Dark Star
Married at 19, the brightest star of the post-punk scene at 22, dead at 23. The life of Joy Division's Ian Curtis is the stuff of rock mythology – and a much talked-about new film. Here, his former band-mates talk exclusively to Jon Savage about their troubled singer's last days
Published: 07 October 2007
Saturday 27 October 1979. I'm up in the gods of the Ardwick Apollo, a huge 1930s cinema situated in the middle of slum clearance. The Buzzcocks' manager Richard Boon is fiddling with the tripod of a primitive Beta video camera as he attempts to get the stage area into focus. His primary purpose is to film his group, who are headlining tonight, but he inadvertently ends up capturing a piece of history.
Sam Riley stars as Ian Curtis in Control
Framed within the cinema's huge proscenium arch, Joy Division walk out and launch into "Dead Souls". The peculiarity of this song is that it has a long, rolling introduction that allows the group to orient themselves in their environment for the night. Like many of the venues on this 24-date national tour, the Apollo is larger than the clubs that have been the group's environment to date. But they are not intimidated. They inhabit the space.
posted by Indigobusiness @ Saturday, October 06, 2007
3 Comments
3 Comments:
They're from my neck of the woods(NW England), & I think that's partly why I 'get them' in a lot of ways.
Just not musically though. Not really.
I prefer what they evolved into: New Order
Both Nazi terms/projects/policies, weren't they....?
Heavy.
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Yeah, New Order clicked with me, too.
Didn't realize the Nazi aspect, at the time, but now that you mention it...
That's the thing about the Nazis: they were into some righteous stuff, they just twisted it into horrific shapes.
I can still hear the riffs.
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