Joy Division

Joy Division started because of a gig. The Sex Pistols at the Lesser Free Trade Hall, 4th June 1976 – the show that supposedly only 40 people attended but launched half of Manchester’s music scene. Bernard Sumner and Peter Hook were there. They picked up instruments. Ian Curtis joined. Stephen Morris came later. Warsaw became Joy Division.

Unknown Pleasures came out on Factory Records in 1979. Peter Saville’s sleeve – the pulsar waves, white on black – is now on every other tote bag in the Northern Quarter, which would have annoyed them. The sound was something new: Hook’s high bass lines, Sumner’s slicing guitar, Morris drumming like a machine, Curtis singing like a man trying to hold himself together and failing. Closer followed in 1980, darker and stranger. Curtis hanged himself in his kitchen in Macclesfield on 18th May 1980, the night before they were due to fly to America.

The legacy in Manchester is everywhere and nowhere. The Free Trade Hall is a Radisson hotel now – there’s a plaque, and that’s about it. The Unknown Pleasures artwork pops up on murals around the Northern Quarter. Curtis’s grave is in Macclesfield Cemetery. The remaining three became New Order and built the Hacienda, which is another story entirely.

If you want to understand why Manchester music has always had a bleak streak running through it – why it’s never been just good times and big choruses – Joy Division is where that starts. Two albums, a handful of singles, and a story that never stops being sad.