Joy Division Page #6

Have one of these."

And then, you know,

two days later, they were gone,

disappeared forever.

And it had been widely distributed on cassette

because Peel played it all the time,

because he was, you know, feeling sorry

for all of those who couldn't get hold of a copy.

And I promise to play

the other side of it tonight,

and, indeed, I shall.

In fact, I shall do it on now.

Walk in silence

Don't walk away

Oh, curses, I'd forgotten.

Sorry. Oh, how irritating,

I'd forgotten that it was a 331/3.

I've remembered about half the times

I've played it.

The French, you see,

they flood the country

with millions of apples

that taste like cardboard,

and then send us records

that play at the wrong speed.

Anyway, I was talking

to my child bride on the phone...

It's just four young guys

who are standing there smoking, shaking,

like this, "Oh, yeah, okay", you know...

underdressed, malnourished,

you know, that's what...

what I always thought of the North of England.

It was quite a shock if you came from Holland,

where, socially, you know,

everybody was taken sort of care of.

Then you come to England,

and there's incredible... extreme poverty.

And, and, and, you know,

people drinking and smoking

and having just a little shirt on

and a thin coat.

And they stand outside in the winter.

It was hard to believe in these four guys there,

making jokes, and they were really lads, you know,

very young, and they could have such a deep,

heavy sound.

And certainly for Ian, when he was on stage,

he was coming out of himself.

He was a different person,

possessed by some very strong power.

And he looked like he was coming from another world

and, himself, in another world.

And very, very emotional.

He looked at the same time

very strong and very fragile,

very vulnerable, you know?

I think he was very brave to...

to sing and dance like he was doing.

We all live very boring, ordinary lives.

And with our great lead singers,

we look at them, and for that one hour,

we live life through their eyes.

Ian walks on, and he seems a little shy and quiet,

and then he just takes command of the stage.

Light comes onto him, and he goes inside.

Take a chance and step outside

Take a chance and say you tried

It was very much as if he was plugged

into some kind of huge electrical voltage

that was creating this sort of twitching, jerking...

tranced-out symbol for a human being.

Say you tried

Say you tried

Say you tried

Say you tried

Say you tried

Say you tried

Say you tried

Say you tried

Once he'd done that thing

where he shook himself into a frenzy,

you just didn't know where it was going to take you.

He was like a kind of puppet,

and you felt his vulnerability

in that puppet-like movement.

It was a bit like watching performance artists

who deliberately lacerate themselves,

cut themselves,

except with Ian, he didn't bleed.

But he sacrificed something of himself for you.

Say you tried

Say you tried

We've played in Europe already

and Holland and Germany,

and we are going to America.

We're only going for about two weeks, three weeks.

I'd hate to be on the usual record company,

where you sort of...

you do all the Odeons.

I just couldn't do that at all.

That experience like that supporting the Buzzcocks.

It was really, uh, soul destroying.

We played a concert

at Hope & Anchor in London.

I remember Ian being in a weird...

kind of a little bit childish mood.

Not quite himself, you know.

This was in the morning.

We drove down, and we did the concert,

and only about three people turned up.

It was about 2 in the morning.

We're driving back up the M1, you know.

And I had the sleeping bag on me,

and Ian just was moaning about the gig,

moaning about the sound, moaning about this,

and he said,

"Hey, give me that sleeping bag."

Which was not like him

because he wasn't a selfish person at all.

He turned around and grabbed the sleeping bag off me.

I said,

"Stop pissing around. Give it to me back."

And I pulled it, so he pulled it back.

I pulled it back, and then held onto it.

So he just wrenched it out of my hands,

put it over his head this time,

and wrapped himself in a ball,

and then just started making this weird

growling sound,

just growling, you know, like...

well, growling like a dog.

The next thing,

a hand comes out of the sleeping bag,

flashes out at Steve,

then comes out, punches the wind screen.

And then he just starts punching,

and that punching turned into a fully-fledged

grand mal fit in the car,

while Steve was driving.

I was like,

"Pull over, pull over, pull over."

Dragged him for his own protection out of the car,

and held him down, flat on the hard shoulder,

you know, dark, middle of the night

and just pinned his limbs down and...

while he basically had a fit.

After that, really,

he just got diagnosed with epilepsy,

and they just started getting

more and more frequent.

Those with epilepsy are going to have

a much more difficult life

because of the age-old stigma

attached to the word epilepsy,

and the real fear which people have of it.

We didn't know what to do.

You know, it's not one of those things

that you're used to.

I mean, we'd certainly never come across

people who'd had fits before.

You know, we... we were there, and...

we didn't know what to say to him.

Plus we're men. Men don't talk.

And we certainly didn't talk to each other.

So we just kind of carried on

the way we were carrying on,

which was working a lot,

and didn't give him much quarter, really,

in which to recover,

because basically, his doctor's advice was...

"Don't drink. Go to bed early."

You know,

"Avoid flashing lights."

Well, he was 22 or something.

Everything that boy has joined a band to do...

you know, the drink, the drugs, the women...

all of that is sort of written out of Ian's script.

You know, he did have epilepsy.

Very suddenly it occurred,

but he also had it very, very, very strong.

Big, you know, grand mal fits.

It wasn't... no messing about.

It was very strong.

Very strong, you know.

He couldn't pick his daughter up.

He couldn't drive a car.

He had to be careful at railway stations

that he didn't stand too near the edge.

As I witnessed a few of his...

of these fits,

you know, I can tell you it was really,

really frightening.

It was like he was being possessed by the devil.

I know it sounds silly to say,

but he was literally raising from the ground.

That's how I remember it.

Nowadays, in the mentally normal patient,

it should be possible to control fits

in at least 85%.

You've got to take lots of drugs,

and the drugs that you have to take,

they're really, really kind of heavy.

One day, he'd come in,

and he'd be laughing his head off and totally happy.

The next day, he'd come in,

and he would be depressed and in tears.

And he wasn't like that before,

before the drugs that he was on.

He wasn't like that.

He was much more...

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