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Rating: The Joy Division were my Beatles. For those who, like me, were "born" musically in the late seventies, they were the most significant and influential group, the one from which all others took their cues. At that time, the Clash wielded their guitars like rifles and shot indiscriminately at the musical star system. And the dinosaurs of rock no longer seemed capable of maintaining their hegemony over the scene. That's when I began to realize that there was music significantly different from what was being offered on national radio. So it didn't take long to move from punk to post-punk, and my new idols had simple faces of slightly angry and depressed young guys. We had entered the eighties.
Among the post-77 bands, Joy Division certainly had the greatest appeal. An incredible name as well as an astonishingly "cool" image, with that blue-eyed singer dressed in black and white like a protagonist from a Kafka novel. And the music and image followed the style, even anticipated it, in their rigorous austerity. This is also why the two records they left us are epochal even beyond their value and musical merits. Maybe it's those Saville covers that have sadly become t-shirt brands, or maybe not… certainly, those lyrics still send shivers down the spine today, just like the hypnotic progressions of the songs, sometimes tight like punk rides, sometimes sweet and desperate. No one else has ever reached such a level of drama, and for this reason too, the music has "held up" over time.
A good example of what Joy Division really were can be found elsewhere. For example, in this magnificent "unofficial" live recording at the Town Hall in High Wycombe on February 20, 1980. Frequently bootlegged and also included in the reissue of the double anthology "Still", it captures a powerful and vigorous performance where the band is at the top of their form and in 35 minutes rolls out an essential repertoire. Their set is simply breathtaking. Intense, with an almost eerie sound quality that captures a band finally finding its true sound - a sound that would influence so many bands and artists since then. The tracks are now classics. A literally overwhelming "Twenty Four Hours" and a "Love Will Tear Us Apart" never heard so open to new pop horizons, a tight live version of "Disorder", fast and sharp, and a stern and edgy "Isolation". The sound is nastier and more visceral than the studio albums, Peter Hook's bass pumps tirelessly, and Ian's voice is deep and expressive, at times desperate as in "Atrocity Exhibition."
At that time, Joy Division were far from the iconic post-punk band they would become after Curtis's death, and they were vigorously trying to impose their musical choice on ears finally more attentive to change and novelty. Afterwards, there would be times of rediscovery and celebration, but that night at the Town Hall there were just 4 young guys with the fixed idea of one day resembling a real rock band and wanting to do it with "their" music. I find it particularly interesting, for example, the inclusion of the soundcheck recordings of the concert, always material of excellent sound quality. No compromises, no smiles even when it came to rehearsals. Only the determination of the performances, with a memorable, martial, and hypnotic "Ice Age," almost as if it came out of a krautrock manual… and what to say about a definitive "Means to an End" in its forward march, conceding nothing towards an already written finale. Three months later, Ian would hang himself in his little room in Macclesfield, leaving an unfillable void for his generation. On that absence, even more than on that brief presence, the myth would inevitably be born.
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