Joy Division Page #4

With Unknown Pleasures,

I think we had three weekends.

I could be wrong, but I think

it was three weekends to record and mix it.

So we played them all live.

So the first thing we did with Martin

was to just get them recorded in the studio.

And then it would be experimentation time,

and then he'd start putting wacky noises on it,

like, he recorded the lift shaft.

It was kind of like you're going on some sort

of strange science-fiction-based journey.

There was a lot of pot smoked.

He wouldn't say to you,

"I want you to do it like this."

It was kind of all,

"Do it again, but a bit more cocktail party",

or "a bit more yellow."

"Magnificent but humble."

"Faster but slower."

- Whether it was pot or whether it was...

- You're right.

The Zen school of production, I don't know.

We're ready.

Let's try one.

Give me a f***ing break.

Put coffee in.

Memorably at the AMS, a digital delay line.

He pressed the button,

hit the snare drum, it goes...

Oh, the snare drum's in the box now.

How have you done that, Martin?

That's amazing.

It was using that machine

that Martin changed drum sounds forever.

But I never knew that Martin

was significantly involved in creating the machine.

These two strange whiz kids from AMS,

Burnley, Lancashire, England,

had discovered Hannett and...

once a month they would meet him in a car park

on top of the moors,

in between Manchester and Burnley.

And this lunatic... stroke drug addict

would climb out of his old Volvo,

into the back of their car,

and would rabbit on for 30 minutes

about the sounds he was imagining in his head.

I think Martin proposed

a way to understand Joy Division.

He heard something.

He saw something.

He felt something from them...

and was able to project in his mind

what it could be.

Well, the songs were great anyway.

Martin didn't write them.

He only produced them.

He started, you know,

chipping in when we needed him.

But that's the job of a producer anyway, really.

I just remember the whole...

the sleeve, you know.

It was just an uncanny moment

because it did belong in your collection,

next to Roxy Music, next to Velvet,

and it didn't look wrong.

It was just next to Diamond Dogs,

it was a great piece of work.

But it didn't borrow any of that language.

It didn't borrow any of that visual language.

It was totally itself,

and I couldn't work out how or where

it had come from.

I made the cover that I would have wanted,

had I found it in a record rack.

And nobody, um,

obliged me to do otherwise.

They'd given me the elements.

I mean, the wave pattern is astonishing.

I mean, one amazing image

for something called Unknown Pleasures.

I took it to Rob's house.

I took the artwork to Rob.

And he said,

"I have a test pressing.

Do you want to listen to it?"

I didn't know if I could sit

through 40 minutes of Joy Division,

especially in front of their manager.

Um, but I couldn't really say no,

and within moments I knew that I had a part

in a kind of life-changing experience.

Minute after minute was beyond anything

I could have expected.

It was just beyond.

It was astonishing.

And just as soon as it started,

and the drums sounded like

no drums had ever sounded,

and everything seemed to belong in its own space

and not quite connecting somehow.

Something amazing had happened.

I've been waiting for a guide

To come and take me by the hand

Could these sensations

Make me feel the pleasures of a normal man?

These sensations barely interest me

for another day

I've got the spirit, lose the feeling

Take the shock away

When Unknown Pleasures came out,

it was sort of like,

this is the ambient music for my environment.

I mean, you know,

when I think about Joy Division,

they're an ambient band almost.

You don't see them function as a band.

It's just the noise around where you are.

It was almost like a science-fiction

interpretation of Manchester.

You could recognize the landscape

and the mindscape and the soundscape

as being Manchester.

It was extraordinary that they'd managed

to make Manchester international, if you like,

make Manchester cosmic.

It's getting faster, moving faster now

It's getting out of hand

On the tenth floor, down the back stairs

It's a no man's land

Lights are flashing, cars are crashing

Getting frequent now

I've got the spirit, lose the feeling

Let it out somehow

Unknown Pleasures is also, of course,

a very iPod-ed kind of world.

It's urban, but it's not.

It's about... a landscape,

but that landscape is primarily an interior landscape.

And so, what is very,

very important about it now,

is to see where we've traveled from since then,

and exactly why it still sounds

so bloody contemporary.

I'm watching you, I'm watching her

I take no pity from your friends

Who is right, who can tell?

And who gives a damn right now?

Until the spirit new sensation takes hold

Then you know

Until the spirit new sensation takes hold

Then you know

Until the spirit new sensation takes hold

Then you know

I've got the spirit

But lose the feeling

I've got the spirit

But lose the feeling

Feeling, feeling, feeling, feeling

Feeling, feeling, feeling

When Unknown Pleasures came out,

it got universal critical acclaim.

It must be only me and Bernard

in the whole bleeding world

that don't like Unknown Pleasures,

you know, which is quite ironic, isn't it?

The only thing we agree on.

I mean, Unknown Pleasures,

I admit, even after we recorded it,

I find it quite difficult to listen to it myself

because it was so dark.

I don't think the production helped

because that made it darker, even darker still.

But I felt,

"Well, no one's going to listen to this.

It's too bloody heavy."

You know, it's too impenetrable.

We

Were strangers

We

I think also in our lives,

we'd all had very dark experiences, you know.

We were only, like, 21, but see, for me,

I had a lot of death and illness in my family.

And to experience such things at a young age

makes you quite a serious person.

Ian, I guess in his line of work,

what he did, you know, was quite serious.

We

Were strangers

For way too long

She's Lost Control was about a girl

that he worked with at Disability Center

that came in to, um, see him

and I think he really liked her, you know?

Thought she's a nice girl.

And he was trying to get her work

at a different place,

and one day, she didn't come in

and she died from a fit.

And... And he was quite shocked by that,

and I think he... that this was before

he had epilepsy himself.

And so he wrote She's Lost Control about her.

And you can see them now, as Ian Curtis sings

the brilliant She's Lost Control.

Confusion in her eyes that says it all

She's lost control

And she's clinging to the nearest passer-by

She's lost control

And she gave away the secrets of her past

And said she's lost control again

And a voice that told her when

and where to act

She said I've lost control again

In September '79, we turned over to BBC 2,

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