered but nice and warm in the van, and just . . . feeling . . . sleepy . . . My snoozing hotspot, that was.
My workmates would bang on the window to wake me up, laughing. I’d get to work and try to keep going, but after a really late night I’d have to go hide in the file room and fall asleep on the floor. Either that or risk it at my desk, but I’d just black out and go . . .
Thump.
‘Oh look, Peter’s fell off his chair again.’
So I was tired. Exhausted, actually.
And I didn’t have epilepsy.
There’s a lot been written about the effect it had on Ian. How he felt embarrassed about the condition, and how the drugs affected him. We saw bits of that: his mood changed a bit; he was quieter, less ready to laugh and more introverted than before, which was understandable. Otherwise he just soldiered on. So instead of taking time off for Ian to rest, and instead of getting together and working out how to adapt to our lead singer’s epilepsy, we buried our heads in the sand, all of us, Ian included, and – and you’ll be hearing this a lot throughout the rest of the book – we just carried on.
Meanwhile, far from slowing, the pace began to pick up.
Rob had jacked in his job at Eagle Star Insurance on Princess Street. His base was his attic flat in Chorlton and with plenty of time to devote to management work he’d come to us with gig offers all the time. We never said no. Wherever it was, whatever it was, we’d agree.
Christ, it must have been exhausting for Ian. (After we found out I eased off getting on at him about not moving his amp, so at least that was one advantage of being epileptic – every cloud and all that.)
But seriously. I mean: if I was that knackered I was nodding off at the pelican and sliding off my chair at work, how did he feel? But, because Ian was Ian, and didn’t want to let us down, he allowed us to keep on going like nothing had happened, and nobody – not us, Tony, Rob, Debbie, his parents, doctors or specialists – stepped in to say he should do anything different. All of which suited us fine, I hate to admit, because the discovery of Ian’s epilepsy coincided with a period when the band was really beginning to take off.
Having the An Ideal for Living EP out as twelve-inch had made promotion so much easier. We didn’t have to apologize for it the way we’d had to with the seven-inch. With the twelve-inch out, both Rob and the band had something great to work with – something that represented us really well.
God knows how much time Rob spent in phone boxes. He must have used them like an office, phoning round for gigs and reactions on the records then phoning us. We were easily reachable, so Rob would just grab a load of coins, go to the phone box and ring us up. I’d pick up the phone at work, probably exhausted from a gig the night before.
‘All right, Hooky. It’s Rob.’
‘All right, Rob.’
‘John Peel likes the record. He wants us in for a session.’
I’d put down the phone and I wouldn’t think, Aw, that’s going to be stressful for poor old Ian; I’d think, Fucking hell, we’re going to do a session for John Peel! and go for a run.
We were totally in awe of John Peel and his programme, and he’d already played tracks off the EP. Somewhere I’ve still got the tape with the places marked in biro where John introduces our tracks, can still remember listening to it in the car, freezing, taping off the car radio on one of those portable cassette players. Doing the session was mind-blowing. For a start, when you work for the BBC you get paid personally: the money comes to you, not to the group. (Later, in New Order, I used to love doing Top of the Pops because I got a cheque for £280 when I was getting nothing off the group.) But it was also mind-blowing because John Peel was a hero, a true musical hero. His was the only show on radio for people like us to listen to, so to be offered a session, well, that was like getting a chart placing back then, only better. We didn’t give a shit about chart placings. Right then success for us was about playing the music we wanted to play: that was that. For us, in Joy Division and New Order, it was always about playing without compromising your music. Doing that was the only success.
When you did a Peel session there was no messing about. It started at two, finished at four and there was no overrun. Hours overdubbing? Forget it. ‘Hey, why don’t we try some synth here?’ None of that. You were in and out.
Which suited me down to the ground. A great way to do things, if you ask me. Nowadays you’re so spoilt by technology you can spend hours and days and months on the computer perfecting every tiny detail. Of course there’s some great music being made that way. But is it greater than the music being made back then? No.
‘Fuck. Martin’s got a boot full of stolen car radios’
We were still at T. J. Davidson’s, where we were being very productive. From two rehearsals – one on a weeknight, for an hour or an hour-and-a-half, cost us £1.50, then three hours on Sundays, which was £3 – we’d get an idea a week and write two to three songs a month; and I’d say that from the time we wrote ‘Transmission’ onwards they just flowed like rain. I mean, writing songs is easy when you’re just starting out. It gets a lot harder and takes longer when you’ve written two or three hundred. You get overdrawn at the riff bank. But back then we couldn’t stop writing them.
All four of us had ideas. One of us would have been listening to Kraftwerk and suggest using that sound as the basis for a song. We’d all chip in and by the time the so
ng was finished, even though the seed of the song had been Kraftwerk, it wouldn’t sound like Kraftwerk at all. That was the art. It sounded like Joy Division. In this particular case it sounded like ‘Digital’, in fact.
‘Shadowplay’ happened in a similar way: Bernard had been listening to ‘Ocean’ by Velvet Underground and wanted to write a track like that, with the surf sound, a rolling feeling in it. So we started jamming and that’s how we came up with ‘Shadowplay’. You wouldn’t say it sounded anything like Velvet Underground, but once you know you can hear the root.
That was the thing about Joy Division: writing the songs was dead easy because the group was really balanced; we had a great guitarist, a great drummer, a great bass player, a great singer. As soon as Ian died it became difficult. He had an ear for us, a great ear, and all bands need one of those. You could tell he would have been a great guitar player too. His guitars of choice were the Vox Peardrop and the Vox Teardrop, very idiosyncratic; the Teardrop had some wild built-in effects that he loved. He’d picked the guitar up late, starting around the time we were writing the songs that would become Closer. Maybe Barney’s playing was still bugging him, but a more likely explanation was that we were featuring more keyboards and Barney was switching between the two. Maybe Ian thought he’d fill in. He played on the video for ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’ and was obviously quite a rudimentary player, but you could tell he would have got so much better because he had that ear – he thought like a musician. The way it worked was that he’d listen to us jamming, and then direct the song until it was . . . a song. He stood there like a conductor and picked out the best bits.
Which was why, when we lost him, it made everything so difficult. It was like driving a great car that had only three wheels. The loss of Ian had opened up a hole in us and we had to learn to write in a different way. It was hard, that period, just starting New Order, and we suddenly found it very difficult to adjust. We felt like we’d been cheated. It had been so easy, so good when it was the four of us. We were so tight, as a group, we didn’t even use a tape recorder half the time. Didn’t need one. We had the odd one, of course, but they never lasted or the quality was so poor as to make them virtually useless. But it didn’t matter because we could do most things from memory. Everything up to and including Unknown Pleasures really existed only when the four of us were in a room together playing it. Not written down, not recorded, just from memory.