Public Servant Lifestyle

The former members of seminal Manchester band Joy Division speak out in a brand new documentary from Grant Gee.

Picture (right): The members of Joy Division pose for the music press.

On June 4 1976, four young men from ruined, post-industrial Manchester, England went to see a Sex Pistols show at the Manchester Lesser Free Trade Hall. Inspired by the gig that is now credited with igniting the Manchester music scene, they formed what was to become one of the world’s most influential bands: Joy Division.

Now, thirty years later - and despite a tragedy that was to cut them off in their prime, they are enjoying a larger audience and more influence than ever before, with a profound legacy that resonates fiercely in today’s heavily manufactured pop culture.

Factory Records

Featuring the unprecedented participation of all the surviving band members - now known as New Order - ‘Joy Division’ examines the band’s story as depicted through never-before-seen live performance footage, personal photos, period films and newly discovered audiotapes. With poignant narratives from all of the former members of the classic line-up of the band: Bernard Sumner (guitar), Peter Hook (bass) and Stephen Morris (drums), as well as accounts from Throbbing Gristle musician Genesis P. Orridge, late legendary Factory Records owner Anthony H. Wilson, iconic Factory Records graphic artist Peter Saville, photographer/filmmaker Anton Corbijn, Belgian journalist Annik Honoré - speaking for the first time about her relationship with lead singer Ian Curtis - and others, the film is a fresh visual account of a unique time and place.

Pictured (left): Joy Division frontman Ian Curtis, whose suicide at just 23 years of age led to the demise of the group.

Director Grant Gee explains his enduring relationship with the music of this most seminal Manchester band: "In 1980, aged 15, I bought a copy of Joy Division’s Unknown Pleasures album. It was the single most beautiful object I’d ever possessed and the first record I’d ever heard that didn’t just spit out sounds but seemed to create a whole new landscape.

"A couple of months later, listening in bed to John Peel’s radio show, I heard that the band’s singer Ian Curtis had killed himself and I experienced a brand new/strange sense of adolescent loss. Apart from filming and filmmaking, the only work I ever enjoyed was studying urban geography: the sense of place. So when I was contacted by producers Tom Atencio and Tom Astor and rock writer writer Jon Savage in 2006 about a Joy Division documentary they’d been developing, it was natural for me to conceive the project in terms of beauty, loss and the city."

This being a music documentary the film naturally features a series of great tracks, including Joy Division classics such as: Isolation, Heart & Soul, Love Will Tear Us Apart, The Atrocity Exhibition, Atmosphere, Autosuggestion, Day Of The Lords and These Days - as well as New Orders' massive record-breaking single Blue Monday.

The film chronicles a time of great social and political change in England and tells the untold story of four men who transcended economic and cultural barriers to produce an enduring musical legacy.

"You may feel rather Joy Divisioned out after Control, the recent bio-flick of lead singer Ian Curtis. Yet this immersive doc manages to find plenty of fresh interest...this is packed with new material." (Metro newspaper).

See also on Lifestyle:

Substance - Anton Corbijn's striking monochrome Joy Division feature film comes to DVD.

Joy Division is in cinemas now, rated 15.

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