Being a JD fan (like I eventually became) is similar to being a Nirvana fan - both left behind discographies so relatively small that you end up fetishizing every song and scrap of information you can get your hands on. Ian Curtis was only 23 years old, and had been Joy Divisioning for less than three years, when he slung himself up from the washing line in his kitchen. When you first come to the realization that JD are actually a good band (I think it was Disorder that did it for me) their library - the entire of it being only two studio albums and a couple of compilations - doesn't seem like it would be enough for you to be able to even call yourself a fan; although you'd be surprised at the mileage you can get out of a few records when there's no alternative.
Peter Hook, Stephen Morris and Bernard Sumner had been playing for a while when they signed up Curtis as singer after a Sex Pistols concert. It's the great punk myth that none of them could play any of their instruments, but what separates the "punk" of Johnny Rotten and Co. and the "post-punk" of Joy Division (a broad term at best, being that it also encompasses wildly different bands like Talking Heads and The Police) is that the former was angry thrashing and the latter was a slowly building cloud of moody atmosphere. Or: the former was anger at society, the latter was anger at the self.
And Joy Division really could play: listen to the precision of guitars on Disorder, a complete contrast to the mess that a band like The Ramones would throw out at the time (a fantastic mess, before you start yelling); or the claustrophobic production in Atrocity Exhibition which slowly builds to the point of sweat and tears as guitar feedback rings through the speakers; or Peter Hook's bass (severely underrated) which had the power to cut through the air like a razor blade. And it's impressive how many sides there are to be found in a band around for such a short time: garage punk ripoffs on their earliest recordings; energetic and at times extremely heavy on Unknown Pleasures; dark and claustrophobic on Closer; and aggressive enough to turn crowds into chaos when live.
I find it interesting to think about live JD, because it's more than likely that even most JD fans in the early 80s hadn't seen them live. If you're wanting to check out live JD you haven't got much to go on: beyond their few appearances on the BBC and some piss poor quality recordings on Youtube, the only quality source of live JD is on compilation disc Still. Just listen to it: I'd argue it makes the case for JD as some of the greatest live performers ever, if only in raw talent and not prolificacy. The best live performers - say Jimi Hendrix or Nirvana, the one's who knew how to make a live set it's own thing and not just a recreation of their albums - were also the ones always closest to falling apart. Cobain and Hendrix sometimes struggled to get through a set, their talent a very active struggle for all to see, while Curtis performed under the constant fear of having an epileptic fit.
Now, I wouldn't call JD a one man show, not with the talent already described, but if all music is is just another way for humans to channel emotions from one another then the emotions of JD are surely all Curtis', with the rest of the band organically moving around him. Listen to the live version of Transmission on Still; you can hear the emotions getting channeled, a constant state of unease building to an explosion, and not just from Ian: the guitars are different from the album version, they have a sense of urgency to them. JD didn't have the eclectic live sets of Hendrix or Nirvana, they stuck mostly to stuff on their albums - but there's a feeling to their live recordings, of a real person performing, getting up on stage like you or I would and doing his best. Not a superstar, too comfortable with performing live, going over another well choreographed performance.
I'd recommend any JD fan check out Control, the biopic of Curtis' life starring Sam Riley as the man himself. On my first viewing I thought Riley, great at the dramatic stuff, was only doing a poor imitation of Curtis' singing. It wasn't until I listened to Still that I realized he had got it right, that his somber throaty delivery really was what Curtis sounded like live, and not the spectral baritone of the albums, like a ghost hanging over each song.
And it's here, in these contrasts between the reality and the fantasies that the music studio afford that you can draw up a narrative out of JD. If there is a "theme" to early JD it's high tech and futuristic. There's a cold, machine like preciseness to the guitars. The front cover of their first album is a visualization of some radio waves; a complete contrast to the "pleasures" promised within. All of their photography is in black and white. All of this could be seen as Curtis trying to create order out of the chaos of his personal life. Trying to turn the grand, lush, despairing emotions he felt into digitalized 1s and 2s. It's a depressing goal, yet there's something hopeful about how Unknown Pleasures looks to the future, about that lone radio signal in the middle of total darkness.
By the time Closer - the second and final JD album - released, this sense of hope had gone. The cover, which depicts a funeral in an Egyptian tomb, looks like a mystical photograph recovered from hundreds of years ago. It's pointing only to the past. Curtis wrote it down himself in the line that's used to open Control: "Existence. Well, what does it matter? I exist on the best terms I can. The past is now part of my future. The present is well out of hand". The whole album represents Curtis' defeat to the dark thoughts clawing at him, and JD finds the perfect music to go without.
As I said earlier: fetishizing over small details and romanticizing everything. I know the little narrative I've just carved out of the JD albums isn't really what was intended; the truth was probably far more ordinary than that. But that's the reason fans draw such a personal connection between themselves and bands like JD and Nirvana. They're making their parts to bands they wish they had more of. So fuck the skeptics, this time rock and roll really was a matter of life or death.
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