JANUARY 7–8, 1980
The first “Love Will Tear Us Apart” session, Pennine Sound Studios, Oldham. Produced by Martin Hannett. Tracks recorded: “These Days,” “ The Sound of Music,” “Love Will Tear Us Apart” (version one).
JANUARY 11, 1980
Joy Division plays Paradiso, Amsterdam, Netherlands. The start of the European tour. The support band doesn’t play, so Joy Division does both slots, performing two different sets for the price of one. Set list (“support” set): “Passover,” “Wilderness,” “Digital,” “Day of the Lords,” “Insight,” “New Dawn Fades,” “Disorder,” “Transmission.” Set list (main set): “Love Will Tear Us Apart,” “These Days,” “A Means to an End,” “Twenty Four Hours,” “Shadowplay,” “She’s Lost Control,” “Atrocity Exhibition,” “Atmosphere,” “Interzone.”
JANUARY 12, 1980
Joy Division plays Paard Van Troje (the Trojan Horse), The Hague, Netherlands, supported by Minny Pops.
JANUARY 13, 1980
Joy Division plays Doornroosje, Nijmegen, Netherlands.
JANUARY 14, 1980
Joy Division plays King Kong, Antwerp, Belgium.
When finally the Joy Division company arrives the next day, we immediately bring them to the Boemerang . . . in a very friendly and polite way the manager tells us the place is “too scruffy” and request another place to stay . . . hell!
In a hurry we manage to find some rooms in the Appelmans hotel near the central station, and this time the crew and band seem to be satisfied and get in.
All goes well until Annik Honoré, the young girlfriend of Ian Curtis, pops her head in; she sees the red lights, the “special” furniture and erotic paintings on the wall and screams: “No way! You’re not going to put us in this whorehouse! Don’t you know Joy Division is an important band?”
Curtis looks at her and laughs—he doesn’t mind sleeping here with the others—but she bursts into tears.
Excerpt from The Night Ian Curtis Came to Sleep by Marc Schoetens, from joydiv.org
JANUARY 15, 1980
Joy Division plays the Basement, Cologne, Germany. Set list: “Atmosphere,” “Love Will Tear Us Apart,” “These Days,” “Insight,” “Twenty Four Hours,” “A Means to an End,” “She’s Lost Control,” “The Sound of Music,” “Glass,” “Day of the Lords,” “Shadowplay,” “Interzone,” “Disorder,” “Transmission,” “Atrocity Exhibition.”
They were good gigs but fucking hell, Europe was cold. Thinking about it, what can’t have helped was the fact that I’d gone skinhead. The rest of them were growing theirs back but I’d decided to shave all mine off. Ever since the time they’d japed me into dyeing it blond I’d been different with my hair—so if they cut theirs, I’d be growing mine; if they grew theirs, I’d get mine cut. That was the same all through New Order, too.
JANUARY 16, 1980
Joy Division plays Lantaren, Rotterdam, Netherlands.
JANUARY 17, 1980
Joy Division plays Plan K, Belgium. Set list: “Dead Souls,” “Wilderness,” “Insight,” “Colony,” “Twenty Four Hours,” “A Means to an End,” “Transmission,” “Atmosphere,” “Love Will Tear Us Apart,” “Digital,” “Warsaw,” “Shadowplay,” “Atrocity Exhibition,” “Sister Ray,” “The Eternal.”
JANUARY 18, 1980
Joy Division plays Effenaar, Eindhoven, Netherlands, supported by Minny Pops. Set list: “Love Will Tear Us Apart,” “Digital,” “New Dawn Fades,” “Colony,” “These Days,” “Ice Age,” “Dead Souls,” “Disorder,” “Day of the Lords,” “Autosuggestion,” “Shadowplay,” “She’s Lost Control,” “Transmission,” “Interzone,” “Atmosphere,” “Warsaw.” The band has some trouble with a bunch of young rockabillies. Some songs are shot on Super-8 (“Digital,” “New Dawn Fades,” “Colony,” “Autosuggestion”) and later appear on the Here Are the Young Men film.
JANUARY 19, 1980
Joy Division plays Club Vera, Groningen, Netherlands.
JANUARY 21, 1980
Joy Division plays Kant Kino, Berlin, Germany. Set list: “Dead Souls,” “Wilderness,” “Colony,” “Insight,” “Twenty Four Hours,” “A Means to an End,” “Transmission,” “The Eternal.”
According to Ian’s letters to Annik, he and Barney were very depressed after this gig because of the sound. I don’t remember that. They had a few posters up advertising forthcoming films and I nicked a few, which we put on the wall in the practice place for inspiration. That’s where we got loads of our New Order titles from: they’re all old films. Very cheeky.
FEBRUARY 7, 1980
Joy Division plays a Factory benefit (in aid of the City Fun fanzine), the Factory II, New Osborne Club, Manchester, supported by A Certain Ratio and Section 25.
I remember that when we came off Ian was dying for a piss so we couldn’t go back on and do another encore. He was hopping about trying to find a toilet but there wasn’t one backstage, so in the end we were going, “Oh, just piss in the corner,” and he was going, “No, no, I can’t! I can’t piss in the corner! I can’t do it, I can’t do it.”
Rob was going, “Fucking hell, Ian, you know, you’re supposed to be going back on,” and Ian was running round like a fucking madman, holding himself.
So in the end Rob went and got a pint pot and ordered him to go into a corner and piss into it so we could go back on.
After an age Ian came back, saying, “Aw, thanks for that, Rob—I was desperate.” But the pot had only a quarter of an inch of piss in it—something to do with his meds, I suppose.
It was too late to go back on by then, so we didn’t. But I do remember that it was nice to be back in Manchester, just to be home. I was the only one whose car wasn’t broken into that night. I lived in Moston and knew the area, so I parked right outside the window of the pub opposite. I warned them all. But when everyone—audience included—came to leave they discovered that every single car round the club had been broken into.
FEBRUARY 8, 1980
Joy Division plays University of London Union, supported by Section 25, A Certain Ratio, and Killing Joke. Set list: “Dead Souls,” “Glass,” “A Means to an End,” “Twenty Four Hours,” “Passover,” “Insight,” “Colony,” “These Days,” “Love Will Tear Us Apart,” “Isolation,” “The Eternal,” “Digital.” This concert appears on CD2 of the September 2007 remastered edition of Closer.
MID-FEBRUARY 1980
Debbie confronts Ian about Annik.
FEBRUARY 20, 1980
Joy Division plays High Wycombe Town Hall, supported by Killing Joke and A Certain Ratio. Set list: “ The Sound of Music,” “A Means to an End,” “Colony,” “Twenty Four Hours,” “Isolation,” “Love Will Tear Us Apart,” “Disorder,” “Atrocity Exhibition.” Both concert and sound check appear on CD2 of the September 2007 reissue of Still.
The reason that a lot of these gigs were so widely bootlegged was there were these two young lads—quite nice lads, actually—called John and Lawrie, who used to come and tape all the gigs then provide us with a cassette. We’d let them into the sound checks so they’d do them, too, which was quite nice of them—because really they were bootlegging you with your consent, weren’t they?
It was during this period that Ian’s self-harming episode occurred.
FEBRUARY 21, 1980
Joy Division cancels their gig at Manchester Polytechnic.
FEBRUARY 28, 1980
Joy Division plays the Warehouse, Preston, supported by Section 25. Set list: “Incubation,” “Wilderness,” “Twenty Four Hours,” “The Eternal,” “Heart and Soul,” “Shadowplay,” “Transmission,” “Disorder,” “Warsaw,” “Colony,” “Interzone,” “She’s Lost Control.”
We turned up on the day and everything that could go wrong went wrong. The PA was dreadful, our equipment was all over the place . . . Everything, actually, just went completely to shit. But for some reason we embraced it with humor, which didn’t always happen, and it ended up becoming quite funny. You know the way it goes sometimes: when the more something goes wrong, the funnier it gets? Well, it was like that.
Years later Tony Wilson put out a bootleg of this gig because he loved it so much because you can hear everything going wrong. It was the beer pump—it kept cutting out the amps. Barney’s guitar amp went. Then my amp went. Barney came over and tried to plug into my amp and I was going, “You’re wasting your fucking time ’cause my amp’s gone as well.” Then the keyboards went off.
Rob was in the background screaming, “Play, you fuckers, play!” It’s on the bootleg, him screaming at us. Occasionally one of us would go to the mike and say, “Oh, sorry about this; this has all gone wrong.” It just completely fell apart but the audience didn’t seem to mind, particularly. There weren’t that many of them there. There was a wonderful, glorious moment when some girl got up onstage while we were all busy trying to fix our equipment; we were all looking at her thinking, What’s she doing? She just went up to the mike, grabbed hold of it and said, “The coach for Blackburn is leaving in five minutes.” That’s on the bootleg as well.
We just couldn’t get it back then; we’d just lost it, you know, lost the whole gig. Complete disaster. So anyway, afterward in the dressing room there was a great atmosphere, with everyone laughing and joking, but the promoter came back and was fuming. He said we hadn’t played and we could fuck off if we thought he was going to pay us. Then he stalked out of the dressing room.
We weren’t having that. The dressing room doubled up as a food store and there was a freezer in there, so I kicked the lock off the freezer. Inside were about thirty frozen chickens that we took as wages. I remember Ian nabbed all these chickens to take home to Debbie—so I think he must still have been living at home with her then. He probably took them back as a peace offering: Sorry I’ve got another girl on the go, love. Here are some defrosting chickens.
FEBRUARY 29, 1980
Joy Division plays the Lyceum, London, co-headlining with Killing Joke, supported by Section 25 and A Certain Ratio. Set list: “Incubation,” “Wilderness,” “Twenty Four Hours,” “The Eternal,” “Heart and Soul,” “Love Will Tear Us Apart,” “Isolation,” “Komakino,” “She’s Lost Control,” “These Days,” “Atrocity Exhibition.” This concert features on the Heart and Soul box set.
MARCH 1980
Licht und Blindheit seven-inch single (Sordide Sentimental SS33022) released: “Atmosphere”/“Dead Souls.” Produced by Martin Hannett. Limited to 1,578 numbered copies.
MARCH 5, 1980
Joy Division plays Trinity Hall, Bristol, supported by the Passage.
Around this time Ian himself started to get very worried about the frequency of his fits, worrying that they would take over his life and that he would not be able to carry on working.
MARCH 13, 1980
The second “Love Will Tear Us Apart” session, Strawberry Studios, Stockport. Produced by Martin Hannett (working sporadically over a period of three weeks beginning April 24). Tracks recorded: “Love Will Tear Us Apart” (single version), “She’s Lost Control” (twelve-inch version).
Tony had visited us at Strawberry and again brought Ian a Frank Sinatra album. Tony tried to encourage Ian to emulate it here: I think he thought the combination of the timbre of his voice and this song would be perfect. I don’t think it ended up like Frank Sinatra, though; just sounds like Ian to me.
At the time we all thought he was doing it to wind us up. But I know that in one of his letters to Annik Ian mentions how much he liked Frank Sinatra’s voice, so obviously not. But Christ, the recording of “Love Will Tear Us Apart” was a marathon. We were in the studio overnight on these sessions, everybody was exhausted, and it still wasn’t done—we ended up finishing it in Britannia Row during the recording of Closer. There were loads of different mixes of it too. Martin kept remixing it and must have done it ten to fifteen times; then Tony pulled the plug on him because it was costing so much money. Martin was never happy with it and kept searching, constantly, for the great mix. He tried different engineers but could never get the definitive mix. Funnily enough, I now don’t like the mix he eventually chose for the single. I like the one that’s got a dead-loud guitar overdub on it, a radio mix.
MARCH 18–30, 1980
Joy Division records Closer, Britannia Row, London. The band stays in two flats: the “party” flat, and the “intellectual” flat, living the rock-’n’-roll high life on £1.50 a day. Tracks recorded: “Atrocity Exhibition,” “Isolation,” “Passover,” “Colony,” “A Means to an End,” “Heart and Soul,” “Twenty Four Hours,” “The Eternal,” “Decades,” “Komakino,” “Incubation,” “As You Said.”
APRIL 2, 1980
Joy Division plays the Moonlight Club, West Hampstead, London, supported by Section 25, Crawling Chaos, and John Dowie. Set list: “The Sound of Music,” “Wilderness,” “Colony,” “Love Will Tear Us Apart,” “A Means to an End,” “Transmission,” “Dead Souls,” “Sister Ray.”
“Sister Ray” features on Still, but is wrongly credited to the Moonlight Club.
APRIL 3, 1980
Joy Division plays the Moonlight Club, West Hampstead, London, supported by A Certain Ratio, Kevin Hewick, and Blurt. Set list: “Love Will Tear Us Apart,” “Glass,” “Digital,” “Heart and Soul,” “Isolation,” “Disorder,” “Atrocity Exhibition,” “Atmosphere.”
APRIL 4, 1980
Joy Division plays the Rainbow Theatre, London, supporting a unique Stranglers lineup along with Section 25, Fashion, and the Soul Boys. Set list: “Dead Souls,” “Wilderness,” “Shadowplay,” “Heart and Soul,” “Decades,” “She’s Lost Control,” “Atrocity Exhibition.”
APRIL 4, 1980
Joy Divisions play the Moonlight Club, London, supported by the Durutti Column, X-O-Dus, and the Royal Family and the Poor. Set list: “Transmission,” “A Means to an End,” “Twenty Four Hours,” “Day of the Lords,” “Insight,” “Interzone.”
APRIL 2–4, 1980
After an exhausting run of concerts Ian has a fit onstage. This comes shortly after an incident in which he wounded himself with a kitchen knife.
APRIL 5, 1980
Joy Division plays the Malvern Winter Gardens, Malvern. Set list: “Disorder,” “Wilderness,” “Twenty Four Hours,” “Heart and Soul,” “Atmosphere,” “Love Will Tear Us Apart,” “Isolation,” “Interzone,” “She’s Lost Control,” “Girls Don’t Count,” jam with Section 25.
I met the band backstage. They were all very polite and friendly, apart from Hooky, who was being an arse. Ian was sat on his own. He seemed in good spirits, though looked tired and had a painful-looking shaving rash under his chin. He talked enthusiastically about the ‘new songs’ and actually thanked me (but I don’t know what for!). He spoke in a soft, high-pitched voice, which surprised me. Fond memories indeed!
Phil (fan), on joydiv.org
APRIL 6, 1980
Ian takes an overdose.
APRIL 8, 1980
Joy Division plays Derby Hall, Bury. Set list: “Girls Don’t Count,” “Love Will Tear Us Apart,” “Digital” (all without Ian), “The Eternal,” “Decades” (or “Passover”; both with Ian on vocals), “Sister Ray” (without Ian). The gig ends in a riot.
APRIL 9, 1980
Following the Bury gig, Ian begins his stay with Tony and Lindsay.
APRIL 11, 1980
Joy Division plays the Factory, Russell Club, Manchester, supported by Minny Pops.
APRIL 12, 1980
Joy Division cancels their gig in Bradford (venue unknown).
APRIL 12–13, 1980
Ian leaves Charlesworth and spends most of the week away from home, either with Bernard Sumner or with his parents.
APRIL 16, 1980
Natalie Curtis’s first birthday. Ian is absent, though briefly returns home before leaving for Derby on Saturday.
APRIL 18, 1980
“Love Will Tear Us Apart” seven-inch single (Factory Records FAC 23) released. Produced by Martin Hannett. Sleeve designed by Peter Saville. Rereleased on twelve-inch with a new cover (FAC 23.12 27.6.80). Track list: “Love Will Tear Us Apart,” “These Days,” “Love Will Tear Us Apart” (Pennine version).
APRIL 19, 1980
Joy Division plays the Ajanta Theatre, Derby, supported by Section 25 and XL5. Set list: “Dead Souls,” “Wilderness,” “Digital,” “Insight,” “Passover,” “Heart and Soul,” “Isolation,” “These Days,” “Transmission,” “She’s Lost Control,” “Colony,” “Girls Don’t Count,” jam with Section 25.
I remember that there was a bit of a weird atmosphere to this gig. Also we had a lot of equipment problems. The synthesizer in particular kept going out of tune—and I think if you listen to “Isolation” on the live tape, the whole thing’s out of tune—and it was really off-putting. The sound was bad too, and you felt that Ian was unwell. So I really did get a feeling that something was wrong. With hindsight everything was falling apart.
APRIL 19–20, 1980
Ian and Annik spend the weekend at a hotel in Rusholme, going their separate ways on Monday: Annik back to London, Ian home to Macclesfield.
APRIL 22, 1980
Debbie calls Annik at the Belgian embassy, warning her of her intention to divorce Ian and name Annik as co-respondent. Debbie and Ian’s parents become involved, and Ian’s parents now learn about his suicide attempt for the first time. Debbie begins divorce proceedings.
APRIL 25, 1980
Joy Division cancels their appearance at the Scala cinema, London, because of Ian’s poor health. A Certain Ratio, the Durutti Column, and Section 25 play.
We’d canceled but Ian still turned up at the Scala. He arrived about one thirty a.m. and sat at a table on his own, writing furiously in a notebook while watching Kevin Hewick play. Three songs later he was gone. He hadn’t spoken to anyone. Kevin told me that Tony debuted Closer that night, playing a tape of the LP in between the live acts.
APRIL 26, 1980
Joy Division cancels their gig at the Rock Garden, Middlesbrough.
APRIL 26, 1980
Annik leaves the UK for Belgium, then on to Egypt for a holiday.
LATE APRIL 1980
“Ceremony” (though as yet unnamed) and “In a Lonely Place” demo session, Pinky’s, Broughton. “In a Lonely Place” later released in the Heart and Soul box set as “In a Lonely Place (detail).”
People say that the recordings of these tracks were from TJ’s, but they weren’t. The only time we went into TJ’s during this period was to record the “Love Will Tear Us Apart” video. Besides, we’d started taping everything by then, so there might be hundreds of those tapes—it’s just that bootleggers get hold of them and make out it’s the only one of its kind, which is what happened here. This is what happened: Rob lent a tape out to a fan and it got leaked, and then years later these songs are cropping up on bootlegs and now they’re on YouTube and whatever. Exactly where the recordings are from—whether it’s Pinky’s or Graveyard in Prestwich—is difficult to say, but I do know this: they’re definitely not from TJ’s.
APRIL 28, 1980
The “Love Will Tear Us Apart” promo video is filmed at TJ Davidson’s, Manchester. Directed by Stuart Orme. The video would be first shown on Granada’s Saturday-morning children’s show, Fun Factory, on June 26, 1980, introduced by Manchester DJ Ray Teret, who said: “Joy Division isn’t a female vocalist; it’s a band.”
That’s Rob Gretton’s hand you see pushing the door, and the “Ian C” you see scratched onto the door originally said either “Ian C is a bastard” or “Ian Curtis is a bastard” and was scratched there by a girl who Ian had, shall we say, “spurned” a while back, when we first started rehearsing there.
MAY 2, 1980
Joy Division play High Hall, Birmingham University, supported by A Certain Ratio. Set list: “Ceremony,” “Shadowplay,” “A Means to an End,” “Passover,” “New Dawn Fades,” “Twenty Four Hours,” “Transmission,” “Disorder,” “Isolation,” “Decades,” “Digital.”
This was Joy Division’s last-ever gig (it was recorded and later released on Still), and when we debuted “Ceremony,” Ian wrote very positively about the gig—“It was our biggest crowd ever”—while berating himself for forgetting the last verse of “Transmission.” He also said that the best number of the night was the new one, “Ceremony.”
MAY 3, 1980
Joy Division cancels their gig at Eric’s, Liverpool.
MAY 4, 1980
Ian is hypnotized by Bernard while staying at his flat in Worsley. The process regresses Ian to his childhood and then several lives before and leaves a marked impression on him.
MAY 5, 1980
Ian moves back to his parents’ house.
MAY 8, 1980
Joy Division cancels their gig at the Astoria, Edinburgh.
MAY 9, 1980
Joy Division cancels their gig at the Albert Hall, Stirling.
MAY 13, 1980
Ian goes home to see Debbie and Natalie. He has his picture taken with Natalie: this is the last photograph taken of him.
MAY 14, 1980
Joy Division recording session, Graveyard Studios, Prestwich. Tracks recorded: “Ceremony,” “In a Lonely Place.” “Ceremony” is later released on the Heart and Soul box set.
I remember doing the session because it was downstairs in Stewart Pickering’s house in Prestwich, which was next to a graveyard. (Hence Graveyard Studios.) But Martin was in a weird mood and it was very rushed, the whole thing, and a bit of an unsatisfactory session, which is why it was never used for anything—nothing official, anyway. But the plan, had everything turned out all right, was for these recordings to become the next single: the next record was going to be “In a Lonely Place” and “Ceremony.” But, of course, this never came to fruition.
I know a lot fans think the “Ceremony” on the Heart and Soul box set comes from the same session as “In a Lonely Place,” but it doesn’t; it’s from this session. “In a Lonely Place” is from a rehearsal tape and this isn’t and I’ll tell you how I know. Those drums are dead loud; it’s not ducking the vocal. So I’d say that’s a recorded version of a live rehearsal, because the drum sounds as fat as fuck but it’s not making the cassette-player compressor duck and that’s what had happened. That’s the one we did at Graveyard, I swear it, and I can do that in court.
MAY 18, 1980
The day before the band is scheduled to leave for America, Ian commits suicide. The “joint” North American tour with Cabaret Voltaire would have opened at Hurrahs in New York on May 21, taking in Toronto, Detroit, Chicago, Minneapolis, San Francisco, and Los Angeles after that. Martin Hannett was committed to mix the live sound on this tour.
MAY 23, 1980
Ian Curtis is cremated. Factory holds its own wake at Palatine Road and screens the Sex Pistols film The Great Rock ’n’ Roll Swindle.
JUNE 13, 1980
The inquest into Ian’s death is held, Macclesfield.
JUNE 27, 1980
“Love Will Tear Us Apart” twelve-inch (FAC 23.12) released.
JULY 18, 1980
Closer (Factory Records FACT 25) released. Produced by Martin Hannett at Britannia Row, London. Engineered by Martin Hannett and John Caffery, assisted by Michael Johnson. Photograph by Bernard Pierre Wolff. Designed by Peter Saville, Martyn Atkins, Chris Mathan. Track list: “Atrocity Exhibition,” “Isolation,” “Passover,” “Colony,” “A Means to an End,” “Heart and Soul,” “Twenty Four Hours,” “The Eternal,” “Decades.”
JULY 18, 1980
Free giveaway flexidisc (Factory Records FAC 28) released. Produced by Martin Hannett. Initial pressing: 10,000 copies. Track list: “Komakino,” “Incubation,” “As You Said.”
For a while there had been talk of making Closer a double album, but we dropped that plan because we all hated the idea of a double. This did mean that we couldn’t put the other three tracks on the album, so we came up with what we thought was a compromise: releasing a flexidisc with the album. You’d buy the album and get the flexidisc free. But the record stores didn’t like that and decided to sell the flexidiscs—they didn’t get the giveaway idea. So when you bought the album they’d say, “Yeah, you can buy the flexidisc as well to go with it: fifty p,” or whatever, the rotten devils. Our intention was to give them all away.
SEPTEMBER 2, 1980
“Atmosphere”/“She’s Lost Control” (Factory Records FACUS2/UK) twelve-inch single released. Produced by Martin Hannett. Sleeve photography by Charles Meecham. Typography by Peter Saville.
OCTOBER 8, 1981
Still (Factory Records FACT 40) double twelve-inch LP released. The final Joy Division album, a double LP comprising songs by the band never readily available and some formally unreleased; it also includes a live recording of their final concert. Produced by Martin Hannett. Engineered by Chris Nagle. Sleeve design by Peter Saville. First 5,000 with collectors’ hessian cloth cover. Track list: “Exercise One” (Unknown Pleasures session), “Ice Age” (October/November 1979, Cargo Studios), “The Sound of Music” (“Love Will Tear Us Apart” Session 1), “Glass” (Factory sample), “The Only Mistake” (Unknown Pleasures session), “Walked in Line” (Unknown Pleasures session), “The Kill” (Unknown Pleasures session), “Something Must Break” (“Transmission” session), “Dead Souls” (from Licht und Blindheit/Sordide Sentimental session), “Sister Ray,” “Ceremony,” “Shadowplay,” “Means to an End,” “Passover,” “New Dawn Fades,” “Transmission,” “Disorder,” “Isolation,” “Decades,” “Digital.” Track 10 recorded live at the Moonlight Club, London, April 2, 1980. Tracks 11–20 recorded live at Birmingham University, May 2, 1980.