Shock Of Daylight , Heads And Hearts: 30 years without Ian Curtis and Joy Division...

30 years without Ian Curtis and Joy Division...

Imagem: Joy Division em 1979.

Right to left:

Stephen Morris, Peter Hook, Ian Curtis and Bernard Sumner.

Salford, Greater Manchester, UK.

«Ian Kevin Curtis (15 July 1956 – 18 May 1980) was the songwriter and lyricist of the band Joy Division, which he joined in 1976 after meeting Bernard Sumner and Peter Hook at a Sex Pistols gig.

Curtis was born at the Memorial Hospital in Stretford in Lancashire (now part of Greater Manchester). He grew up in Hurdsfield, an area of Macclesfield,[1] and from a young age he exhibited talent as a poet. Proof of his ability was his admission at the age of eleven to The King's School, Macclesfield with a scholarship. Despite this, he was not a devout student and did not further his education after receiving his O-levels.

He was influenced by the writers William S. Burroughs, Friedrich Nietzsche, J. G. Ballard and Franz Kafka (the song titles "Interzone", "Atrocity Exhibition", and "Colony" coming from the three authors, respectively), and by the musicians David Bowie, Lou Reed, Iggy Pop and Jim Morrison.

In 1976, Curtis met two young musicians, Bernard Sumner and Peter Hook, at a Sex Pistols gig, who told him they were trying to form a band; he immediately put himself forward as a vocalist and lyricist. The three of them recruited and sacked a number of drummers before settling on Stephen Morris as their final member. Initially, the band was called Warsaw before changing its name to Joy Division in 1978, due to conflicts with the name of another band, Warsaw Pakt. The name "Joy Division" stemmed from the sexual slavery wing of a Nazi concentration camp in the 1955 novel The House of Dolls.

Curtis's last live performance was on 2 May 1980 at Birmingham University, a show that included Joy Division's first and only performance of the song "Ceremony", later recorded by New Order and released as their first single. The last song Curtis performed on stage was "Digital". The recording of this performance can be found on the compilation album Still.»

Joy Division Discography

«An Ideal For Living», (EP), Enigma, 1978