Read Unknown Pleasures: Inside Joy Division Online
Authors: Peter Hook
Tags: #Punk, #Personal Memoirs, #Music, #Biography & Autobiography, #Genres & Styles, #Composers & Musicians
Unknown Pleasures: Inside Joy Division (40 page)
Barney was moving from guitar to keyboards. Live this had no guitar, but of course in the studio we would overdub some at Martin’s request. I have a feeling Ian may have played the chord guitar. We continued with this way of writing, which felt quite natural. Barney would say, ‘Oh, why don’t we put that low bass on the synth, and you can play over with it with your six string and add high strings for the breaks?’ This was what we did and we used it a lot in New Order too. I’d write a bass line then he’d put it on the synth to make it dancey and I’d play over it with the melody. Barney used to call me Mr Melody, in his lighter moments.
‘Twenty Four Hours’
Now that I’ve realized, how it’s all gone wrong . . .
Ian had difficulty singing some of the songs he wrote because he didn’t have the range in his key, but I’ve always felt very, very strongly that a great vocalist can write great music and doesn’t have to sing it perfectly as long as the emotion’s there. The emotion comes from the heart, the soul, the passion, which together make a perfect delivery. When Barney used to strain in his vocals it sounded a hell of a lot better to me than when he started writing them all in the right key. I thought then it became too perfect; I preferred the emotion and the vulnerability of it before. Ian had that too. I mean, I know I keep saying it, but what you want in life is strength and belief, and if someone has that it doesn’t have to be technically perfect.
People turn round to you and say, ‘God, you’d been hearing these lyrics for weeks – why didn’t you realize he was so bad?’ You hadn’t. He wasn’t slumped in the corner with a lone fiddle in the background; he was fucking going for it. I suppose that’s the contradiction: on the one hand, he was ill and vulnerable; on the other, he was a screaming rock god. That’s what was confusing.
‘The Eternal’
Cry like a child though these years make me older . . .
This is a great song. My favourite lyric. So dreamlike. Any band would die to have this under their belt, in their arsenal. It’s instrumentally and
musically powerful as well as vocally powerful. It’s the six-string bass with the clone pedal, which gives you a slight double-track. It just makes it wobble and sound fatter. Barney’s playing the keyboards and then at the end using the Transcendent as a white-noise generator. Steve’s drum riff is amazing, so simple and strong. And there’s a great use of echo plate on the snare by Martin. Listening to it now you can hear how well we played together; the solidity between me, Ian, Steve and Bernard was very, very powerful. I don’t think any of us will ever have it again. Classic.
‘Decades’
We knocked on the door of hell’s darker chambers . . .
This is an interesting track. It begins with me playing low bass and, unusually, playing in sync with the bass drum; then there’s overdubbing of another bass part, on the six-string, very rhythmic so it sounds like guitar. There’s a great Syndrum sound, loads of echo plate in use. There’s Barney on the keyboards, again layered wonderfully, and over-dubbed guitar melodies. It’s one of the most beautiful songs we ever did. I think it’s more beautiful than ‘Atmosphere’.
I find
Closer
much easier to listen to than
Unknown Pleasures
. I like it as a musical offering and find myself listening to
Closer
simply for pleasure, which I can’t really do with anything else that I’ve done. Definitely not the New Order stuff, sadly. This is actually one of my favourite albums. My five favourites would be
Chelsea Girls
by Nico,
New Boots & Panties
by Ian Dury & the Blockheads,
Raw Power
by Iggy Pop,
Berlin
by Lou Reed and
Closer
by Joy Division. Oh, I forgot John Cale,
Paris 1919
, and the Sex Pistols, of course . . . Oops, that’s seven.
JANUARY1980–OCTOBER 1981
7–8 January 1980
The first ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’ session, Pennine Sound Studios, Oldham. Produced by Martin Hannett. Tracks recorded: ‘These Days’, ‘The Sound of Music’, ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’ (version one).
11 January 1980
Joy Division play Paradiso, Amsterdam, Netherlands. The start of the European tour. The support band don’t play so Joy Division do both slots, performing two different sets for the price of one. Set list (‘support’ set): ‘Passover’, ‘Wilderness’, ‘Digital’, ‘Day of the Lords’, ‘Insight’, ‘New Dawn Fades’, ‘Disorder’, ‘Transmission’. Set list (main set): ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’, ‘These Days’, ‘A Means to an End’, ‘Twenty Four Hours’, ‘Shadowplay’, ‘She’s Lost Control’, ‘Atrocity Exhibition’, ‘Atmosphere’, ‘Interzone’.
12 January 1980
Joy Division play Paard Van Troje (the Trojan Horse), The Hague, Netherlands, supported by Minny Pops.
13 January 1980
Joy Division play Doornroosje, Nijmegen, Netherlands.
14 January 1980
Joy Division play King Kong, Antwerp, Belgium.
When finally the Joy Division company arrives the next day, we immediately bring them to the Boemerang . . . in a ver y friendly and polite way the manager tells us the place is ‘too scruffy’ and request another place to stay... hell!
In a hurry we manage to find some rooms in the Appelmans hotel near the central station, and this time the crew and band seem to be satisfied and get in.
All goes well until Annik Honoré, the young girlfriend of Ian Curtis, pops her head in; she sees the red lights, the ‘special’ furniture and erotic paintings on the wall and screams: ‘No way! You’re not going to put us in this whorehouse! Don’t you know Joy Division is an important band?’
Curtis looks at her and laughs – he doesn’t mind sleeping here with the others – but she bursts into tears.’
Excerpt from
The Night Ian Curtis Came to Sleep
by Marc
Schoetens, from joydiv.org
15 January 1980
Joy Division play the Basement, Cologne, Germany. Set list: ‘Atmosphere’, ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’, ‘These Days’, ‘Insight’, ‘Twenty Four Hours’, ‘A Means to an End’, ‘She’s Lost Control’, ‘The Sound of Music’. ‘Glass’, ‘Day of the Lords’, ‘Shadowplay’, ‘Interzone’, ‘Disorder’, ‘Transmission’, ‘Atrocity Exhibition’.
“They were good gigs but fucking hell, Europe was cold. Thinking about it, what can’t have helped was the fact that I’d gone skinhead. The rest of them were growing theirs back but I’d decided to shave all mine off. Ever since the time they’d japed me into dyeing it blond I’d been different with my hair – so if they cut theirs, I’d be growing mine; if they grew theirs, I’d get mine cut. That was the same all through New Order, too.”
16 January 1980
Joy Division play Lantaren, Rotterdam, Netherlands.
17 January 1980
Joy Division play Plan K, Belgium. Set list: ‘Dead Souls’, ‘Wilderness’, ‘Insight’, ‘Colony’, ‘Twenty Four Hours’, ‘A Means to an End’, ‘Transmission’, ‘Atmosphere’, ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’, ‘Digital’, ‘Warsaw’, ‘Shadowplay’, ‘Atrocity Exhibition’, ‘Sister Ray’, ‘The Eternal’.
18 January 1980
Joy Division play Effenaar, Eindhoven, Netherlands, supported by Minny Pops. Set list: ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’, ‘Digital’, ‘New Dawn Fades’, ‘Colony’, ‘These Days’, ‘Ice Age’, ‘Dead Souls’, ‘Disorder’, ‘Day of the Lords’, ‘Autosuggestion’, ‘Shadowplay’, ‘She’s Lost Control’, ‘Trans mission’, ‘Interzone’, ‘Atmosphere’, ‘Warsaw’. The band have some trouble with a bunch of young Rockabillies. Some songs are shot on Super-8 (‘Digital’, ‘New Dawn Fades’, ‘Colony’, ‘Autosuggestion’) and later appear on the
Here Are the Young Men
film.
19 January 1980
Joy Division play Club Vera, Groningen, Netherlands.
21 January 1980
Joy Division play Kant Kino, Berlin, Germany. Set list: ‘Dead Souls’, ‘Wilderness’, ‘Colony’, ‘Insight’, ‘Twenty Four Hours’, ‘A Means to an End’, ‘Transmission’, ‘The Eternal’.
“According to Ian’s letters to Annik, he and Barney were very depressed after this gig because of the sound. I don’t remember that. They had a few posters up advertising forthcoming films and I nicked a few, which we put on the wall in the practice place for inspiration. That’s where we got loads of our New Order titles from: they’re all old films. Very cheeky.”
7 February 1980
Joy Division play a Factory benefit (in aid of the
City Fun
fanzine), the Factory II, New Osborne Club, Manchester, supported by A Certain Ratio and Section 25.
“I remember that when we came off Ian was dying for a piss so we couldn’t go back on and do another encore. He was hopping about trying to find a toilet but there wasn’t one backstage, so in the end we were going, ‘Oh, just piss in the corner,’ and he was
going, ‘No, no, I can’t! I can’t piss in the corner! I can’t do it, I can’t do it.’
Rob was going, ‘Fucking hell, Ian, you know, you’re supposed to be going back on,’ and Ian was running round like a fucking madman, holding himself.
So in the end Rob went and got a pint pot and ordered him to go into a corner and piss into it so we could go back on.
After an age Ian came back, saying, ‘Aw, thanks for that, Rob – I was desperate.’ But the pot had only a quarter of an inch of piss in it – something to do with his meds, I suppose.
It was too late to go back on by then, so we didn’t. But I do remember that it was nice to be back in Manchester, just to be home. I was the only one whose car wasn’t broken into that night. I lived in Moston and knew the area, so I parked right outside the window of the pub opposite. I warned them all. But when everyone – audience included – came to leave they discovered that every single car round the club had been broken into.”
8 February 1980
Joy Division play University of London Union, supported by Section 25, A Certain Ratio and Killing Joke. Set list: ‘Dead Souls’, ‘Glass’, ‘A Means to an End’, ‘Twenty Four Hours’, ‘Passover’, ‘Insight’, ‘Colony’, ‘These Days’, ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’, ‘Isolation’, ‘The Eternal’, ‘Digital’. This concert appears on CD2 of the September 2007 re-mastered edition of
Closer
.
Mid-February 1980
Debbie confronts Ian about Annik.
20 February 1980
Joy Division play High Wycombe Town Hall, supported by Killing Joke and A Certain Ratio. Set list: ‘The Sound of Music’, ‘A Means to an End’, ‘Colony’, ‘Twenty Four Hours’, ‘Isolation’, ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’, ‘Disorder’, ‘Atrocity Exhibition’. Both concert and sound-check appear on CD2 of the September 2007 reissue of
Still
.
“The reason that a lot of these gigs were so widely bootlegged was there were these two young lads – quite nice lads, actually – called John and Lawrie, who used to come and tape all the gigs then provide us with a cassette. We’d let them into the sound-checks so they’d do them too, which was quite nice of them – because really they were bootlegging you with your consent, weren’t they?”
It was during this period that Ian’s self-harming episode occurred.
21 February 1980
Joy Division cancel their gig at Manchester Polytechnic.
28 February 1980
Joy Division play the Warehouse, Preston, supported by Section 25. Set list: ‘Incubation’, ‘Wilderness’, ‘Twenty Four Hours’, ‘The Eternal’, ‘Heart and Soul’, ‘Shadowplay’, ‘Transmission’, ‘Disorder’, ‘Warsaw’, ‘Colony’, ‘Interzone’, ‘She’s Lost Control’.
“We turned up on the day and everything that could go wrong went wrong. The PA was dreadful, our equipment was all over the place . . . Everything, actually, just went completely to shit. But for some reason we embraced it with humour, didn’t alaways happen, and it ended up becoming quite funny. You know the way it goes sometimes: when the more something goes wrong the funnier it gets? Well, it was like that.
Years later Tony Wilson put out a bootleg of this gig because he loved it so much because you can hear everything going wrong. It was the beer pump – it kept cutting out the amps. Barney’s guitar amp went. Then my amp went. Barney came over and tried to plug into my amp and I was going, ‘You’re wasting your fucking time ‘cause my amp’s gone as well.’ Then the keyboards went off.
Rob was in the background screaming, ‘Play, you fuckers, play!’ It’s on the bootleg, him screaming at us. Occasionally one of us would go to the mic and say, ‘Oh, sorry about this; this has all gone wrong.’ It just completely fell apart but the audience didn’t seem to mind, particularly. There weren’t that many of them there.
There was a wonderful, glorious moment when some girl got up on stage while we were all busy trying to fix our equipment; we were all looking at her thinking,
What’s she doing?
She just went up to the mic, grabbed hold of it and said, ‘The coach for Blackburn is leaving in five minutes.’ That’s on the bootleg as well.
We just couldn’t get it back then; we’d just lost it, you know, lost the whole gig. Complete disaster. So anyway, afterwards in the dressing room there was a great atmosphere, with everyone laughing and joking, but the promoter came back and was fuming. He said we hadn’t played and we could fuck off if we thought he was going to pay us. Then he stalked out of the dressing room.
We weren’t having that. The dressing room doubled up as a food store and there was a freezer in there, so I kicked the lock off the freezer. Inside were about thirty frozen chickens that we took as wages. I remember Ian nabbed all these chickens to take home to Debbie – so I think he must still have been living at home with her then. He probably took them back as a peace offering:
Sorry I’ve got another girl on the go, love. Here are some defrosting chickens
.”
