Joy Division Page #5

and I'd never seen a TV performance like it.

Ian Curtis' performance and the band's performance

has just totally broke through

the plastic of the media.

Going from musicians

who couldn't even play their instruments,

suddenly they were a super group.

And I was just astonished to see this.

Dance, dance, dance, dance,

dance to the radio

Dance, dance, dance, dance,

dance to the radio

Dance, dance, dance, dance,

dance to the radio

Dance, dance, dance, dance,

dance to the radio

Well, I would call out

when the going gets tough

The things you've learned

are no longer enough

No language, just sound,

that's all we need know

To synchronize love to the beat of the show

And we could dance

Dance, dance, dance, dance,

dance to the radio

Dance, dance, dance, dance,

dance to the radio

Dance, dance, dance, dance,

dance to the radio

Dance, dance, dance, dance,

dance to the radio

They must have had a sense within the unit

that they'd done something special.

Ian's ambition, obviously, was the one ultimately

that created the great catastrophe.

But I think the others had

their own ambition within that.

Even it was just to be

the greatest bass player on the planet.

I just wanted us to be how we sounded live.

And it was purely that, you know.

I didn't want it to sound melancholy.

I didn't want it to lacerate.

I want just to lop people's heads off,

like, uh, Iggy Pop live.

I wasn't interested in depth or anything.

I just wanted to, you know,

kick them in the teeth.

Joy Division sounded like no one else.

Very, very powerful on stage.

And Ian on stage was something fascinating.

He sang and he danced in a unique way and...

Plan K, that was kind of like...

Ian had met Annik.

They never traveled much,

I think, as teenagers.

And when they first went to Europe, yeah,

I think something really happened for them.

It's a major milestone.

You're leaving home turf for the first time,

and we were playing a gig at Plan K.

Cabaret Voltaire was on the bill.

It was a converted sugar refinery,

So, you know, it was pretty arty.

So we went over there, and we thought,

"Right, you know, we're big time Charlies."

The big attraction was that

they actually had William Burroughs.

Pay it all, pay it all,

pay it all back.

Play all your reports back.

The bands would play the concert space.

The other floors,

that was kind of performance art,

and then one room where they just showed movies.

Boys, school showers and swimming pools.

There was such an arty do.

Everyone was so arty, wandering around,

"Oh, God, Joy Division,

that's so wonderfully sublime, darling,"

in French.

I mean, the hilarious one there was when Ian decided

he was going to get a free book off William Burroughs,

because he felt like he'd read all of

William Burroughs' books and bought them,

so for some strange reason

he thought that this time,

William Burroughs would give him a free book.

And Bernard and I were most amused,

and we went with Ian to William Burroughs,

where William Burroughs was reading first,

and then he was doing the signing.

And, uh, he went over,

and me and Bernard

were pissing ourselves behind the pillar.

Can't remember what he said,

but we were there,

and then all we heard was William Burroughs'

"Aw, f*** off, kid!"

We have had enough of your common bullshit.

Oh, we used to laugh at him for hours.

Ian was so embarrassed.

Ian was a big Burroughs fan

because his writing was very much

a post-industrial nightmare.

It was about the bigotry and lack of ethics.

Cynical, hate-filled, totalitarian, dark underside,

greed of Western society gone mad.

The secret nature of perception...

- Good, thank you.

- The cut-up.

It all seemed to fit and suggest

that there was a way to integrate

that more artistic and literary idea

into what was otherwise a rather paltry glam rock,

prog rock wilderness.

As we became more popular

and started doing more and more gigs,

we just went,

"Right, we'll have to give our jobs up now.

Stop being semi-pro."

Fully professional.

The Buzzcocks tour was our first real sort

of experience of proper rock-'n'-roll

and, uh, roadies and all that.

And of course, their crew and Buzzcocks' crew

got up to all kind of stupid roadie mischief,

as did members of both groups.

He was pissing in the ashtray,

the dirty bastard.

Big lump of draw like that.

Caretaker came in.

There, eat that.

And he grabbed hold of him

while he was pissing in the ashtray...

It felt like my head had fallen off.

And he went, "Oh, oh, oh!

You tell me what you want me to do,

and I'll do it!"

He would show you his tattoo...

Bucket of maggots...

And coming out of his backside were two hands.

Live mice and put them in.

"Yeah, the gear's in the van, yeah."

So I opened the thing

and it was just full of beer.

"You must have these."

He'd robbed the bar!

And these two red stars.

"I'll have them."

Then the barman came out with about five bouncers.

Oh, it was like, you f***ing twat...

Off his f***ing nut.

Hallucinating.

Inane, laughing, grin on his face,

like a lunatic. Couldn't speak.

He's French, right?

He doesn't understand "F*** off."

He went,

"All right, then, all right, then.

Fuckie offie!"

Once Joy Division really found their...

their seam,

they'd almost always start with Dead Souls.

Now, that track has a very,

very progressive, intense build-up.

There's nearly three minutes

before the vocal comes in.

Now, this gives Ian a chance

both to calibrate positioning himself,

to start to read what the atmosphere is

coming off the audience,

to feel how the band behind him

are locking in with each other

on that particular evening,

and to decide how high he wants to travel.

A lot of people thought

he was off his head on drugs,

and he wasn't... never ever, ever.

And, um, because he looked like he was on drugs,

but he was just...

the music seemed to just put him in,

like, a trance

and he'd just start dancing away,

and he'd go in, like, another world.

Keep on calling me

They keep calling me

That's Joy Division,

and it's called Dead Souls.

Always choose cheery subjects,

don't they, these boys?

I know that tens of thousands of you

are going to sit down

and write letters to me

here at BBC asking about that.

I can't really give you

a great deal of information

except that it's on

the Sordide Sentimental Label.

That's sordid with an E added

to the end of it

to make it look French because,

indeed, it is French.

It is available in one or two shops

and it comes in this sort of folder,

which makes it obviously larger than a record,

and, um, more book-like, in a sense.

He loved that record.

He was so proud, so proud of the sleeve,

of, uh, such a beautiful object.

It was quite funny because when it did come out,

in an edition of 1578,

Rob was down in London,

and he was handing them out,

you know, like, kind of,

"Have one of these. I just got this over from France.

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