Last Tuesday I was filling in an expenses form when somebody told me a 
joke. They said they'd had a phone call from Scotland saying The Teardrop
Explodes had dedicated a song on stage the previous evening to Joy 
Division's Ian Curtis who was dead. I laughed, and half self-consciously
compensating for bleak and industrial jibes, I said I wouldn't be surprised
if he had.
  But I was half worried as well, so I phoned Factory's Alan Erasmus to erase
the joke from my mind and let me return to my difficult expenses sheet. In a
frightening calm, most probably still shell-shocked voice, Alan Erasmus told
me it was true; Ian Curtis was dead. I forgot all about my expenses sheet.
  A few days later and the fragments of 'facts' that can be gathered are: it
was not a joke (nearly everybody I know thought it was at first, but we'll
come back to that later); Ian Curtis was dead, he'd hanged himself by the 
throat on Saturday night until the life was out of him; it's said he was 
found in the street, though this is unconfirmed.
  It's also said, though again this isn't yet verified, that his wife had 
left him on Saturday afternoon and he'd commited the deed later that 
evening. The band were preparing to fly to America the following morning.
  These are the shadows of facts, the information I've dared to glean from 
people around Joy Division. Gathering those eerie scraps of reality was
almost certainly the hardest thing I've ever had to do; I felt like a cub-
reporter.


  Ian Curtis was twenty-three. He leaves behind a wife and a baby. that's the 
bloody thing I can't get over, the baby. Still sticking to the facts, the 
most frightening and awesome aspect of Ian Curtis's suicide was the sheer 
fact that it was a colossal surprise, nobody seems to have suspected it.
Factory's Tony Wilson, who provided me with what comes closest to an 
'official statement', said: "It came as one bloody shock..."
  Joy Division had finished their new album, 'Closer'. It's still coming out
in a few weeks time, while the single 'Love Will Tear Us Apart' is due any
day. A freebie single had also been completed and it too will be released in
the coming months. On Sunday the band were going to America for three weeks 
of touring, so there is every reason to conclude that it was a hectic time
for the band and that all was going well, even that they were full of hope 
for the forthcoming projects.
  For the last three weeks I've been trying to arrange an interview with the 
band, but nothing had come of it. After my last, unusually turbulent feature,
the group were apparently split in deciding whether they should speak to me
again; I understand, and can now believe, that Ian Curtis wanted to do that
interview.
  I accepted the rebuff. I wasn't destroyed, just slightly disappointed, and
after all I was aware of the strange people that are Joy Division, perhaps 
the only band I've spoken to and come away feeling none the wiser and 
somewhat lost.
  For that's how I feel; I want to look into Joy Division because what Ian
Curtis did makes me want to now more than ever. I'm not searching for 
reasons, I'm just looking for ideas and above all I don't want to come over
ghoulish. But it's there, the feelings won't go away, the aura surrounding 
Joy Division is such that you're irrepressibly sucked into thought concerning 
them. And that notion at the beginning, that the brutal stroke of reality
that was Ian Curtis's suicide should strike people as a kind of topical joke
at the beginning, that in a way they jokily or uneasily half-expected it, 
that in other words, it should fit what Joy Division are about, that
reaction is a telling one.   
  Looking back (and it's almost impossible to talk as though the band are 
still a living unit, even though the other three members are naturally 
undecided and unthinking of whether they should go on as a trio), Joy 
Division meant a kind of romanticism to me more than anything else. I 
couldn't cope or cater for it for the most part, hence I suppose my frequent 
opposition. Joy Division records are records I alternately hate and adore; 
I'm either swept away in them or I don't play them. Even for me, who changes 
his mind more than most about music, the very distinct and unwavering split-
reaction is something remarkable. But Joy Division music contains so many 
pieces of the remarkable for so many people: Hilary of The Flowers won't play
it in the house by herself because it frightens her; Richard Jobson sang
'Transmission' all through East Berlin with me; The Fall don't like them at
all; whole gamuts of young British groups are at the moment so obviously and
openly inspired by Joy Division it's almost indecent hearing a teenage Scots
or N. Irish kid emulating that unworldly American groan of Ian Curtis's with
such child-like and innocent precision.
  For Joy Division's music was always full of spirits and ghosts. They had a
mystique that was born of romanticism. Their music often trembled with fear 
and it couldn't be explained away, that was the great thing. They had 
mystery, the eternal life-spring of any vital and special r'n'r music. The 
degree to which that mystique was a calculated thing, that too now fittingly 
becomes part of the mystery. Ian Curtis has taken it with him. In fact, he's
probably answered those questions and doubts: Joy Division, at least for him, 
were total and real and they meant it to death. Literally.


  Joy Division were a manic romance. Their music was of another world of 
symbols, abstracts, coincidence and hellish fear. They lived that world 
totally and Ian Curtis took the romance dance one step too far until it 
chills you to think of that final, that overwhelmingly final symbol of
submission or weakness or a terrible kind of communicated pride. Joy Division
aren't quite in my world. They didn't stamp or shout or openly despair. They
didn't tear at the music biz walls. They didn't rage or rant. But they too
dealt in the lonely, in the unassuming, in the world of dreams and the
imagination. Ian Curtis dealt in rock music's 'X ingredient'; in it's 
mystery, in it's communication of the inexplicable, in it's delivering of
something new always, something that the pseudo-worlds of culture and art 
can't even hint at in the way a song as powerful as 'Transmission' or
'Shadowplay' or 'Disorder' does. Still the thought comes: they took it too
far, they took the magic of r'n'r too much, they evoked it's dark spirits
too much. 
  I wonder. You hear rumours, and you tell the rumour-mongers to fuck off.   
I've heard: Ian Curtis was attending a clinic, that he was part insane, that
he put so much into live performance that he was gradually shrivelling up in 
real life, that he took on the spirit of Jim Morrison on stage, that he was
dying outwardly. Alan Erasmus did say that he was often ill, that he fell 
down a lot. I'll keep on wondering, absolutely exhilarated by the fact, the
one clear fact, that Ian Curtis was the stuff of enchanted, immutable 
mystery. When I met him he talked in a whisper and he talked hypnotically and
enchantedly about toy-shops. He spun words magically, that I do remember, 
that was his gift, he poured pure silver across totally memorable phrases and
related scenarios, and he managed it in songs too.


  His death was poetically beautiful. It was no cheap r'n'r death; he was no
worthless casualty, and it shouldn't be treated as such. So you can stuff 
your music business sympathy, your chic 1980s pseudo-passions. Ian Curtis 
belonged to the real world: the bleak and industrial pyre you made for him is
now your own pyre, your own guilt, your own stupidity, your own way of 
evading the simple truths.
  So next time you flick through your merchandised half-truths of a record-
collection, the next time you blunt your spirit on a clapped-out rock star
story, the next time you've a minute of silent contemplation away from the
plastic world, think of Ian Curtis, let his soul fill you. That man cared for
you, that man died for you, that man saw the madness in your area.      

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