The Legacy of joy Division

This is a strange post to write I have to admit its hard to write about something when its so entrenched in your past, for me the music of Joy Division was there from about 1985/86, I cant actually say I as into them at the time(i was only 7 then). For me what I liked about the band initially was the production of the music and the strictness of the rythmns, I didnt get into them via a normal route. The Double album called 'Still' was my first hearing of them. This featured out-takes and a poor quality live album.
There has been 4 points which get me going back to them, the first was a Joy Division documentry which as almost film like which I watched on BBC4 about 3 years ago, in a way it unravelled most of the myths surrounding the group. The second was the film 'Control' which I watched in parts. Other points were stumbling across images of his daughter Natalie curtis and lastly picking up a book by his wife Debroah Curtis'.

The latter is a brilliant piece of work, in a way I let the book rest on a shelf for about 6 months. The thing is Joy Division were right up there with some of the classic all time rock bands, in reading it I thought i wouldnt like them in the same light. one has to say Debroah curtis is a brave woman to give such details of her life with Ian Curtis whilst keeping all that information back for so many years(the book was published in 1995).

What comes across to me in the book is that there were failings in the health service at the time in his diagnosis and his level of care, the side effects of the drugs he was taking ultimately affected his reasonable judgment. Also the lyrics of 'closer' I always classeed them as the most directed suicide note ever directed to an ex partner, at the time you thought the lyrics might have been aimed at the wife but alot of it was aimed at the mistress(horne).

The lyrics that stick in my mind about Ian Curtis are the ones where he was talking about life as a whole rather than aimed at the single person. Lyrics like 'here are the young men , weight on their shoulders'.'novelty' which was a b side to a single is quite an optimitsic song.

The legacy of Joy Division is that they influenced a music scene from small beginnings, obviously achieving long term success as New order long afterwards.

I have put a picture of Debroah and Natalie curtis at the top of the picture, it makes you realise that suicide is a futile and its the people left behind are the ones that suffer.