There are two Joy Division songs I cannot listen to: “Atmosphere” and “Walked in Line.” The reasons why I cannot hear the first do not matter within the context of what I want to address here[1]; as to the latter, the reason is plainly that it is an example of the worst punk has to offer, not only within the context of 1970’s British punk, but also in all the political strains of punk thereafter.[2] When Joy Division came together and were still known as Warsaw, they followed a simple set of rules described by bassist Peter Hook: “We decided to follow the rules of punk… Rule one: act like the Sex Pistols. Rule two: look like the Sex Pistols. One guitar, one bass” (39). In following these, Joy Division were not different from most of the British bands around the years of 1976-77. But, as many soon found out, mimicking the Pistols was not an easy task, not only because the Pistols were much better than most would be ready to recognize, but also because there was a miscomprehension regarding what the Pistols were actually doing. Right from the beginning, the Pistols became the center of a discussion that was regarded as fundamentally political, without real regard for the music itself, mostly fueled by the impact they had beyond the music industry. This impact had a huge influence on the way the band was perceived; as Jon Savage accurately points out, “[t]he impact of punk on the news, instead of on the entertainment pages, made it possible to sing about anything—except love. Singing about love only reinforced pop’s ‘private’ status in society: Punk was public, determinedly in the world” (295). The commotion following the Pistols’ career and the release of Never Mind the Bollocks (October 1977), and the pressure exerted by the media on songs like “God Save the Queen” or “Anarchy in the U.K.” made the Pistols look like political activists when they were nothing close to it. 

The failure to realize the true quality of the Pistols led many to make the same mistake Joy Division did in their punk songs and to assume the bands should have a political role to be closer to what the Pistols were doing. The songs became the center stage for an “us” against a “them,” they focused on “the failure of Modern Man,” they mentioned the numbness of watching TV (“Exercise One”), and they expressed all the frustration expected in facing an unknown and unidentifiable foe. “Walked in Line,” with its obvious denunciation of the military institution, seems too simple, too obvious even for a political idea of what punk should be, and, most obviously, falls short of Ian Curtis’ quality as a songwriter (which was, nonetheless, already visible in some of those early songs[3]).

My detrimental position on Joy Division’s initial songs is not meant to diminish in any way the band’s achievements; on the contrary, Joy Division’s studio albums are two miracles, although for different reasons. Closer (1980) is a miracle of perfection, with Curtis’s lyrics balancing in the narrow line of romantic poetry, and the music perfectly set to the power of such lyrics. It is a miracle such an album could have been made in the aftermath of punk by a band that only two years prior to its release was reveling in basic punk structures. Unknown Pleasures is also a miracle, in part because it is an anomaly within the punk music context in which it was made, but mostly because its lineup shows how the band evolved in such a short time span. The songs show a band changing, address that change, and move on to a different stage in music writing. The album is, if we think about it, a very uneven record, with punk songs mixed with the more romanticized songs that were a prediction of Closer (songs as “She Lost Control” or “I Remember Nothing”).

Perhaps to call Unknown Pleasures incoherent is not the most intuitive insight, but one must recognize that the apparent cohesion of the record is majorly set by Martin Hannett’s production, which introduced an overall sense of consistency the songs, by themselves, did not have. I think the toning down of the songs had more impact on the band’s way of composing than it is usually recognized. What finally made Joy Division such an important band is a direct result of that change, mostly because it had a direct impact on Curtis’ writing and, as the living band members publicly recognized, in certain moments they were just trying to find music which fitted Curtis’ lyrics. While the songs show the band’s evolution as musicians, they most clearly show Curtis’ evolution as a songwriter, an evolution which is clearly central for Joy Division. Hannett’s role in the production of Unknown Pleasures shows he was already sensitive to Curtis’ lyricism, something made obviously clear by the way both of them would later work on Closer’s production (where they mostly shun aside the other band members).[4]

In 1978, under the strong influence of punk, to sing a line like “I took the blame,” as Curtis did in “New Dawn Fades,” was a very strong statement; it marked a move away from punk themes and changed the idea that the “I” in punk was meant to encircle a “we”; with that shift, the individual was put up front and, for Curtis, that came with an unexpected difficulty: the realization of the hypocrisy he was engaging in as the front man of a punk band. For while it seemed easy to take on a role and assume a character from which to adopt a point of view, to sing in the first person triggered a series of problems. The song clearly displaying such problems and Curtis’ change in the way he wrote songs is “Shadowplay.” What marks this as a changing point is the realization that Curtis is playing a game of shadows, where he must assume and deal with two different roles; in a sense, he goes up on stage to act out his own death while off-stage real life goes on. To sing from an assassin’s point of view in a song is a way to separate the singer from real life but at a certain point the two different existences collapse—either because they are similar (and one cannot sing about things outside one’s life) or because they are too far apart (and songs are mere stories to which one is unattached). The song describes the difficulty in dealing with these two realities and one must note the change in the assassin’s position; while in the song “The Kill,”[5] the assassin was on the stage, in this song the assassins are dancing on the floor:

In the shadowplay, acting out your own death, knowing no more,
As the assassins all grouped in four lines, dancing on the floor,
And with cold steel, odour on their bodies made a move to connect,
But I could only stare in disbelief as the crowds all left.

I did everything, everything I wanted to,
I let them use you for their own ends,
To the centre of the city in the night, waiting for you,
To the centre of the city in the night, waiting for you. 

While in the first song Curtis assumed the position of the assassin as an easy subject to write on, the evolution of his writing and of the band led to a change in the characters’ positions. The four rows of assassins dancing are a reference to the audience in a concert; it is that crowd that now takes the place of the assassin, a position marked by their constant demand for more. The move to connect, to establish a relationship with this crowd, naturally fades, leaving the writer alone. So alone, in fact, he is left with no way out except to talk to himself: “Shadowplay” is a song where a man is talking to himself, and the chorus must be seen in relation to the closing lines of “New Dawn Fades”:

Oh, I’ve walked on water, run through fire
Can’t seem to feel it anymore.
It was me, waiting for me
Hoping for something more
Me, seeing me this time, hoping for something else. 

The inability to walk on water or run through fire develops from an inability to feel, an inability that shows the incapacity to take on roles to write from; the ability to perform deeds as those described in the first two lines seems to require a capacity for empathy and so, one might say, finding his own self means fantasy is no longer possible. It is a movement described by the chorus in “Shadowplay” and most obviously by the opening stanza of that song:

To the centre of the city where all roads meet, waiting for you,
To the depths of the ocean where all hopes sank, searching for you,
I was moving through the silence without motion, waiting for you,
In a room with a window in the corner I found truth. 

The discrepancy between the first two lines and the following two, in the sense they seem to belong to two different realms, is closely related to the idea one can walk on water and run through fire; to find truth in a room is a description of how it is by writing this author finds the position to write from; and moving through the silence without motion is just a refined way of describing the writing itself. Curtis is searching for himself, alone, waiting for nothing more than a comfortable position from where to write; the “you” he waits and searches for is himself, exactly as in “New Dawn Fades” he sings: “It was me, waiting for me.”

Having this in mind, I suppose the best description of what happened to punk after 1977, and by extension to the band, is contained in the opening line of “New Dawn Fades”: “A change of speed, a change of style.” If punk was a statement, the mere changing of the speed of the music made by the bands that existed around punk must also be seen as a relevant statement. Curtis’ description in “New Dawn Fades” goes straight to the point

A change of speed, a change of style
A change of scene, with no regrets
A chance to watch, admire the distance
Still occupied, though you forget
Different colors, different shades
Over each, mistakes were made
I took the blame
Directionless, so plain to see
A loaded gun won't set you free
So you say 

Very plainly, this is the description of Joy Division’s evolution from the early years as Warsaw to the band which recorded Unknown Pleasures; it is also the description of the fading of the new dawn punk symbolized. Peter Hook openly says the song comes out too slow in the album version, that the band sounded different live (74); it had more energy and strength, both toned down by Hannett’s production to match Curtis’ lyrics. What is relevant, if one sees these lines as a description of what is going on with the music, is the notion this was not an intellectual movement, not an attempt to counterbalance the ideology of punk; it was a necessary move to write about something different. The keynote in this reflexive description of what Joy Division was doing is the idea of “directionless.” 

But then what is Curtis describing here? He is describing that writing needs subjects and, in a very general way, there are no possible subjects without the presence of the author. Take the line “A loaded gun won’t set you free” as an example; Curtis’ suicide in 1980 turned this line (as many others) into a hint at the event, but the stress here is openly different. A loaded gun can set one free in a different sense in this song, and one must look at the line without the innuendos arising from the biographical knowledge one has about Ian Curtis. A loaded gun sets one free in the sense it allows one to write, it is a subject from which, and of which, to write; and it is even more relevant because it allows for a distance between the singer and the subject, since one does not expect Curtis to be really the character in a song portraying a killer. Curtis realized using characters in songs did not fit him as a writer. It required a need for empathy which was outside his scope, and it had a mark of fakeness to it (funny enough, punk always held its ground on account of being honest). As he sang in “Shadowplay,” acting out one’s own death was a deed made by someone “knowing no more,” done by someone who felt his abilities as a writer allowed for nothing more than to take on the role of characters who kill or are killed. 

In a later song, “These Days,” Curtis will sing: “Spent all my time, learnt a killer’s art. / Took threats and abuse ’till I’d learned the part.” If my intuition about how a loaded gun can set one free holds, then in these lines Curtis is commenting on his own education as a writer; the killer’s art refers to his position as a writer during the band’s existence as Warsaw, singing on stage about guns, hitmen, and killers. From there to the position of the man writing the songs in Unknown Pleasures there is a gap, since what happens in the album is exactly the collapse between character and writer. One can enjoy the music, the rhythm, even to a certain degree identify with the lyrics of “They Walked in Line,” but one cannot accept that the song does justice to Joy Division’s quality as a band and, most specifically, to Curtis’ abilities as a writer. Unknown Pleasures, more than an amazing record, is an extraordinary portrayal of a writer’s inner struggle.

[1]  Neither do I know, if pressed to it, that I would be able to rationally articulate the reasons for my disliking it.

[2] While I grant that some bands achieved an interesting equilibrium between music and politics, in punk and in different subgenres of punk, most production in such vein is mostly lacking in quality.

[3] “The Leaders of Men” is a clear example: while it is in the same line of deadpan punk akin to “Walked in Line,” its rigid rhyme scheme keeps the song somewhat interesting.

[4] Peter Hook says the following regarding Martin Hannett’s production: “We were wrong, I think, about what Martin was doing. He was making sense of what we were doing without us really knowing that’s what he was doing” (Morley 129).

[5] I am thinking here of the Still (1981) version; the demo version of the song goes even more, I think, to my point: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ObFIztY9M1c.

Bibliography:

Hook, Peter. Unknown Pleasures: Inside Joy Division. London: Simon & Schuster, 2012.

Morley, Paul. Joy Division: Piece by Piece: Writing About Joy Division 1977-2007. London: Plexus, 2008.

Savage, Jon. England’s Dreaming: Sex Pistols and Punk Rock. London: Faber and Faber, 1991.