Unknown Pleasures: Inside Joy Division (27 page)

There was a bad one on the second date of the tour, at Leeds, when I had to hold him down backstage. Holding his tongue, I thought he wasn’t going to come out of it – that he was going to die. After that he should have rested, of course. (And why didn’t we insist? Because he said he was all right, that’s why. And because it suited us to take his word for it.) But the next night he was playing Newcastle and the night after that we were in Scotland, where we were staying away from home and behaving like pigs at a trough.

Now there’s a story. It all started at the Hilton in Glasgow, the first time we got to stay out with the Buzzcocks. The bands and our crew were all in this hotel, drinking in the bar. Drinking like mad things, charging the drinks to other people’s rooms, getting absolutely arseholed. Us lot were crowded round Sarge, who was of great interest to us because he’d been in the Hell’s Angels – a former sergeant-at-arms, which accounted for his nickname. The sergeant-at-arms is the guy who does all the enforcing. He polices the Angels, and one of Sarge’s jobs was to preside over the initiations, which he was telling us about, one of them being that the new guys have to drink a pint of piss.

We were like, ‘How fucking disgusting is that?’ and Sarge just shrugged.

So Ian said, ‘Go on then, you drink a pint of piss.’

‘All right,’ said Sarge, ‘You get a pint of piss and I’ll drink it. But it’s going to cost you a fiver.’

That was it. Us lot were running around scabbing money off people to pay him to drink the piss, and once we’d got enough we set about filling the pint pot – Terry mainly, whose piss was like treacle it was that thick and brown.

We handed our warm pint pot of thick, treacle piss to Sarge and put it on the table, watching as he looked at it then dipped his hand in it then put it in his mouth.

He went, ‘It’s warm. I want a tenner.’

We raised more, gave it to him then watched as he downed the pint in one, banged the glass down and said, ‘Right, shit sandwich for twenty quid.’

Shit sandwich
. We needed some bread for a shit sandwich.

Disaster – we couldn’t find any bread. Next thing you know the whole lot of us were tearing around the hotel trying to find bread. Me and Dave Pils ran down a corridor and came across this breakfast trolley that had all the stuff in it you could wish for, so we started rooting around in it and then, for no good reason – apart from that I was pissed and it seemed like a good idea at the time – I turned the trolley over on Dave and pinned him to the floor. Lying there covered in knives and forks, and little pots of marmalade and sachets of brown sauce, he was laughing, calling me a bastard, then he shoved off the trolley and came at me, grabbed a huge plant out of a pot and began swinging it at me.

One messy plant-pot fight later and we got back to the bar, only to find it had been closed because we were getting so rowdy. We weren’t having that. They’re supposed to leave it open all night if you want. So, even though it was four o’clock in the morning and we were as pissed as bastards – or more likely
because
it was four o’clock in the morning and we were as pissed as bastards – one of the Buzzcocks’ lighting crew ripped the shutters off the bar and we all dived in. Midway through that session somebody shouted that the cops were on their way – they weren’t; it was just somebody being a bastard – and we all scarpered. Never has a bar emptied of people so quickly. Then we all passed out in our beds.

I woke up the next morning to discover two things: first, that I’d slept with my arm out of the bed; and second, that the police really were on their way. The theft/vandalism/whatever you want to call it in the bar had been discovered and Joy Division were being blamed. For about half an hour we ran about like headless chickens, Rob grabbing our clothes for us and shoving them into bags, desperately trying to get us out of the hotel before the police arrived. The Buzzcocks’ management could sort it out later. We just needed to concentrate on not being taken into custody and risk missing that night’s gig in Edinburgh.

We made it. Just. Left behind our wreckage and travelled on to Edinburgh, all of us except Steve nursing terrible hangovers and me wondering about my arm sticking out of the bed like that – and this is the funny thing, because ever since that night I’ve always had to sleep with one arm hanging out of the bed.

We kept our noses clean until we got to Dundee, where we decided that Twinny was getting too big for his boots, because he was always sniding off with the Buzzcocks, so we decided to jape his room.

First order of business was to get all his clothes and tie them to a flagpole outside the hotel. Then we took the bed out of his room and replaced it with a baby’s cot we found in the corridor and then, because Twinny’s dead superstitious, we took out all the light bulbs, tied a bit string around the coat hangers in his room and fed it through the connecting door, where we waited, giggling.

And waited. Five o’clock in the morning, when Twinny finally got back to his room, pissed as a fart, and we’d long since stopped giggling. But still, we felt extra justified now that he’d spent all night living it up with the Buzzcocks again! So when he got into the room and we heard him flicking the light switch to no avail, we started rattling the coat hangers. He freaked. Shouted something about the room being haunted and tried to escape. But because he was pissed and the room was pitch black he fell over, right into the cot, which smashed to pieces.

He passed out and the next morning was furious, demanding we give him his clothes. We just pointed him in the direction of the flagpole and told him it served him right.

We had a break from the Buzzcocks tour to do our next gig, which was at Plan K in Brussels, a big arty happening with a William Burroughs reading, screenings of films, Joy Division and Cabaret Voltaire. We were almost late getting there because Terry was driving the van. The thing was, Terry, Twinny and Dave Pils got on really badly sometimes, always bickering, and it was only me that kept them from battering each other. But now that we were a proper professional band with paid road crew (i.e., them) I didn’t drive the van any more so I didn’t travel with the crew; I went in Steve’s Cortina. Luxury. But it did mean that the Three Stooges didn’t have anyone to keep them apart; and on the day we left for Brussels they must have had some massive fall-out, because Terry was in a bad mood, and because he was in a bad mood he was driving at Miss Daisy speeds down the motorway and kept pulling over. Never the most competent of drivers, he was telling me that he couldn’t get the van to go over thirty miles an hour and I ended up replacing him in the driving seat and flooring it down the motorway rather than risk missing the ferry. I got it up to eighty, though, and we made it to Brussels, which was dead exciting – the first time we’d travelled outside the UK.

Somehow we found Michel Duval, the organizer, who took us to the hotel and we were buzzing – even more so at the thought of the luxurious Brussels hotel he was bound to have chosen for us.

Except when we got there it wasn’t a hotel. It wasn’t even a B&B. It was a youth hostel. Instead of having rooms with two sharing, which is what we were used to, we had to sleep in this huge dormitory. We grabbed the best beds. Steve, being too slow, got one with a big lump in it where the springs had broken and when he lay on it he was all bent over; Barney was already complaining that he wouldn’t be able to get any kip, being such a light sleeper, even though it had never seemed to bother him before; while Ian took one look at the set-up and went off to try to wangle a bed elsewhere – which he did, with Cabaret Voltaire in their normal, nice room, before returning to rub our noses in it.

With our sleeping arrangements sorted we went to the gig, which was at this huge, amazing ‘art’ space, I suppose you’d have to say. We did our bit and it was really good gig, and afterwards me, Ian and Barney went along to see William Burroughs then stood around as he sat at a table signing books.

Ian was a bit awestruck, but poor, so he couldn’t afford to buy one of the books William Burroughs was signing. ‘I’m going over to ask him if I can have a book,’ he said, after standing there for ages looking over at the table like a kid eyeing up a plate of warm pies or something.

Me and Barney thought this was hilarious. I mean, looking at William Burroughs, how grizzled and world-weary he looked, he didn’t seem like the kind of guy who was in the habit of handing out freebies to oiks from Macclesfield. Still, Ian had sunk a couple of Duvels and was feeling brave and we were winding him up something rotten. So when there was a lull in visitors to William Burroughs’ table over he strolled over, ignoring us two, who went and hid behind a pillar nearby, sniggering.

‘Oh hello, Mr Burroughs,’ he said, ‘I’m a big fan of yours, and . . .’

William Burroughs looked at him and growled. ‘Yeah, kid, yeah. Whatever.’

He’d probably been hearing that all night – from people who were at least buying his books.

‘Well, I’m in the band Joy Division who played tonight . . .’

‘Yeah, kid, yeah. Whatever,’ growled William Burroughs.

‘Well, I was wondering if I could have a book?’

‘
Have
a book?’ snapped William Burroughs.

‘Yeah.’

He looked at Ian. ‘Fuck off, kid,’ he said and Ian slunk away, tail between his legs, as we wet ourselves laughing. We then spent the rest of the night growling, ‘Fuck off, kid,’ at Ian – whose response was to get really, really pissed.

He wasn’t the only one. Twinny: also absolutely pissed. I found him outside and instead of loading our gear into the back of the van he’d raided the bar and had stacked the van full of stolen beer. We made him put it all back so we could get the gear in, so we could return to the youth hostel. When we got there it was absolute carnage. Back in the dorm, Twinny discovered this Belgian guy asleep in his bed.

‘Oi, you, fuck off!’ he was shouting, just hollering at the bloke, who in return looked terrified, like a rabbit in the headlights. Twinny was advancing on him and would probably have grabbed the guy if I hadn’t stepped between them.

‘Twinny,’ I said, ‘he can’t understand you, y’daft bastard. He’s a Belgian. You’ll have to speak French to him.’

Twinny looked at me, nodded, and went to the guy, ‘Oi, You.
Fucky offy
.’

Poor bloke just got out of bed and legged it, by which time the lot of us were in absolute hysterics and there was no stopping us. Ian was laughing because he was going off for a good night’s kip in Cabaret Voltaire’s room and it was obvious that things in our dorm were only going to get more out of control. Barney was moaning about something then started having a fight with Twinny, but Twinny got carried away and upended Barney’s bed, with him on it, so Barney came flying off and hit his head on a radiator. That completely enraged him so he picked up a bottle of orange squash, smashed the end off on the radiator and poured it all over Twinny’s bed. Twinny’s response was to smash open two bottles of Duvel and pour them on Barney’s bed, by which point we were telling them both to calm the fuck down before someone got hurt. Just then Ian got his knob out and started pissing in our ashtray – one of those tall freestanding ashtrays, it was – thinking it was hilarious, looking back over his shoulder going, ‘Ha, you wankers, I’m pissing in your room! Ha ha, pissing in your room!’ It was one of those pisses that just seemed to go on and on forever, like a donkey’s, and we were calling him a dirty bastard when a caretaker walked into the room flanked by two security goons.

The guy went berserk. Ian wasn’t smiling any more. He was trying to stuff his cock back into his trousers and at the same time pacify the caretaker, who was turning all shades of purple, calling Ian in French what we’d just been calling him in English, except that now Ian didn’t think it was at all funny.

‘I don’t understand French,’ he was saying. ‘I’m sorry. I don’t understand French. Just tell me what you want me to do and I’ll do it.’

Whatever it was he did to calm the caretaker down, I don’t know, but he did, and the festivities continued and next thing I passed out, one arm hanging out of the bed.

Next morning we woke up in this wreckage of a dorm, with orange
and Duvel and Ian’s piss everywhere, hungover to shit, desperately needing something to eat and ending up in what we thought was a burger bar. There we spent the last of our money on seven burgers, which they handed us to eat raw. Turned out be horse meat and of course none of us could eat it so we went hungry.

Which served us all right, I suppose.

That was our Belgium jaunt. On our return home we went straight back on tour with the Buzzcocks, but somewhere in the middle of all that madness we found time to record what would go on to become one of our best-known tracks, ‘Atmosphere’, which we did for
Licht und Blindheit
, a French-territory-only EP. Who puts one of their best songs on a limited-edition single available only in France? Us, that’s who.

‘Atmosphere’ is a massive song. A lot of people say it’s their favourite Joy Division song but it’s not mine; it reminds me too much of Ian, like it’s his death march or something, and it figures that it’s one of the most popular songs to play at funerals: Robbie Williams has got ‘Angels’ for weddings and we’ve got ‘Atmosphere’ for funerals. Becky says that when I die she’s going to play ‘Atmosphere’ at my funeral – but by Russ Abbott. Thanks, love.

So no, ‘Atmosphere’ isn’t my favourite. If you were to ask me what was, it would have to be ‘Insight’. I mean, it might change tomorrow, but it’s ‘Insight’ right now because it’s just so simple but so powerful – and it doesn’t have a chorus. That was one of the things I really liked about Joy Division, that the songs didn’t have to have a chorus or a middle eight. I used to love it about New Order, too, until we started to get all formal about the writing, until by the end every song had a verse, chorus and middle eight, which to me just made everything bland.

But ‘Insight’ doesn’t have all that. To me it’s the sound of a group of young musicians working out the possibilities of what they can do, and working them out together. Changing the world. It reminds me of a time when writing music was easy but most of all fun.