Bandsplain - Joy Division with Anthony Anzaldo

Episode Date: March 23, 2023

Joy Division made a huge impact in a very short amount of time. The iconic Manchester outfit that would tragically have to turn the page and become New Order were formed quickly in the wake of a Sex Pistols show, and released some of their most prominent tracks after the passing of their lead singer, Ian Curtis. Anthony Anzaldo of the band Ceremony joins Yasi to explore this shooting star of a band that helped bring in a new sound and way of doing things.  You can follow Anthony Anzaldo via his band on Twitter @Ceremony Listen to songs we detail in the episode HERE This episode includes discussion of suicide. Please keep this in mind when deciding if, how, and when you’ll listen. For resources on these topics, visit spotify.com/resources. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi, I'm Erica Ramirez, founder of Ili, and host of What About Your Friends? A podcast dedicated to the many lives of friendship and how it's portrayed in pop culture. Every Wednesday on the ringer dish feed, I talk to my best friend Stephen Othello and your favorites from within the ringer and beyond about friendships on TV and movies, pop culture and our real lives. So join me every Wednesday on the ringer dish feed where we try to answer the question TLCS back in the day, what about your friends? This episode includes discussion of suicide. please keep this in mind when deciding if, how, and when you'll listen. For resources on these topics, visit Spotify.com slash resources. What's with this band anyway?

I don't get it. Can you please explain? Wait, like, Bansplain? Hello and welcome to Bandsplain. I am your host, Yossi Sallick. This is a show where I invite an expert guest on. to explain cult bands and iconic artists to me and to you. Today's episode is about Joy Division. If you've never heard Joy Division,

love is not what will tear us apart, babe. My guest today is Anthony Anzaldo, iconic guitar player for the California band ceremony, and also more recently, Cold Cave. Welcome to the program, Anthony. What an intro. Did I do you justice? You did me more than justice. You did a great job. Thank you for having me. I'm quite honored, honestly.

Not that we haven't had, like, other beautiful people on the show before, but, like, I'm particularly disappointed that this is an audio-only program today because people are not able to take in the splendor of your hair. I'm having a very good hair day. Yeah, you guys are missing it. There's a volume situation that, like, is gravity-defying. And, and, and so. stunning. She is a truth teller. Before we dive in to Joy Division, I just want to say up top, trigger warning. I'm so sorry, but I just, this story, if you don't know, there is suicide in this story. It's very tragic and sad. That being said, this is a podcast where we play around. We do jokes. So just, I just wanted to say upfront, obviously, suicide is extremely serious. And if you

are suffering from any, you know, thoughts or ideas around that. Please, please, please, please seek help. There's so many avenues, but we are going to make some jokes. So it doesn't mean we don't take it seriously. It just means we like lulls on this program. Two opposing truths are both true. Both true, exactly. That TW aside, Anthony, tell the good folks at home why you are the guy.

to talk about Joy Division. Well, I don't really have an answer for that question, apart from you asking me and I jumped at the opportunity. With that said, I love Joy Division very much, obviously. They were sort of the gateway for me as a punk who got into, you know, more melodic and atmospheric and metal-cal, you know, insert, you know, adjective here. They were sort of the gateway not only for me, but for a lot of us. And they were able to open a whole new world of guitar-based music that was sort of acceptable as a young punk to dive into,

which then led me and many people like me on a path that we're still on now. The thematic and lyrical approach, I'm sure we'll dive deep into Ian's lyrics later, but that was, I mean, hearing those words within the context of punk, that is, was quite, you know, we all marveled at that. Right. It wasn't, you know, I am the Antichrist. I am an anarchist. Correct. Which we loved as well. Sure. We just didn't know that. No. No. Opposite of shade. Light. Yeah. Big light on your dog. Big light on your dog. We should start that going in just laying. But we, I just could not have conceived, with, Without Joy Division, I could not have conceived that thing, which is those words and that

musical approach was possible. So what I'm hearing is that without Joy Division, you would still be a punk and not a goth. I mean. Just to like simple. For lack of a better. Yes. Yes. Yes.

Truth. It's like TLDR, you know. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I would never have found Rick Owens. Yeah. I mean, not, not no, not no.

Well, that's good enough for me. Let's get started. And I'm really sorry, not to like Ken Burns, but I need to talk to you about Manchester a little bit before we get started. It's the industrial revolution, okay? Change is happening in Manchester. The population is booming, expanding at an astonishing rate. This is around the turn of the 19th century.

There's like, new ways of thinking are brought by all these new people and like free trade and there's new religious sex and new forms of labor organization. There's visitors from all around coming and being like, wow, this is like a city of the future. It's like a golden age, right? Industrial Revolution did also bring with it besides wealth, wage gap, if you will, poverty, squalor. It's dark, babe. Okay, it's dark. And then, as if that's not bad enough, the First World War happened. and the economy tanks because they suffer greatly from the Great Depression that comes after.

And then, don't worry, it's World War II. And we're getting bombed, bitch, okay? Like Manchester, by the late 1940s, there are air raids all over the fucking place. The Christmas blitz happens. December 1940, they dropped 474 tons of explosives on this poor city. The war is over. Economy continues to tank. Manchester's lost 150,000 jobs. This is bleak. This is dark. This is deking. This is decrepit.

This is a Dickensian landscape. Okay, this is where our story begins. This is the backdrop into which our heroes are born. Ian Curtis was born July 15, 1965. That's right. He was a Leo, which will become abundantly clear the more we get into this story. He was born in Manchester on St. Swithin's Day. Anthony, are you familiar with St. Swithin? I have not. I've never heard of that before. St. Swithin was an Anglo-Saxon bishop of Winchester, okay?

However, nobody cared about that while he was alive because he died, and that's when I think they made him a saint, because he had a reputation for posthumous miracle working. I'm just pointing out that this man was more famous in his death than his life, much like Ian Curtis. Ian Curtis's parents, Kevin and Doreen Curtis. That's right. His dad was a cop. I know, rough.

Detective Officer and the Transport Commission Police. They lived in Macklesfield outside of Manchester, kind of between Manchester and Sheffield. He had a younger sister named Carol. He grew up loving, reading books, poetry. He was a little reader. Apparently his father had written several plays that had never been published, thwarted, a thwarted office.

author, but so it ran in the family. And he was a good enough student that they gave him a scholarship to this like better school where like the posh kids go and the smart kids, whereas like he was like very working class. It's called the King's School. This is important, I feel like, because this is the very first time that Ian will be sort of like between two worlds of like this sort of like more elevated posh, affluent, but also like intellectual situation and like where he comes from, which was like a working class council block. And I feel like that dichotomy sort of defines him for his whole life. Would you agree? Absolutely. I mean, that's his role in the band. So in his widow, Debbie's book, she says that he was a performer from a very early age.

He like at first wanted to be a stunt man. Let's just say he loved a job. attention. In high school, he got really into music, right? MC5, Roxy Music, Velvet Underground, David Bowie. Glamming it up. Yeah, it was like you were either into glam or you were into like metal, basically, or whatever, like hard rock. Right, right, right. Or disco, which we're not quite at disco yet, but that was sort of the main situations happening. Here's the thing about Ian. He loves drugs, babe. He loves drugs, okay? He starts doing drugs. with his mates in high school.

He had this best friend named Tony. Their school had them do, like, social services. And what Ian and his, like, mates would do as their social service was they would, like, go visit elderly people who, like, lived alone to, like, keep them company. But what they would also do while they were there is be like, oh, can I use the bathroom? And then they would steal whatever prescription drugs they had in their medicine cabinet and take them. That's not. That's bad. That's a bad thing to do.

It's a bad. Don't do that, you guys. Actually, don't do that. The elderly need their medication. Yeah, like, literally, like, took this schizophrenia medication from this one old woman, and basically he had OD didn't have to have his stomach pumped. So this is, like, this is quite young. This is, like, preteen, teen-ish time. I mean, he was at death's doorstep for many years.

Yeah. It's really sad. He was, yeah, it's, well, yeah. But you know what? He did okay in school. According to Debbie, when, because Debbie and Ian meet in high school, right? She was dating Tony, the aforementioned Tony Nuttall, and that's how they met. According to her, when Mott the Hooples, all the young dudes,

Ian got really obsessed with this song, according to Debbie, specifically the lyrics, which are, like, about dying before you're 25. He also idolized people like Jim Morrison who died at their peak. This is a quote from Dibby. Debe is how you say it in their parlons. Debe. Another thing I thought was interesting was that when, because I think everyone has an idea, a visual idea of Ian Curtis in their mind in this like very utilitarian like Berlin gallerist clothing, right? But at this time, again, because glam was how.

happening. When Debbie first met him, he was wearing, like, eyeliner and, like, a pink fur coat. Yeah, it's a trip. You know, he's been so mythologized, you know. He, like, it just permanently exists, like, in an Anton Corbin, like, like, like, landscape. Yeah. But much like yourself, you know, like, who would never have gotten to Rick Owens, would never have gotten out of your bondage pants or whatever it was that you were wearing when you were in your punk era. he too could have been stuck with a pink fur coat on forever if he had him been saved. But yeah, it's so interesting to think about him in a demystified way.

Right. Because the world, we've all just adopted him and have projected our own identity onto Ian Curtis, partly based in truth, but of course there was just so much more. just a whole other other side and this that's just such a trip to learn about i think that is something that i was really interested in while i was like doing the research for this because i was like okay nobody is just this one-dimensional you know and like and if you're preserved in amber because you died so before your time you're going to sort of and you know what maybe some people to some people that's good you know like then you never did anything embarrassing you know like

You never had a chance, as we love to say, some of these people would have ended up DJing at a Coachella after party with some leather wristbands on if they had lived long enough to bend towards cringe because we all bend towards cringe eventually. It's simply what it is. Yeah. Or even just knowing that like, you know, I listened to this interview with Steve and he was like, yeah, nobody would ever think that Ian ever would smile. Right. Or laugh or whatever. Or laugh, but he was smiling and laughing and having fun with us all of the time. That's how I remember Ian.

I remember Ian in color, and the world remembers him in black and white. Well, I guess we didn't fucking help that situation, one Anton Corbgen, if you will, and I'm so sorry to say it, but that movie, I don't care for it. I have a feeling we'll have different takes. So Tony breaks up with Debbie, and there's. her and Ian start dating. Him and Tony stayed friends and they were like really into Valium. Tony said, taking Valium was meant to be fun. There was never anything sinister about it, but it got out of hand. That had a lot to do with this romantic image. Taking drugs seemed a good image. Tony goes, when I was told he killed himself.

Sorry, spoiler. My first thought was what an indulgent bastard he is. There was no need to do it. What he really wanted to do was play rock and roll. I think he was doing what he wanted to do. The theatrical way he did it suggests, He did enjoy theater. He did enjoy his theatrics affecting other people. I thought that was so, like, you could tell he caught himself before saying something sort of fucked up. But, like, I guess he's just pointing to the fact that he was always, like, someone who did things for effect. Yeah, I mean, I think that, you know, any lead singer has that has that in their,

their bones and their DNA to some degree. Obviously, this is to the extreme. But he did, again, spoiler, the evidence is there in that he took his own life at the house that his wife was living at that he at the time was not. He knew who was going to find him. Yeah. Okay. Sorry, we've gotten to the end of the story already and we're just in the beginning. We're in the beginning. That's what makes this story so interesting is that there's so many, there's so many crumbs. Right. And it's like, it's so many people who were close to him have said, I can't believe I didn't see it coming. Yeah. Oh my God. That was like the running through line through all of these, you know, pieces of media and books. I got the sense that they were all like, but I, but I promise,

like, we didn't know. And it's like, nobody said, nobody said it was false. Right. Right. And it's important to keep in mind that all those people, all these people who were saying that, were 22 at the time. They were literally kids. Literally kids. Okay, anyways, back to the timeline. So Ian and Debe's first date was to a David Bowie concert at the hard rock in Manchester. According to Debbie, Ian was actually like freakishly obsessed with David Bowie. Like, he had his autograph. He had Trevor Boulder's autograph. He had McRonson's autograph. He had one of Woody's broken drumsticks. He had a guitar string. He was collecting. I mean, he was, he was a stand, you know, he was a Bowie Stan. But back to what Debbie said in the book. She said,

through him, I began to learn about James Dean, Jim Morrison and Janice Joplin. Anyone who had been involved in the young, arty medium of any form of show business and found an early grave was of interest to him. When he told me that he had no intention of living beyond his early 20s, I took it with a pinch of salt, assumed it was a phase, and that he would grow out of it. Okay, I'm so sorry, but just like to juxtapose that with like everyone being like, we had no idea. Anyways, he said for like 10 years that he's going to live past 25, but we literally had no, I mean, it was such a shock. It came out of nowhere. She also said, I tried to keep a hold of my old friends, but I was not successful, mainly because Ian strongly objected to them.

Without me realizing he began to take control of my life very early on in our relationship. I disliked drawing attention to myself, and in retrospect, I think that was one of my main assets for Ian. I was there as an accessory with little danger of ever outshining him. There's a lot of stuff. She says she stopped wearing makeup because he said, quote, I looked better without it. When she was studying at college, he didn't like her to wear a short skirt there. He wanted her to wear her pants. didn't want to wear makeup there because there was men there. So these are the things that she's saying in her book about what their relationship was like. She also says that he was very loving and would take her on these beautiful long walks. He was very romantic. Also, I just want to mention this because going on it becomes sort of a thing where like later his bandmates are surprised when they start to see it. But Debbie saw it early on. She said that he always had a temper. She said, I'm not sure Ian himself knew why he would suddenly become so angry. He seemed to have a great deal of hate inside that was always

directed at those closest to him. Late in the spring of 1973, he quits the King's School. His family moves to Manchester. He drops out of the second school he goes to where he's supposed to do his A-levels. He just, like, wasn't into it. He gets a job at a place called Rare Records. This is a really important job for him. He, like, studied for the interview by reading all these back copies at the music press,

and he was, like, so thrilled when he got the job. He was in the pop department in the... the basement. Might surprise you to learn, I don't know, during this time, Ian was super into reggae music and dub music. That was actually what he was most into when he was working at this record store. Isn't that interesting? It's very interesting. I don't hear any of that in the music he made. If I didn't, you know, know that Ian was sort of the maestro behind Joy Division, you know, they always talked about how he would always instruct them to go more down, down this avenue or play something that sound like this. You know, they all look to him, right? But normally,

or in many cases, you know, the singer who does not play an instrument is just laying a vocal on top of the music that's already created. So I would say, well, that was, well, that's just what he was into, and that just didn't make its way in because they weren't writing that kind of music for him. But he had a very big influence on the sonic and the musical style that was Joy Division. He only works there for a year, and then he needs to get sort of like, I guess, a more real job. And he becomes a civil servant working for the government. In April of 1974, Ian and Debbie get engaged. They are really young.

I'm confused. This is a first strong confusion for me. Why are you as a 19-year-old getting engaged? It's such a trip. It's such a trip. I'm just so confused. Like, it doesn't make any sense. I think it probably goes back to he just wanted to have some sort of possession over Debbie.

I think any person that young who gets married, acts impulsively. That's an impulsive decision. Yeah, totally. That's a good point. And if what Debbie is telling us in her book and what have you, is true that she, you know, it makes sense that he would want to have her. Right. Totally. So it was a guitar to pay for the engagement ring. It was 1750 pounds sterling. Debbie's parents offered to either pay for an engagement party for the whole family or an 18th birthday party for her. She wasn't 18 yet. And her friends.

And she said, Ian chose that we should have an engagement party. He was fond of telling me that his friends did not like me. He also pointed out that an engagement party would mean presents for our future together. But an 18th birthday party would mean presents for me personally. That's some 19-year-old shit, babe, to care about the presence, right? But they're 19. Or he's 19.

At the party, according to Debbie, Ann saw her dancing with one of her younger uncles, and he got really mad and threw a Bloody Mary in her face. Man, the dichotomy of this person will never seem normal to me. Like, you could be so childish and so immature. And, I mean, that's an understatement, obviously. But then, right. The most profound lyrics of all time.

Right. as a 20-year-old. Yeah. He was a lot of different things. And not all of them were good. Okay. But a notable and more fun memory from the engagement party is Debbie remembers him dancing at the party, which she describes as very similar to the dancing he later became famous for doing on stage. Which I think is very funny and interesting because it almost leads you to believe, like, this is just like what he thought dancing was.

Not like it was, yeah, right? Like it was like so much was made of it. Like it was this like artistic show and it's like, I think he just maybe that's how he danced. That's how he danced. Yeah. Arms and elbows. They get married August 23rd, 1975 and wears an absolutely insane shiny peach colored pinstripe suit. It is ugly, but it was the 70s.

Debbie says he later told Lindsay Reed, who was Tony Wilson's first wife, that he had thought about canceling the wedding because he knew in his heart that he would eventually be unfaithing. He was right. He was right, yeah. So they lived for a while with Ian's grandparents after this, who like take care of them, do every single thing for them, and then they finally move into their own place. Now, meanwhile, let's go to Peter Hook. Okay. Hooky. He was born Peter Woodhead, February 13, 1956, an Aquarius in Salford, which is not the same as Manchester.

It's a different place, but very nearby. He changed his name to Hook when his parents got divorced and his mom remarried a man named Ernest Hook. As a teen, he was a skinhead, self-reported, which back then did not mean racist. It meant being into ska and reggae. So he was also really into reggae and ska. And he was really into the Upsetters and the Pioneers, Desmond Decker, stuff like that. Get up in the morning, slave, a professor so that every mouth can be there. He got a record player in fourth year.

He bought one from a friend. He didn't have any money left to buy any records. So he shoplifted his first few records where he simply just grabbed two records from a jukebox that was selling them or something without even looking. And they ended up being Ruby, Don't Take Your Love to Town by Kenny Rogers. And the Green Monolishi by Fleetwood Mac. But the first music he really, really, really got into was a song. song called Sebastian by the band Cockney Rebel. Do you know this song? No. This song is seven minutes long. It is very dramatic. They were like a sort of like a glam rock band also, but that was when he was like,

oh, fuck, music. So he's been friends or well, they're not friends anymore, but he was friends with Bernard Sumner since their first year at Salford Grammer. Back then he was, Bernard Dickon. Also, everyone called him Barney. Born January 4th, 1956, he's a Capricorn. Makes sense. Him and Hokie would eventually follow it on. Honestly, very, very different types of people. His mom, Laura Sumner, had cerebral palsy. He never knew his father. He was gone before he was born. But he was raised by a stepfather that came into his life, like when he was young, who also had cerebral palsy and officially adopted Bernard, sorry, I think that's how he pronounced it, Bernard,

when he was a kid. So he was called Dickin all through school, which Hockey did mention that they did make fun of him about. Barney Dickon. Salford, I think, might be more working class than Manchester even, but it was like, like the way he described his street growing up, they all had porches, everyone was like sort of in each other's business,

but kind of in like a really sweet and community-oriented way. And like his aunt lived next door and his other aunt lived across the street. And like he had cousins and they would like run around the neighborhood. And like, so he had this like sort of really strong community. And I think that was really important to him because his mom was like a bit abusive and not maybe the most loving and caring mom by his own admission in his book. His first meaningful music moment was at 15 when he heard the song, Ride a White Swan by T-Rex. I think the first music to really, in his words, throw him sideways, was the score to the film The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, by one Inio Morricone.

Anyway, this community that I aforementioned, it really does all of it sort of fall apart. His family moves away from this, like, great street, to a council flat, which was, you know, the advent to be like, oh, this is so much more economical and better use of space and blah, blah, blah, but it's also like way lonely or there's no porch to sit on. You're sort of isolated in these flats. He was really close to his grandparents, especially his grandfather, was sort of like a surrogate father. His grandmother got very ill, and then she had a botched surgery, which left her blind, and his grandfather died before he was 18. So he says, suddenly everything had become really fucking serious, and I'd had to grow up fast. I don't think that it's a coincidence that this is when I got more into

because what happened around that time has really influenced the music I've made. I think you can hear the death of the community and the death of my adolescence in my contribution to the music of Joy Division. Wow. I know, right? That's a lot, especially because he played so sparsely in Joy Division. I think what he did in Joy Division is brilliant. But I think he was the most economical member of the band in regards to

their contribution. You're like, you're a do-nothing bitch. I don't know what you're talking about what you brought to Joy Division. I'm just kidding. That's what you're saying in really nice words. No, I'm just kidding. But, no, I get what you're saying.

I took it to be like, okay, like, this is the vibe you brought to the table at the very least, you know? And like, a lot of it was about the chemistry of the members and the vibe that they brought to the music. So, like, whether or not musically it actually presented

in any meaningful way. And maybe it did, again, you know me. I don't tone-depth, don't understand or something. I think it was a meaningful way. I think it being so sparse

and so minimal, it makes sense why, if that's his reasoning. Hookie and Barney and their pal, Tere, Hoke, Barney, Tere,

they start going to shows together, okay? They're a motley crew. They go see Lou Reed. Deep Purple, which Hooky really liked, and Santana. Or among some of the bands that they went and saw together. Bernard said, often they wouldn't let us into gigs because we looked like skinheads, when actually we were suede heads.

Here's the thing. The swadehead subculture was an early 1970s offshoot of skinhead subculture in the United Kingdom and Ireland. The suedeheads grew their hair longer. They dressed more formally. And they were brogues, low. They were suits in check patterns. Okay? This is the difference.

They also wore, um, colored socks. They were, they were skins with just a little, with, with, with some flare. Silk handkerchief. Anyways, that's neither here nor there. Peter, hookay. He reads about the sex pistols in Melody Maker in 1976. Here's what he says. I had an epiphonet.

I can't help myself. I'm so sorry. First off, I was intrigued by the idea of a group who seemed, I don't know, human compared to bands like Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple, who seemed to a working class tosser from Salford, so out of my league, they might as well have lived on another planet. It was unusual and it was a different culture. It was yobbish, which obviously appealed to me being a yob. Anthony, I don't know if you like myself are a student of the culture of Great Britain,

and thusly I know what a yob is, but do you know what a yob is? I don't know if I know what a yob is. A yob is like, like you would be a yob if you were like working class, weren't like high and mighty, weren't educated, like that's what they call. I'll crack me if I'm wrong British listeners. I'm sure there's going to be an entire Reddit thread about how I got this wrong. But yob, yob, yobo, even if you don't like Joy Division, if you just like goss and mess and feuds, you should read both Peter Hook and Bernard

Sumner's books because they literally just shit on each other both in each book the entire time. And there's a whole like section in Bernard Sumner, Bernard Sumner's book where he's like, I don't know why Peter Hook was so obsessed with us being like calling us these like yobs and like whatever, oakes is another word for it, Oakes. You know, that's not how I identify. Barney was like, my pronouns are not oikyob, babe, okay? So, um, anyhow, here it is. The most important, the most important cultural event of all time, the split in the universe. June 4th, 1976.

The sex pistols play in Manchester for the first time at the Manchester lesser free trade hall. Who organized this? I'll tell you. The Buzzcocks were not quite a band yet. TBQH. They had a name and they had Howard DeVoto and Pete Shelley, but they didn't have the rest of the band. And they really wanted to open.

They wanted to bring the sex whistles there and they wanted to open, but they couldn't get their shit together. So they put it on, but they didn't end up opening this band called Solstice Opened, which is like a straight-up hard rock band. It was 50 pence to get in. and the gig was advertised in the Manchester Evening News, which is how Peter Hook and et al found it. I'm going to tell you something about this,

which I'm sure you know, but for the listeners at home, this was a sit-down show. It was in a theater with seats, which is absolutely hilarious if you think about it with the sex pistols. There were like 40 people there, Max. Here's who was there. Barney, Hookay, Terry, they went together. Who else? Everyone, babe.

Howard DeVoto and Pete Shelley aforementioned. Ian Gray, who we'll talk about a little bit later. Stephen fucking Morrissey, who by all accounts did not enjoy it. Mark E. Smith, you might be familiar. May he rest in peace. Of a band called The Fall. Mick Hucknell, babe. Yeah, maybe you don't know him by that name.

Maybe you know him by his later name. Simply Red. That's right, bitch. Mr. If You don't know me by now. Here's what Peter Hook said about this event. I remember feeling as though I'd been sitting in a darkened room all my life, comfortable and warm and safe and quiet, then all of a sudden someone had kicked the door in

and it had burst open to let in an intense bright light and this even more intense noise showing me another world, another life, a way out. People like Morrissey who didn't particularly like the band, they saw them play, just thought he could actually get on the stage, it's something he'd always wanted to do. And people like Hockey saw them and they thought they can't play. I'll just go out and can I just go and play now. So he went out and bought himself a bass the next day.

Let me ask you, Anthony. Have you ever had a moment like this in your musical career and upbringing? I would like to say yes. But the way that all of the first gen, I guess 1.5 gen punks talk about seeing the sex vessels for the first time makes me feel that I haven't. Because it's- Well, yeah. I mean, I think it's impossible to have that exact experience because that was such like a phenomenal, like, it was just nothing like that had ever happened before. But I'm sure you had your own version of like- Of course. Of course. Something, you heard something or you saw something and you were like, oh my God. Like, because basically the gist is they all saw this and they were like, wait a minute, I can do that. That's like the meaningful part of this. Yes. I have definitely had like, you know, I am perhaps the biggest prince fan. on this on god's green earth but i have never with any music i've ever made it hasn't really been

influenced by prince because he's so in another stratosphere he's he's i can't do that core yeah yeah yeah yeah it's like oh i don't even try that he's gay keep girl boss gaslight core as he should totally totally but the joy divisions and the new orders of the world you know i i i could definitely relate with hooky saying that they it felt human where where, you know, the hawkwins of the world and the Led Zeppans of the world felt otherworldly and unattainable, where the sex pistols felt like it was for me. I've, you know, of course, I've had many of those moments finding out about Joy Division being one of them. Gracious.

Which was when I watched Darnie Darko for the first time. Oh, no. Oh, no. Incredible. I love it. Bernard said, for the first time at a live performance, I found I could truly relate to the people on stage. We'd had the same kind of fuck authority attitude ourselves since we were at school, this underlying resentment at being told what to do all the time, how to behave. Then the sex whistles came along and made us feel we were right.

Not only that, they showed us that we'd been right all along. Punk was something giving us a voice for the first time. It justified our outlook. at the time made us feel we were worth something after all. So the Buzzcocks, they had found out about the sex pistols. Howard Devoto, then known as Howard Trafford, had read about the sex pistols in NME, and they were like, oh, they covered a Stooges song. That's cool.

And then at the end of the interview, they said, we're not into music. We're into chaos. And they were like, oh, fuck yeah. But then they couldn't figure out, they were like, we have to go see this band play. This is crazy. They sound amazing. and could not find any information about where they were playing. So Howard and Pete went on down to London on the weekend, went to the sex shop, and found Malcolm

McLaren, and went to him and were like, when are the sex pistols playing next? Isn't that so cool? Sorry, I had to tell that because I found that so cool. Like, you guys don't even know. You just open up, you fire up Spotify, and there's everything. These people drove hours and went and found the manager of the band and asked him when the next gig was. It's incredible. And like, you know, I, I am pretty anti back in my day culture, but that story, it just really illuminates the value that that music once had that it just simply

doesn't have anymore. And the meaningfulness it has to people's lives in a way where it's like, I feel like you value something less when it, the more easily. it is given to you. Yeah, but I don't know. Like, teens are universes, unknowable universes. Like, we were when we were teens, they are now.

I do think that they have their own version of it. We just don't know about it because we're old. Sorry. Totally. I'm sure you are correct. But just to oversimplify it, if there's a record that you've gone to 10 stores to get and you finally get it,

rather than it being a record that someone gives you, for me, The one that I went to 10 stores to get, I will cherish and value more than I would, the one that was given to me. Oh, of course, right. I think this story is just more of a testament to, like, how important the sex pistols were. It was this, like, tesseract in the, you know, like, is just, like, just them existing was such a huge deal. It was this moment that sort of, like, really blew the whole shit up, you know? Totally.

Okay, speaking of that show, everybody in Banchester, who was at that show when started a band. 10% of the attendees there went on to start some of the most influential alternative music ever. Super stars. It's insane. They go home, let's have a band. Barney had a guitar. He had gotten out for Christmas or something with a little red practice amp. So he was like, okay, I'm the guitarist.

And so Hokey was like, right, I'll play bass. Teret was like, I'll sing. And that didn't work out. But they were like, hmm. Barney and Hookie, they're so adorable. They each bought a book, how to play guitar and how to play bass, set about learning how to play guitar and bass. They got in with Richard Boone, who was the manager of the Buzzcocks, and he gave them their first name, which was the Stiff Kittins. They still don't have a band, though, because they don't have a drummer and Terry can't sing. Now it's the second Sex Pistol Show in Manchester. This time the Buzzcocks do open.

They got their shit together. A lot more people were there this time because word has spread, including for sure Tony Wilson. Let's talk briefly about Tony Wilson. He's a major player in this story. As you will know, if you've seen 24-hour party people, one of the best movies of all time, unlike some other movies that are also about this band that I won't mention right now. Tony Wilson was born February 20th, 1950, a Pisces. He worked at Granada TV.

So Granada TV was like a regional TV broadcasting company that provided the TV to all of Northern England. And once again, not to back in my day, but back in the day, even before my day, that's the only TV you had, right? Like, that's it, babe. You live in this part of Northern England? This is all you're saying. He hosted this culture show called So It Goes. And he was one of the early champions of punk. Were you wondering, how did he get into punk music?

Oh, fantastic. I'll tell you. Were you not wondering? That's too bad. You can skip it. Here we go. So, Tony Wilson, has this deadhead friend. It's like burnout deadhead friend in America. And he sends him Patty Smith's horses. He's like, I think you'll like this. Tony Wilson is radicalized by Patty Smith. Then, not that long later, your friend, Morrissey, who is a young lad. I think he's like in school. He's like a schoolboy, mails Mr. Tony Wilson of the TV, of the tele, a copy of a New York Dolls record and says, Mr. Wilson, can you make sure to book more bands like this? What a fucking dork. I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. And then thirdly, Howard Trafford, Howard DeVoto, mails him prior to these sex pistol shows, mails him a cassette of three sex pistol songs. And he says, here's a new group.

we're going to bring them to Manchester in June. I think you'll love them. So this is how Tony Wilson gets into punk. So it goes, I mean, they gave the sex pistols their first ever TV appearance. That's huge. Patty Smith was on there. The Jam, the Clash, Buzzcocks, the Stranglers, Susie and the B&Chee's, Iggy Pop. Actually, Iggy Pop is what killed the show because he cursed so much that they canceled it.

But anyways, that's, we're getting ahead. Ian Curtis and Debbie were also at this second sex pistol show, and so was Martin Hannett, who's also an extremely important character in this story. By all reports from everything else I've read, nobody was like, oh my God, the sex pistols were so good. You know what I mean? Like everyone was like, that was crazy. I loved it. I'm radicalized. Martin Hannett was like, they had a real tight rhythm section.

Absolute love him. What a weirdo. Yeah, you've never heard anything. of these people say, oh my goodness, that one song that they played blew my mind. Right. Like, musically, no one was, no one was a writing home, if you will. Which is interesting because they're, the songs that they made are incredible and hooky. But that, that is strange how the vibe, if you will, and the lifestyle and all that was what really hooked them all in.

No, I'll explain to you and actually producer Jesse, to his credit, did guess. It's because they had probably willfully horrible live sound. Like, it was actually a hallmark of theirs. Like, whoever did their sound made them purposely sound just terrible. So, like, the songs might have been the most gorgeous songs you ever heard in your life. You're not going to make that out. You just have this guy spitting on you, you know? Totally.

Now there's a third Sex Pistol Show in Manchester, different venue, electric circus. It becomes an important venue in our story. This was actually one of the only dates, again, of those of you that listen to the Clash episodes, Anthony, of that ill-fated sex pistols clash Johnny Thunder's damned tour that you'll remember got mostly canceled because Johnny Rotten had got on the tellé and said, fuck or whatever, cunt at the man. And so most of the dates canceled, but this one didn't.

The damned had gotten kicked off the tour. before this happened, but the rest of them showed up, the clash, Johnny Thunders. This is an important event because this is where Barney, Terry, and hooky notice Ian Curtis. Ian Curtis is here wearing a donkey jacket, and on the back, he had painted hate in orange fluorescent paint. Seas one sex pistol show. Just kidding. Whatever? I don't care.

That's sick. If I saw that now, okay, well, actually, if I saw that now, it would be like that you got that hot topic or whatever and it was like made by like Taiwanese children and but back then I would have thought it was really cool. What's cool about that if I may? We know why that's cool, but why earlier when I said I haven't had a like any experience as profound as though they had when seeing the sex crystals is because like now if I were to see something that really moved me, I would research it and be like, oh, look at all this stuff

that is also like this. when they saw the sex pistols, there were like, there was no other things like this. So for Ian to see them and then be inspired to write hate, it wasn't like he saw like, oh, there's this whole like lineage and, you know, and like culturally leading up to this. It was like, it was, it was way more under his volition and his idea to sort of take on that identity rather than, you know, you go see a punk band now. It would be very easy to start wearing botnage pants. that story is written for you where for someone like Ian

to write hate on his jacket now seems kind of insignificant but I could see how inspired it is Yeah I mean I think even like To like zoom out of that sentiment even more Like that was really real You know like you

So many things You couldn't go buy any of that shit Because they weren't I mean you could technically you could go down to the sex shop not the sex job, but like sex the store. But everyone was fucking poor. Like that's the other thing. Like no one had any money.

Like part of the reason that Joy Division looked cool wasn't even on purpose. It was because they wore the clothes that they could afford and a lot of military parkas and stuff. It's fucking balls ass freezing in Manchester if you need to be warm

and you're going to go get the cheapest thing which are these like army surplus. It's post war. Like You know, I think we forget a lot of that, right? That, like, a lot of it was like, hell yeah, it looks fucking sick as hell. But, you know, they did the best with what they had. And they did make style choices, but. But it was all, it was so honest.

It was all so honest. Yeah. And like, it's the same sentiment as you saying, like, things are more meaningful when you have to work to find them. They're also more meaningful when you have to work to make them, you know, like. Absolutely. Absolutely. And next, you'll be hearing me podcasting live from the farm that I love. on where I'm a homesteader.

And I actually won't have time to do this job anymore because I'll be milking the cow and making churning butter. So sorry, enjoy it while you have it. Farmers only, babe, here I come. Okay. So he has hate on his coat. This is what Hook says. Me and Barney were at the top of some stairs looking down and he came up the stairs with

his donkey jacket on and we got talking to him because we'd seen him around. What were our first words to him? Fucked if I can remember. I love Peter Hook. I'm not even sure we found out his name. name that night. He was just a kid with hate on his coat, just a normal kid. Sounds Magazine wrote up this gig and they said, the sentiments that the pistols were great were echoed by most every kid I spoke to. They were certainly all in the process of forming bands. Stiff kittens, hookah, Terry,

Rorae, and Bernard, who has the final word, being the most grotesque offering. Roe was someone they were in the midst of trying out as a singer, but he obviously did not work out. He was their mate from Salford also. Ian has also formed a band. He has responded to an ad that the other Ian, Ian Gray, who has an extra A in his name, has placed at Virgin Records looking for a singer. Ian Curtis is the only person that responded. He showed up in leather pants. Back to his style, not always being what we think it was, he was wearing leather pants and his hate jacket. Rules. Rules, yeah, sick. I'm going to copy that, actually. Another interesting thing about Ian Gray is that he says. So again, Ian's already married. He says that about Ian and Debbie, I've never met a couple

before or since who were so happy. I envied it. Ian was the picture postcard happy guy. So just giving you another angle, another view of the situation from like a bit of an outside source. Another just fun little story from the brief time that they were a band. They went to London to like, you know, fuck around. And Ian ended up going up to Don Lerner. Letts. A lot of crossover here with the Clash episode. And just asking him, do you know any bands in London? Because you look dead cool.

Isn't that cute? Come on. Come on. Funnily enough, he was like, I know one, but they're not ready yet. He was talking about the Clash because this is pretty much. Okay. Anywhood. Their little band, they called it Warsaw. So that's the lasting impact of their band.

It doesn't work out because they cannot find any other members. And I think they found a drummer. but he quit. Martin Jackson was his name. He left to play with magazine and then ended up in a band called Swingout Sister and Peter Hook says, Betty kicks himself now. Icon, legend. Obviously, over on the stiff kittens front, we have a bassist and a guitarist. So Peter Hook was saying there's like a punk philosophy where you're not allowed to take someone else's people or whatever. So they're sort of like tippy towing around that. They put an ad in Virgin Records.

That's one way. That's one story, okay? And people say that Ian responded to that and that's how they became their singer. Hookie remembers it that they saw him at the fourth sex pistol show in Manchester. And they asked him if he still had a group and he said, no, Ian is fucked off, other Ian. And they were like, well, why aren't you come sing for us then? Either way, he becomes part of the band. This is something really interesting that Peter Hook said that I wanted to also talk about briefly.

I do think Joy Division in their own way was as important as the sex pistols in the waves that came after them. Would you agree? 100%. And I'm just interested to point out how quickly that happened. So Peter Hook says, looking back, I wonder if that last pistols gig at the Electric Circus was the night that the allure of punk started to fade for some of us. Once you get the football fans coming, the twats who just want to spit and throw bottles, it's time to move on. And people like the Buzzcocks and then Us Magazine and the Fall and Cabaret Voltaire were eventually able to find a way forward. I found that really interesting because that is true, right?

Like it all starts with like anyone can do this. And as we've often said, just as anyone can doesn't mean everyone should. And they managed to start out. That just gave them the permission to start, but they took it somewhere else. They became good musicians. They wrote really, like, interesting and good songs. They became sort of arty, for lack of a better word. They left that, like, four to the floor just, like, snarly, spitty punk behind.

Kind of by accident, which obviously we'll get into later as well. But, but, yeah, I would say there are probably more bands directly influenced by Joy Division now than there are directly influenced by the Sex Pistols. Totally. Because I don't think the sex pistols musically, while those were good songs, they didn't really reinvent the wheel musically, right? Besides that they sounded shit on stage. They reinvented presentation and an aesthetic and like being good at your instruments or like a not good or whatever. But like when there's a great quote from like about no wave where they were like even the sex pistols still had R&B in their music.

Like we didn't have any of that shit. Yeah, for sure. We removed every remnant. And that's true, right? Like, ultimately, at the end of the day, sex pistols are just making rock music. They just presented it differently. Totally. I mean, the big, the Ramones, the clash, and the sex pistols are obviously like the three from that first era that we all sort of go to. And that's what they all had in common, right? And I think that's probably a reason why, you know, after their initial burst, the sex pistols, their influence was as wide because the Ramones kept going, because the clash kept going.

And they all started doing different things where something like Joy Division, and they only had one album, of course. This is in the Sex Pizzles episode. But I think that Joy Division having two albums and then how they ended, obviously contributed to, you know, their. It was all part of the story, right? Yeah. A lot of things to latch onto with Joy Division, apart from their incredible music. That's so true. It's so. Oh, true, best name. Okay.

So Ian is in the band, bitch. They don't have a name right now. They are between names. Terry, Teret, did not work out a singer, okay? And then he wanted to be guitarist, but that didn't work out either. And then he also became the drummer for one second, but that also didn't work out. So he became the manager. That also didn't work out.

So then he became the sound guy, which also, I'm so sorry to tell you, did not work out. And then he eventually ended up the roadie, which he was for quite some time, we've been through New Order. So terrorist is around. But here's a really important. It's so good. I love him. Honestly, unsung hero of the Joy Division store. We need like an entire Terry Mason biopic. I'm obsessed with him. He's actually a talking head in the Joy Division documentary and he's quite funny. So he did something really important, though, besides being bad at all of the jobs. Peter Hook said it was actually Terry who discovered distortion for us. Ian had a small WEM amp and two columns of 10-inch speakers used for his vocals. Terry didn't have an amp that day, so he plugged

into the whim while Ian wasn't singing. Oh my God, it sounded like choirs of angels, distorted choirs of angels, heavenly. Barney elbowed him out of the way immediately saying, you and Ian use mine. Barney discovered distortion. Once again, the absolute shade that is thrown back and forth in these books. So Ian brings to the table like his entire, like, musical education, right? I mean, he's worked on this record story. He just, he has a deeper understanding of, like, sort of cool, weird music. He teaches them about can, craft work, Velvet Underground, and Iggy Pop, who very interestingly, and again, I'm just reporting what I read, Tony Wilson says in the John Savage book, which is the oral history that actually Debbie was the OG Iggy Pop fan and she's the one that put Ian on to him

which I found very interesting. Wow. Right? Like a huge if true, if you will. Yeah. I mean, I mean that that contextualizes the end of this podcast not to give spoilers a lot differently. Yeah. Right. Okay. So anyways, that's that. Ian Curtis read a lot. Okay. He read a lot of Nietzsche. Sartra, all the fun stuff. J.G. Ballard, he was really into. Oh, obviously William Burroughs. All sort of depressing. Peter Hook said about Ian, he was just a bit more of a gentleman than we were, I suppose you'd say.

Well, a lot more of a gentleman, but he didn't stay that way for long. Soon enough, he was behaving the same way. If a girl walked down the street, he'd be looking too. But that was his personality, though I'm not sure I realized it at the time. But looking back, that's exactly what you. he was, a people pleaser. He could be whatever you wanted him to be. A poetic, sensitive, tortured soul, the Ian Curtis of myth. He was definitely that. But he could also be one of the lads. He was one of the lads, as far as we were concerned. That was the people pleaser in him, the

mirror. He adapted the way he behaved depending on who he was with. We all do a bit, but with Ian, the shift was quite dramatic. That's what we were talking about earlier. That's right. I mean, for how well read and, you know, into art you are, if you're a post-war 20-year-old kid from Manchester, like, you got to have some yab in you. There's some yab in there. Okay. It's time to find a fucking drummer, bitch. Okay.

That's enough fucking around. We need a drummer. We find a guy. Okay. Tony Tobac. That's his real name. Tony Tobac. He's a nice guy and quite a good drummer, according to Hooky, a bit meaden potato.

but good. They play their first ever show, May 29th, 1977. They are still called stiff kittens, although they didn't want to be, and they finally come up with the name Warsaw, but it's too late, and the Buzzcocks manager does bill them as stiff kittens. It's an opening slot, first of three, supporting penetration in the Buzzcocks. They were a bit mad that they were called stiff kittens, but that's how it went down bit. Tadie Wilson is at this gig, so is Paul Morley, who's another important figure in the story. He was a local Manchester bloke, who was also at the time writing for NME and who would go on

to really champion the entire Manchester scene, because he was from there. Also in attendance at this show, Kevin Cummins, you might know him from his gorgeous photographic work of Joy Division, and John the Postman, who was a postman, but also a musician who sang Louis-Louis at the end of

every show. This was memorialized in, I think, both of those films. By and large, as reported by Kevin Cummins, Ian Gray, people, this show is not great. They do not kill it, okay? But there's a bit of a vibe. Is Hokie dressed like a village person? Yes. He's absolutely wearing like a leather or like a pleather cap.

Barney has a mustache. It's a bit of a mess, babe. We're giving a mess, okay? But Ian looked cool. Manager of the Buzzcox said they were very very. very raw and unfocused, but there was an energy and a drive, which was essential. A lot of bands that formed in the wake of that early punk enthusiasm were basically talentless. But Warsaw had something. They had a spirit. Ian always struck me as being a very driven young man.

And if Hookie and Barney just wanted to play a bit, he had something he wanted to exercise. I thought this was a really insightful observation, because you said it a little bit earlier that he was really, really, the maestro. I also, besides being the maestro, which is an extremely important part, he was also the most ambitious. Every band has to have that, right? And I don't know, because I was never in a band, but I've studied at this point. And you, being in bands, I think can attest to this. You need at least one guy who's like, I'm going to die if we don't do this. You need somebody who is all in, at least one person. And it sounds like Ian was absolutely all in, you know?

Like, this wasn't like, he didn't come here to fucking play games, bitch, okay? Right. You need someone who it's not, or it's not work. It's like they, it's something that they have to do. Yeah. As, as Boone said, he had something he wanted to exercise. Okay. Paul Morley reviewed this gig in Enamee.

He said, there's a quirky cockiness about the lads that made me think for some reason of the faces. Damn. Rod Stewart. Twinkling evil charm. Perhaps they played a little obviously, but there's an elusive spark of dissimilarity from the newer bands that suggests they have plenty to play around with.

Time, no doubt, dictating tightness and eliminating odd bouts of monotony. The bass player had a mustache. I like them and will like them even more in six months' time. There's also another review, which was a little bit less generous, that's uncredited, that says, stiff kittens, aka Warsaw, aka whatever they're called next week, rate zero,

even on my Mary, White House odometer. The guitarist must be some refugee from a public school. The neatest thing about the basis is his headgear, and the singer had no impact whatsoever. Wow. They, uh, look, they were growers. It was like their first show. They weren't really a band.

Yeah, anyways, it's fine. Okay. May 31st, 1977, they opened for the heartbreakers. I only bring this up to mention that Peter Hook was so excited for this, and he was so bummed when he got there and they were all backstage passed out because of heroin. Because of the stuff. Meanwhile, Tony Tobac, babe, he's up to some fuck shit, okay? Tony Tobac is absolutely a criminal's name, just F why.

Yeah, oh yeah, yeah, yeah. And unsurprisingly, he was a criminal. He decided he was going to sell pot and his brilliant scheme to succeed at this was by undercutting the prices of all the other dealers. One thing we know about drug dealers is they don't like that. No. They don't like it when you're going to undercut their prices. And so what they did was they shopped him, quote unquote, which I can only assume means

narct on him. And he was arrested and then his parents grounded him and then he wasn't the drummer anymore. So. And then you're under, you're undercutting drug dealers. You're getting arrested. And then what happens? You get grounded. You get grounded.

You're not the drummer. I mean, I don't know grounded. are at there, but they were all, they're like all adults-ish, but they're all still living with their parents and their parents are like, you want to still live here, bitch, you don't go outside, you don't play in a band anymore. But he wishes he had done differently. Anyways, they get a new drummer. Steve Brother Dale, hook says, again, a meat and potatoes drummer, but not bad.

Apart from, he'd always be banging on the ride symbol. It's a fucking hateful sound, the ride symbol used to drive us mad. Also, he brought his girlfriend everywhere, and they did not like that. They were, they hated that, actually, and they would fight with it. him about it. Tale as old as time. Tale is old as time. The girlfriend should not be on the tour.

I did it once and they also all got mad and I get it. June 30th, 1977. Warsaw plays rafters in Manchester. This is where they meet Alan Erasmus. Born April 26, 1949, a tourist king. He is literally the most mysterious man in the world. I'm obsessed with him. There's so little about him and actually nobody has any idea.

he ends up being a founding partner of factory records nobody has any idea what his role is not a clue much like and there always needs to be somebody in the band whose life it is there has to be someone on your team where that nobody knows what they do yeah totally i think he i think those people just bring the vibes they just have the vibes you know totally totally and he did seem really viby also he had an apartment i think that they would work out of so maybe that's what he brought up the table. Yeah. Just a gorgeous detail in Peter Hook's book is that Alan Erasmus once threatened to throw Peter

Saville out a window. Peter Saville, the graphic designer and artist of all the factory records. And Peter Hook said, can't blame him for that, though. Peter can be very annoying sometimes. L-O-O. Never not taking the piss. Never not taking the piss. So this is the first time they meet Alan Erasmus.

It's also the first time they speak to Martin Hannett. He's not there, but he had organized a gig. And the reason they speak to him is they get into a fight with the other band that was playing Fast Breeder about who was supposed to headline. And so they call up Martin. And Martin's basically like, I don't care by. Like, please don't call me. I literally don't give a shit. It doesn't matter.

And Fast Breeders like, they go back to Fast Breeder. They're like, he said we were highlighting. And Fast Breeder was like, okay, fine. You guys can headline. You guys should sound check. And so they did. And then what did Fast Breeder do, babe? They pulled a fast one on them.

They set up their gear. They sound check. And then they left, fucked right off, left all their gear on stage and did not come back until it was time for the headliner to play, which was, in fact, now them because they were playing in that slot. And Warsaw had to go on at the very end where there was nobody left. It was cutthroat in Manchester. Like, this is another thing. These bands all fucking hated each other and they were all, like, out to get each other, which is kind of a funny detail. Which is so interesting because, like...

Except for the Buzzcocks. The Buzzcocks. Right. But there just weren't that, you'd think that in a scene where there aren't that many bands, especially within like a respective genre, that it would just be a little bit more communal. And, you know, there just simply wasn't as much, quote unquote, competition as there is now. There's so many bands, right? Yeah, but I think also there wasn't as much infrastructure either. There's like two places to play. There's, totally. There's only so many shows you can get on. You know, so I think it is like so cutthroat, you know, like in that sense. No, no, yeah, that's a really good point. And I mean, like, if you're slaughtering the dogs and you suck and Joy Division's this good, Warsaw, you're going to be a little competitive.

One of the people that was still in the audience when Warsaw played was a punk girl named Iris, who does later become Hooky's girlfriend and mother of his children. Meanwhile, this gig is important because Ian Gell. that's right pissed, both in the American and English sentences, okay? So he is both wasted and fucking angry. And so they're playing, and a couple of songs in the set, he jumps off the stage and starts flipping tables over. He was like the Hulk. And these tables had glass tops and then glass shatters everywhere.

And then he throws himself on the ground and starts riving around in the broken glass. cuts himself up, like cuts like a 10-inch gash on himself, and the band's just up there playing like, um, what are you doing? What is our man's doing? I think it was a big shock for them because they had not seen this side of him, you know? Right, right. Yeah, they haven't seen the anger yet. Peter Hook makes a good point. He was like, looking back, I think there was a bit of showmanship involved, for sure.

This man is always doing theater. He is an actor. He said, Ian was really into Iggy. and was always pushing us in that direction musically, but I think this was the time that he took on the physicality of Iggy too, prompted partly by him being pissed and partly by this huge fallout with fast breeder. Even so, it was a massive shock to seeing him like that. We'd witness other examples of it, of course, when he'd lose his temper,

usually when he was pissed and start screaming and shouting, but that was the first time. I mean, yeah, and it's one of those things where it's like, you flip one table regardless, if you're Ian Curtis, regardless of if you're like, oh, that was an overreaction, you have to commit and flip all the tables or else you just did something really awkward. And you may as well do something really crazy. Who flips tables? It was like full real housewife hours. It's crazy. I have never seen a table flipped. Not in real life. Yeah, not I don't know. Perhaps we've lived sheltered lives. They drink a lot.

We'll talk about them. They'd be drinking. Okay. It's July 18th, 1977. It's time for our first demo session as Warsaw. They do it at a place called Penin Sound Studios. It's a converted church. Basically, they don't know what the fuck they're doing, okay? And so they go to this and whatever, they pay for a package from this engineer who gives them absolutely no guidance. And they do five songs in three to four hours, because that's all they could afford was that much time. The songs are inside the line, an Ian song, guts for garters, a Peter song. This one has a fun little scream of the word war song in the beginning. Otherwise, this song sucks. I'm really sorry. And also, the lyrics are giving in-sell. It was cool to hear Ian sing my lyrics, which went something like this.

Don't talk to me, girl. You know it's not nice. Don't laugh at murder. I won't pay the price. You're such a chic tart. You're really dressed up. Don't want to talk to you. Just left with your mom. He made a your mom joke in his fucking song. Okay. There's a your mom joke in a Joy Division. song. Incredible. At a later date, which is a Peter song, which is just very much like I heard you like the sex pistols. The kill, the kill, which does turn into a Joy Division songs. I think that's the only thing that survives this demo. And then the song called You're no good for me. Anyway, they're trying to use this tape to get gigs. It's just a tape, demo tape. They task Terry at this time, Tara, he's still the manager, okay? And they're like, Terry, take this tape home, copy them. We don't have money, so you need to copy the tapes. We're not going to get them pressed. and you know, you send them to venues so we can get gigs. But every time Terry would call up a venue, they would be like, no, this is fucking trash. This sucks. We're not booking this band.

Terry came back and he was like, no one wants you, lads. They all say your shit. And they were like, okay, I know we're not like the best band in the world, but like those songs are pretty good. Like, it's not crazy. Yeah, they're songs. They're songs. They're, like, so Hooky is like, can I listen to one of the tapes? Lo and behold, Terry was copying these tapes while.

his mother was watching the program Coronation Street in the same room. So you can absolutely hear the song of the TV show, the whole TV show. Then you hear his mom yelling, Terry, come down. Tea is ready. And this is why Terry stops being their manager. Anyways, they start sending off real good demo tapes with no Coronation Street on them. And they get a gig at Erick's in Liverpool. Eric's are very famous in the punk pantheon.

But then guess what? Tragedy strikes, babe. Steve Brotherdale quits. Devastating. It's hilarious. Drummers. Drummers, the weirdest. But I love them because they're so kooky and weird.

Okay. So there is a band called The Panic with a K. Yeah, it's managed by Manchester music scene, Mover and Shaker Rob Gretton. He's going to plan to the story pretty significantly soon, but not yet. He asked Steve to please join the panic, and he was like, yep, sure, on my way and ditched Warsaw, just like that. No problem. Here's what Peter Hook says. This is very funny. Anyway, he went off to join the panic, and I barely saw him after that.

He stayed around because after the panic, he joined a band called V2. After V2 faded away, well, I went in a McDonald's about 10 years ago, ordered a quarter-pounder, no ketchup, no cheese. Just a sidebar that's an absolutely demonic McDonald's order. I just must say that's, you know, You're a fucked up one for that, okay? Throwing that tidbit in a brag is it. I'm like, you're weakening your position. Talk dichotomy. Okay. No ketchup, no she is.

And the guy serving me went, okay? And I went, yeah? He said, don't you remember me? Steve Brotherdale. There he was. Let that be a lesson to you. The story takes a dark turn because then he says, the next I heard of him was in 2009 in the Manchester evening news when he was banged up for stalking his ex-wife,

sad to say. Damn. Hooky threw Steve Brotherdale under the bus, ran over him, threw that shit in reverse, ran back over him. Yeah. Yes. Yes. And you know what? Well deserved.

Well deserved bus throw. I can't stop. I'm just like he said this man served me at McDonald's. Yeah. If I was Steve Brotherdale, I would not have drawn attention to this. Anyways, okay, that's what happens to Steve Brotherdale. They play some ads for a new drummer, okay? And Virgin Records in Piccadilly, and Ian puts one up in the Jones Music Store in Macklesfield.

Enter Stephen Morris. Born October 28, 1957, a Scorpio. Steve says, the first two groups I got into were Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention, and the week after, it was the Velvet Underground, and that was it. I was into punk rock before punk rock, which was the MC5, in the first Stooges album. Anything that wasn't disco. Steve was cool.

Steve rules. And if I may say, a beautiful man. A goddamn gorgeous beautiful man. Gorgeous man. Really? Honestly, no one talks about this. The hottest member of Doidovision. It's because he's in the back.

I know. No one looks at the drummer. Sorry, drummers. You should never put the hottest guy on the drums. Until they put him on a record cover years later, but this is not. And then everyone was like, who is this? So on May 26, 1977, Steve goes to see television and Mwondi play at the Free Trade Hall in Manchester. This is where all these shows are.

And he buys a copy of the Zin Shai Talk. And in that issue, there's ads for three bands looking for drummers, the Fall, V2, and Warsaw. This is like way before where we are now. This is like a year before. And he goes, oh, cool, I can do that. He was a jazz trained drummer. But then he didn't do anything. I mean, it was like a month before.

Okay. So he doesn't do anything. about it because he just forgets about it. He's lazy. He's cocky. I don't know. He's off in his own world. Who knows what he's doing? Then he walks by that music shop in Macklesfield and he sees that ad in the window. Drummer wanted for local New Wave band, Warsaw, call Ian. So he rings right up, babe. And he comes on down. Peter Hook says, the first thing we noticed about him was that he was dressed like a geography teacher.

Right down to the patches on the elbows of his jacket. The second thing, he was nervous as hell, smoking and shaking. Steve Morris does seem to be very nervous throughout almost the entire history of Joy Division, just a nervous, coozy man. There had to be someone, you know, who was subdued. Yeah, totally. Like, there was enough big personalities around here, and he's just like, I'm just going to be here smoking and shaking. Don't mind me.

So he was an incredible drummer. And he also, bonus, had his own drum kit and his own car. He's hired a bitch. That's it. He probably could have sucked at drums, and he would have been hired because, important. It's important to mention the band dynamic already at this point, as Steve is joining, has shifted, okay? Hooky and Barney are barely friends at this point already.

Like, the band is not even called Joy Division yet, and they barely can stand each other. So imagine how much they had to go through. Barney is quite close to Ian. They had, I think, similar sensibilities. They were both really interested in, like, the war. They were always reading about it. You can tell, by the way that Barney, who doesn't like to be called Barney Bernard, writes and talks that he's maybe a little more thinks of himself in a little bit more of like an Ian Curtis sort of way, if you will. Yeah.

You know, you could hear as the band goes on, he was always crowing. He was always trying new things. Totally. He was very, like, future-oriented where I feel like hooky was, hooky wanted to sound like the clash. Hooky wanted to sound like sex pistols. We talk about this on the show all the time where, like, these icon. bands always it happens that so many things have to fall in the place for it to happen right and this band in particular it literally is these four people because hooky writes the sickest fucking riffs dude

no hooky no joy division sorry to say a bitch it's not happening like no all these like iconic catchy earworm ass fucking songs those are almost all built around peter hook's riffs yeah he's the lead guitar player. Basically, right? Yeah. But he's the bassist. They write their songs on bass for better or for worse. Meanwhile, while Ian was the maestro, Barney arranged everything.

Like Ian would, Ian was basically like, I'm so sorry to say this, Raya ass, but he was the creative director. Yeah. Right? For sure. Like he had a vision. Like he had the vision and then he would take these like pieces and then a Barney would arrange them musically, but he would be like, this is what it should like start.

off and sound like or whatever. And then you have Steve, who is like just the best drummer and it can do anything that you want him to do. Yeah. I always, you know, viewed Ian as more of like the broad, given the broad direction as opposed to, you know, he wasn't saying the song needs to be in this key. The song needs to have this instrumentation. Much like me, he doesn't know what those words mean, babe. Right, right. But Barney could sort of filter that through and make an arrangement. But like you said, Hookie had the raw riffs.

I think he had just had a raw talent, like a raw musical talent. Because you know Peter Hook is toned up, much like myself. Peter Hook is on record so much saying that he's like, he doesn't play bass. He can't play bass. He's not good at bass.

But he did something that no one else has really done on that instrument. And just an innate, like that's an innate talent. Exactly. Yeah. He's just a natural yob. Yeah. Just pure yob talent. Okay. Yeah. Barney's close to Ian. Hooky is palling around with Terry and their other friend, twinne, twin. Who, you know why he's called that? Hit me. He's a twin. That's literally why he's called that. And the other one is also called Twine.

Bernard said, Brandon Flowers. That's right. I bet you weren't expecting to hear the name. Brandon Flowers in this podcast, but here you go. Brandon Flowers said when he first met us, I get everyone, but I just can't read Steve. I don't think he likes me. And Bernard said, not true, Brandon. Steve is just very funny indeed. When we first met him, it was clear he was very chilled out and had that Mac thing,

Macklesfield going on in common with Ian, a tangible Mac mentality that is hard to define, odd in a good way. There's some, I think in the factory records documentary, maybe Peter Hook is just like, I don't like McEltsfield. I don't know. That place is fucking weird. Something is off about McElwold and these two people are from there. August 27, 1977, Warsaw plays Erics in Liverpool, supporting the X-Rays Vex.

Wouldn't you fucking killed to be at that game? Come on. Come on. Hage and Barney get into their first real argument, which then never ends until probably the end of New Order. they are just going at it for the next. And New Order ends twice, right? Anyways, that's for a different episode that we're not doing here about New Order. That's a different time.

Okay. October 2nd, 977, they play the Electric Circus closes, right? They basically can't afford their permits or whatever. So there's like a big last show weekend there where all the bands play. The Prefects, the worst, the fall magazine, Warsaw and the Buzzcocks. Virgin Records. Gig. gig, babe. Gig slaps, okay. Virgin Records who, Richard Branson, besides being one of our only remaining eccentric billionaires, instead of like devious sinister billioners, although I'm sure he's sinister also, but just in a more amusing way, he very early on was like, let me make money off punk. And so the Virgin Records, mobile studio rolls right up to this shit to record the whole thing for a 10 inch called Short

circuit live at the electric circus. When it finally comes out, the track is actually credited to Joy Division because they had changed their name by them, but they don't change their name here. This is important, okay? Besides the fact that we need to just marvel at the fact that this was an actual lineup, they record every band playing two songs, right?

But there's like some mess up. They only catch the second song for Warsaw. And the track begins with Bernard Sumner calling out... You all forgot, Rudolph Hess! Quickly, Rudolph Hess was a pretty famous Nazi. He was one of the more famous Nazis.

He was second in command to Hitler. It's also very weird because he like went out of his way to do it. Like he didn't have a mic. He like went over to Ian's mic to yell this. Now Peter Hook says in his book, I don't know the reason for him saying that. One theory is that we had just played Warsaw, the song, which was a song about Rudolph Hess.

Well, it wasn't about Rudolph Hess as far as I know, but the lyrics quoted his prison number, which Ian had used because Hess was in the news. A book had come out about him that Bernard and Ian had read, and there were people saying he should be let out of prison because he had served his time. Spoiler alert. He did not get let out of prison. He actually killed himself in prison in 1987 at the age of 93. But that's neither here nor there. This is another thing we have to remember. And we're going to get into the Nazi stuff. For sure. Post-war, it was really on people's minds, right? It's so soon after this shit has happened, right? So it really has captured the imagination.

And I don't say that in a positive way. It's just, it's so insane. Yeah. And it's like, it's almost, you know, the way I think I can make the comparison is like how after like the Middle Eastern different wars in the 90s, like there was such like a preoccupation with like Saddam Hussein and then later Osama bin Laden and like puns would put those people on. You know? Like, it's just this, like, it's just this thing that people are, it's so in the news and you're so inundated with it. And like, you're not celebrating it per se. Anyways, whatever. It was just a prerequisite for punks to be controversial. Exactly. To be subversive. Exactly. And then they're not thinking about it because they're fucking 20 and they're stupid. Okay. So then Peter Hook says, however, I don't know if we'd even written that song at that point, let alone played it. So he's like, I actually don't know if that's why he yelled that out. We don't know. It's forever. memorialized on this thing, okay? Yeah.

I think it actually technically ends up coming out after their EP, so it's not their very first introduction to the world, but let's just say it's very close. So that happens, okay? They record their first EP shortly thereafter in December at Panine Studios. Ian takes out a loan from the bank to buy furniture for his home with his wife and takes that 400 pounds straight over to this engineer to make them this EP who does not tell them. that actually four tracks is too many for a seven-inch and you should not put four tracks on a seven-inch

because what it does is it makes the grooves really narrow which in turn makes the whole record sound like it's underwater like you've called from a phone booth underwater. They're so excited, they bring their little seven-inch home. They put on the record player and they're like, this sounds like trash, this is horrible. And they're like, maybe it's just, it's my record player at home, it's a bad record player.

So let's go down to Pips Disco Tech It's a place they had punk nights They hung out there a bunch They're like they'll let us So they come up to the DJ And like force him to play it On his like big sound system This is like a night where there's people

There on the dance floor This shit clears the whole fucking dance floor bitch And the DJ takes it off And he's like no it's fucked And they're like cool I just have to remind you guys We're laughing but they're so poor Okay like this was a huge deal

This is like all the money they had and they didn't even have it. They had to, Ian had to borrow it. Debbie kind of had to borrow it. Debe was not, yeah, this was, Debe was pissed, bitch. Rightfully so. Okay. So that happens.

Bit of a blow. They changed their name to Joy Division. Okay. This happens because they were calling to get gigs, right? Terry's not the manager anymore. So now they're all being the manager. They take turns. And people would be like, oh, you're Warsaw Pact?

Oh, cool. And they'd be like, no, no, no. We're just Warsaw and they'd be like, okay, sorry, bye. Warsaw Pack, by the way, is sort of a mediocre, like, clash rip-off punk band, who did not make it in the end. They did cause the name change. So Ian is obsessed with this book called House of Dolls. House of Dolls is a 1950-through novella by, I can't even pronounce as Katsunik. The novella is about joy divisions, which were groups of Jewish women.

in the concentration camps during World War II who were kept for the sexual pleasure of Nazi soldiers. It's not a nice name. No. Again, they're 20 and they think they're being the most clever fucking people on the entire God's good earth with this shit. And the alternate names that were being

bandied about were boys of bondage and slaves of Venus. I mean, without context, the words, Georgia Vision, And is a great name. I think most people probably don't know what that means unless you've kind of have gotten into the, we've done a little research because it's not a commonly known phrase at this, at this point. Right, right.

Now it's January 24th, 1978. What happens on January 24th, 1978? Tony Wilson and Alan Erasmus start M24J. That's their management project that started on the 24th of January to manage the band, the Derrudi column. The next day, Joy Division plays their very first show under the name Joy Division at Pips Discotech. Then, April, it's the Stiff-Chiswick Battle of the Bands. Stiff and Chiswick are two record labels. It's at Rafters in Manchester, okay?

This is the place that we need to fucking bring our best, our A-game, because we want to get signed. At this point, Chisick, I've never heard of in my God-given life, but stiff, has reckless Eric, Ian Dury, Elvis Costello, they had put out that first damned single. They're pretty sick. 12 or 13 bands show up to play, okay? Most notably, a band that was formed by Paul Morley, again, a writer, with Kevin Cummins, a photographer and two other journalists who could not play any instruments called negative as a joke.

Before we get into why that is important, this is also the event that was memorialized, I think, in both films in which Ian Curtis goes right up to Tony Wilson and calls him a cunt because he hasn't put Joy Division on the tele. It worked. It worked. Yeah. He took notice. Yeah. I think everyone was annoyed at this.

There was just a bad vibe. Joy Division gets in a fight with this band negative and particularly Ian is just furious. Again, this only backs up what we've been saying, right? Ian, this is like life or death for Ian. Like this is, I'm going to fucking make it, I want this. You and your fucking joke-ass band get out of my fucking face, basically. Like, he is pissed. They ended up not playing because they were, they chased them out.

And Joy Division plays last, okay? Mick Wall, who's now basically most well known for writing, like, very long biographies about bands, but at the time was a sounds writer, called them Iggy imitators. and Paul Morley, who displaying the most journalistic objectivity I've ever witnessed in my life as he was screamed at and chased out of the venue with his fake band and then did write them up and say, with patience, they could develop strongly and make some testing worthwhile music. Incredible. But most importantly, they impressed Tony Wilson and the resident DJ at Rafters, who was Rob Gretton. Big players. Big players.

Rob Gretton was a soul music DJ, but that's neither here nor there. Meanwhile, Ian has been hanging around a bunch at the northern production offices of RCA Records. Just hanging around, just showing up, sitting around, bothering people. Because RCA Records was the home of his hero, Iggy Pop. He befriends, two guys. A guy called Richard Seerling. Richard Searling had put out this record. It was by the floaters and it was called Flood On and it starts,

Hi, I'm Larry, I'm Capricorn and the whole band introduces themselves in their star signs. Have you ever heard of this? It's apparently a massive hit. I have not heard that. He's the one that thought punk was the next big thing. And there's other guy called Derek Branwood, who was a manager. and Ian had given Derek the demo of Joy Division. And I guess he didn't like it, but his son did.

So he was like, okay, like, we do, like, English punk is a thing. Like, let's like, let's see. We want an English punk band to do a cover of a Northern Soul song by NF Porter called Keep On Keep On. So they asked Joy Division. Joy Division comes in at Arrow Studios with this guy John Anderson. and they record like all of their songs basically. Just so green. They don't know what they're doing.

Yeah, yeah. John Anderson keeps telling Ian to sing like James Brown. And they're like, what? Because that's the thing you could just do. Yeah, especially him. Like, and they, so they get him really drunk on whiskey and it doesn't work. So he just starts yelping like a dog instead of singing like James Brown. The whole thing is a nightmare.

The keep on, keep it on never happens. All that happens is that event. eventually mutates into a Joy Division song, which is Inner Zone, which actually totally makes sense because Inner Zone is probably their worst song, in my opinion, and it doesn't even, it makes no sense on the album, don't you agree? Yeah. Like, it's so weird. It does absolutely sound like it was, like, lifted from, like, an R&B or soul song.

Like, it's so weird. Anyways, the whole thing is bootlegged. I'll get to how everything of theirs is bootleg. You can basically hear unknown pleasures before it was unknown pleasures without Martin Hanit, and you kind of can get a sense. sense of what a difference Martin Hannett made. So that happens. Nothing comes of that, except that they're stupid and they signed some contract, of course. Things are slow. They're not getting booked for gigs. Peter Hook says, you know, all the other groups in Manchester were trying

to be a bit arty, like the Buzzcox, but we weren't. We were just dead working class and had no pretensions. Ian, I suppose you'd say it was the most pretentious of us with his love of burrows and Kafka and whatever. But I think other groups looked at us and they saw a bunch of yobbs. So he's saying why they weren't like accepted by the Manchester music community. So this time when it's slow, they hold up and they keep writing songs and they get better and better. Luckily in May, Rob Gretton does enter the chat for real. Okay. Bernard is in a phone booth. He's talking to Steve. Rob yanks open the door and is like, hey, you're in Joy Division, right? I want to be your manager. And he's like, oh, hold on, Steve. I got to go. So he chats with him. And then he's like, yeah,

cool, come down to our practice at T.J. Davidson's. That's where they practice. sounds like a restaurant that sells like nachos and potato wedges. He does forget to tell the rest of the band so that when Rob Grattan shows up, they're all like, what the fuck is this man doing here? Why is he staring at us? And then he's like, oh, sorry, guys, mates. This guy wants to manage us. And they were like, oh, yes, thank fucking God.

Yes, please, we don't want to do it anymore. Hook says, of course we liked Rob straight away. He seemed to know what he was talking about, probably because he'd already managed the panic and had a lot of band experience working with Rabid and Slaughter and the Doll. And even though we hated slaughtering the dogs, and Rob had precisely zero success with the panic, and in truth, the same managerial experience we all had, he seemed to say all the right things. Here are the things he said. And you know what? They were all the right things. The first thing he said is this record's shit, the seven inch that sounded from underwater. We need to have it remastered and make it a 12 inch. And we need to get rid of this fucking Nazi artwork. Did we mention the artwork? We have not. Okay, yeah. The seven-inch art work was a young Nazi boy playing the drums, chosen by Bernard. So again, we're not beating the Nazi allegations. Okay, we're not doing our best to beat these allegations.

No. We called our band Joy division. We got in front of an audience and said, this one's for Rudolph Hess made or whatever. We put a Nazi drummer boy on the cover. Hitler youth on our... Hitler youth, yeah. And Bernard also did decide to identify himself as Bernard Albrecht in that seven-inch. Why? I genuinely don't think they were Nazis. I think they were just, like, dumb, young, you know, kids that thought this shit was subversive and interesting and, like, couldn't think of the ramifications.

And clearly they didn't because it bit them in the ass. Totally. And a lot of punk bands and punk adjacent performers and artists were doing that as well. Oh, the Sex Pistols had swastikas all over their shit, Susie, and the band she went on TV with a Nazi arm band, like a swastika arm band on. Like, it was pretty prevalent. I always kind of took it as like, like, it was kind of their version of like, OK Boomer, where it was like... You're so old. I can't believe you don't believe in fucking putting Jews in gas chambers.

Loser. Well, like more... Like that. No, more like, more like they were clamoring to be so controversial. And I just, I just always sort of figured that like everyone from the generation before them were like bragging about like being on the right side of like helping like like like like like like save the world. And these like shit 19, 20 year old idiots were like fuck you dad. Right. I have no hard fact.

for that, but just knowing how the youth are and how, and their disdain for the generation before them, I think that there's some truth in that. I know, but there is some conflicting stuff which we'll get into, which Debbie definitely

is like, Ian voted conservative his whole life, and he loved Margaret Thatcher. Ian? Yeah. Anyways, Rob Gretton, to his credit, was like, yeah, the Hitler Youth got a go, bitch. Are you guys crazy? Jesus, yeah.

So Bernard said he was just what we needed, a really strong figure. He instantly tuned into the dynamics of the band and the dynamics of the individuals. You had me as Mr. Mischief. Hooky, who seemed to be gradually turning into Mr. Ego. Had to get that in. Ian, who had the temperament of a volcano. And then Steve as Mr. Wacky. Mr. Wacky.

Rob gets to work, babe. Okay? He might not have known what he was doing, but he fucking got it done. He recovers the masters for the EP, okay? He has it represses a 12-inch with different art than Hitler Youth, gone, insert, photo of some scaffolding. Who cares? It's not a Hitler Youth. He convinces this guy Tosh Ryan of Rabid Records, which was the label of Slaughter and the Dogs,

to buy and distribute the rest of the seven inches. That sounded terrible. I don't know. Maybe it was like punk of them. And then the 12 inches also, and he paid up front, that guy, Tosh Ryan. So Ian got to get paid back right away and paid the bank back. Handled. Rob, killing it.

The goad, babe. And then they told him, oh, yeah, by the way, we did sign a contract and go to this mayor of studios and do that. And he was like, you guys are fucking stupid, literal morons, but I'll take care of it. So he went and cut a deal with that guy and he bought the masters back for like, some people say 1,000, some people say 1,500. It doesn't really matter because that guy clearly kept some, and it did get booedlegged right away. And there's some lawsuits around that.

But anyways. Then he gets them into something called the Musicians Collective in Manchester, which was, I don't know, it's like a little club, a club where all the bands were in it, a little club, got little meetings. A little co-op. Yeah, a little co-op. Help them get more gigs. Peter Hook hated it, never wanted to go. He said Ian really liked it, though, because it was quite arty.

It's just so funny how much, how much of a yob hook he is. Peter Hook was like, it was like school. I don't want to, do not want to go there. That's incredible. Fucking club, where you're talking about music? Okay, so they play the Mayflower Club, May 20th, 1978. This is an important thing because they start to realize they've gotten really good, okay? Because, like, keep in mind, they're playing all these songs that we now know in love, right?

They've written them all, so not all, but like, whatever, everything that's on unknown pleasures. And so at Soundcheck at this place, they play transmission. And he says the entire crew and both opening bands just stop in their tracks. and watch them. And he was like, oh, we knew we had something. And they did. And they did, they did. They did.

Yeah, I mean, I can't really imagine. That seems so surreal seeing Joy to Edition play transmission. At sound check. At sound check. And it's like, I know that's what my reaction would be, but you always hear these stories about bands when they write these, like, you know, iconic 10 out of 10 songs. Yeah, there was like whatever it sucks. We didn't know that it was what it was until.

So later, and it's so fun to hear that all these people were like, no, like, we knew that was incredible and unparalleled the first time we heard it. It's so cool. It's so cool. Okay. May 26, 1978 is the first ever factory night at the Russell Club. Tony Wilson and Alan Erasmus, yeah, they started a factory night at this random sort of fucked up club so that their bands from their management company had a place to play. Why did they call it factory?

Because Alan Erasmus saw a poster nearby that said factory closing. And he was like, how, wouldn't it be funny if we had factory opening? Tony Wilson hires Peter Saville to make the poster for the club. They had met at a Patty Smith concert. Peter Saville does deliver the poster. It's two weeks into the four-week run. Peter Saville is never on time. for anything from what I'm gathering. Absolute non-punctual legend. They're not good at anything, these people. It's crazy that these people made all this shit work when they're like absolute fucking

just clowns. They're only good at making art. Yeah, this is a clown car of people trying to make like a company happen. Okay. Meanwhile, Tony Wilson had written a bunch of letters to Rob Gretton being like, I love Joy Division. And so they get booked to play the factory night on. June 9th. Now before that,

they officially put out their EP now that it sounds normal, June 3rd, 1978. Just to like contextualize, 1978 music landscape is like Bruce Springsteen put out darkness on the edge of town that year. The jams, all mod-cons

came out. The clashes, give them enough rope, which people have mixed feelings about. But also x-ray specs, germ-free adolescents. Rolling Stones, some girls. Like, keep in mind some girls. Like, one of the most iconic Rolling Stones album is coming out still.

So it's like, the music landscape is very, it's varied at this point. Also, sorry, I have to point out, this is all just the cool shit. Like, dominating the charts is probably like Barbara Streisand. You know, like, let's not forget. Yeah, I mean, this was the year after Saturday Night Fever. Yes, exactly. Like, disco is ruling the world. Which I love, but nonetheless, different.

Peter Hook says when this comes out He's like, well, looking at it now, I can see the problem. I mean, an ideal for living, it even sounds Nazi. It's crazy. Between the art and the fucking whatever. But there was nothing more to it than a bunch of lads, Barney and Ian in particular, who were a bit obsessed with the war. Everyone was back then.

We grew up with bomb crates behind our houses. Everybody was fixated on the war. And punks being punks focused on the most unpalatable, shocking side of it. But it was about being shocking, not a lot. about ideology. We didn't have a political bone in our bodies. None of us did, not even Ian. That's actually not true.

But Hook says, Arty's stuff was what he liked, not political. However, Debbie says, Ian always voted conservative and made her vote that way too. Wow. Because he didn't want his vote canceled out. Again, back to Hook's point about it being shocking,

not about ideology. Like, he's right. Like, I mean, we talked about it on the clash episode, but like Mick Jones, whose mother was literally Jewish, had a band called the London SS. You know, like they were just fucking, fucking idiots and they just, I think they were enough, they were far enough away from it, but close

enough to it that it had like lost its like absolute horror to them and was just now this kind of mix of like grotesque fascination. Yeah. You know? Absolutely. I think that's the perfect way to put it. Oh my God, thank you. In an interview with Uncut Magazine in 2001, Stephen Morris said that when they were making that EP, the band requested that the engineer make the drum sound like the speed of life, which is the opening track. on David Bowie's 1977 classic album low, which I forgot to mention, but which is also where the name Warsaw came from. Strangely enough, he couldn't. This was a cheap engineer who was not giving them. I wanted to bring this up to you, though, because you talked about hookah's bass

sound. He says that sound-wise, from the beginning, he was most inspired by Jean-Jacques Bernel of the Stranglers. I used to listen to his bass on peaches and think that's how I want to sound, and he ended up buying all the same equipment as him also. He went and saw them play in, like, box. Here's from my guitar center thoughties, a Vox 2x, 2x15 cab, and a high watt lead, whatever that means. Some good equipment is what that means. Here's to your point about his very interesting style, though. Basically, and I saw him say this like a million different places, and Bernard says it in his book too. So basically, he says early on I had a shit amplifier, but Bernard had a really good amplifier.

So all you could hear in practice was his guitar. So the only way I could make the bass stand out and to hear it was to be. play it high on the strings because then I could hear it and it cut through. Now, when I did that, Ian said, I'm a massive fan of when you play high. I love the sound. And that encouragement from Ian early on was absolutely solid. So yeah, that's where it came from. Maestro. It's just like an accident, like a stupid accident where like I couldn't hear myself because I had a bad amp. So I started playing higher on the bass and now I have a signature fucking sound, you know? And a bad bass amp when you're playing the low notes sounds especially bad.

From my brief time as a bassist, I totally know what you're talking about. The EP is not particularly good. Would you agree? They've not yet come to be the Joy Division we know in love. That I do agree with. I do think that two of the songs are very good. The first two. Yeah.

Okay. Warsaw, that's the first song. This is the one that's a lyrical biography of Rudolph Hess. So besides the fact that it is told from the point of view of Rudolph Hess, it's a cool song. Yeah, yeah, I mean, just from like, yes, yes, yes. No, but it is. It's like a cool punk song. Yeah, like the riff is memorable, like the vocal pattern and the melody is catchy.

No love lost. once again, we are not beating these Nazi allegations, babe. We're just not going to do it because what we do here is we stick on a spoken word verse, which is literally just lifted from that House of Doll's book. But the song is fun. I do enjoy it. And let me clarify, when I said the first two, I meant to say Warsaw and Leaders of Men. Leaders of Men is the second song when they do substance.

Got it. Not on the track listing on this. Yeah, no, that song I don't care for. Leaders of Men, I will ride for. I just wrote in my notes that this is fine, vaguely sinister. To me, it's like the first one where you could sort of see what Joy Division is going to be. Yeah, the vibe is there. The vibe is there.

It's not fully articulated, but it has that special sauce. Yeah. Warsaw does not sound like Joy Division. Ian doesn't really sound like Ian. No, Warsaw's like, we love the sex pistols. We love the buscogs. Yeah. Yeah.

We made a little song about it. And then failures is just absolutely forgettable. I'm really sorry. Paul Morley, our great friend, reviews this in NME. And he says, Joy Division were once Warsaw, a punk group with literary pretensions. Their record attempts to communicate in an almost tangible way, all the abstraction of Buzzcox's spiral scratch. It is called an ideal for living and is on the enigma label. It proclaims on the sleeve that this is not a concept EP.

It is an enigma. If that's not the most 20-year-old should I've ever heard in my whole good life, then I don't know what it is. Despite all this, the record is structurally good, though sound-wise poor, a reason it might not be widely released. They're a dry, doomy group who depend promisingly on the possibilities of repetition, sudden stripping away with deceptive dynamics, whilst they use sound in a more orthodox, hard rock manner than say the fall or a magazine. It's true. Paul Marley, he knew what he was talking about. That's true.

It's a pretty decent review. Yeah, I mean, I feel like that's an appropriate. Yeah. It's a rare review that is rather spot on. June 1978, Debbie gets pregnant. They planned this, babe. This was not an accident. Yeah, no, definitely not.

I mean. Ian, uh, Ian, babe. I think it goes back to what we were talking about earlier. No, it absolutely does. Here's what Debbie says. I tentatively began to talk about babies thinking Ian would probably suggest a more appropriate time to have one. Ian wasn't the type of man to discuss events logically, and what he wanted most in the world was for people to be happy. Okay.

I'm not a logician, a logic person. But I started talking about babies because I thought he would just be like, oh, no, it's not a good time. But actually, in the next sentence, you say he wasn't the type of man to discuss events logically. And what he wanted the most was to make other people happy. So why did you think that he wouldn't just say? Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think that's an underlining theme in this entire story, is that everybody is 20 years old and doesn't know how to do life at all yet. I would not be trying to have a fucking baby with a 22-year-old band dude.

No, that's... Sister, sis, babe. Ian didn't tell his band. That should tell you something. I don't think that he didn't want to. I definitely think he probably did want to have a baby, you know? I just think that he was operating in these different spheres and maybe, I mean, maybe he was just like, oh, this works for this sphere, but didn't even think about how like, oh, I have this other sphere where, like, that's not going to work at all. Yeah, I mean, he had multiple lives.

And that worked for that life. Guess what, bitch. It's September 20th, 1978, and we're finally going to be on the tele. And we hope that we're launching them on a real joy ride, as we have before, with many others. Haven't we, Tony? Yes. This Joy Division is the most interesting new sound we've come across in the last six months. This number is Shadow.

Like we said before, Tony Wilson introduces them. So it goes is canceled because of Biggie Pop, so it's a new thing on Granada Reports TV. where this is really crazy. This was like the news, okay? But they started putting in this segment into the news where it was like, what's on, like in culture and they would have a band come like. Can you imagine that? Can you imagine just turning on like ABC 7 news at night? And it's like this and that and car crash and blah, blah, blah. Then anyways, here's Iggy Pop. Yeah. Yeah. Tony Wilson introduces the, you know, guitarist comes from Salford, not Manchester, very important distinction. Hooky is annoyed. The funniest part of this, two funny parts.

The people that did this thought that they were very boring to look at. So they overlay the performance. They play shadow play with negative offcuts from the world in action, which is like news. It's footage of cars. Okay. But that's meaningful because Peter Hook says, maybe Ian took that to heart.

I don't know because it's around then that he started doing his dancing more often, which became his trademark. to maybe he was like oh you think we're fucking boring and look I'll show you

fucking bored and look at every band's history has that moment where where they

really step it up live what did what it happened for you guys for ceremony well for us

we after not to do ceremony mansplain but after we signed to Mattador we started

doing shows like doing a support tours with barriers and, you know, we did a tour with Block Party. Yeah. And we couldn't rely on so much on crowd participation that we had to make the set work with us. Yeah.

We then didn't become part of the performance and we were the performance. So that's when I feel we got a lot better at that. But, you know, like the first two prints shows, Ward was that he tanked. There's the story of the Rolling Stones doing that televised. appearance with James Brown and then the Stone's playing right after him and then that's when like we're fucking up yeah like oh I need to start dancing too you know so it's just so everyone has that I think most people like performing is like a thing that you hone you know and like you sort of fall into your groove or whatever and in this case you fall into this spasmodic dancing to capture the

hearts and minds of the audience which it really did work it's absolutely literally captivating yes Yes. The last funny thing about this appearance is if you watch it, which you can on YouTube, they all look very reserved. I put together. Again, they're like, you know, they have their style, which is very like, like I said, Berlin. Except Hockey has like borderline orange hair because they did trick him into saying that actually we all need a gimmick. We're all going to go blonde for this TV appearance. And then he's the only one who actually did it.

They tricked him. L-O-L-L-M-O. You know, one of the themes of this show will be how much we love these moments where we find Joy Division being revealed in color and not just in black and white. They played pranks that are iconic. Brutal pranks. Like psychotic shit where you're like, and they would laugh and laugh and laugh. They thought this is the funniest shit in the entire world.

You'll also notice in this performance that Hockey is playing his base super low. like physically like on his body which he copied from Paul Simonin because he thought he looked like the dog's bollocks which I can only assume is a good positive compliment because I don't know because I don't know what that means yeah October 1978 factory records is officially founded babe come on come on come on let's fucking go bitch we're off the charismatic chaos no business plan, just vibes type record label indie, like doesn't really, like, you just don't get it anymore. I don't think the culture allows for those types of people to put out records on a scale where they can put out a Joy Division or a new order anymore. There's no way.

Okay, so it's founded because the guy who owned Erics in Liverpool, this guy Roger Eagle, he suggested to Tony Wilson, hey, why don't we team? up and release like a compilation of like Manchester and Liverpool dance. This ends up not happening because Roger wants to do a 12 inch and Tony Wilson took acid and had a vision of a double seven inch pack and he was just not going to lay down and do a 12 inch because of his vision. So he had inherited some money from his mother's death a while back. So he gets together with Alan Erasmus, Peter Sall. and Martin, Martin, and he's like, why don't we do this, guys? And they're like, yeah, let's fucking do it.

We don't have to put it any money, and you're insane, but let's fucking party. And so the comp is set to feature Joy Division, the Derudi column, John Dowey and Cabaret Voltaire. We haven't talked about Cabaret Voltaire yet. Anthony, I feel that you would be a Cabaret Voltaire fan. Yeah, you are correct. They do. seem to have a very similar trajectory in the beginning as Joy Division? Why do you think they weren't as successful? Why do you think they didn't capture the imagination of the populace the way

Joy Division did? The simplest answer is they didn't have the songs the way that Joy Division did. Right. There are just no Joy Division, babe. No offense to you, Cabre Voltaire. I don't think the name helped either. No. Okay. They finally put out that ideal for living 12 in GP in October as well. It sounds normal. poured their tracks for that factory sample that we just talked about. This is where they finally start working with Martin Hannett. Born May 31st, 1948, a Gemini, to no one's surprised because he's absolutely bonkers insane. He's a character.

He has like big curly hair, according to Peter Hook, a trampy hippie look. And he smoked nonstop alternating sort of between cigarettes and weed. And so the control room, in Peter's words, was that of a little bit of a little bit of. a wizard surrounded by smoke and in charge of his strange machines, a lunatic wizard who never used a word when he could use 21, 19 of which you didn't understand. Come on. Come on. This is part of the reason I love this story so much is that there are so many just absolute

fucking characters. Like, I'm sorry that this is so long, but it's I just find all these people so fascinating. No, this is, and they're all essential. And they're all essential, exactly. And you nailed it just now. That is the Joy Division story. And I think the Joy Division stories that have been told are like not. They're all essential. They're like, it's the Ian Curtis show, babe. But it was absolutely not the Ian Curtis show. It was every person was so essential to the mixture of music and publicity and art and all of the things that went into making this band the most iconic. Absolutely. And Martin Hannett is as essential in the sound and the music and the songs of Joy Division as any member of Joy Division. Hot take.

It's funny because Peter Hook, you can tell he hates that. And he'll, like, in every interview, be like, whatever, we wrote the fucking songs, okay? Like, he just produced it. It's not a big deal. Leave us alone. But I tend to, as much as I love Hockey, I tend to side with you on this because you can hear it, right? Like, you can listen to live shows of Joy Division, like bootlegs and stuff, because those exist. And then you can compare them to the recorded music. And you just, it's a world of difference.

I mean, yes, he's absolutely right. And I think to your point back to Cabaret Bolter, not to drag them again under the bus. but their songs are pop songs in the end of the day. And that is like, I think without that scaffolding, Martin Hannett wouldn't have been able to shine up a turd. You know, like, that's not possible. Without a doubt. But he was because they were structurally so catchy.

Totally. I mean, those songs are undeniable. There's, I mean, there's no question about that. But the sonic element and the production of Joy to Vision is so much a part. of their sound and not just their sound, but their influence. Totally. We'll get into that a little bit more, I think, with the first album, because it doesn't show up crazy here, I don't think.

But I have to point out, so the songs they record for this comp are digital. Top three, Joy Division song as far as I'm concerned for myself. And glass. It is nuts to me. And I think they admit this in hindsight that they so didn't know what the fuck they were doing, that they put one of their best songs. they just put it on a free compilation. They didn't get paid for it.

They just didn't release it as a single, just threw it on some comp. So Joy Division had been like playing a lot of punk bands played in red light districts, right? Because that's kind of where like the shit club where the punk bands would play was. And so they played at this place called fan club in Leeds in the red light district, okay?

And then the next day, a copper comes to Hooky's door and he's like, hey, do you have this van? Is this your van with this license plate? and he's like, oh yeah, that's my van. And he goes, so why has this van been spotted in all these different red light districts? What's the deal? And he's like, oh, yeah, well, we're in a punk band. You know, we play on punk shows.

And then it dawns on him that they're looking for the Yorkshire Ripper, who was a serial murderer who had killed 13 women, mostly prostitutes, and they thought he might be the Yorkshire Ripper. Now, that's pretty funny. What's extra funny is that they left, because they're like, okay, yeah, fine punk band. But then they went to Steve's house. And Steve was so nervous that they arrested him. And they locked him up.

And his mom had to come down and rescue him. And in Hooky's book, doesn't he, like, kind of subtly brag that, like, he was able to, like, kind of keep it cool? You know? He's like, yeah, on the real, like, I could manage the. scenarios where like the rest of my band, they were, you know. They were just... They couldn't handle it. They couldn't handle the heat.

A weirdo does sometimes read as a serial killer, so I understand. Anyways, the real rooster ripper, whose name was Peter Sutcliffe, was caught three years later. And you know what? He died in prison in 2020 of COVID. So, suck it, nerd. Bernard marries his girlfriend, Sue Barlow. Ian and Debbie are invited.

Hooky and Iris are not. That gives you a sense of what the vibes were like in the band. That early. Yeah, that early. I know. They do an interview with Sounds Magazine in November with Mick Middleton. You can already tell they're not very forthcoming. This is also an interview where you can see, and I don't know if it had been instituted yet,

but it does end up being instituted where Rob Gretton is like, actually, um, hooky and Barney, you don't speak, okay? Because you guys are, quote, thick as pig shit and or too thick idiots or something or moron.

Whatever. You guys are stupid. Don't talk. And it ends up like having this amazing effect where they seem really mysterious, the pole band, because those two don't talk and Ian is kind of mysterious. But it's very funny. I only bring this interview up because the guy basically is like, are you guys Nazis?

And they have to be like, okay, no, we're not Nazis. Please leave us alone. We're not Nazis. Jesus Christ. They play their first show in London in the end of December 27th. Hope and Inker is the place, the pub. So they're all excited, right? They're like, oh, my God, we fucking made it, bitch.

We're playing in the big city. It's happening. They get there. It's the basement of a pub show. Basically, no one shows up because it's that weird liminal week between Christmas and New Year's, which, as always, nobody does anything. Bernard has like a gnarly flu. He says that only one man and a dog showed up, and I don't think the dog liked us is what he said. So everyone's lay miss, babe, okay? Bernard is like suffering. He's dying. Everyone's in a shit mood. They're driving home from London. They're fucking freezing. Remember, they have no heat in there. car for whatever he said. And this, but this is an important moment. It's in both movies where Ian starts to like ask Bernard, like, can I have your sleeping? I can have your sleeping bag? And he's like, no, fuck off. And he snatches it away from him, covers his head in the car, and then just starts growling and punching. And it turns out he was having a grand mal seizure. But they don't know that because they don't know he has epilepsy. He doesn't know maybe that he has epilepsy or not. They have

to stop the car, they're freaked out, they put him on the ground, they take him to the hospital. It had to be so scary for everybody involved. Especially if you have no idea that he's epileptic, you know, what would you do? I know. What did they think was happening? Yeah, I mean, that's so scary. And even Hockey in his book keeps referencing the fucking sleeping bag. Barney's fucking sleeping bag Because he's just like, it's just a centerpiece of all of these

tidbits of Barney seemingly, according to Hookie, being selfish or... What? My king wanted to be warm. It's freezing. I don't see the fucking issue. I don't want to be cold either. I get very, very persnickety,

very upset when I'm cold. I live in Los Angeles for a reason. There's no doubt. Again, that's important because that's his first seizure. That everyone is around for. Ian, shockingly, or surprisingly, didn't keep diaries or journals, or if he did, there are nowhere to be found. He had journals of lyrics, which that has been published, but, like,

there's no firsthand account. There was some speculation that he had some inkling that he was epileptic, but didn't do anything about it. But obviously, we'll never know that, if that's true or not. The team in the hospital, a hospital guy gives him tranquilizers. He's not really He's not diagnosed quite yet. They asked Joy Division. They're like, is he epileptic? And they're like, no. Because they don't know, you know.

Yeah. Okay. So then in January, that factory sample is released. It was actually supposed to come out in December, babe, so that it could be a Christmas presents. But your pal Peter Saville, he did not finish the artwork in time. My man is on brand. Your dog.

He's like, oh, did you need this? Sorry. Martin really famously said of Joy Division, they were a gift to a producer. They didn't have a clue. They didn't argue. So back to our Martin input situation. Like, that tells you, I think, a lot that you need to know.

It was like, Martin did have a really strong vision, and he was so blessed to have this band who were like, I mean, keep in mind the last time they recorded, they didn't even know that you couldn't put four songs on a seven-inch. So they're really not coming in with the, like, studio. expertise. Yeah, these are four people with raw innate talent. He could do whatever he wants to a record, right? If the songs aren't there, then it doesn't matter how good the record sounds. But he was finally, you know, gifted this opportunity to make these great songs better. That factory sample

sounds fucking cool. The vinyl etching, there was vinyl etchings on each side of all, you know, two, seven inches. One said everything. One said is repairable. One said everything. One said is broken. I'm sorry if I'm a fucking loser, but I think that's cool. No, Matrix etchings are very cool to us, to us punks. In January, also, Ian Curtis appears on the cover of the enemy. So this is a huge deal. It's a huge deal to be on the cover of the enemy.

Paul Mortally had basically, like, fought and begged on his hands and knees to get this to happen because, you know, he's there, like, advocating for Manchester at that. enemy. It's a really cool photo. Like Ian Curtis standing in his like famous Mac trench coat smoking and looking just straight into the camera. Yeah. I mean, it's it's one of those photos that, you know, for any of you who are looking it up right now who think that you haven't seen it, you'll like, oh yeah, that, of course I've seen that. Well, guess what? Here's a fucking behind the music, bitch. Oh, you think he was Mr. Serious Pants? Well, the whole band was behind him the whole time trying to make him laugh.

I love it. I love it. And Kevin Cummins was like, God damn it, left to their own devices, they'd have ended up looking like Bon Jovi. So, again, you only saw a part of this story. So in this NME article, they interview all these bands from Manchester, right? And I'm not going to read all of it. It's a lot. You can look it up. But what I thought was very brilliant was Ian Curtis. says, we'd like to stay on the outside. We'd love it if Tony Wilson said he'd pay us to do an album on Factory. That would be great. We can't afford to do it ourselves, which we'd want.

But you either stay outside the system or go in totally and try to change it. They weren't signed a factory. But for him to sort of like plant that seed in a major publication, was very canny. I mean, clearly it worked out. But I'm curious if that was like, if he was speaking directly to Tony Wilson there where it's like, come on, man, like, we're not going to ask you, can you just, like, we know this is where we need to be. Like, come on. If there's one thing Tony Wilson is going to care about is his name being in the paper. Yes.

So I think that was really smart. Yeah. Ian is officially diagnosed with epilepsy like a week after the enemy cover. The doctor prescribes him an absolutely mental cocktail. of drugs, which at the time, you know, I mean, if you think doctors are bad now back down there, we're just like, who cares? This is just what it is. It's fine. Just take it. And then in the Joy Division documentary, they have like a doctor who is like, this is a crazy mixture of pills to give to someone. Like today, you would never do that. Like it's like absolutely going to cause problems.

And he then, and they did. Yeah, it's really sad, right? So this is like the first part where you're just like, fuck. Like, this is like almost like the first piece of the jenga being pulled out where you're like, oh, we're going to keep pulling these and he's going to topple. But this is, you know, I think this is one of the first ones. Because the pills do by everyone's reports slightly changes personality. He becomes like moody, more withdrawn. And he's trying his best, but I think they're.

causing changes in his personality and that can't be helped. Also, let's not forget that the doctor was also like, so yeah, also like you need to get a lot of sleep, a lot of rest, don't drink, you need to chill. And he's like, yeah, totally made, of course, absolutely. And then just goes back to his life as being a rock star who works during the day and never sleeps. Yeah, with the day job. And drink something absolutely disgusting called Karlsberg Special Brew, which is like an extra strong, extra cheap blogger that he would drink warm. Disgusting. Sounds really gross. Let's just say he didn't listen to the doctor.

Things are really picking up, though. I mean, we're on the cover of M.E. And just a couple weeks later, we do our first John Peel session. Huge. Huge. John Peel is like the architect of all underground music in the UK. Like every kid who cares about that kind of music gets their... you know, info straight from John Peel. So this is a big deal. Absolutely. Yeah. This is dream come true. So they do exercise one, insight, transmission, and she's lost control. So just, these are already written and done. I wanted to talk briefly about she's got control.

The lads are still all working day jobs. Okay. Like they have, they don't have any money. Like, they're going from the gig, sleeping for an hour, going to their job. And again, Ian's job, He's a civil servant who at this point, he helps place disabled people with jobs to help them get their benefits. Like, his title was Assistant Disablement Resettlement Officer. And he had this client who was a girl with epilepsy. And she ends up basically having a seizure and hitting her head and dying. And the song is about her. Yeah.

The song is especially powerful. Yeah. It is kind of wild because we don't know. This song was already written before he got his diagnosis. So we don't know how meaningful it was. But if you think that he had a suspicion, which, I mean, I have to imagine, if you're working closely with people with epilepsy and you are experiencing any of the symptoms, maybe you have a bit of an inkling. I don't know. Again, fanfic, but.

I think that's a pretty safe assumption. I think it was likely that he, you know, he recognized some of the symptoms within this person and had some terrifying internal monologue that this may be his condition. Totally. He was working with disabled people every day. Yeah. He wasn't writing songs about their conditions. And I would have to imagine that it's not a coincidence that this is the one that he wrote about.

Also, especially because his boss at the time, who is this man, Ernest Beard, who was like, he was really close to him. It was like an uncle to him. He said later that Ian did have suspicions that he had epilepsy long before he's diagnosed. And I think he might have confided to Ernest. So to do with that information what you will. But it does, like you just said, Anthony, like really give an extra layer of meaning and sadness to she's lost control. Yeah. And apart from the lyrical content, this is, if you were going to play, somebody Joy Division and say this is what this band sounds like, this would be one of the few songs I think one would go to because it really does have the moving lyrics, the earworm

bass, the catchy drum riffs, and the signature, you know, like when we envision Barney's guitar playing, you know, it's very much evident in this song. And I feel like this song is a perfect example of why Joy Division is so great. Yeah, totally. I mean, he's already, like, in his bag with the lyrics, like you said, and especially, I think one of the main, I think one of his main, like, weapons of lyricism is repetition. And it's already happening here, like, in the chorus. It's just, like, this repetition, it's repetition. And it, like, really hammers you. And it's a goddamn gorgeous, beautiful song. That's right. You're all waiting for me to say it, and I said it. I was really afraid that, given that we're not playing the full songs that we weren't going to

that we weren't going to hear it, but I'm happy it happened. Listen, I too don't want to be a one-dimensional cartoon character, but I will for you this. At the end of the session, John Peel does play the doors, and then he says, there you go, now you know what they're trying to sound like. I mean, not no, but that is exact. I know we're going to get to it more. That is why Martin is so important, because Martin made Troy Division sound like Troidivision. Right. Martin was like, yeah, yeah, I hear the doors, babe, but we're working in to.

He is. It's around this time also that Rob Gretton institutes his no girlfriends or wives at away shows policy, which comes to play a big part. Debbie says, if Ian was going to play the tortured soul on stage, it would be easier without the watchful eye of the woman who washes his underpants. I suppose there's some truth in that, but I feel like the wife with the baby should have been, allowed to be wherever she wanted to be, despite Rob's insistence. Yeah, we're going to set up what I think I ultimately took away from this entire situation

with these things, but I'll save it for later. They're playing a ton of shows now, okay? This is not great for Ian's epilepsy, but nobody cares, least of all Ian. So they don't know. They're like, fine. And it's time to make an album. So Rob, he starts wheelin and dealing, babe. There's two main contenders.

Factory. The hometown label, babe. They offer an incredible. Honestly, the offer they offered is not only incredible, but quite stupid. Probably the best deal any band has ever received. Ever received their life. So it's a back-end deal, 50-50 split, with the label paying for the recording and manufacturing. and the publishing.

So it ends up kind of being like a 50-42 split. Here's what Tony Wilson said. The fact is Rob is a fucking genius, but doesn't let you know he's a genius at all. Oh, by the way, it's 50-50, but we leave publishing out of it. Then you pay the publishing out of your 50%. And me, being the good Catholic communist,

went, yeah, yeah, fine. And that's what bankrupted us in the end. That's not entirely fair because Tony Wilson also was doing things like buying $30,000 tables for their office. So there was a combination of things that bankrupted them, namely the hacienda, but we're getting ahead. This is the deal on the table from factory, also full creative control, but no advance. So the advance was kind of important to them at the time because they wanted to quit their jobs. They were tired, babe. They're tired. Ian, maybe the most

out of them all. And then they had Genetic, which was some subsidiary of Warner Brothers by way of stiff records. Like, this was the type of, like, the big labels coming and absorbing all these small labels or making offshoots for, like, cool producers that they thought had a vision. Genetic was Martin Rushin's imprint, and he and them were offering a 70,000 pound advance for a five-album deal. Which, while I don't think Rob, in the end, made the decision from a place of logic and intelligence, like, I don't think he was, like, actually 70K up front for five album deal is not that good. And in the end, like, you won't make any money up your albums. And also, like, that won't last very long as hell, blah, blah. What he thought was, I hate London.

Fuck London. I never want to go there. Everyone there is a cunt. And I want to stay in Manchester. And this is how we stay in Manchester. And the end. And he didn't like owing anyone money, which I think was smart because he didn't in the end. You know, the band didn't know anyone money.

It's really easy when you're a band, especially a new band, to convince yourself that no matter who puts out the record. Yeah. You know, when there's $70,000 pounds, sorry, potentially in front of you. Also, in the late 70s, that's a lot of them. money. They live with their parents. They don't have heat in the van. So it's a, you know, it's a testament, no matter how that decision was made to not, to not go with them and to go with factory, it is, it is still impressive because, again, like, it's so easy for, for you to say, you know what, we're never going to make any money anyway. We're a band. You know, like, we're a bunch of

punk kid run yeah yeah totally and like in many cases they they would be they'd be correct well before they finalized their decision martin russian the genetic guy he's like a big deal okay he's produced the buscocks he produced the stranglers like he's cool okay he's not like some suit that's like trying to woo them like he has credit he invites them to london to record a demo session with him just to see if there's like vibes or whatever peter hook He says when we got there, we saw Martin Russian had a brand new Jaguar XSJ. As it happened, I'd been reading this article about how nine out of ten jag owners don't lock the boot of their car. Who would write this article where it would appear?

I do not know. So I thought, I wonder if that's true. Tried his boot. That's a trunk for you Americans, for you yanks. And lo and behold, it was unlocked. When I looked inside, it was full of stolen car radios. You could tell they were stolen by the way the wires were dangling off them where they'd been ripped out. I just in my notes have 15 question marks.

Why did Martin Russian have a trunk full of stolen car radios? We could only speculate, but, you know, I think we could do a whole fanfic ep. I'm like obsessed with this. Anyways, it doesn't matter. They do a few songs with him, glass, transmission, Ice Age, Insight, and Digital. Martin Russent was super into it, but Warner Brothers, babe, they were not. They were like, no, don't do this. Go find the next angelic upstarts, which of you guys don't know.

are sort of an oi punk band that are, they're fine. They did not become iconic, though. Anyway, Martin Russian is fine. He will go on to produce Human League's dare, which is a masterpiece. A masterpiece. Groundbreaking, so don't worry about Martin Russian. Also, apparently never got arrested for those fucking stolen car radios. Good on him.

Good on him, babe. A criminal and a genius. So March 4, 1979, Joy Division opens for the cure at the marquee. Peter Hook said, the cure never even acknowledged us. Here I come, bitch, because if you listen to the cure episode, you'll know what I'm about to say, but if you didn't, gorgeous. Here's that backstory. And I love this. This is how you should always think that when you're thinking that someone is like judging you or hates you, it's probably not true.

Because here's what was happening. Loll said in an interview, I remember Ian Curtis had a very sad aura about him. I wasn't at all shocked to hear about his passing later. Robert Smith said, I can't remember Joy Division at all. Backstage at the Marquis is about as big as a toilet, and there were always about 20 people in there. We couldn't go out to see them play because we were too nervous anyway. So how the fuck Lowell noticed Ian Curtis was sad, I'll never know. It never stops being funny to me.

He was just like, how the fuck you know he was, we never even saw that bitch. What are you talking about? Yeah. End of March, they start recording unknown pleasures at Strawberry Studios in Stockport. Huge. They have no idea that they're about to change goddamn history. I'll tell you that much. No.

What they're doing is going on two weekends and the third weekend to mix. That's the entire time it took to make this album. Because they didn't have any money. It is, it's unbelievable. I mean, that, that sounds like fan fiction. But I think it's common. Like, I don't want to get off a tangent, but like, truly the best gift, I think, for art in many ways is constrained. Of course.

Of course. I mean, it's more a testament to, like, how impactful and how evergreen and how good the performances are that it was that. Yeah, like how good of musicians there are. Yeah. We're going to try the making of album in one second. I just want to mention that socially or personally during the making of this album, Natalie Curtis, Ian Curtis's daughter is born. The band only finds out that the baby was born because he had like a fit at the delivery or like around the hospital or something and cut his head open. They were like, oh, yeah, was your head cut open.

He was like, oh, yeah, was the hospital delivery of my baby and would cut my head open. They were like, you were at what now? That's a dramatization. I don't know what was actually said. Okay, so unknown pleasures, bitch, produced by Martin Hannett. Here are a couple of things I wanted to ask you about. Okay, so he very famously used two things on this. The AMS and the Marshall Time Modulators.

I know about the Marshall Time Modulator from this album. Right. You know, I've never come across it in my, I've never, I've never, had the pleasure of using it on any like any you know a session or none of my you know contemporaries um but it very much is like the sound of of the band without without getting you know into the uh exact effects of what it does and sounding very uh guitar center guy well i do want a little bit put on my guitar center man hat because i want to talk well that is important and also the a ms which was a digital delay machine i only want to mention

it because he actually also had a huge hand in the creation of this digital delay machine, which was like kind of a very revolutionary piece of equipment, right? And the people who made it would fucking every week drive and meet Martin on some more, a more bitch, because this is fucking the UK. And he would get out of his car and go sit in their car, like, stoned as all fucking hell. and they would ask him questions about like what to do with this and he would tell them. He was like a creative consultant. Yeah.

Crazy. That's so cool. Who are you? Dosakis man. He's the most interesting man in the world. Let's talk a little about the vibes in the weekends of the studio. Martin was, he was a funny man. Okay?

So he would, here's what, here's what Hook said. Martin being Martin wanted the live feel of the band playing, but without sacrificing the clarity of the insubricing, instruments. So he set us up to get maximum separation. And the way he did that was to record us separately, especially the drums. Martin wanted them isolated so he could work on the drum sound, which of course he ended up doing a lot creating that very clean, precise sounding, almost clinical drum that became his trademark. Very funny, which was depicted in 24-hour party people, he made poor Steve take the entire drum kit apart, the entire thing. And then the fact that they

finished this fast with all the shit that Martin made. them do. That's what I'm saying. Like, that's the crazy part. You know what I mean? Like, bands have recorded albums in, you know, six days worth of time so many times, right? But were they ever made by like a freak, psycho, mad scientist? And were they ever this good? No. Yeah. I mean, I'm just dying because like, okay, so Peter Hook said, we'd play disorder. Is that all right, Martin? No, I didn't like it. Try it slower, but faster. Neener, but kinder. We'd look at each other and say, oh, do fuck off. And then Steve said, he wouldn't say to you, I want you to do it a bit more like this.

It was like, great, do it again, but a bit more cocktail party or a bit more yellow. No cold play, babe. They weren't around yet. It's a great, gorgeous song, though, but that's not what he was talking about. While it was done in three weekends, two of the weekends was the musicians. Martin did the mixing on his own. He would not allow them to come. He hated them being around when they weren't playing.

Peter Hook said that he would scream, get these fucking musicians out of here. He used to say musicians like it was a swear word. But Peter Hook admits, what difference it would have made to the finished article if we'd been sitting on his shoulder, I couldn't say. Back then, we didn't know enough about the process to have much of an opinion.

All we saw was him pressing buttons. He could have been releasing a squadron of bats for all we knew. So whether we were there or not, Martin mixed unknown pleasures his way. And thank goodness he did. Can you describe a little bit what that way is, like what that sound of that mixes? Yeah, a lot of the elements of a standard, you know, guitar-based drums band that would be very upfront feel very far away.

Yeah. The guitars are, you know, like very like washy and like atmospheric in a way that you could tell was not intentional by Barney. He's not playing into that. That's like a production. You know, like that's where those, you know, like the AMS and the and the Marshall came into play. And also he manipulated the drums in a way that made them sound really, you know, like you talk about earworms with Peter Hooks playing. Martin figured out a way to emphasize the drums to where they were their own. they weren't just keeping time.

They weren't just keeping the beat. They were like a hook within themselves, whether it be like there's a specific reverb on like the snare that made the snare pop, like the snare sound pop out at you. That effect isn't coming from any other part of the drums. Like you could tell that they wrote those songs thinking that they were going to sound like punk songs.

Like Iggy Pop. Like they wanted to sound like Iggy Pop basically. Yeah, like Iggy Pop and the clash. Like that record could have easily sounded like. like the clash with Ian Curtis singing, with like guitars really up front, you know, really clear and like the drums and the bass more like, you know, a lot of in like in rock music, especially like the bass is very like felt,

not heard, you know, where he, he had a really good ear of what the hooks were. Right. And what were supposed to be like the bed. And he kind of switched, you know, the order of things. Damn, what a genius. There's another thing that he did that this might inform a little bit what you're talking about

in a more tangible way. He did this on the vocals, but I think he did it on other parts of the music too. He would use an external speaker in a very ambient room, and he would use the fader on the desk, and he'd send the signal out into the room at, like, a suitable volume, and then bring it back through the microphone into the control room to mix it with the original track. which is why you have this sort of like, it is like there's a distance. Yeah, yeah.

And that's what Phil Spector would do tricks like that. You know, Martin made the studio into an instrument and not just a tool. Well, let's talk about the songs. According to Barney, Cabre-Bolter and Craftwork were huge influences on all these songs. I thought it was very interesting. I guess that makes sense. They loved Cabr-R-R-Bolter. I think they really fanned out on them and obviously,

craft work. But I think secretly also Peter Hook is just like a straight meat and potatoes rock music guy, which is thank God. And that gave us a lot of the catchiness, you know? He's very on record saying that he was so displeased with the sound of the record. Oh yeah. Him and Barney hated it. He wanted it to sound like the sex pistols. He wanted to sound like the clash. He wanted to be, you know, like a punk band. And it's just simply not like a traditional punk album. And thank God. And I think maybe he admits now that he's wrong. Yeah, yeah, for sure. Okay. Disorder, bitch. Disorder. I too have been waiting for a guy to take me by the hand. God damn it. I think that's what, maybe that's not what you're saying, but that's what I hear. That's why I sing. What an opening line to an album.

I know. It's so strong. Like, I know that people say this about a lot of people, but he was such an incredible. bull your assist. That's what happens when you read, bitch. If you're listening, read a fucking book, you idiots. Yeah, he was, he was well read and well tormented. I'm literally just thinking about a musician that I went on a date with who will remain unnamed that I literally was like, so what are you, you know, reading any good books? And he looked me in my face. He looked me in my fucking face. And he was like, I don't really read. I don't really read books. And I was like, cool, cool. Disorder is so fucking good. So I wanted to ask you, Peter Hook says in his book that he played some bum notes on here.

I don't hear them, obviously, but can you hear them? After reading that, I could. It was like, oh, that's what that sound was. Yeah. But I never heard it as a mistake or a bum note, as Hook, you would say, until it was revealed. And, like, I knew exactly the section that he was talking about. I just thought it was a, you know, a studio trick or like, you know, a noise or, you know, effect. I'm kind of shocked Martin. Let it go being Martin.

I mean, you know, when you only got two weekends, you only got two weekends. That's true. Especially back then, you know, there wasn't, you know, the luxury of retaking how, like, how there is now. Yeah, totally. I mean, you're literally on fucking physical tape here. Yeah, he's like, oh, I only messed up one note. All good. Pack it up, babe.

Let's move on. Day of the Lords or Day of Lords. Also, very, I think, notable to point out that they did not demo almost any of these songs. I think two of them were demoed. The rest were just in their heads. They weren't demoing in the sort of like traditional and official respects, but also not even on a tape recorder for Ian to take the songs home.

home to write lyrics to. He wrote these lyrics to these songs from, from memory. Babe, he wrote them because he would have a plastic bag. He had a plastic bag, this man, a hobo, a plastic bag full of pieces of paper with lyrics on them. And he would fish around in his magic plastic, Mary Poppins bag of lyrics and just pull, be like, I think I have one that works for that. I've never heard of such a process and I'm obsessed with it. Also, you didn't have like a canvas Tobebip? No, this was pre-toe bag.

It's bleak. It's not one plastic bag. Day of Lords is basically a Doors song. I think we can both agree. Yeah. But again, Martin made it cooler. You know how he did it? He secretly overdubbed keyboards.

And you know what? They didn't know about it. He didn't ask them. He didn't say, can I put keyboards on this song? They just heard it when the song was done. Mm-hmm. He was like, there's keyboards and you will like it. Okay, fuck you.

Yeah. These keyboards are making it better, period, the end. Yeah, bye. Leave me alone. Candidate is a pretty good song given the fact that it was, like, written at the studio, again, in the two weekends because Martin was like, you guys don't have enough songs, right? He went to Hooky and Steve was like, write two more songs. And they were like, uh, okay. Which is so interesting because, like, there were.

plenty of songs. There were plenty of songs. What if you put digital on here? Yeah, exercise one. Yeah, what about the other really good songs that you opted not to put on here? Or, you know, the songs that you recorded for this session that were on still. Yeah, I don't know, but, well, whatever they did. They did that.

And the fun part about that is that Barney hated that song. So he, like, was being a little pouty and was like, I'm not going to write guitar to that. I don't like it. And so Martin was like, okay, I'll trick him. I'm going to play it for him backwards. And then he was like, oh, I like that. And then he played his guitar to the backwards song. And then Martin went ahead and made his guitar backwards and put the song frontwards.

Genius. What the hell? Yeah. Like, that hasn't happened before. Insight? Babe. Pretty iconic. Pretty good songs.

Come on. Not to say a controversial opinion, hot take, but that's a pretty fucking good song. At first you hear this and you're like, this is fun. And then you're like, oh, no. Yeah. Oh, no. Yeah. This is one of those moments where when the members keep talking about, like, with hindsight,

we now know what like in, you know, struggles were. This is one of those examples. Guess your dreams always end? That's the opening line. Yeah. Guess your dreams always end, bitch. Sorry. They don't rise up just to send.

I've lost the will. to want more. I mean, again, in the defense of all the members, they were like, we didn't know what he was going on about. We couldn't hear him. Yeah, yeah, totally. It's loud. We have no idea what the fuck this man is singing. We just, he's just singing and it sounds good and we're like, sick.

Cool. Rock on, brother. They don't know he's like, I want to die. No, no. Yeah, they're not stopping between takes asking what the words, what the words are. No. I mean, Hooky even says, I think, sometime later that he's like, we were not in the habit of analyzing lyrics. Like, if we had come up to Ian and said, let's have a look at those lyrics, babe, let's analyze them. He would have thought we were mad and told it to fuck off. Like, that's not, that was his personal thing and we didn't, we didn't look into that. New Dawn Fades, God damn gorgeous depressing song. That's a new, new hot take for you guys. Yeah, this is a depressing song. This song is really heavy. Basically, like, these two songs should have triggered one of those things that I keep getting where Instagram comes and says,

someone thought that you might need some additional support. Can we help you? I think later, when the album comes out, Debbie confronts him about that particular song, New Dawn fades. And she's like, are this just lyrics? Like, do you really feel this way? And he sort of just doesn't confirm or deny. Like he won't participate in the conversation and just walks out of the house. Should have been probably kind of alarming.

I'm sure it was kind of alarming. Yeah. I would take that as a confirmation that they were, in fact. Yeah. You would think if they weren't. He'd be like, no, no, babe, don't worry. It's just her. She's lost control as the next song.

Like, we, I don't know if we mentioned, it's based around one of Hooky's riffs. And the drum riff, Steve Morris said, was stolen off of a Phil Spector song. He said it's the same beat just played with different sounds. There you go. Yeah. The sounds are, because the beat is not, is very simple. There's kind of nothing to it. It'd be a forgettable beat on its own without that production.

You know what the hi-hat pattern is? It's aerosol spray. Yeah. Martin made Steve go in the vocal. vocal booth and do the high hot pattern with an aerosol spray. Barney said, unfortunately, I think it was fly spray or something. It nearly killed Steve, you know, all the way through the track. Poor Steve. He had it in for Steve, definitely. Yeah, Martin did really uniquely torture Steve. Whatever he did, I'm not one to hear a record and say,

oh my goodness, the drums are incredible. That's not where I go. But Joy Division is one of the few bands where unlike the drummer and the drumming and the drum sound is so essential to the band. Totally. There's also a drum synthesizer that was used on here called the Cynar that has a white noise generator. So you hear that as well. Shadowplay, bitch? Bye. In the shadow play, acting out your own death.

Again, je telephone police, babe. Like, what? But again, nobody knew what he was saying. It's like a, it's almost like, it's almost funny how tragic it is, right? It's like a fucking Monty Python. Like they're all like grooving and vibing and they're like, yeah, thumbs uping and he's like saying this shit, but they don't know. No one knows. Yeah, yeah.

Austin Powers ass fucking tragedy. This song was apparently influenced by the song Ocean by the Velvet Underground. Barney had been listening to anyone to write a track like it with a surf sound and a rolling feeling in it. So that's how they came up with shadow play. Inner zone? I'm sorry, I don't like it. Yeah, I think it's the least good Joy Division song. Once they really figured out what they were and what they were going for and when they were on a roll, this is the least good one.

Yeah, it's the one that they plucked from the song that they were supposed to cover back in the day of the RCA session, the Northern Soul song. And Peter Hook sings the main vocal on this, and Ian does the low backing vocal. And Hooky did say that it was very cool that Ian actually had no ego about singing. He wanted everyone to sing. Yeah. Most of all, they apparently tried to get Barney to sing a bunch and he, funnily enough, said no.

Oh, the irony. Yeah, fast forward. This is a good way for us to get into the artwork. Very, maybe the most famous Urban Outfitters T-shirt-ass artwork that we will ever experience in our lifetime. So Barney, never forget. He was an artsy guy, okay? He was an art person.

So he found this image that was used on the cover in the encyclopedia. It's a pulsar, a graphic representation of a dying star. Wow. He gives it to Peter Saville. He's like, here, can you do something with this? Peter Saville is like, yeah, I'll change it from black on white to white on black. And I think he made it smaller as well. Peter Saville at this point, by the way, had said, I didn't, Joy Division was like, who cares to me?

Like, they had two songs. They were fine. I don't care. And he hadn't heard the album when he did the artwork. And Tony was like, do you want to hear the album? And Peter Saval says, within moments, I knew that I had a part in a life-changing experience. Minute after minute was beyond anything I could have expected. Joy Division with Martin was just beyond.

It was the most developed thing that I had ever heard in the brief canon of the new wave. And I was buying things and listening to things. And I had a context to place it in. It was astonishing. It didn't have the rough rawness that so much of the punk new wave had, but it had integrity. It had the spirit of postpunk without the crudity. Spot on. Show me the lie.

Show me the lie. And a thing about this record that has always confused me is like, I understand hooky hearing it and being let down by the sound. But Barney finding this image and thinking that's what. our album should be. The fact that he didn't hear this production and hear this as, you know, the piece that it is, despite what his expectations wasn't immediately like, oh, that's what we're supposed to sound like. That's, that's, that's, that's, that's joy division. I've always been so confused, like, how someone who had that, like, very forward thinking outlook was able to see, you know, that artwork and know that it applied to this music, that he wasn't able to recognize,

recognize that Martin's mixing style was the right choice initially. I say this with absolute love and respect in my heart for Bernard, but this is also the man that five minutes ago was like, what if we put a Hitler youth on the thing? So, like, I think you're giving him just a scotch too much credit. And I do think he developed. I think he's a very interesting character that develops into a more savvy artist and by absorption, right? Like, he really takes on, he learns so much from Martin. He learns a lot from Ian, like about books, about dress. Like, Peter Hook points out that, like, Ian was the one that

was really into that style of dress and Barney sort of followed suit. So I think he was, like, a bit of a sponge, but also obviously had the aptitude for it. Like, it's just, I don't think he was quite there yet. Yeah, he definitely wasn't quite there. I've just, I will always marvel at the fact that hearing this album for the first time didn't get him there. Yeah. Also, in the album cover, they did not put the band name, the album name, none of it. Peter Saville was like, do you want that? No, okay, seems a bit obvious.

Yeah, trying too hard, totally. So they thought it was trying too hard to put the band name or the album name on the cover. Love it. Whenever a band is garing up, the record's done, it's mixed. It's artwork time. There's always someone who wants to not put any letters on that album cover. It's mysterious. Yeah.

And I guess they were right to not do so with this one. Again, not by any foresight of their own, though. Just happy accidents. Yeah, yeah. Many happy accidents in the story of Joy Division. So the reviews of this album were really good in real time, not. just like this is one of those sort of like rare things that when it came out even though it was so different it was given its flowers in its time like properly rated properly rated exactly

and me like raved about it they called it an english rock masterwork sounds gives the album five stars Dave McCullough but it's an absolutely unhinged fucking review bib it's like a short story about a fake character named Andrew who loves the album and seemingly kills himself at the end. It's unclear. Here's the last graph. Unknown Pleasures was taken off the turntable and placed carefully back in its stiff black shell like a walking, talking image of death, settling back into its tomb once again. Still, the bloody mess of broken bones, he thought. Andrew walked to the bathroom. He was humming she's lost control to himself when the razor slashed ecstatically like a hungry vampire. Bro, what the fuck is this? Yo. Bitch. Bitch.

What are you saying? I back it. At least write a good short story is what I'm saying. Yeah, yeah. You're right. Totally. The sounds feature, which follows on the heels of the insane short story review, it does not go well, Bim. Okay.

Dave McCullough comes on down. He tries to interview them. They say, we don't want to give people straight answers. We'd rather they question things for themselves. Dave McCullough is not into that. He doesn't like that. He says the irony was, of course, that even by, as they thought, remaining inscrutable and, ahem, obscure, the ban provided us with gargantuan evidence of their cerebral shortcomings. I called them stupid.

Ian remained contentedly silent as I became increasingly irritated by the absurd masquerade that was taking place. You mad, bro? Manager Gretton, obviously assured of his own cleverness and the bearded bassist, he never learns the name of Hokie, in particular. gave the impression that they suffered from serious mental deficiencies as they groped around in the dimness of their quote-unquote attitudes. It's so good. It's really funny. I'm sorry, it's just really funny because they're just like taking the piss.

They're like, we don't care. We're not going to. And then he brings up the Nazi shit again and like isn't this name Nazi. And Ian goes, it's just a name. They're like just stonewalling him, you know? And then this kind of happens again. in another interview in the same month in NME. The person says,

Joy Division aren't giving anybody clues about their lyrics. They don't agree with lyric sheets, and that's something they're very adamant about. Peter says, apparently Rob wasn't around. I don't know. He's allowed to speak. You get people who seem to think you should put your lyrics on so you can get your message across.

They ask us what our lyrics are about, and we say, well, they're whatever you hear, really. Which, again, particularly funny because hooking himself does not know what the lyrics are at this point. Or maybe he does because the albums come out. I don't know. But it has always been frustrating for me where journalists is like kind of wanting you to do their job. Yeah.

You know? And it's like, it's art. You heard of it, bitch. It's up for interpretation. Yes. Yes. Once I tell you what it meant to me, that's what you're not going to be able to attach your. It takes away the mystique.

Right. That being said, I love to speculate. what songs are about. Of course. Of course, but do you want to know? No. No. I remember and I, again, I never looked further just because it broke my heart into a million pieces. But my favorite David Matthews-bound song is number 41. And when I did that episode, Grayson, my guest was like, you know, that's about their lawyer, right? Absolutely ruined my life. It ruined my whole life. Yeah, you can't speculate if you know. And we love to speculate. July 1979 is when they record transmission and all the songs.

Peter Hook says what we both were saying. He says it's one of our songs that should have been a hit and probably would have been if we'd been on a major or even if factory had done things differently. Digital and disorder should have been singles before this. And that when transmission came out, it had a foundation. Yeah, because like that's what the cure did, basically, right? They are good parallel bands, honestly, because they kind of were at the same time and they were both sort of at the forefront of something.

Totally. They did that. Right. Like, part of the reason that some of the Cure singles are so weirdly big, even when they're not that good, is because they just continuously built this foundation of singles. And so they had this, like, recognition. They're on top of the pops and all this shit, right? We would do that. Like, they could have. If they had put digital out as a fucking single single, good fucking bye. Goodbye. Or even, like, put out, you know, like did single versions of songs that were on unknown pleasures. Factory didn't believe in that. Like, I know later on. They do do a single and factory, they decide not to hire a radio promo person because they're like, we don't believe in that. That's cheesy. That's selling out.

And they're like, all right, mate. All right. All right. Rob Gretton kept like really detailed notebooks the whole time. He was like a bit rain man about it, just like constantly writing. In his notebooks about this song, he wrote, good song. Too much screaming, question mark. It's just the last phrase before the last chorus where there's any sort of.

But I love that. Because it's one of the only times that I feel that Ian Curtis does that. Yeah. Really like breaks the sort of like monotony to like scream. Yeah, totally. I mean, yeah, he like definitely would be more shoddy with this song live. But it only being used kind of in that one part on the recorded version is so impactful. August 13th, 1979 is another one of those.

Jenga pieces that falls out. Joy Division plays the Nashville rooms in London. This is where Anique Honoré enters the chat. She's Belgian, which is like the Canadians of French people.