45 Years Later: Closer & The Last Days Of Joy Division

Because of the death of Ian Curtis and the nature of the band’s last recordings, Joy Division’s Closer is an album around which a stillness has settled. In truth, says Jonathan Wright as he talks to Peter Hook and Paul Morley, no band evolved so rapidly. This feature was originally published on 13/07/2020

n 1979, for even the most avid NME reader living outside Britain’s big cities, it wasn’t easy to get to see new bands. Sure, you could hear them on John Peel, but that didn’t tell you anything about their stage demeanours. It follows that many of those who watched Joy Division perform ‘Transmission’ and ‘She’s Lost Control’ on BBC Two’s Something Else programme on 15 September 1979 had little or no idea of what to expect.

What viewers saw was extraordinary. Here were the young men: Peter Hook scowling, bass hung low, guitarist Bernard Sumner lost in concentration and Steven Morris busily keeping time. But what really commanded the attention was the fierce intensity of frontman Ian Curtis, a man possessed, spasming and running on the spot to keep up with the music that had taken him over.

In their sole appearance on national TV, Joy Division left an indelible impression. And for those already paying attention, there was the sense this was only the beginning, that this was a band already moving beyond Unknown Pleasures, released in June 1979 and a debut where, for all the eerie spaciness in the music, Joy Division’s roots in punk were clearly discernible.

Tragically, it was a journey that, because of the suicide of Ian Curtis on 18 May 1980, had already ended by the time the band’s second album Closer was released in July that year. 45 years on, it remains an extraordinary record, an album where Joy Division and producer Martin Hannett distilled the band’s sound, its icy clarity a counterpoint to lyrics that, to quote journalist Paul Morley, were written by a man who “was on the edge of the abyss” and “was actually experiencing trauma in real time and pressing it so precisely into his lyrics”.

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