Bipolar and Digital in 1979

Joy Division. It took 22 years to tell their story. For years growing up I’d heard of this band that came before New Order. Various friends would play their songs for me, but it was too dark, too distant from New Order’s “Republic” in 1993. Even as I worked backwards through the NO catalogue, Technique, Substance, Brotherhood, Joy Division still stayed distant. See, there wasn’t much press on the four boys in the 70s, New Order never talked about those years, the story wasn’t mentioned until the Heart and Soul box set was released in 1997.

Post-college is when I first picked up Joy Division, that’s when the moody melody and the haunting lyrics first got under my skin. And thank God it wasn’t sooner, I’m not sure I could’ve handled it before 1997. The box set had four discs, their main two albums, a few singles, and some rare live shots. It was hard to tell what order the songs were originally released in, but with a very large book inside, the written lyrics were a godsend to those who’d been listening to Ian Curtis’ mumbled singing. The few pictures, not as many there should have been in a book that size, revealed the contrasting youth with the tiredness of their hometown of Manchester, England. It was this box set book that first laid out the story for me.

Within the last five years, the Joy Division story has rounded out through a series of three films. In 2002 “Twenty Four Hour Party People” took on the immense task of telling the tale of how Tony Wilson started and guided Factory Records, whose biggest act was Joy Division and New Order. Through the strength of Joy Division, Factory, re-modernized the city of Manchester. The basic stories of how Joy Division came to Factory, how they made their mark in the northwest of England, and how Ian Curtis killed himself play the major first act of 24HPP. However, because this is Tony and Factory’s story, the impact and continuance of the band doesn’t play a deep role.

We have to skip forward 5 years to 2007 to see the next Joy Division biopic, specifically centered on the troubled lead, Ian Curtis. For this we get the movie “Control”, based on Ian’s widow’s book of their time together. Though disputed by many of the band members, “Control” fleshes out more of Ian’s motivations and demons. It’s hard to call Ian the protagonist of this movie, because he comes across as such a twat. Sympathies lie more with his wife Debbie, as she’s dropped from his life, piece by piece, after having their kid. By the time his suicide happens, which you know is coming from a mile off, you don’t feel sorry for the man, you feel sorrier for those left behind who are forced to carry on.

The final part of the story is more solidly told in Grant Gee’s documentary “Joy Division” released at the end of 2007. Like any modern rock documentary this movie juxtaposes snippets of interviews from the people in Ian’s life with the actually concert and TV footage from the late 70s. The players here reveal their favorite Joy Division stories, give a full explanation of the times, and analyze the songs. This feels like the first time the other band members have sat down, stared a camera in the lens, and discussed Ian, and what he meant to them and the band. It’s frank. It’s poignant. It’s a bit disturbing, like being let in on a therapy session that was twenty years coming. But it’s the only version of the story that the rest of the world will get. The most informative discussions are about Ian’s lyrics, how his epilepsy and bipolar disorder truly affected his view of the world, and how much positive/negative visuals the songs contain. It’s too hard to play “what if” 22 years on, but for a brief few years in the bleak years of the late 70s, in the dreary north west of England, art was created that we’re still dissecting and dancing to today.