# Joy Division Manchester post-punk band, active 1976–1980. Only released two studio albums in their lifetime, but they're one of the most influential bands to come out of the UK post-punk moment — cold, cavernous, minimal, and inseparable from the death of singer Ian Curtis at 23. Companion note to [[Misc./Music/New Order|New Order]], which the surviving members formed afterward. ## Formation Formed in Salford in 1976 by Bernard Sumner (guitar/keyboards) and Peter Hook (bass) after they saw the Sex Pistols play Manchester's Lesser Free Trade Hall — one of the most mythologised gigs in British music, credited with kicking off a whole generation of Manchester bands. They initially played under the name Warsaw, with Ian Curtis on vocals and, after a couple of drummer changes, Stephen Morris settling in behind the kit. They renamed themselves Joy Division in early 1978 to avoid confusion with the London punk band Warsaw Pakt — the new name came from *The House of Dolls*, a novel referencing the forced-prostitution wings of Nazi concentration camps, which is part of why the band later drew (denied) accusations of fascist sympathies, a controversy that dogged New Order too over the years. ## Sound Where a lot of their punk contemporaries were still playing fast and loose, Joy Division under producer Martin Hannett became something colder and more controlled: sparse, echoing, bass-forward, with Hook's basslines often carrying the melody while Sumner's guitar became texture and atmosphere rather than riffing. Hannett's production — famously obsessive, using early digital delay and gating to make the band sound like it was playing in a vast empty room — is as much a part of the "Joy Division sound" as the songwriting itself. Curtis's droning, doom-laden baritone and his stiff, trance-like "epileptic" dancing on stage (related to his actual epilepsy, not an affectation) became as iconic as the music. ## Albums - *Unknown Pleasures* (1979) — debut, recorded in about two days, released on Factory Records. Cover is the now-ubiquitous stacked-pulsar-waveform image (from a radio astronomy textbook), reproduced on more t-shirts than almost any other album cover in music history. - *Closer* (1980) — released in July 1980, two months after Curtis's death. Bleaker and more overtly about death and collapse in retrospect, though it was written and largely recorded before he died. ## Singles and Ian Curtis's death Joy Division were never really a singles band commercially during their lifetime — "Love Will Tear Us Apart" is the exception. It was recorded and initially released in April 1980, but distribution problems delayed it reaching shops until 12 May 1980. Curtis died by suicide in the early hours of 18 May 1980, hanging himself at his home in Macclesfield, the night before the band was due to fly to the US for their first North American tour. He was 23. He'd been struggling with epilepsy (including seizures onstage and reactions to his medication), a failing marriage, and depression. Factory Records re-released "Love Will Tear Us Apart" on 27 June 1980, just weeks after his death; it became the band's only actual UK chart hit (No. 13) and is now generally regarded as one of the greatest singles in British music history — inevitably read now as a kind of unintentional epitaph. "Atmosphere" is the other posthumously-elevated classic, originally a French-only single before being reissued and eventually charting in the UK in 1988. ## Aftermath The three surviving members — Sumner, Hook, Morris — regrouped later in 1980 as New Order, adding Gillian Gilbert. See [[Misc./Music/New Order|New Order]] for that half of the story. Joy Division's Factory Records-era catalogue was later compiled on *Substance* (1988) and various reissues; the band has been the subject of the film *Control* (2007, Anton Corbijn) and Deborah Curtis's memoir *Touching from a Distance*. ## Notes to self - Listen straight through *Closer* again knowing it was largely finished before Curtis died — curious how much of the "about his own death" reading is retrospective projection vs. genuinely there in the lyrics. - Look into Martin Hannett's production techniques in more detail — he's as much a character in this story as any bandmember. - Maybe worth a note on *Control* (2007) and/or *Touching from a Distance* separately if I ever watch/read them. - Tony Wilson / Factory Records / Haçienda note is still on the list from the New Order entry — applies here too.