Unknown Pleasures: Inside Joy Division (6 page)

15 January 1953

Rob Gretton born; raised Newall Green, Wythenshawe.

A fierce Manchester City fan, Gretton worked as an insurance clerk before leaving the job to work on a kibbutz with girlfriend Lesley Gilbert. He returned to the UK in 1976 and became involved in the emerging Manchester punk scene, working with Slaughter & the Dogs then the Panik.

9 October 1955

Peter Saville born; raised Hale, Manchester.

Saville attended St Ambrose College before studying graphic design at Manchester Polytechnic. Envious of contemporaries Linder Sterling and Malcolm Garrett, who had already made their names designing for the Buzzcocks and Magazine, and learning of the soon-to-open Factory club, Saville approached Tony Wilson at a Patti Smith concert. Not long afterwards the pair met in the canteen at Granada, where Saville showed Wilson a book of Jan Tschichold typography . . .

4 January 1956

Bernard Sumner born; raised Lower Broughton, Salford.

Sumner attended the Salford Grammar School, where he met Peter Hook.

13 February 1956

Peter Hook born.

15 July 1956

Ian Curtis born, Stretford, Manchester.

Early academic prowess saw Curtis admitted to the King’s School, Macclesfield; while there he met Deborah (Debbie) Woodruff. He
was also friendly with Helen Atkinson Wood, who later found fame playing Mrs Miggins in
Blackadder
, and gave her his copy of
The Man Who Sold the World
. He passed seven O Levels but dropped out of school midway through studying for his A Levels to begin a job at Rare Records in Manchester. He became engaged to Debbie on 17 April 1974. After a spell running a record stall, he took jobs in the civil service, eventually settling in Oldham after his marriage in 1975. Still dreaming of a career in the music business, Ian placed an advert in the music press, signing himself ‘Rusty’, which attracted the services of guitarist Iain Gray.

13 December 1956

Deborah Woodruff born, Liverpool.

Having left Liverpool when she was three, Deborah’s parents set up home in Macclesfield, where she attended Macclesfield High School for Girls, a ‘sister’ school to the King’s School. She became acquainted with Ian in 1972 when she was seeing his friend Tony Nuttall. When she and Tony split, she agreed to go on a date with Ian, to see David Bowie at the Hardrock Concert Theatre in Manchester. Soon they were a couple. Deborah was Ian’s second serious girlfriend.

12 October 1957

Annik Honoré born, southern Belgium.

To satisfy a voracious musical appetite, Annik travelled to gigs throughout Europe, seeing Siouxsie & the Banshees more than 100 times, as well as Patti Smith, the Clash, Generation X, Iggy Pop and David Bowie. Like Ian Curtis, her favourite album was Bowie’s
Low
. Annik became involved with the fanzine
En Attendant
, and then made plans to move to London. In the meantime she saw Joy Division for the first time at the Nashville Rooms on 13 August 1979, having travelled from Belgium especially to see them, and two weeks later interviewed the entire band at the Walthamstow flat Dave Pils shared with his girlfriend, Jasmine. By September that year Annik was living in London, in Parsons Green, and working at the Belgian Embassy.

28 October 1957

Stephen Morris born, Macclesfield.

Morris attended the King’s School, Macclesfield but was expelled for drinking cough syrup. Morris had drummed with the Sunshine Valley Dance Band, a group of school friends, and worked for his father’s firm, G Clifford Morris, a local plumbers’ merchants. He spotted two adverts in the window of Jones’ Music Store in Macclesfield: ‘Drummer wanted for punk band the Fall’ and ‘Drummer wanted for local punk band Warsaw’. Luckily for him he responded to the advert with the local phone number.

23 August 1975

Ian Curtis and Debbie Woodruff marry, Henbury.

23 April 1976

The Sex Pistols play the Nashville Rooms, London.

It was by all accounts an unremarkable concert until Vivienne Westwood decided to ‘liven things up’ by slapping a female audience member. The girl’s boyfriend rushed to help her, at which point Malcolm McLaren came to the aid of Vivienne, then the band to the aid of them both. All of which was captured in what were to become iconic images of the Pistols and reported in the
Melody Maker
and the
NME
(in a piece written by a pre-Pet Shop Boys Neil Tennant), marking the beginning of the Pistols’ notoriety and the aura of violence that was to accompany them from then on.

Inspired by the Velvet Underground, friends Howard Devoto and Pete Shelley had formed a band, taking their name from a headline in Time Out that read: ‘Feeling a Buzz, Cocks?’ Having made a pilgrimage to see the Sex Pistols in High Wycombe, they resolved to stage the Pistols in Manchester – with themselves supporting. A gig was scheduled for 4 June 1976, at Manchester’s Lesser Free Trade Hall – although, as it turned out, the Buzzcocks were not ready to play and support was instead provided by rock band Solstice.

Very few attended. Fifty at most. Yet the concert has been immortalized in two films (
24 Hour Party People
and
Control
), is the subject of a book (
I Swear I Was There: the Gig That Changed the World
, by David Nolan) and is popularly believed to have been the wellspring for years of musical innovation that was to follow, not just in Manchester but globally: in punk, post-punk and ultimately dance-music culture.

Among those who were definitely at the gig were Peter Hook and Bernard Dickin, who went on to form Warsaw/Joy Division/New Order; Steven Morrissey, later of the Smiths; Mark E. Smith, later of the Fall; Mick Hucknall, later of Frantic Elevators then Simply Red; John the Postman; photographer Kevin Cummins; and writer Paul Morley. They and others went away inspired: bands were formed, fanzines published, wardrobes overhauled – and the word about the Pistols was spread, so that the next concert, on 20 July, also at the Lesser Free Trade Hall, was far better attended. Most of those at the first gig returned, along with Ian Curtis and producer Martin Hannett.

I’ve always read the
Manchester Evening News
cover to cover, ever since I was a kid. Don’t ask me why. Same with watching
Coronation Street
; it’s just something I’ve always done. Home is Becky and the kids,
Corrie
and the
MEN
.

Reading the small ads in the
MEN
was how I found out that the Pistols were playing at the Lesser Free Trade Hall, 50p a ticket.

Now my mates – and I mean this in the nicest possible way – have always been dead normal, so they weren’t interested. But I’d been going to gigs with Terry and Bernard and (apart from the infamous toothache incident) having a laugh, so I phoned Bernard up.

‘The Sex Pistols are on – do you want to go and see them?’

He went, ‘Who?’

I said, ‘Oh, it’s this group. They have fights at every gig and it’s really funny. Come on, it’s only 50p.’

‘Yeah, all right, then.’

Terry was up for it too, so it ended up being me, him, Barney and Sue Barlow, who was Barney’s fiancé. I think they’d met at Gresty’s house when he was sixteen or so. They’d been going out for a few years and used to fight like cat and dog. With the possible exception of Debbie and Ian, they had the most tempestuous, argumentative relationship I’ve ever known in my life.
And
they ended up getting married . . .

So that was it anyway, the group of us who went and saw the Sex Pistols at Lesser Free Trade Hall. A night that turned out to be the most important of my life – or one of them at least – but that started out just like any other: me and Terry making the trip in Terry’s car; Barney and Sue arriving on his motorbike; the four of us meeting up then ambling along to the ticket office.

There to greet us was Malcolm McLaren, dressed head to toe in black leather – leather jacket, leather trousers and leather boots – with a shock of bright-orange hair, a manic grin and the air of a circus ringmaster, though there was hardly anyone else around. We were like,
Wow
. He looked so wild, from another planet even
.
The four of us were in our normal gear: flared jeans, penny collars and velvet jackets with big lapels, all of that. Look at the photographs of the gig and you can see that everybody in the audience was dressed the same way, like a
Top of the Pops
audience. There were no punks yet. So Malcolm – he looked like an alien to us. Thinking about it, he must have been the first punk I ever saw in the flesh.

Wide-eyed we paid him, went in and down the stairs into the Lesser Free Trade Hall (the same stairs I’d laid down on many years before). At the back of the hall was the stage and set out in front of it were chairs, on either side of a central walkway, just like it was in
24 Four Hour Party People
– although I don’t remember many sitting down like they
are in the film. I don’t think there was a bar that night, so we just stood around, waiting.

The support band were called Solstice, and their best number was a twenty-minute cover version of ‘Nantucket Sleighride’. The original, by Mountain, was one of my favourite records at the time so we knew it really well, and we were like, ‘This is great. Just like the record.’

Still, though, nothing out of the ordinary. Normal band, normal night, few people watching, clap-clap, very good, off they went.

The Sex Pistols’ gear was set up and then, without further ceremony, they came on: Johnny Rotten, Glen Matlock, Steve Jones and Paul Cook. Steve Jones was wearing a boiler suit and the rest of them looked like they’d just vandalized an Oxfam shop. Rotten had on this torn-open yellow sweater and he glared out into the audience like he wanted to kill each and every one of us, one at a time, before the band struck up into something that might have been ‘Did You No Wrong’ but you couldn’t tell because it was so loud and dirty and distorted.

I remember feeling as though I’d been sitting in a darkened room all of my life – comfortable and warm and safe and quiet – then all of a sudden someone had kicked the door in, and it had burst open to let in an intense bright light and this even more intense
noise
, showing me another world, another life, a way out. I was immediately no longer comfortable and safe, but that didn’t matter because it felt great. I felt alive. It was the weirdest sensation. It wasn’t just me feeling it, either – we were all like that. We just stood there, stock still, watching the Pistols. Absolutely, utterly, gobsmacked.

I was thinking two things. Two things that I suppose you’d have to say came together to create my future – my whole life from then on.

The first was:
I could do that.

Because, fucking hell, what a racket. I mean, they were just dreadful; well, the
sound
was dreadful. Now the other band didn’t sound that bad. They sounded
normal
. But it was almost as though the Pistols’ sound guy had deliberately made them sound awful, or they had terrible equipment on purpose, because it was all feeding back, fuzzed-up, just a complete din. A wall of noise. I didn’t recognize a tune, not a note, and considering they were playing so many cover versions – the Monkees, the Who – I surely would have recognized something had it not sounded so shit.

So, in fact, sound-wise it was as much the sound guy who inspired us
all as it was the Sex Pistols, who were, as much as I hate to say it, a pretty standard rock band musically. I’m not saying it’s a bad thing that they played straightforward down-the-line rock ‘n’ roll, but it didn’t make them special.

No. What made them special, without a shadow of a doubt, was Johnny Rotten. The tunes were only a part of the package – and probably the least important part of it, if I’m honest. Close your eyes and like I say you had a conventional pub-rock band with a soundman who either didn’t have a clue or was being very clever indeed. But who was going to close their eyes when he, Johnny Rotten, was standing there? Sneering and snarling at you, looking at you like he hated you, hated being there, hated everyone. What he embodied was the
attitude
of the Pistols, the attitude of punk. Through him they expressed what we wanted to express, which was complete nihilism. You know the way you feel when you’re a teenager, all that confusion about the future that turns to arrogance and then rebellion, like, ‘Fuck off, we don’t fucking care, we’re shit, we don’t care’? He had all of that and more.

And, God bless him, whatever he had, he gave a bit of it to us, because that was the second thing I felt, after
I can do that
. It was:
I
want
to do that
. No .
I fucking
need
to do that.

Tony Wilson said he was there, of course, but I didn’t see him, which is weird because he was very famous in Manchester then; he was Tony Wilson off the telly. Mick Hucknall was there, and Mark E. Smith and everyone, but of course we didn’t know anybody – all that would come later. The only people we knew there were each other: me and Terry, Barney and Sue. I don’t know what Sue made of it all, mind you; I’d love to know now. But me, Barney and Terry were being converted.