Celebrating Ian Curtis: Joy Division live videos, newly surfaced photos, interviews, more
Today marks the 40th anniversary of Joy Division singer Ian Curtis‘ death and there are many tributes happening in honor of him. The biggest will happen at 3 PM Eastern today: ‘Moving Through the Silence: Celebrating The Life and Legacy of Ian Curtis,’ a two-hour livestream celebration featuring a Q&A with Joy Division/New Order members Bernard Sumner and Stephen Morris, live performances from The Killers‘ Brandon Flowers, Elbow, and more. You can livestream that here.
Meanwhile, former Joy Division and New Order member Peter Hook has shared the full three-hour “So This is Permanent” concert from May 2015 where he and his band The Light performed the complete works of Joy Division. This stream will only be available for 24 hours but it will then be coming out on DVD as well as a three-disc live CD set, with proceeds going to benefit the Epilepsy Society. Watch here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zr7pgDxS_kI
The Independent talked to Peter Hook, Bernard Sumner and Stephen Morris about Joy Division and Ian Curtis’ legacy. “People assume that when he died it was like Nirvana but it wasn’t,” says Hook. “The last gig we played, in Birmingham, we played to about 150 people. So we were not successful. Ian always said we’d be huge all around the world. He would sit there whenever any of us got down about everything, as you do when you can’t get a gig or a record deal or whatever. He’d always say, ‘Don’t worry, we are going to be big in Brazil. We’re going to be big here, we’re going to be big there’. It was always him that was the cheerleader, that would pick us up by the scruff of the neck and convince us to go on. He had the passion and enthusiasm every time we waned, he was amazing at that.” The article also talks to The Charlatans’ Tim Burgess, music journalist Jon Savage and more.
If you want watch vintage footage of the actual Joy Division performing live, you can do that too. This is the “Here Are the Young Men” video which features footage from their two Manchester Apollo shows in October of 1979 and a January 1980 show in the Netherlands. It includes performances of “Love Will Tear Us Apart,” “Transmission,” “Dead Souls,” “She’s Lost Control,” “Day of the Lords,” “They Walked In Line,” and more:
Joy Division also made a few television appearances, the first of which was for Granada Television in September 1978. The host is Tony Wilson who would start Factory Records to release Joy Division’s music. They performed “Shadowplay”:
And here they are on the BBC’s Something Else show doing “Transmission” and “She’s Lost Control,” plus a short interview:
Here is a bootleg of Joy Division’s encore of their final show (May 2, 1980 in Birmingham), the last song they would play live in front of an audience, “Digital”:
That comes via Far Out magazine who also pointed us to this this recording of Ian Curtis’ final interview, which was for the BBC’s Radio Blackburn:
Far Out also notes photographer Jonathan Crabb has shared photos of one of Joy Division’s early London gigs on via his Facebook, and you can check those out below.
In other news: Joy Division’s Closer is getting a 40th Anniversary reissue, and New Order have postponed their tour with Pet Shop Boys.
