Unknown Pleasures: Inside Joy Division

by Peter Hook

  Well, I had. I suppose in the end it’s almost too easy to look back and say what you should have done, how you might have changed things. How you might have done things differently and ultimately stopped Ian from doing what he did. What’s harder – what’s much, much harder – is to accept what you actually did do. Accept what you did and live with it. At that point I thought that the worst thing that had happened was me losing a friend, the band losing a member. It took me a long time to realize that a child had lost a father, a mother and father had lost a son, a sister had lost a brother, a wife had lost a husband, a mistress had lost a lover. All a lot more important than me and the band; we paled into insignificance. You’re selfish when you’re young and I suppose in many ways that’s self-preservation. Now I’m embarrassed to have put us first. Even after writing and researching this book I’m no clearer as to why he decided to end it on that night. About what made that night different. The only odd thing I see is the dog story: Candy going to the farm. It seems like such a cliché. Did they have the dog put down, I wonder? Was that what was too much for him to bear on top of everything else? I will never know.

  EPILOGUE

  We packed everything in a little box once he’d gone, and put it away. Now, of course, Ian’s with me all the time, and even this book is as much about him as it is me. But back then – then it was like the group disowned the group. I mean, Joy Division’s popularity skyrocketed: ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’ came out and was a great success, then Closer, but we didn’t promote them, didn’t play them, didn’t read reviews of them, didn’t want to know about sales, nothing. Didn’t care about them.

  The only thing we took from Joy Division – the only two things, actually – were the songs Ian had left us: ‘Ceremony’ and ‘In a Lonely Place’. To each other we said, ‘See you on Monday,’ and that was it. Me, Barney and Steve got together on the Monday to work on the songs. I took the riff for ‘Dreams Never End’ into rehearsal. It was weird because I was looking for Ian to tell me if it was any good or not. Realizing that we’d lost our spotter, our mentor. Realizing that suddenly we had to find a new way of working that didn’t rely on him. We had to learn to record everything, play it back and pick out the good bits ourselves.

  We never considered carrying on as Joy Division, though. We had made a pact years before that if one of us didn’t want to do it any more, or if anything happened to any one of us, then Joy Division would be over. The group was finished. I mean, the desire to carry on was uppermost, but as for trying to carry on as Joy Division with one of us lot singing, or even getting in a new lead singer, it never even came up. We just knew that Joy Division was over. But we wanted to continue as a band, to carry on making and playing music. From a purely practical point of view, we did have the core of a band so it seemed right to carry on. There was, of course, the problem of who was going to sing the songs. That wouldn’t be resolved for a while. In fact, right up until we played our first gig as a three-piece, all three of us were singing two or three songs each, but we got there in the end.

  Then there was the business of finding a new name. We sat down one day to try to come up with one, thinking that we were going to learn our lesson this time, and that whatever name we came up with wouldn’t be anything even vaguely Nazi-sounding.

  No way, we thought. No fucking way were we going to make that mistake again.

  CLOSER TRACK BY TRACK

  I really recommend listening to the record while you read.

  ‘Atrocity Exhibition’

  This is the way, step inside . . .

  Me and Barney were bored writing on our own instruments so we just thought, Let’s swap. Barney plays bass and I play guitar on ‘Atrocity Exhibition’. I was nowhere near as proficient a guitarist as him, mind you, but I like the way it sounds. Great riff. Great bass too.

  During the recording Iris had insisted I go home for a christening or a wedding or something, and Martin mixed the first two tracks while I was gone: ‘Heart and Soul’ and ‘Atrocity Exhibition’. I remember coming back and being dead excited to hear them because I played the guitar really heavily on ‘Atrocity Exhibition’ and I loved it. So there we were, sitting in Martin’s Volvo. Barney put the cassette on so I could listen to the mixes and the bass was really low on ‘Heart and Soul’, very dead and quiet, and I was, like, head in hands, Oh fucking hell, it’s happening again. Unknown Pleasures number two.

  As if that wasn’t bad enough, he then put on ‘Atrocity Exhibition’ and Martin had fucking melted the guitar with his Marshall Time Waster. Made it sound like someone strangling a cat and, to my mind, absolutely killed the song. I was so annoyed with him and went in and gave him a piece of my mind but he just turned round and told me to fuck off.

  Rob said, ‘Fucking hell, Hooky, if you’re going to fuck off home you’ve got to be prepared to take what happens in your absence.’

  ‘Isolation’

  Mother I tried please believe me . . .

  This is an interesting track because it has no guitar on it. If we wrote ‘Isolation’ now, Barney would not only have played the synth but would have done a guitar part too. We would have done a low part, a medium part, a high part; we’d have done a part you can’t hear, a part on the left, part on the right; we’d have killed it. So it was the inexperience involved in us writing ‘Isolation’ that just kept it dead simple, straightforward and very, very effective. What Martin did was take the original drum track, flange it and effect it through his synth, then get Steve to overdub the drums so they were separate; then he could have them really up front in the mix, not buried in a drum mix. Plus he used the drums to trigger his synth, which was, again, ahead of his time. Barney overdubbed the Arp over the Transcendent, playing the same part, and it sounds current even now. Nice vocal effect. I mean, Martin was a fucking genius, without a shadow of a doubt. The way the acoustic kit comes in halfway through the song is fantastic.

  Martin had finished it with a dead stop and the echo going off. But there was a click on it and he wanted to edit it out. But John Caffery got in a right mess – too nervous, I think – and couldn’t get the edit to work. And the more he tried to fix it the more he was losing of the take – and this was the only copy of it. Don’t forget that editing was done with a razor blade, cutting out the part you didn’t want then sticking with tape the bits you did. He was working on the master, so the tape was getting shorter and shorter. In the end Mike Johnson, the tape op/tea boy, had to come in and rescue him, to rescue the edit. That was what impressed us so much about him and why, when we came back in to record as New Order, we got him in as our engineer. That’s why ‘Isolation’ sounds a bit weird at the end. It’s a great song, though. If we’d believed in releasing singles off albums then we would have released it, but we always knew ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’ was going to be the next single and we were far too bloody-minded to put the singles on the albums.

  ‘Passover’

  This is the crisis I knew had to come . . .

  I’m playing six-string bass on this, the first time I used it, I think. I got it on Barney’s recommendation, actually. He’d seen it in Mamelok’s music shop on Deansgate and very graciously suggested I go and have a look at it. ‘You should get it, you should get it; it’s fucking great. You could really use it, because the way you play is guitar-like.’ Which was very nice of him.

  So I went and tried it out and, lo and behold, something about it got me playing it like a guitar. I suppose, in a way, I’ve always been a frustrated guitar player who plays bass, but what I’ve done is stuck with bass and made it a guitar. So getting the six-string bass actually felt quite natural. Around the same time we tried out some effects pedals, again on his recommendation, I got the Electro-Harmonix Clone Theory, because of the fragility of the six-string sound, and that really helped it, fattened it up. Everyone thinks it’s a guitar but it’s not; it’s the six-string bass. It was quite a departure for me. Coupling the chorus with a short eighty-millisecond delay gave me the sound for the
next phase of my career. This track has great crescendos and dropdowns and is one of my favourites. Ian’s lyrics are insanely good with hardly any repetition.

  ‘Colony’

  A worried parent’s glance, a kiss, a last goodbye . . .

  Great lyrics. ‘Colony’ is on the four-string bass. These songs are the product of a great group, without a shadow of a doubt: music chemistry at its best. Steve’s drum riffs, the bass riffs and the guitar riffs are all excellent. The whole lot of them on every song are excellent. I shouldn’t say it really, because I was in the band, but I love this album. There’s not one dodgy track on it. It’s very atmospheric, very powerful. If you listen to Unknown Pleasures there’s a bit of reticence on some songs, but not on this L P. Every song is confident – which is strange, given the fact that most of the music is very melancholic, very fragile but intense.

  ‘Means to an End’

  Two the same, set free too, I always looked to you . . .

  This is the pop song on the album. It’s a fucked-up disco song. We had it worked out a little but finished it in the studio. Martin always liked it when we did that – it meant he could put his stamp on it. Weird: the verse has four ascending notes all next to each other, with no thought to sharps or flats. It’s very unusual. I liked that.

  ‘Heart and Soul’

  Existence well what does it matter . . .

  This is so seductive, a very sexy song that has many layers. I wrote the low bass and we transferred it to the synthesizer. Martin showed Barney how to layer and structure the keyboards, the strings especially, and that’s what he’s doing here – playing the low bass, while nice and low in the mix you’ve got my six-string bass. This was another occasion when Martin really took the heat out of it during the mix, downplayed it, but it really adds to the atmosphere. I was upset when I first heard it but he was right and I was wrong.

  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.

  TIMELINE FIVE:

  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�
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  “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’.