Being offered this collection to review set off a welter of contradictory and conflicting responses in me. I felt excited, privileged even. I’ve loved Joy Division for a very long time now and it seemed a big moment for me, a kind of responsibility if you like. Then I thought, what the hell is there left to write about Joy Division? Is there anyone left who isn’t at least vaguely acquainted with their music and the stories and myths surrounding the group and their music? At this point in time in time, almost 28 years since Ian Curtis’s suicide and the bands inevitable implosion, Joy Division are as big as they have ever been, if not even bigger, particularly in the wake of the media attention surrounding the release of Anton Corbijn’s biopic Control last year. Finally, I had to ask the question, who is this collection aimed at? There’s nothing on either disc for long-term fans so I have to assume that there is an audience for this. Perhaps a younger generation who may have heard of the band through the music press or via Control? I don’t know. I would like to think that there are people who may have yet to hear Joy Division, whose lives may be dramatically changed for the better by doing so, who may come to the music afresh, untouched by the mythology and history that swathes Curtis and Joy Division in mystique. It’s unlikely though as that history has been writ large but really, the music should, in fact does, stand up on its own. So here are the facts as I see them: from 1977 to 1980 Joy Division made some of the most stunning music ever recorded, music that is often (over) described as dark and despairing but is also defiant, warm, inspiring, intelligent and stunningly beautiful. This music stands the test of time as well, despite emerging from a specific time and location, post-punk, post-industrial Manchester in the late 1970s.
In 1979, around about the time Joy Division were preparing to release their debut album Unknown Pleasures, Elliott Murphy penned the liner notes to 1969 Live by the Velvet Underground. Taking an imaginative leap he wrote, “It’s one hundred years from today, and everyone who is reading this is dead […] And some kid is taking a music course in junior high, and maybe he’s listening to the Velvet Underground because he’s got to write a report on classical rock ‘n’ roll and I wonder what that kid is thinking.” Of course, when Murphy wrote that, the idea of bands becoming canonised, of even the most obscure bands (and let’s face it, for most of their short career, Joy Division were fairly unknown in terms of mainstream culture) prospering years, even decades, after their demise, had not really taken on the force it has now. Before the internet, before compact discs even, most ‘popular’ music was destined to end up in the dustbin of history within a very short time-span. Only mainstream acts made it to best of status and the cinema screen. Perhaps the distressing circumstances of Joy Division’s demise give it all an added macabre allure but I believe that the answers lie in the music.
Flashback several decades: its no longer 1979 but 1987. Ten years from punk. I don’t remember punk but its influence has lingered on and can still be felt in small waves. I’m watching a ten years on thing presented by Tony Wilson, mostly culled from the archives of the Granada show he presented, So It Goes. It’s a real mish-mash, opening with the Sex Pistols and battering through the main suspects (Buzzcocks, Clash, Siouxsie and the Banshees) and throwing in some less obvious stuff (The Fall, John Cooper Clarke, Iggy Pop, even Wreckless Eric). The friends I’m watching it with are, like me, avid fans of music. We gleam our scant musical knowledge from the weekly music press, John Peel, fanzines, word of mouth recommendations and trips to local record shops, particularly Groucho’s. We’ve learned to be cynical. Sometimes we read rave reviews of bands, obtain the records and find ourselves disappointed. We are always looking for the next ‘big’ thing. Not in terms of a band that is going to ‘make it’ but in terms of ones that are going to excite and thrill us, inspire and energise us. There are plenty of thrills on this show so far. Then Wilson announces the last band, Joy Division. All we know is that three of them are in New Order, a band some of us adore. Me, I’m less keen though I will grow up to love some of their music. The programme cuts to a barely lit studio, four men, barely out of their teens, stand apart on podiums. A black and white film of moving cars and a cityscape, all concrete flyovers, stark buildings and other motorway ephemera, is superimposed upon them. The song kicks off slowly at first, just that bass line and the wash of cymbals. We all fall silent, utterly mesmerised as the song builds up and up, with its jagged guitar and that voice, so deep and resonant. The overall effect of the song is incredibly intense. The song is ‘Shadowplay’ and it’s amazing, a real head trip on the road to Damascus conversion. Luckily I’ve recorded it and it gets played several times that night. Even Iggy’s incredible performance of ‘The Passenger’ and The Fall’s feral garage punk is (temporarily) forgotten. The mission is on to track down some Joy Division on record, to see if it can match the awesome, overpowering impact of ‘Shadowplay’. All the way home I have that riff playing in my head, along with the opening lines
To the centre of the city where all roads meet
Watching for you
To the depths of the ocean where all hopes sank
Searching for you.
My head is all over the place. It isn’t punk really, but what is it? It certainly doesn’t sound like much of the other music I adore. Finally someone tracks down an album. It has a rather enigmatic cover, no picture, and very little information. Of overarching importance though, it has ‘Shadowplay’ on it. It’s also a double album, something we don’t often see, linked, as they are to early 70s prog rock bands. We meet up to play it; communal listening is a big thing with us. It can be dangerous though if your purchase meets with mockery or disapproval. We play it. Everyone looks a little awkward, discomforted even. It’s fine. Well, truth be told, it’s a bit disappointing, particularly some of the rough and ready live stuff. Yeah, you’re laughing, I know. Not for us were the unadulterated pleasures of Unknown Pleasures or Closer. We had, in our possession, Still, a collection of outtakes, demos and a recording of Joy Division’s last ever concert. More for connoisseurs than novice initiates like us at this point in time. True, it has some fine stuff on it but it made a pretty anti-climatic, full-length introduction after the agonisingly joyous taster of ‘Shadowplay’. As was often the case, someone a little older and a lot wiser, at least in terms of musical tastes and knowledge, pointed out our ‘error’ and sent us scuttling in the right direction. Not that this was always a wise move. I recall an older guy telling me that if I liked the Wedding Present, I’d dig the Birthday Party. I bought Junkyard and nearly shat my pants on the first play. That said, I love the Birthday Party dearly now, and all who sailed on her while I merely have a soft spot for the Wedding Present. It was all trial and error. Nowadays a few clicks of a mouse and you’d have a hundred (possibly conflicting) views of where to start with any band. Mind you, I spotted a review of Still that rates it as the best Joy Division overview so what the hell do I know? Maybe there is still room for trial and error.
Anyway, after that edgy first proper date where things could have went badly awry, Joy Division seduced me. We’ve been going steady for 21 years now. Sometimes we spend a lot of time apart but drift back into one another’s lives and I fall in love all over again. Playing this collection, I’m still taken aback by how fresh and vital the songs still seem. ‘Shadowplay’ still makes the hairs stand up on the back of my neck, ‘Transmission’ always makes me want to dance, ‘Digital’ is full of raw power and fury. ‘These Days’, my second favourite Joy Division song, (yeah, no prizes for guessing my favourite) with its extended instrumental beginning that keeps propelling me forward until it’s almost a release when the vocals come bursting in. Joy Division mixed a futuristic series of soundscapes with a jagged, primal sound. Joy Division, even at their most experimental or poppy, still sound like no one else from any time or place. Each song on the Best Of disc is an exercise in creating a unique world out of sounds and words, full of spaces but never abstract or pretentious. The songs on the second disc are culled from the archives of Radio One with 8 songs from the John Peel show and 2 live songs recorded in the studio. These songs have a rawer feel to them but are no less stunning. Somehow they manage to seem fragile and robust at the same time though this is a quality that is audible in most of Joy Division’s recordings. Joy Division, despite the fact they ended in 1980 still seem very alive today musically. Perhaps the music has lasted so long because it remains beautiful and all too human and because music can still mean so many things to so many people, that it can touch them, move them and inspire them like it did for me all these years ago.
I’ve so much more to say and yet I don’t want to say too much. So I’m just going to imagine that it really is a hundred years from today or even just today and some kid is listening to Joy Division and I really want to know what they are thinking. Some kid who has perhaps only heard the Killers version of ‘Shadowplay’ and tracked down the original and is hearing it with fresh ears. Just because everything is immediately available for inspection and possible canonisation does not mean that everything is of equal validity or brilliance. Joy Division however are still vital and brilliant. Not just of their time and location but for these times as well.