Ian Kevin Curtis: 40 Years On.
By Tom Harrison.
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On the 18th of this month, fans of revolutionary Salford Post-Punk outfit, Joy Division On the 18th of this month, fans of revolutionary Salford Post-Punk outfit, Joy Division (and the wider music community as a whole) mourn the loss of one of the most enigmatic, twisted and complex figures in the pantheon of British music: Ian Kevin Curtis. Curtis is not alone in his inspiration of mass mourning: a brief glance at the crowds around the gothic mausoleums of the Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris to pay respects to the late Jim Morrison, or the huddled-together tourists jammed into the corner of New York’s 72ndStreet and Central Park West to honour John Lennon at the spot on which was assassinated by Mark Chapman in the same year Ian himself passed. In more recent years, fans have paid devotion to icons such as Amy Winehouse, whose likeness is forever enshrined in bronze in the Stables Market in Camden and grieved at the losses of beloved hip-hop stars like Tupac Shakur and the Notorious B.I.G or even more controversial figures like alleged domestic abuser Jahseh Onfroy (better known as XXXTentacion). Ian Curtis’ legacy, however, is arguably more complex even than these.
Born into a working-class family in Macclesfield, Cheshire in 1956, Ian demonstrated considerable academic ability, obtaining a scholarship to Macclesfield’s independent King’s School, where quickly a natural flair for poetry [pictured right] and philosophy blossomed as he tore through everything from Eliot, Sartre and Nietzsche to William Burroughs and Thom Gunn. Curtis quickly became unenthused with academic life and his infatuation with the monolithic figures of the late 60s and 70s as figures like David Bowie and Jim Morrison began to seep into his artistic influence and perhaps into his personal life in some ways (he was once found, unconscious, on the floor of his room by his father, having consumed a large dosage of Largactil he’d stolen from the elderly patients he visited as part of a school programme).
Disenfranchised, the future Joy Division frontman abandoned his studies and decided to find real employment (though he continued his explorations into art, music and poetry on his own) bouncing around from a record shop in Manchester city centre, to the Ministry of Defence for several months, before, by his own request, being stationed at Macclesfield’s Employment Exchange, where he worked as an Assistant Disablement Resettlement Officer — Anton Corbijn’s 2007 biopic, Control, offers some highly compelling, but tragically iconic scenes of Ian trying to find work for someone suffering from severe epilepsy — a condition which latterly would prove to be the spark of a bleak downward spiral culminating in his suicide in 1980.
Joy Division (initially under the moniker Warsaw — an allusion to David Bowie and Brian Eno’s collaborative 1977 hit Warszawa from the critically acclaimed Low album) was formed by Peter Hook and Bernard Sumner following a Sex Pistols gig in Manchester and quickly brought in Curtis on lead vocals (who had responded to an advertisement in the Manchester Virgin Records store) and Stephen Morris (who had attended the same school as Ian). Over the next few years the band recorded and re-recorded, had disputes with their record label and came under fire for their occasional flirtation with Nazi and other fascist imagery (the name Joy Division being taken from a sex slavery wing of a Nazi concentration camp from Ka-tzetnik’s 1955 novella House of Dolls) before their breakthrough 1979 album: Unknown Pleasures. An intense, tortured, blend of the under-produced, unrefined sounds of the growing punk movement in England, with some of the more experimental ideas that would blossom in the 80s (Art Rock, Krautrock, etc.), this landmark debut almost single-handedly etched Joy Division’s name into music history, but as the band’s success grew, with their 1980 follow-up Closer showing no signs of a sophomore slump, touring schedules and performances became more taxing, and Ian Curtis’ epilepsy began to take over the band’s performances, with Ian often being unable to complete the set before his body was taken over by seizure.
Embarrassed and ashamed of these instances, Ian became depressed and removed and the band grew increasingly worried for his health, both physical and mental. By the 7th April 1980, his mental state had deteriorated to the extent that he attempted suicide: an overdose on his anti-seizure medication phenobarbitone. The following evening, with Curtis in no state to perform, Alan Hempsall of fellow Manchester post-punk band Crispy Ambulance and Simon Topping of A Certain Ratio took his place at the front of the stage, the latter being met with bottles hurled at the stage later in the set — proof, if any were needed to Hook, Sumner and Morris that there was no replacing Curtis. Cancelled shows became more and more frequent through April before the band played the set that would come to be their last at the University of Birmingham’s High Hall on the 2ndof May — including the only ever performance of the song Ceremony (the last to be penned by the ill-fated frontman) by the band, as Joy Division.
Alongside the struggles of performing with the band, Ian had spent most of the year in domestic turmoil after his affair with Belgian journalist and music promoter Annik Honoré had been discovered by his wife Deborah, who had quickly begun divorce proceedings, citing further the singer’s ‘controlling’ nature in the relationship for several years. On the evening of 17th May 1980 — Curtis arrived at 77 Barton Street in Macclesfield, Cheshire, their family home to beg his wife to drop divorce proceedings (though she latterly remarked that he likely would have changed his mind the next morning). Deborah, mindful of Ian’s struggling condition and battles with epileptic seizures, placated and offered to spend the night with him, however, by the time she had returned from her parent’s home, where she had informed them of her intentions, his demeanour had changed entirely. As described in Deborah Curtis’ 1995 biography he informed her that he intended to spend the night alone, and asked her not to return until he had left on the 10 am train the following morning to rendezvous with his bandmates, who were about to embark on their first US tour.
On the following day, 18th May 1980, Ian Kevin Curtis was found strangled against his kitchen washing-line, Werner Herzog’s 1977 film Stroszekin on the TV, Iggy Pop’s 1977 album The Idiot on the record player and photos of his wedding and baby daughter were strewn across the floor along with a suicide note, declaring his love for Deborah despite the affair.
It seems a familiar story: promising young musician taken too early, tossed by the cruel winds of fame, depression and drugs but somehow Ian’s story and legacy seems a little different: for starters, his story ends even earlier, dying at the tragically young age of 23, Curtis didn’t even get far enough to belong to what Kurt Cobain’s mother once called “that stupid club”. But beyond the seemingly arbitrary categorisation of the ‘27 club,’ Ian Curtis’ legacy seems to grow in complexity as time passes. Unlike many of his musical colleagues — there seems to be nothing poetic about the end of one of Britain’s most important frontman. In Kurt Cobain’s final year, Nirvana performed what would go onto be the most iconic MTV Unplugged show of all time, whilst he can be found in dozens of interviews from previous years, calmly mocking the status quo and espousing feminist values ahead of their time; Amy Winehouse’s story is one of an astonishingly talented young woman who became victim to the cruelty of the music industry, a pushy father and an abusive boyfriend; and even Jim Morrison, who himself was said to have had outbursts of cruelty and a generally inconsiderate attitude had a death shrouded in mystery and intrigue, at the side of his most consistent partner Pamela Courson; Jeff Buckley, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin as well — behemoths of music history who have come to be idolised and almost deified. Ian Curtis’ death and legacy are unlike theirs: he died alone, defeated by his disability and mental health, facing the rejection of his wife and daughter and doubting his own ability to front the band with which he had become famous. Furthermore, it seems difficult to idolise Curtis in the way we might Cobain or Buckley, despite the obvious sensitivity that can be observed from his work as an artist, there are parts of his life we cannot ignore: from the flirtation with neo-Nazi and fascist imagery coupled with his loyal support of the Conservative party and vehement opposition to immigration to the domestic troubles recalled by his wife in her 1995 biographyTouching From a Distance which describes him as a man who swung from good-natured generosity to ‘selfish control-freakery’.
Despite his complex legacy, Ian Curtis and Joy Division are still much beloved today, and even if we are not to idolise Curtis in the way we might some of his counterparts (though a quick look at many of these might inspire similar realisations) that is not to say there is nothing to be learned from his struggle. Following his death, guitarist Bernard Sumner reflected on the band’s awareness of Ian’s true feelings: ‘Strange as it may sound, it wasn’t until after his death that we really listened to Ian’s lyrics and clearly heard the inner turmoil in them’. It seems almost a parroted mantra these days, but it can never hurt to check in on those around you — Ian Curtis’ struggle is not an uncommon one, especially in 21st-century society, increasingly, people seem at war with their own mental health and if the other members of Joy Division could get up on stage night after night and remain unaware of the depths of the depression described in their own band’s lyrics, clearly these things are sometimes hidden beneath the surface and it is when these buried issues are left unscratched beneath the surface, that they can become greater than ourselves and as undefeatable as Ian Curtis clearly felt his to be.
Edited by Marnie Ashbridge.
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