Although Joy Division were seen as a Manchester band, Ian Curtis was born in Macclesfield and grew up in the towns most deprived area, however he made it into the most prestigious grammar school in Macclesfield, The Kings School. Ian Curtis was a performer from an early age. He first decided to be a stunt man and rigged up a wooden sledge as a landing pad. After drumming up support from local children he donned a crash helmet and jumped from the roof of a garage. The showman left his first stunt battered and bruised.
Ian Curtis was obsessed with music as a teenager but couldn’t afford the albums he wanted as well as the cigarettes and drink he’d taken a liking to, so often he would go to the indoor market in Macclesfield town centre and steal records underneath a large grey coat. A young Ian was forced to do ‘social services’ by visiting the elderly as part of a school scheme. Not one to miss an opportunity, he’d steal prescription drugs from residents and take them himself with mates. He once had his stomach pumped after taking too many. After finishing his A-Levels, Ian thought about moving to London. He saw an advert in a newspaper asking for young men to apply and travelled down only to find out the job was for the position of a gigolo. Ian was asked if he’d be willing to ‘entertain’ old ladies.
Suitably for a man idolised because of intensely introspective dark lyrics, Ian had a peculiar allergic reaction to the brightness of the sun’s rays. If he was exposed for too long his hands would turn crimson and swell up to resemble a huge pair of red rubber gloves.
On 23 August 1975, Curtis married a school friend, Deborah Woodruff at St Thomas’ Church, Henbury. He was 19 and she was 18. Their daughter Natalie was born on 16 April 1979.
“He liked Iggy Pop because of the way he used to cut himself on stage. He liked to listen to people who may have suffered or pretended to have suffered in some way.” Deborah Curtis
In 1976 Ian Curtis travelled to Manchester for a Sex Pistols gig, a defining moment in Manchester’s musical history. The Sex Pistols inspired a generation of young Mancunians to start up punk bands and it was at this gig that Ian Curtis met Bernard Sumner and Peter Hook. Together they then began to play the clubs around Manchester.
The first embodiment of Joy Division were known as Warsaw, and took their name from the track ‘Warsawa’ on Bowie’s ‘Low’ album. The band played their first gig on 29th May 1977 at the Electric Circus, on a bill which also included the Buzzcocks and John Cooper Clarke. The name Joy Division itself came from the name of a pleasure house in Nazi Berlin in which German soldiers would often frequent.
Paul Morley nearly ended up producing Joy Division’s first EP, but a hangover prevented him from being there. He supported them in the press. Their first interview lasted two hours with the incredibly shy band barely saying anything. Morley pretended in writing that their silence was some kind artistic statement.
On Joy Division’s debut album, “Unknown Pleasures”, Punk rock collided with Northern Soul and European dance music while Ian Curtis’ lyrics provoked a sense of loss that seemed to have originated from Manchester’s post industrial landscape. Despite the relative success of ‘Unknown Pleasures’ Ian was always strapped for cash. He’d often have to clean the studio building after recording to earn extra. When Factory pressed ‘Return Of the Durutti Column’ he ended up gluing the sheets of sandpaper to the sleeves to get cigarette money.
Ian wrote an abusive letter to Tony Wilson to try to provoke him into giving the band a TV slot. He gave Tony the letter and called him a bastard for not having put them on – it worked. Tony got them to perform ‘Shadowplay’ and again for ‘She’s Lost Control’.
Known for his distinctive on-stage moves, one night Ian pulled wooden tiles off the stage and threw them into the audience. “He dropped a pint pot on the stage, it smashed, and he rolled around in the broken glass, cutting a ten-inch gash in his thigh,”-Peter Hook.
Ian Curtis’ health was failing as a result of his epilepsy and, attempting to balance his musical ambitions with his marriage, was foundering in the aftermath of his close relationship with journalist Annik Honore (who in 2010 stated it was not an “affair” and merely a close and platonic relationship). Shortly before the end of Ian’s life, his wife Deborah had started divorce proceedings and Ian was no longer living at the family home. In April 1980 Ian was admitted to hospital after taking an overdose of his epilepsy medication. As in many such cases, it is not clear whether this was a genuine suicide attempt or simply a plea for help. What is clear is that by the last month of his life Ian Curtis found that the pressures on him were greater than ever, not least because of the need to prepare for the band’s first American tour.
“He did stay with me a couple of weeks before he died and I did try and talk him out of this frame of mind and he wasn’t really having any of it.” -Bernard Sumner- former member of Joy Division.
Despite Curtis’ personal problems, Joy Division finished recording their second album, Closer, in 1980. Still regarded as one of the great rock albums of the 80s, the lyrics make for a disturbing listening. The lyrics couple a medieval sense of mortality with an awareness of the trials and horrors of the 20th century.
“I remember one night when we were making Closer, very late, must have been about four o’clock in the morning and I was asking him (Ian Curtis) how his lyric writing was going and he said it was amazing. He said it’s just coming one after another, I’m writing really quick and I know exactly where the end of the song is……He said that I feel as if i’m swirling down into a dark void and as i’m doing it i’m throwing out pieces of paper with writing on.” -Bernard Sumner
By the 17th May 1980, Ian Curtis’ personal life, mixed with the inevitable effects of the illness he was suffering, began to get on top of him. His marriage was beginning to collapse after his infidelity and both his anxiety about the bands upcoming debut tour of America and his epilepsy was worsening. The dividing line between his illness and his art had collapsed, one could say.
On the morning of the 18th, Ian Curtis hung himself on the kitchen clothes rail in his home in Macclesfield.
“He must have stayed up all night listening to records, I think, because one of the records was still going round on the table and I guess he must have decided to write to me at about three o’clock in the morning because he said that the birds were singing when he finished the letter.”- Deborah Curtis
Shortly after Ian Curtis’ suicide the single “Love will tear us apart” finally took Joy Division into the top 20 in the charts. This was not necessarily a reaction the Ian Curtis’ suicide but confirmation that the group had been on the verge of contemporary stardom. In career terms, Ian Curtis had everything to live for. To some Ian Curtis’ suicide draws a logical conclusion for his career. He symbolised the mood of existential gloom that symbolised one of Britain’s main musical exports in the 1980s. Turning the punk revolution inwards, Ian Curtis’ dark lyrics raged at the human condition. He turned musical lyrics from a message of “fuck you” to “I am fucked”.
beyond the Edge of reason 