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Joy Division, Part Two

© Jason C. Reeher

By the dawn of 1980, Joy Division was in full bloom. The Manchester, England-based post punk band was one of the hottest and most talented rock quartets on the planet, and the new decade promised a wider audience and hopefully, global recognition. But if four unique and powerful musicians made up Joy Division, they would never survive the loss of any one member, and they knew it.

Mercurial singer Ian Curtis was getting worse; his epilepsy struck at odd times, sometimes even while the band were on stage. This created an atmosphere of uncertainty for Joy Division, although audience members often turned out to see if Curtis would have a seizure, a bizarre spectacle to fit Joy Division’s bleak image. Curtis would later write the lyrics to “Atrocity Exhibition” with this in mind: “For entertainment they watch his body twist/ behind his eyes he says ‘I still exist.’”

If the band was unaware of Curtis’ declining mental health – as they later claimed – then the music-buying public was completely oblivious. It wouldn’t be until after Curtis hanged himself in his home, in May of 1980, that the realization of his condition would become fully apparent. Curtis’ marriage was on the skids, his health was lousy, and he didn’t want to tour America, as planned. Although cynics would say that his early demise was inevitable, given the darkness of his music, Ian Curtis seemed to simply fold under the multiple pressures of his difficult everyday life.

Yet, the band would still achieve a measure of success. In April, before Curtis died, Joy Division would release what would become their best-known song on either side of the Atlantic, “Love Will Tear Us Apart.” The single, a masterful mid-tempo ode to the dissolving of a relationship, has been called one of the best rock songs of all time by SPIN Magazine. It later became a staple video of MTV’s popular “120 Minutes” alternative rock show.

The band had always agreed that they would dissolve Joy Division if any member could not (or would not) participate. They released their final studio album, the brilliant “Closer,” in July of 1980. One of the most personal rock albums of the post-punk era, it was a classic, and sold well in the U.K. in spite of (of perhaps, to some degree, because of) Curtis’ well publicized death. Including such great Joy Division songs as “Isolation,” “Colony,” and “Decades,” the final LP was the pinnacle, albeit an untimely one, of the band’s short history.

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