Read Unknown Pleasures: Inside Joy Division Online
Authors: Peter Hook
Tags: #Punk, #Personal Memoirs, #Music, #Biography & Autobiography, #Genres & Styles, #Composers & Musicians
Unknown Pleasures: Inside Joy Division (33 page)
29 October 1979
Joy Division play De Montfort Hall, Leicester, as part of the Buzzcocks tour.
30 October 1979
Joy Division play the New Theatre, Oxford, as part of the Buzzcocks tour. Set list: ‘Walked in Line’, ‘The Only Mistake’, ‘Leaders of Men’, ‘Insight’, ‘Ice Age’, ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’, ‘I Remember Nothing’.
November 1979
A photographic session with Anton Corbijn results in yet more iconic images of the band and sees the start of a relationship that will eventually culminate in the multi-award-winning film
Control
, Corbijn’s biopic of Ian Curtis.
“What I loved about Anton was that he did the pictures really quickly, with no fuss, no fucking about: bang, bang, bang and it was over. At the time, I thought,
Now, that’s how a photo shoot should be.
Those shots he took of us in the tube station: absolutely brilliant. The way that he works, he almost does it like a throwaway gesture. When he did New Order in America was with us for four days, pissed as a fart, having a great time; when we were all sat on the grass outside the gig on the afternoon of his last day he went, ‘Oh, I’m sure there’s something I’ve forgotten. What have I forgotten?’ Then the colour drained out of his face and he went, ‘Oh my God, I’ve forgotten to take any pictures.’
All his gear had gone to the airport so he rushed to a garage across the way, bought a couple of instamatic cameras and took us into a fairground opposite the venue, where he got Steve to wear these daft glasses and did the photo shoot. He’d been there for four days and did the shoot as the car was waiting to take him to the airport. Class. And this is the thing – they were brilliant. The guy is either a fucking genius or somebody up there likes him, without a shadow of a doubt. He’s a nice guy as well, really easy to be with. He’s sweet and patient – one of those people that you feel so comfortable with and happy to be with – which is a gift for a
photographer. He did a great job of
Control
and I knew he would. He is a perfectionist, though, and in that respect working with him wasn’t easy. Doing the soundtrack was the last nail in the coffin for New Order. I realized after that me and Barney were poles apart, too far apart, and no one seemed able to bring us back together. I thought our management were useless and Steve seemed lost. It was awful. The music was great, though. Typical: you’re always better when you’re full of anger. One thing I was happy about was that Natalie Curtis was included in the publishing for the songs. The credits are ‘Curtis-Hook-Morris-Sumner’.”
1 November 1979
Joy Division play the Civic Hall, Guildford, as part of the Buzzcocks tour. Set list: ‘No Love Lost’, ‘These Days’, ‘Disorder’, ‘Candidate’, ‘Shadowplay’, ‘Autosuggestion’, ‘Warsaw’, ‘Transmission’, ‘The Sound of Music’.
“This was the night that Pete Shelley slipped Twinny (£3.50) to get the key to his room so he could play a practical joke on Dave Pils. Dave was awoken by a drunken Buzzcock tickling his feet under the covers. Dave ran away screaming.”
2 November 1979
Joy Division play the Winter Gardens, Bournemouth, as part of the Buzzcocks tour. Set list: ‘I Remember Nothing’, ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’, ‘Interzone’, ‘Colony’, ‘Insight’, ‘These Days’, ‘Digital’, ‘Transmission’, ‘Atrocity Exhibition’. The set is cut short because Ian has a fit and is taken to hospital.
3 November 1979
Joy Division gig at Sophia Gardens, Cardiff, cancelled. Part of the Buzzcocks tour.
4 November 1979
Joy Division play Colston Hall, Bristol, as part of the Buzzcocks tour.
5 November 1979
Joy Division play the Pavilion, Hemel Hempstead, as part of the Buzzcocks tour. Set list (possibly incomplete): ‘Dead Souls’, ‘Wilderness’, ‘Twenty Four Hours’, ‘New Dawn Fades’, ‘Digital’, ‘Disorder’, ‘Interzone’.
“The practical jokes went up a gear here. The Buzzcocks’ road crew told Terry that swallowing a huge lump of dope would give him a mild buzz. He was incapacitated. We arrived to find him leaning against a wall outside the venue, whimpering. We put him tenderly in Steve’s car to recover and sleep it off, then Twinny, me and Barney took it in turns to shove lit bangers up the car exhaust and repeatedly scared him to death. Rob did the sound for the gig.”
7 November 1979
Joy Division play the Pavilion, West Runton, as part of the Buzzcocks tour. Set list: ‘Colony’, ‘These Days’, ‘Autosuggestion’, ‘Twenty Four Hours’, ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’, ‘The Sound of Music’, ‘Atrocity Exhibition’.
9 November 1979
Joy Division play the Rainbow Theatre, London, as part of the Buzzcocks tour. Set list: ‘The Sound of Music’, ‘Shadowplay’, ‘New Dawn Fades’, ‘Colony’, ‘Insight’, ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’, ‘She’s Lost Control’, ‘Transmission’.
10 November 1979
Joy Division play the Rainbow Theatre, London. The last date of the Buzzcocks tour. Set list: ‘Dead Souls’, ‘Wilderness’, ‘Twenty Four Hours’, ‘Day of the Lords’, ‘These Days’, ‘Interzone’, ‘Disorder’, ‘Atrocity Exhibition’.
26 November 1979
Joy Division record their second John Peel session, BBC Studios, Maida Vale, London. Produced by Tony Wilson (not the same one). Tracks recorded: ‘The Sound of Music’, ‘Twenty Four Hours’, ‘Colony’, ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’.
8 December 1979
Joy Division play Eric’s, Liverpool (matinee and evening shows), with Section 25.
18 December 1979
Joy Division play Les Bains Douches, Paris. Set list: ‘Passover’, ‘Wilderness’, ‘Disorder’, ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’, ‘Insight’, ‘Shadowplay’, ‘Transmission’, ‘Day of the Lords’, ‘Twenty Four Hours’, ‘Colony’, ‘These Days’, ‘A Means to an End’, ‘She’s Lost Control’, ‘Atrocity Exhibition’, ‘Interzone’, ‘Warsaw’.
31 December 1979
Factory office party at Oldham Street, Manchester.
“Rob bought about 200 cans of beer for 25p each – the idea being to sell them for 50p and make back the money that we paid for the PA and the lights, so we’d break even. It was a nice idea; quite forward-thinking, actually. Rob said, ‘Right, I’ll sell the fucking beer. I can’t trust you bastards. I’ll do it.’ But what he didn’t do was get a float, so when the first kid came up with a pound note to buy a 50p drink Rob had no change. So he said, ‘Fucking have two cans.’
The kid said, ‘I don’t want two cans. I want one.’
‘Look, we’ve got no change.’
‘Well, give me the beer then.’
‘Come back later and get your 50p.’
‘No, no, I’ll come back later and give you 50p.’
Rob was like, ‘Oh, fucking hell!’ and gave him the beer.
Anyway, so the next kid came up: same story. Rob had to keep
giving the beers away and in the end he got so fucking fed up he just went, ‘Fuck off the lot of you; you can have it.’ And he just walked away and left the bar open.
That was when we discovered that it was easier to give drink away than it was to get people to pay for it – an important lesson, that, and one we made great use of during the Haçienda years.”
‘Ceremony’
Joy Division began the new decade with a ten-date, eleven-day tour of Europe, where Ian was joined by Annik.
As I’ve said, I liked Annik. She really, really cared for Ian and she looked out for and after him. Being Belgian she seemed impossibly exotic. She was strong, independent, very into her music, intelligent and pretty into the bargain.
But none of that could make up for the fact that she was a royal pain in the arse on that tour. She didn’t like us being at all laddish and was always pulling us up on our manners. God help you if you farted in the minibus or something. She disapproved of us chatting up girls and generally being dirty bastards, and didn’t like our bad language. She was a right mother hen, in other words, clucking round us all the time.
Ian seemed to love it, of course, but that’s because he changed when he was with her – that chameleon aspect of him coming out again. Was he more himself when he was with Annik, or more himself when he was pissing about with us? There’s the eternal question. All I can remember is that with her he became a bit . . . Well, Barney probably put it best when he said ‘poncey’. With us: chasing groupies and pissing in ashtrays and looking at turds in toilets. With her: talking about Burroughs and Dostoyevsky. The perfect friend or partner for Ian would have combined all those things, but if that person exists they were nowhere near our social scene, so he had to be the chameleon, moving from one to another. You have to say he was bloody good at it. In her book Debbie says he would have made a good actor, and I think she’s spot-on there.
So the tour was hard. Not just because of Annik, though she hardly helped, of course. But because we had no money, we were hungry, it was cold and miserable, we were driving around in a minibus and we really got on each other’s tits, and the gigs were small too.
Worst of all, there was never any privacy. Nowhere could you go to be by yourself for a bit. I’d not been abroad for any length of time, had
a bit of my mother in me when it came to food, and wouldn’t touch anything that wasn’t ‘English’. So at the end of a gig when the promoter brought us Chinese, I went hungry. Never had rice, you see. I was in my early twenties and had never had rice. Well, maybe rice pudding. So I just used to sit there, tummy rumbling, watching that lot eating and going hungry. If it wasn’t Chinese then it would be lentils – most of the promoters were hippies – and just the sight of lentils used to turn my stomach. So again I ate nothing.
Added to the hunger was the cold. The van was freezing. You’d spend the whole journey twisting and turning, hugging yourself trying to keep warm, with everyone bitching and moaning around you . . . Jesus.
I just wanted to go home. To warmth, and the cat, and proper food. When we got to Antwerp it was like heaven because we had a hotel lined up and we were looking forward to getting a proper wash and a decent bed for the night, rather than kipping on a promoter’s floor.
But on our arrival at the hotel any thoughts of luxury were well and truly dashed when the promoter announced that we weren’t allowed to check in until after 1am. Huh? What kind of hotel can’t you check into until one o’clock in the morning? Annik was grumbling off about that, quite rightly on this occasion, because Ian was ill and she’d made it her job to ensure he was as comfortable as possible – which must have been especially hard for her, considering his policy of behaving like nothing was wrong. She was on damage limitation, I suppose you’d have to say.
Either way, we went off, did the gig then returned to the hotel just after midnight. Perhaps they’d take pity and let us in before one.
But of course they didn’t. So we had to wait in the freezing cold, moaning about the van and watching people coming and going from the hotel. There were some right choice fuckers coming out of there, I’m telling you. Tarty women and fat geezers.
Then all of a sudden Annik sat bolt upright and went, ‘I know what ziss is – eet’s a brothel.’
Me and Barney were like, ‘
Really
?’ looking forward to getting in there even more. But she started having this flaming row with Rob.
‘You peeg,’ she was saying. ‘You peeg. You are deesgusting to bring us to ziss brothel,’ which the rest of were cracking up about – right up until she announced that there was no way we could stay there, no way.
Then we stopped laughing. Because let me tell you we’d been really looking forward to a bed for the night. It didn’t matter to us that it was
a brothel. It was the wash and bed we were desperate for. But she was really kicking off about it, shouting at Rob and calling him immoral or something, which was the wrong thing to say because Rob squared up to her, pushed his glass up his nose and said, ‘I’m immoral?
I’m
immoral? I’m not the one fucking a married man with a kid.’
Which wasn’t strictly speaking true, of course. Ian’s medication meant that fucking anybody was out of the question; and, like I say, it’s public knowledge that he and Annik never – what’s a nice way of saying it? –
consummated
their relationship. Even so, what Rob said was close enough to the bone to shut Annik up and she agreed that we could go in, which we did, only to discover that it was indeed a brothel. Everything was neon and there were neon strips everywhere – under the tables, which looked really good. (Come to think of it, I’ll have it to suggest that to Becky for our house.) And in every room there was a speaker under the bed, so that when music was playing it vibrated (but I won’t suggest that).
Oh, and there was hot water and a mattress. The fourth date of the tour and it was the first time I’d had a proper mattress. Fucking luxury.