Joy Division Page #9

And basically, we just agreed

that he should call me at home the following day,

and he told me he was listening to a record,

and he was going to watch a film,

and he was alone.

I was the first one to be told,

and it was really weird

because I was sitting down,

just about to have me Sunday lunch,

me and Iris, and the phone rang.

Literally like that.

I went on the phone, and they said,

"Oh, this is Police so-and-so.

We're trying to get in touch with Rob Gretton."

And I said,

"Oh, he should be at home."

He said, "Oh, we phoned him at home.

He's not there."

I said,

"Why, what's the problem?"

And he went,

"Oh, well, we've got a...

You know, sorry to tell you this,

but Ian Curtis has committed suicide."

And I went,

"Oh, right. Okay."

And he went, "Right, well, if you speak to Mr. Gretton,

could you get him to call us?" you know.

And I went,

"Yeah, right. Okay."

And put the phone down and went...

sat back, and had me dinner.

And then Iris said to me,

"Oh, who was on the phone, by the way?"

And I went,

"Oh, it's Ian. He's killed himself."

And that was it, then. That was...

you know, the shock of it.

It was really weird. Horrible.

When he first tried to commit suicide,

when he took the overdose,

it was a complete surprise.

In fact, when he actually did commit suicide,

and Rob told me,

I said,

"What, he's tried it again?

You know, I can't believe it.

He's tried it again."

And he said,

"No, he has. He's dead."

I was, like,

"What, he's tried it..."

He said,

"No, he's dead. He's done it."

Everything there seems a blur after that,

really, you know.

Just spent most of the time in the pub,

spent most of the time together, all of us.

Me, Twinny, Terry, Barney,

we'd all go and sit together.

Just sit in the pub together.

We just couldn't take it in, really.

It's hard to say.

Sort of 50% sad and 50% angry...

really.

Angry at him.

Really, for being stupid and doing that,

and angry at myself for not doing something.

Uh...

Yeah.

I arrived in London.

Ian never rang,

so I thought maybe there's a problem.

I should call his parents, at his parents,

because that's where he was staying...

where he was supposed to stay,

and, uh, when I called,

his father just said, "Ian is dead."

And he put the phone down,

and that was it.

I came home from work,

and there's this piece of paper.

I looked at it, and it says

"Singer kills himself on eve of tour."

You think,

"This isn't true.",

and then you get a feeling of anger where you say,

"You twat. Why have you done that?"

"You bastard," you know,

"you should've stuck it out with the rest of us."

We didn't go to the wake.

I don't think we were welcome, really, somehow.

I mean, one of my greatest regrets in life is

I didn't go and see him, you know, after he was dead.

I really, really do regret that.

But I think we were so young,

we didn't know what the bloody hell...

Nobody offered it, you know.

I think if somebody said,

"Oh, you wanna go see him?"

We'd go, "F*** you, mate.

Do I wanna go and see a dead body?

Do I f***. You know, I'm 22.

I'm gonna go to the pub for a while."

But, you know, I really do regret not seeing him

and saying good-bye now. I really do.

It was only Bernard and I that didn't go.

Everybody else went, you know.

So then it was my job to look after Annik.

So I didn't go to the funeral

because it was my job

to make sure Annik got

on the plane back to Brussels,

and there was no scene at the funeral.

And sent me looking after Annik

for five or six days.

I'm sure Annik probably doesn't remember this,

but, uh, she was playing both albums

back to back, non-stop, 24 hours a day,

for about the entire time

she stayed in the cottage.

There ya go.

I didn't go to the funeral, but I went around

to Factory Records after the funeral,

and they played

The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle.

I always remember that,

and I just remember being frozen throughout it,

and I think we all were in the room.

Um, frozen at the...

at the aptness and the absolute ridiculous stupidity

that we should be doing this,

so it was the classic

putting on a brave face, I guess.

And doing it in a showy way.

And not really dealing with the emotion.

It was almost like we were just

too damned self-conscious

about maintaining

a ridiculous kind of degraded cool,

a kind of cool that in a way,

a lot of that thing at that time was meant to destroy,

but we still, you know,

didn't really talk to each other.

The day Tony found me to tell me

that Ian had died,

it was during that conversation

that I suddenly thought of the cover we had.

And I felt it necessary to point it out.

And Tony was very concerned.

The... The notions of sensationalism

or exploitation were lying there,

and I said, "Tony, we've got a tomb

on the cover of the album."

And he was like,

"Oh, f***."

'Cause Joy Division ends,

'cause it all ends with a jolt,

the jolt of a rope,

there's a tendency to end the story there.

I think the important thing

is not to end the story there.

Why did we decide to carry on?

We just carried on.

We never even thought, "Should we?

Should we carry on or not carry on?"

We went to the funeral,

went to the wake at Palatyne Road,

and then it was so...

"Monday?

All right, see you on Monday, then."

That was...

That was it.

I did everything

Everything that I wanted to

I let them use you

For their own ends

To the center of the city in the night

Looking for you

To the center of the city in the night

Waiting for you

The beauty of Joy Division

is that we did it, four of us.

Didn't know what we were doing,

didn't know why we were doing it.

The chemistry was unbelievable.

Take...

Talk to one of us, we didn't know.

Maybe Ian might have known.

I suppose that's something

we'll never find out.

But, you know,

it was just pure chemistry, four people.

And it was easy.

It was easy, writing those songs,

playing that well.

It was easy.

It only got difficult when he died.

The revolution that Joy Division created

and were at the heart of

and inspired many other people to take part in,

of not differentiating between dance and rock,

has resulted in this modern city,

and what was the original modern city becoming,

again, a modern city.

The vibrancy of the city,

the expectations of the city,

all those things are the legacy of Joy Division.

I think what they managed to do

had a kind of truth to it,

that has sustained

through the fluctuations of fashion.

And integrity,

something you can believe in,

something that didn't seem to be just for the money,

for the career, it was anti-industry,

all the things that ultimately seemed important

to the maintenance of popular culture.

The reinvention of what cool is.

Those that exploit, you know,

can make good use of something like Joy Division

because it explains some of the rules

of what it is to be cool.

The two works are

Unknown Pleasures and Closer,

and that's it.

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