At the Rainbow gig coming over all cross and rock-star grumpy, I half-heartedly tried trashing my drums, so half-heartedly that to the untrained eye nothing untoward appeared to have happened at all. During the set, an exhausted Ian suffered a really bad seizure. The audience, for the most part, didn’t notice that either, thinking it was all part of act.
‘Don’t ever do that again,’ was Rob’s rebuke to my childish petulance. Whether he was criticising my gear trashing or just the way I went about it was unclear.
If I’d been smart I would have replied, ‘No, Rob, I’m fucking not doing this again – ever! It’s fucking madness.’
But I wasn’t smart, I was tired and emotional. Ian was shattered. I loaded the gear up for the trip up the road to West Hampstead via Euston station.
In an attempt to make up for my girlfriend’s weekend in London debacle, I’d invited Gillian down for the last of the Moonlight gigs and a generally Joy Division-themed fun weekend. Never let it be said that I didn’t know how to show a girl a good time.
The band’s embargo on female friends at away shows had gone out of the window in the light of Annik’s continued presence over the last few months. It was all getting too much. Ian’s seizure at the Rainbow was followed by a much more serious one later at the Moonlight.
‘Joy Division convince me I could spit in the face of God’ was the NME’s verdict on our performance that night.
Thank goodness we didn’t have another gig the following night.
Oh hang on . . .
The next day, with Gillian squeezed onto the Cortina’s back seat, we headed north to Malvern.
Despite near complete exhaustion and Ian’s poor health, the set was extended by a two-band jamboree drum-a-thon. This was theoretically based around Section 25’s single ‘Girls Don’t Count’, which Rob and Ian had recently produced. At the end I felt a sense of euphoria. Fill up the car. We were going home – for a couple of days.
I couldn’t really blame Rob or anyone for what was a very heavy workload. It was self-inflicted. We’d all agreed to it willingly. No one put a gun to our heads and said you will do four gigs at the Moonlight Club or else.
Like so many things, it sounded like a good idea at the time. It might even be fun, so why not? We were young. The madness of youth.
While we had been in the studio recording Closer, the idea came up that as we had two more songs than would fit on the album (these would eventually end up being ‘Komakino’ and ‘Incubation’), why not put them on a separate disc to go with it? Not a single, just an additional disc of the extra tracks. Eventually this Britannia Row control-room discussion between Rob, Tony, Martin and myself had moved on to a social experiment to see if it was possible to actually give something away for nothing. We even decided to throw in ‘As You Said’ (aka ‘The Worst Song Joy Division Ever Wrote’). We would do a flexidisc and just hand it out at record shops.
‘This Is a Free Record’ and ‘This record should not have cost you anything, wherever or however obtained’ would be printed on it so people wouldn’t get ripped off by profiteers. Brilliant, I thought.
Of course, the profiteers won. It currently goes for up to £20 – so much for idealism. This is an early example of Factory’s wilful economic perversity. They definitely lost money on that marketing experiment. There was a lesson there that I failed to pick up on. Some things you just can’t give away, no matter how hard you try.
Maybe we should have done a limited edition run of four copies and charged a million pounds each. But sooner or later someone always finds a way to sell something old as though it is something shiny and new – they’d do another limited release but include a free T-shirt as well.
Cunning bastards.
25
A DAY AT THE MUSEUM
In Macclesfield’s West Park Museum they’ve got a panda. They keep it near the dead. Not exactly adjacent but near enough.
They’ve got a mummy that never knew King Tutankhamun in a corner and some earthy fragments of turquoise jewellery in a glass cabinet along the wall.
There used to be a scold’s bridle, an ancient rusty black metal and leather contraption that was used to forcibly silence troublesome women. It was kept on public display as a deterrent (until the PC mob got in and said it was too scary and violent).
Not far from there is a huge rough ball of rock that may have fallen from the sky.
Or been dropped off by a passing glacier.
Or lorry.
Three monolithic black fingers of stone stand uneasily next to the children’s playground. Pagan relics displaced from the fifth century, they seem to be waiting to be moved on by an angry parent.
There used to be a Victorian bandstand but that fell into disrepair (along with Victorian bands) and has now been replaced by a skateboard area. And there’s a finely manicured bowling green.
They’ve got some weird ideas in this town. A triangular park hemmed in with hospitals on two sides and a cemetery on the other.
Putting a panda midway between the sick and the dead – a peculiar bit of planning.
When I was an energetic young boy I would run up and down a muddy patch of grass between two trees chasing a ball. I was not alone. I was in a pack of would-be Charltons and Moores shrieking, ‘To me! To me! Centre it!’ and very occasionally ‘GOOOOAAAAALLL!’
When the rain got too much and the mud reached the top of our grey woollen socks, a whistle would blow and we would troop off to visit the panda on his plinth and the mummy in the corner until the sky cleared and we’d dried off.
It wasn’t far, maybe 10 or 15 yards. Sometimes if the teacher (Mr Worthington) wasn’t looking, one or two of us would sneak off for a piss in the bushes.
Once a year, when the sun shone, there would be a maypole and pairs of boys and girls would dance spirals around it to scratchy accordion tunes. Weaving the coloured ribbons in and out. Making patterns, folk dancing – the old ways, football and witchcraft – weird ideas.
A place where time seemed to misbehave or stop.
I think, What better place to spend a few hours on a Sunday lunchtime?
It’s 18 May 1980. Another sunny day peeps beneath the orange window blind in my bedroom. Radio 1 for a wake-up call.
Coffee in the kitchen. Pick up the phone and call Gillian.
‘Fancy a trip to the park? Just for a bit. Got to get back and get me packing finished. Or started. Those new trousers Rob got us are a bit on the long side. I got this tape stuff. I don’t know what you’re supposed to do with it though. Are you any good at turn-ups?’
Not the subtlest of hints.
‘See you in a mo’.’ Hang up the green telephone on the kitchen table, check coat pockets for cigarettes and matches and off into the sunshine to pick up Gillian.
Do they actually have No. 6 King Size in the States? I wonder. Probably best to get a few extra packets and stock up just in case.
Stop off at the newsagent’s on the way
In New York, they’re just going to bed after a Saturday night out. The listing for next week at Hurrah (the rock disco) is in the ‘what’s on’ sections of the papers: ‘Wed–Fri May 21–23 – Joy Division – Rough Trade recording artist from Manchester.’
That’s where I’m heading to join the procession of UK new wave exports in what became known as the ‘second British Invasion’ as though someone was keeping some sort of a campaign tally.
I’m excited.
I wonder what the film will be on the plane. Will there even be a film?
How many people can you fit on a Pan-Am jumbo jet? Will we get to go in the upstairs bit? Wonder what’s on American TV?
Rob went over to sort out the gigs a couple of weeks earlier. He’s still complaining about the jet lag.
Wonder what that’s like?
Should I take a bit of dope for when we get there or is that too risky? What’s American dope like? How do you get it? Rob or Tony’ll know.
Rob had taken us all spring shopping in Manches
ter on Friday. Buying us smart new clothes. I am shit at buying clothes. I never look any different, whatever I wear I always end up looking exactly the same. Plus I hate trying stuff on. I once tried on this second-hand black ex-Navy top in the underground market near the Arndale and couldn’t get the bloody thing off again. God, that was embarrassing. Just paid for it.
‘No, I’ll keep it on, it’s fine.’
It must have belonged to a tiny sailor, a midget submariner most likely. I wonder what became of him.
Rob thinks we’re scruffy bastards and should take more care of our appearance.
Ian always does, he’s good with clothes, Bernard’s pretty good too. But me and Hooky – he despairs.
‘S’not that bad for Steve, no fucker can see what he looks like anyway. But you should smarten yourself up a bit.’
Naturally Ian did best at the wardrobe shopping on Friday – carefully choosing, then getting indecisive over which items looked best on him, then talking Rob into getting him everything. I just grabbed a pair of baggy grey trousers as an afterthought so as not to be left out. They looked sort of all right but even I could tell they were too long. How do you fix that?
‘Get Gillian to do it for you,’ Rob advised.
‘Good idea, fancy a pint?’
Then on Saturday – yesterday – back in Manchester again. Ian wanted to take stuff back from the shopping expedition, swap it for what he now thought he really wanted. He seemed a bit unsure generally. Not that this is unusual at the moment. In a bit of a quandary he is – a lot of one actually. Annik on one side, Debbie and Natalie on the other. Us – the band – on one hand, being ill and tired on the other.
All those chickens coming home to roost all at the same time. What to do? Can it get any worse? Will it ever get any better? Weather the storm? We were often a bit comically depressed, you know, grim-up-north stoic young men.
It’s all them other bastards’ fault – if it wasn’t for them . . . That chip again – not fully paranoid but defensive in that little world of our own we shared together. A kind of glue you wouldn’t understand and couldn’t ever talk about or even mention. Trying to defeat the world and all the problems it gave us. If we just keep on playing, it’ll all go away; do another gig. The hifalutin I’d taken to reading called it a ‘belief system’ or more aptly a ‘reality tunnel’, as if knowing what it’s called helps.
So, indecisive Ian was in the Cortina on Oxford Road that Saturday, just in front of the BBC. Not gloomy though – never that gloomy to me.
‘Drop us here, here’s fine.’
Smiling as he got out of the car.
‘Not going back to Macc then?’
‘Might do later on.’
Since he and Debbie had split up, he’d been a bit ‘no fixed abode’. He’d stayed with Tony and his wife, Lindsay, in Charlesworth and with Bernard for a bit. Then back to Debbie.
‘OK, see you at the airport then,’ I said. ‘You want to try that Mexican over there on the corner. It’s really good.’
‘Oh yeah, might do that, bit peckish. See you tomorrow at the airport. Tara.’
And off he scampered across the road through the traffic.
I autopiloted the car back up the A34 in silence – radio’s fucked again.
* * *
An ordinary run-of-the-mill, half-hearted Saturday night in Macc and I was back at home watching telly on my own. Waiting for the Herzog film on BBC2, 9 p.m. Stroszek, another weird movie from Werner Herzog – a favourite in the Joy Division Film Club. We like weird. That’s what they called me at school, weirdo, so it’s only natural that I should. The movie was about a German busker fleeing his home for a life in America and trying to understand and fit into an alien landscape. No big production numbers or bells and whistles. Just simple, witty, straight but weird and to the point. My eyes got a bit heavy halfway through but I managed to keep up with the subtitles. The ending was beautifully poetic, thought-provoking. My thoughts were definitely provoked.
So that was Saturday.
‘Shit! Forgot to bring the trousers.’
‘Never mind, you can always do it later. You’ve got loads of time.’
So off we trek, Gillian and me. I think of parking in the hospital car park but change my mind and cheekily park up right next to the museum with the clearly marked no parking bays.
‘It’s Sunday, who’s going to be bothered?’
We wander round the park. Watch old geezers rolling bowls on the green before dinner, try and find the plaque – I’m sure there used to be one – that explains how the giant boulder got there. We wonder what the three stone pillars are about and why they’re positioned there.
‘I used to play football here,’ I say as we make our sunny way across the keep-off-the-grass verge back to the museum.
Ever had a song suddenly appear in your head for no reason? Well the Doors’ ‘The End’ pops into my head and won’t leave. It’s had a whole new lease of life since Apocalypse Now, but there are no Huey helicopter gunships making their way across the valley from the cemetery. No burning trees. No grunts on patrol shout, ‘Medic!’ None of that.
I say to Gillian, ‘Funny, “The End” just started playing in my head for no reason all. The intro and that and Jim singing “No safety or surprise.”’ (In the years to come, I’ll find out that Debbie imagined hearing the same song earlier on the same day.)
‘Mm, we’re not going in the museum are we?’
‘Why not? Go on, let’s go and see the panda.’
And we do. First the mummy then the panda. It’s as unaware as I am, but Jim keeps going on about friends and killers before dawn, over and over.
Just across the road from the museum is the mortuary, like it was planned alphabetically. Keep the Ms together.
I drop Gillian at hers and nip home for the troublesome trousers.
The green telephone on the kitchenette rings.
‘Probably for me!’
It is for me. It’s Hooky . . .
‘It’s Ian . . .’ he says. ‘He’s done it again.’
From the way he says it, I can guess what ‘it’ is.
‘No! He’s not tried to top himself again has he?’
‘No, he’s done it . . .’
‘What, he’s had another go? An overdose or . . . where is he?’
‘No, Steve, he’s actually done it, he’s gone . . . dead . . .’
‘What? Are you sure? How do . . .’
‘I’ve tried calling Rob. I don’t know where he is.’
‘Yes, best tell Rob.’
Numb shock. That feeling of no feeling of all, the feeling being sucked from you and being replaced by a fog of disbelief. Like getting punched in the face for no reason.
It must be a mistake. It has to be. What do we do now? It’ll be a mistake. Only an attempt. Stupid, stupid bastard!
‘I’ll try and find him . . .’ Hooky says.
I sit quietly blank for a while. There must be something I can do, something someone can do.
Rob’ll ring up in a minute and say it’s all been a mistake. He will, or Tony.
I put the phone down.
Pick it up again and call Gillian and try and recount what I’ve just heard, what may or may not have just happened.
She’s shocked and confused and the chain letter of disbelief goes on.
I still think we’ll be going to America, still think we’ll be getting on that plane.
‘But you can’t, how can you?’
‘Oh, it’ll be all right.’
‘No, it won’t.’
Gillian is right, as usual.
This wasn’t Ian’s first attempt at meeting his maker. The previous one had been filed under the ‘cry for help’ heading. Highly strung, his illness and its heavy medication, his emotional predicament and exhaustion all likely suspects. Oh, and artistic temperament. With the lead singer CV comes the right to act the petulant child at a toy-hurling competition and take things to the extreme. Ian could at times get incandesce
nt about minor things.
He’d taken an overdose at the start of April 1980. Just after the Rainbow, Moonlight endurance test. Maybe by accident, maybe not, the day before a gig at the Derby Hall, Bury. I remember a phone call from Rob saying Ian was in hospital getting checked over after trying to end his life.
‘Well, I suppose the gig’s off then,’ I said logically enough, at the risk of stating the obvious.
‘Oh no, I still think we should do it. I’ve got an idea . . .’
‘What? He’s just nearly killed himself and you think we should still do the gig? It’s not that important – a gig in Bury. It’s a fucking mad idea, Rob.’
‘No, he wants to do it.’
It really was the maddest thing I’d ever heard. I know there was a sense of pride involved of the ‘Joy Division don’t cancel gigs even if the singer’s dying’ variety but, really, it was a recipe for disaster. It had BAD VIBES in block capitals all over it. Surely Rob or Tony or Alan would see that and postpone the gig for a bit.
No one likes letting people down, and going on and on about what a bad idea something is just gets you labelled as boring, negative or awkward. Usually getting a ‘tut’ accompanying the comment, ‘Fucking musicians,’ from Tony. No, nobody wants that, especially not when things are going a little bit (to put it mildly) ‘off the rails’.
No, think positive, it’ll be fine. So that’s what we did – except I honestly reckon we all thought, No, this is a really bad idea and sooner or later someone will actually say so but it’s not going to be me.
So you’ve got an emotional, frayed, ill, medicated, post-suicidal singer – what’s going to make him feel better?
Why, doing a gig of course. What could possibly go wrong?
The good people of Bury had paid for a Joy Division gig. Most of the crowd would have seen us before and had a good idea what we looked like. There was no small print or announcement that the Joy Division that had come to watch might not be the full Joy Division. If there was, it was either very small or very quiet.
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