Joy Division

O God, grant us a vision of our city,

fair she might be.

A city of justice,

where none shall prey on others.

A city of plenty,

where vice and poverty shall cease to fester.

A city of brotherhood

where all success shall be founded on service,

and honor shall be given to a nobleman alone.

A city of peace

where order shall not rest on force,

but on the love of all for the city,

the great mother of the common light and weal.

I don't see this as the story of a pop group.

I see this as a story of a city

that once upon a time was shiny and bold and revolutionary,

and then suddenly, 30-odd years later,

is shiny and revolutionary all over again.

And at the heart of this transformation,

is a bunch of groups, and one group in particular.

Go further back in time,

further back through time,

to another set of memories.

Time, you see?

5, 4, 3, 2, 1.

I can remember very precisely what Manchester was like in the mid-'70s.

It felt like a piece of history that had been spat out.

This had been the historic center of the modern world.

We invented the industrial revolution in this town.

And yet, even though we did, we also invented these conditions.

It was really grimy and dirty...

a dirty old town.

You were always looking for beauty

because it was such an ugly place...

whether, again, on the subconscious level.

I mean, I don't think I saw a tree until I was about 9.

Here are your playgrounds,

your porches and sun lounges

and whatever else you can use them for.

I just remember factories and...

nothing that was pretty, nothing.

I like that!

I remember the first time I was in Manchester,

seeing all these hou... end-to-end terrace houses.

And then the next time you went, it was just a pile of rubble.

Then the next time you went,

there was sort of, like, all this building work.

And then, by the time you were in your teens,

there was this big concrete fortress...

quite futuristic at the time.

Then, of course, concrete cancer set in,

and it looks horrible.

I was born in 1956.

I lived in my grandparents' house,

and they used to talk about the war all the time.

My grandparents' history had been bombed.

The house had gone.

I remember we had a room there,

and it was full of, like, gas masks, and...

tin helmets, British flags, and, you know, old radio sets,

paraphernalia for the war.

I'm at Bernadine Salford Grammar School.

Um, when we're 11,

you get less for murder, don't you?

I guess, living in Salford,

you're a bit of a nobody, really.

You know, you didn't have much chance of progressing in the world, really.

You were thought of as factory fodder.

So, um, we just sort of wasted our time together.

We were really, really normal, daft beer boys,

I suppose you'd have to say.

I had some myriad instructions while I was working,

and basically, it was reading the evening news.

When I was going through the adverts in the classified,

just scanning for anything of interest,

and the Sex Pistols 50p, Lesser Free Trade Hall,

I thought, "That looks interesting."

I thought it was shit. It was like a car crash.

It was like, "Oh, my God.", I've never seen anything like it in me life.

I mean, I'd been to see most groups...

you know, Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin.

I'd never seen anything as chaotic or as exciting

and as... rebellious.

It was how I felt.

You know, you just want to trash everything.

It was a right racket, you know, and you thought...

you just thought, "Fucking hell, I could do that."

You know, I could just about do that.

We... We'd formed a band then, that night, there and then.

We formed a group.

It's easy to form a group.

It's all the rest that's difficult.

We went to see the second Sex Pistols gig,

when the Buzzcocks supported them.

And, um, we were in it then.

We had a meeting with them on Friday evening because they said,

"But we'd like to start a band, but we need some help."

And because, as I say, punk being an inclusive thing,

and we needed all the...

all the best similar minded people that we could have,

you know, to make it, uh, a growing concern.

We advertised for a drummer and singer.

One guy called and he didn't sound mad.

I said, "What's your name?" He went, "Ian."

I said, "Ian who?" "Ian Curtis"

I said, "Oh."

Because there was two guys called The Two Ians.

They advertised for a singer, and Ian answered it.

We met in the pub in Sale.

Looking at him, you think, Christ, you know.

Quite frightening-Iooking guy: Leather pants,

combat jacket with "Hate" on the back,

getting daggers from the locals,

like, "What the hell is this? What's he?"

Pretty dangerous thing to do in 1976 Manchester.

I said, "Oh, The Two Ians, right?

We met you at the Clash gig the other day." Or whatever, you know...

And I was going, you know, like, punk ideals, yeah:

Being married, boring.

He went, "Oh, I'm married."

Yeah, he shows me his wedding ring.

We thought... "You're such a nice guy."

I thought, "Oh, yeah, it doesn't matter."

He's like, "Yeah, yeah, that's me, that's me."

I said, "All right, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, all right, you've got the job."

And that was it, over the phone.

The first set of material we wrote was just... was aping punk, really.

Completely aping it and doing it really badly.

Don't know what I'm doing, don't know where I'm going

Leading me to ruin, I should have traded you in

Yeah, you think you're something,

But you're no good for me

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah

Fuck off, fuck off

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah

Bollocks, bollocks

You know, these really dreadful...

dreadful, dreadful songs.

No good

Na na na na na na na na, no good

I get on the phone.

I expected some sort of oafish punk type...

And it was very mild-mannered, very chatty Ian.

The first gig that I had with them was the last night at the Electric Circus.

The Electric Circus is one of the places that we...

hired from bemused hippies on their quiet night to put on, uh, emerging punk rock.

Can you explain to me why you come to the Electric Circus?

Because it's the best place where they put punk rock bands on.

Because it's got a great atmosphere.

Looks like he just come out of Risley for the day, don't it?

He won't go see it.

Bottles from plastic pumps.

I want you to do something for me.

Because look at me now, I'm nothing.

That's what punk is...

You can start going and really enjoy yourself,

you know, jump about a bit, let yourself go. Why not?

It became a punk club, and... and...

and absolutely a very important part of the whole landscape.

And then suddenly, we were saying good-bye to it

in an emotional weekend do,

that was recorded rather pitifully by Virgin Records.

And, yeah, The Warsaw, and the, um,

"Remember Rudolph Hess" thing, and all that kind of nonsense.

At the time when any of that happened,

those of us within it had not a moment's doubt

that it was anything dicey.

You know, it just... you just sort of trusted,

somehow, the instincts of locals that it was not dicey.

Can't buy everything, that's true

Only one thing wrong with that

What it don't buy I don't use

Some guy at work gave me a couple of books.

One was called House of Dolls ,

and I knew it was about the Nazis, but I didn't read it.

And I just flipped through the pages.

It was the brothel that soldiers went to.

And I thought, "Well, it's pretty bad taste,

but it's quite punk."

And everyone I told the name to went, "That's a great name."

It sounds too neat and tidy, but it almost seems to be

that it all came when they had the name.

It was like Roxy Music or Velvet Underground.

You know, you knew instantly from the moment it happened,

it was one of those names.

At that stage,

when we made our first record, An Ideal for Living ,

we just were making this music,

and we wanted people to hear it.

And it was very much punk ethos of do-it-yourself, independence.

Forget big labels,

just small, you know, cottage industries.

I'd actually forgotten that Ian borrowed the money.

God, if I did it now, my wife would kill me.

So how he got away with it then is unbelievable, you know.

So we banged it down, heard it in the studio.

We thought it sounded great.

A couple of weeks later, we got the vinyl.

You know, Ideal For Living ,