“No words could explain, no actions determine, watching the trees and the leaves as they fall.” – Ian Curtis
Deborah Curtis discovered Ian’s body on Sunday morning. Neighbour Kevin Wood was outside washing his car on Barton Street in the spring sunshine while his wife was cleaning the windows at the front of their house. Her parents had taken their six-month-old baby son for a walk in nearby South Park.
“It was about 11-11.30am and Debbie came past in a Morris Minor Traveller,” says Kevin. “She’d got her little girl in the back who was a similar age to our son. Normally she would take Natalie out and go into the house with her but, for some strange reason, this time she left Natalie in the car. She walked in and within a few minutes came running out of the house hysterical. My wife and I ran up to her and couldn’t get a word out of her. I told Pam to take her into our house and give her a coffee. I knew Ian was epileptic and it ran through my mind that he might have been in the middle of a really bad fit and she couldn’t handle it. I went into the lounge, there was a table with a couple of spirit bottles and an empty glass there. I glanced at the mantelpiece and I could see an envelope and I then looked into the door that led you into the kitchen and Ian was there, unfortunately hung. Not as people would probably imagine, he’d tied a rope to the old fashioned clothes rack on a pulley, but by this time the rope had stretched and cut into his neck and he was knelt on the floor as though he was praying.
“I said to him, ‘What the bloody hell have you done that for you stupid bastard?’ I panicked and ran to a neighbour’s house and warned him what to expect. We both ran back in and I decided that we should cut him down because we didn’t know how long he’d been there, although it was pretty obvious he was dead. I took a knife off the drainer and cut the rope but he never actually moved. I went home and phoned the police and ambulance. The ambulance driver put one hand on the body’s shoulder and said, ‘Rigor has well and truly set in.’ Debbie’s parents came very quickly and took her away. If I hear the tune ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’… even now 26 years later it sends a shiver down my spine and it all comes back to me.”
At the time the body was discovered Annik was making her way back from Belgium to her rented flat and job in London. She took a hovercraft across the English Channel in the early hours of the morning and although it was a lovely clear day and the sea was calm, she was very sick. Having risen at 6am after a late night at Plan K, she had only had three hours’ sleep but nonetheless she thinks her vomiting was due entirely to her sense that something was badly wrong. “[I was] so sad and so sick,” she says.
Concerned, she rang Ian’s parents on arriving in England. Ian’s father answered the phone and told her, bluntly, ‘Ian is dead’. He could say no more. On hearing his voice Annik realised at once that Kevin Curtis was completely devastated, that something inside him had broken which could never be repaired. Anxious to learn more, Annik rang Rob Gretton. His immediate response was that someone must be playing a very cruel joke on her, that it quite simply was not true – but a short while later he phoned and confirmed the fact and the circumstances.
As the shock waves rang out across Manchester and the sorrow struck home, some of those closest to Ian were, deep down, not really surprised that he had taken his own life.
In Torquay, Ian’s sister Carole was out sunbathing, recovering from a hangover from the previous evening when they had been celebrating her friend’s birthday. Her dad called her with the devastating news. “In my mind I never thought he’d get his pension,” she says today. “I never thought he’d see past 30 to be honest. Weird that. But only like looking back on it now can you think [it]. When I found out that he’d done it, I… I agree with Debbie when she said he wasn’t bothered [about America] because he knew in his mind that he wasn’t going.”
Ian had said years ago that he wouldn’t live long. Not in any morbid or depressing way. He told his aunt Barbara that in passing and, of course, she told him, “Don’t be so silly”.
Vini Reilly said of that Sunday: “I was waiting for the phone call and I wasn’t remotely surprised.”
Annik made immediate arrangements to travel up north and stay with Tony Wilson and Lindsay Reade. By a rather morbid coincidence, she found herself sleeping in their small spare room where Ian had slept five weeks previously, and for the exact same number of nights.
Annik was completely devastated, distraught and heartbroken. She was unable to sleep and seemed to Lindsay to have gone beyond any kind of rest. Tony Connolly, who had visited when Ian was there, was helpful and gave Lindsay some medicine, a sedative, thinking that it would calm Annik down and help her to sleep. He thought it might even knock her unconscious but soon after swallowing it, she announced that she was going out for a walk. Concerned about her frame of mind, Lindsay offered to accompany her but Annik insisted on being alone. She returned after about an hour and her mood seemed to be entirely lifted; indeed, she seemed almost happy again. She told Lindsay that she had been with Ian, that while on the hillside there had been a strong light, sweeping up and breaking through the clouds. She knew it was Ian and that he was OK – that he had managed to find peace now.
At the time Lindsay thought this experience was imagined, but helpful nonetheless since it evidently comforted her. Today, however, she feels differently. “In light of the experiences I myself have had subsequent to death of loved ones in my family, I now accept and believe that this meeting took place,” she says. “I believe that the deceased can, and do, make contact. People dismiss such events as a fantasy of the half-baked – as I did with Annik at the time. While this is understandable, once a person has experienced something like this for themselves their feelings on such matters alter.”
Some 25 years later, Annik’s encounter on the hillside is her one abiding memory. “I think it gave him some kind of final peace and harmony that he was desperately looking for,” she says. “I think he needed really a lot of peace, I am sure.”
Annik was upset that she was prevented from attending Ian’s funeral. At first Debbie forbade her to see his body too, but it was later arranged that she could visit the Chapel of Rest and Tony drove her there with Lindsay in his Peugeot Estate. “I had disliked that car from the day he bought it,” says Lindsay. “I had always called the car ‘the hearse’. Of course he had got it because it was useful for ferrying groups of musicians about. But that morning as we set off for the Chapel it seemed as if it had really become a hearse. It felt to me that we had Ian’s body – or spirit at least – in the car with us. Tony and I went in to pay our respects together. I looked at Ian and said, ‘God bless you’ and at almost the same instant Tony said, ‘You daft bugger’ in a fond and friendly way. Afterwards Annik went in and was alone with Ian.”
Annik: “It felt important to me to see him one last time and the expression on his face – there he was lying looking like his skin was wax, his body obviously emptied of all life – just an empty envelope – Ian had gone.”
Having said goodbye in the only way she could, Annik decided to leave England as soon as possible. She flew directly from Manchester to Brussels on May 23, the day of Ian’s funeral, and returned later to collect her things from Fulham. The embassy was not best pleased that she didn’t work her full notice, seeing it as a breach of contract to be fleeing her post. “How can you be so upset? You weren’t even married,” the Chancellor told her. Annik’s doctor in Belgium helped by stating that she was sick and incapable of continuing her work. Annik knew instinctively that this was the end of her life in England, and that she had to go home. Tony Wilson bought her an air ticket to Brussels, using the name ‘Annik Curtis’ because he was unaware of her surname. Michel Duval, who ran the label Factory Benelux, met Annik on her arrival at Brussels airport.
Paul Morley, whose own father committed suicide in the late Seventies, described his visit to see Ian’s body at the opening of his book Nothing and, despite stating at the close that this was not true, that it was in his imagination, he says now: “I did go in, I did see the body, yes. In a way what I did was replace Ian with my dad, who I didn’t see, so it was just a metaphorical thing almost, as if I’d recreated now enough of my father. I never saw my dad’s body. At the end of the book I am willing myself to believe that I’d seen my father’s body – but I hadn’t. I remember getting the train on my own to Macclesfield. Tony was stood outside the church. He was on his own. I was very uncomfortable and I took some flowers and I remember Tony looked at what I’d written on the card and I was really embarrassed because I hadn’t done anything special. I think it was just ‘Missing you’ or something, but you know Tony, he was looking for some quote from Dostoevsky or something magnificent. Even though I got the feeling – in hindsight – that somehow he was plotting the myth even then and wanting material. It just seemed a very odd situation.”
Wilson also took A Certain Ratio to the morgue to pay their last respects to Ian. Jeremy Kerr felt somewhat frightened of going in but Rob Gretton told him it would be all right. Afterwards ACR went on to play a gig at De Villes. Apparently it was a very sombre set.
Paul Morley: “Tony was doing day trips, wasn’t he, he was selling tickets. It was a very odd scenario and I didn’t understand why it was him doing it (showing me the body) and not Debbie, or someone more directly to do with Ian. It’s true about the myth – what Tony said to me was – ‘You’re going to write the book on Joy Divison so you’ve got to be here to see this’. That’s what I mean that he was already busying away at that. There was definitely a kind of truth to it in a way which at the time you don’t think it but it was something that, I guess, Tony knew. He needed to make history and you make history by telling it yourself. I wasn’t informed enough to know what was going on. I didn’t think there’d be a book about Joy Division. At that time you just thought he was thinking too far ahead. They’re going to be Pink Floyd, they’re going to be Led Zeppelin – no, they’re not – or The Doors was his big one – this is gonna be our Jim Morrison, we need to know this story and you’re going to be the one that does it.”
Ian Curtis was cremated on Friday, May 23. Out of respect to Ian’s family, Factory decided to hold their own wake, at their offices at 89 Palatine Road, Didsbury. It was fitting, perhaps, that the occasion was marked with an ironic twist, specifically the screening of the Sex Pistols film, The Great Rock’n’Roll Swindle, in which the rock’n’roll impresario Malcolm McLaren claims to have orchestrated the entire rise to prominence of the Pistols. This is strongly disputed by the band’s intelligent singer, Johnny Rotten, who claims the power lay with the talent, rather than the management. Whatever, it was certainly a curious choice for this particular afternoon.
There was a sense of unease in the atmosphere. “The mood in the room didn’t seem especially negative, or gloomy though perhaps that was more male bravado,” says Lindsay. “Men are good at covering their feelings. Annik had gone and I felt at liberty to cry through most of that afternoon. When anyone close dies there are inevitably feelings of guilt but when someone commits suicide the guilt is magnified hugely. I think a lot of my grief for Ian centred on guilt feelings along with a feeling that something or someone could have prevented his death.
“There was a line in the film we saw that jumped out at me – ‘Noone is innocent’. I looked around the room and thought this statement was true – it wasn’t just me that was guilty. I took some comfort from that at least. Shortly after that Hooky came over and spoke to me. I was still crying quietly. I think it probably annoyed him. I don’t blame him. I’m sure his grief went deeper than mine. Hooky said something along the lines of, ‘What you crying for?’ I said something along the lines of it being such a waste, such a terrible shame. He replied, ‘Well I think it’s a shame that you never knew him’. I thought he sounded angry and was a bit taken aback. Another reason to be guilty – that I hadn’t got to know Ian. Maybe I misinterpreted it. Maybe he came over because he wanted to comfort me. Hooky is like that really. He was right about me not knowing Ian that well though. It was a shame I didn’t because I would have made a better friend. I don’t remember anything else from that day. I can’t say for sure who was there. Tony didn’t even remember we had a wake.”
Ian Curtis steals the show at the Futurama Festival in Leeds, September 8, 1979. (Kevin Cummins/Idols)
Annik Honoré on holiday in Egypt, May 1980. (Courtesy Annik Honoré)
Ian on stage at the Plan K Club in Brussels, October 16, 1979. (Philippe Carly – www.newwavephotos.com)
Sombre young men: Joy Division photographed in Paris, December 1979. (Pierre Rene-Worms)
Paris, December 1979. (Pierre Rene-Worms)
On stage at Les Bains-Douches Club in Paris, December 18, 1979. (Pierre Rene-Worms)
A family Christmas dinner in the Last Drop Inn, Bolton, 1976, from left, Kevin Curtis, Doreen, Debbie, Ian, grandparents Les and Edith, Uncle Brian, Aunt Barbara, Carole and her friend Gail Lyon.
Here are the young men; April 1980. (Harry Goodwin)
Ian Curtis, in Germany, January 1980. (Mark Reeder)
Set list in Ian’s handwriting from Joy Division’s last ever gig at Birmingham University, on May 2, 1980.
Ian’s last photograph, taken in a Manchester photo booth for the US visa he required for Joy Division’s aborted tour of America.
Ian’s last letter to Annik, written on May 5, 1980. (Courtesy Annik Honoré)
Curtis at the edge; a compulsive, unsettling performer, April 1980. (Peter Anderson/SIN)
Paul Morley, who didn’t go to the funeral, certainly remembers that day. “Playing the film seemed really odd – everyone didn’t know whether to take it seriously or to have a laugh. Which way to take it, you know. I think the atmosphere was deeply traumatised, it was very, very sad but everyone was trying to cover it up and that life goes on. It was a very, very weird mixture of energy. It was a big old house and so the room was very large and a lot of people could get in. I just know I was hugging the wall, one wall. I felt very uncomfortable being there really. I was very shy as well. I can’t imagine me mustering up the energy to put myself in that situation, but there was something about me that also wanted to do it somehow.”
Terry Mason attended the funeral along with the band. He recalls that he and Hooky hired two cars for the occasion – a Mondeo and a Cavalier – since their own were considered unsuitable, unfit to be seen. They all followed on to the wake at Palatine Road. “Cabaret Voltaire were there at both ceremonies,” he says. “There were plates of sandwiches at Alan Erasmus’ flat that afternoon – cut the posh way into a triangular shape.”
He also remembers collecting his new puppy that same day from a breeder in Boothstown, along with Iris, Hooky’s then girlfriend. “The hire car had to be back by 5pm since it was a bank holiday weekend and the car was hired out again at 5.30pm. The little dog became agitated and fouled the back seat, leaving no time for the car to be cleaned before it was rehired.”
Life for the bereaved continued though it would never be the same.
An inquest into Ian’s death was held in June, attended by – amongst others – Kevin Wood. “I was treated like a criminal and questioned why I had cut him down if he was already dead,” he says. “Everyone had thought that the envelope on the mantelpiece was a suicide note but it wasn’t. It turned out to be a letter that he’d written to Debbie saying that when he got back from America he wanted to get back with her and to be part of a normal family again.”
Kevin Curtis came down with diabetes very soon after his son’s death and the rest of his life was blighted by declining health. Ian’s mother was also unwell with migraine headaches. Kevin died from cancer in 1995. Doreen had the good sense to combat her loneliness somewhat by acquiring a stray cat, name of Muff, but she still cries in private over the son she lost so tragically. Carole, too, still cries when she is reminded of her brother. Life may have moved on but the peculiar thing about grief is that, underneath the layers of all the years, it remains somehow unchanged and undisturbed. Nevertheless, just as Ian himself did, these women who loved him also know how to laugh. “For all your ills, I give you laughter,” said Rabelais.
Annik: “It must have been terrible for his parents. More than for anybody. More than for me or Debbie. Very hard for Natalie of course but for his parents to see their young son dying like that.”
Carole and Barbara swear they’ve caught sight of Ian in the street sometimes. Carole: “With his great coat on. I’ve not had it for years now.”
Barbara: “I used to think he’d gone away somewhere and he wants quiet for a few years and then he’d reappear. And he’d say, ‘I’m sorry but I had to go away to sort myself out.’”
Annik: “I swear I would have given my life for Ian to remain alive. For him to look after his daughter, carry on with the group and write songs and poems. Be in peace. And maybe never meet him in the first place. Nobody can replace him. How I wish he was here – not dead, not dead.”
Tony Wilson believed for many years that Ian’s suicide was for altruistic reasons: “At the time, I always thought it was to do with the fact that he thought he was helping everybody. He thought he was messing everyone’s life up – his daughter, his wife, his lover – so that’s what I thought for eight years until my own experience with the kids and Yvette in 1990. Certainly in 1980 and for the following 10 years I thought it was to do with that, that he was helping everybody and he thought he’d do everyone a favour. But that changed to be the irresolvable problem was resolved. That’s my personal explanation. I have no reason to think that I should be right and everyone else is wrong. Bernard may be right – that it was the medication.”
Terry Mason: “Ian killed himself, because he was a nice guy that had got himself a ridiculous situation from which he couldn’t see any way to resolve it. I know that seems overly simplistic and wrecks any grand stories that there may be, but that’s it.”
Paul Morley has a theory about Ian’s life: “My theory is that it was almost a weird strange sense that he knew he only had so much time, because lyrically and what he said seems so mature and articulate that you couldn’t believe it came from a 22 year old. That there was something about him that had lived his complete life. So he had the maturity at the end of his years that a wise person has at the end of their years. This was the extent of his life.”
When Annik returned to Belgium she went to live with her grandmother, with whom she had always been close, in a tiny village in the middle of nowhere near the French border. She recuperated by walking in the woods with her dog and remained there until September 1980 when she again took an apartment with a friend in Brussels. Michel Duval and Annik became involved in releasing records by groups other than the Factory catalogue that Michel dealt with, and launched the label Les Disques Du Crepuscule. It was Annik’s idea to name the label ‘Crepuscule’ which means twilight. She began to pick up the pieces of her life and found work a very useful distraction. She remains thankful to Michel for that to this day.
The love between Ian and Annik was essentially simple yet classically tragic. Whilst it is true that everything – ultimately – ends in tears, could there be any hopeful note to end their sad story on?
Annik: “We were always happy together. We had a good time. He was always smiling to me. Always. Honestly, I see him like the face of an angel. Always smiling, always happy.”
He remains an inspiration to her. “You know… Ian was really an inspiration for me to be a good person,” she says. “He was never mean or unkind.”
Given the extent of their shock and grief, it was to everyone’s surprise that the remaining members of Joy Division picked themselves up and carried on almost immediately. In spite of the tragedy, Bernard Sumner, Pete Hook and Steve Morris – strongly aided by Rob Gretton – made the decision to move forward towards a new kind of band. Without the charismatic drive of Ian Curtis, without his central position within the dynamic, this would be an entirely different prospect. Initially billed as ‘The No Names’, the band’s first performance without Ian was on July 29, at The Beach Club in Manchester. They played an intense instrumental set, surprisingly based around newer and subsequently post-Joy Division material. Two songs however, ‘Ceremony’ and ‘In A Lonely Place’, were recognisable as Joy Division survivors. At some point during this evening, it was announced – to no little immediate controversy – that the band would be called ‘New Order’.
Paul Morley remembers how the group continued: “Ian didn’t just kill himself and it all just disintegrated and the whole thing fell apart – the group themselves picked themselves up and kept going which was extraordinary. I would never have thought it or that it could have happened so quickly – it was only a matter of weeks. We seem to think it was a couple of years but it was actually just a few weeks. Even before they were New Order they were New Order. They played a gig down the road – you’d think it must have been a long time but it wasn’t. They pulled themselves together and I think that was through Ian. Not just for him but I think it’s in there – as much as it’s in spite of him, I think it’s for him as well. We’re not going to give up just because of you but also we’re going to carry on because of you.
“Ian did give them something quite special that I think they then carried on – again, unexpectedly. It was very moving seeing the first New Order gigs because no one filled Ian’s place. Barney didn’t move across for quite a while. The first time I ever saw them Barney was still playing guitar at the side, Hooky was out there so there was no one in the middle, a sort of ghostly absence… a presence which I thought was incredibly moving.”