Everyone's favorite spastic dancer loses control
I was talking about this with a friend my smart and rad pal, Trent Burton, a week or so ago and saying how I wanted to write a blog post about the evolution of Joy Division into New Order following the suicide of Ian Curtis.
Both bands are brilliant for their own reasons but its really interesting, to me at least, to look at the transition from Curtis to Sumner and how the mood and tone of the band changed, and also how the mood and tone of the band stayed the same.
The best song to look at to see this evolution is Ceremony. It was one of the last Joy Division songs and one of the first New Order songs. Curtis wrote the lyrics and first recorded it when he was 23 (!!) and it was the first song that the reincarnated New Order did immediately after his death. Guitarist Bernard Sumner stepped up to sing and, purportedly, had to transcribe the lyrics from the audio of Curtis as they weren’t actually written down anywhere. I’m not sure if that’s true, but if it is, and if you stop to think about it, there’s something incredibly, hauntingly, beautiful about that. The first sounds moving forward for this collection of friends are actually initiated by the voice of the recently departed Curtis. How his voice must’ve hung in the air.
Now if you’re not really a Joy Division fan, or not into this music, the best version for you to listen to is likely the New Order version from the 1987 album Substance. I’m not saying that this is the best version, its just the most sort of accessible one – although the 7″ version is a bit more punk and raw and that’s good too. The original Joy Division recording is very muffled and Curtis’ distinct and robotic drone can be a bit alienating if you haven’t warmed up to it. A great Joy Division song to prime a new listener on would be Love Will Tear Us Apart Again, of course, probably followed by Shadowplay, the first of these two is pretty popular and the second was covered by The Killers. But once you get deeper into the sound these songs begin to sound a bit too poppy and you end up going all the way back to stuff like the original Ceremony, or Temptation, another exceptional example of Joy Division begetting New Order and one made popular by the movie Trainspotting. I also just heard a Weakerthans song that featured the distinctive ‘oh you’ve got blue eyes, oh you’ve got green eyes, oh you’ve got grey eyes’ at the end of it. Apparently John K Samson is also a fan. Eventually you get to stuff like She’s Lost Control and Dead Souls, which was on the Crow soundtrack as a cover by Nine Inch Nails – probably one of the bands that best emulated the spirit of an Ian Curtis, if not necessarily the sound of Ian Curtis. Perhaps my personal favs would be Digital, which is pretty punk at the end of the day, and Disorder, which gets into some really, really cool atmospheric sonic kind of sounds and distortions. Groundbreaking stuff. Isolation is another classic. Hell, I like em all.
Anyway. Back to Ceremony. Give these a listen back-to-back. The vocals are really bad in the first two but these are the only recordings (well, plus one more live one) of this song, so that’s all there’s ever going to be. The second one here has some rather Transylvanian sounding spookiness. The third is the first post Ian Curtis, with Sumner singing. But you feel that its still very much a Joy Division song being performed by guys that are just emulating the sound they’d always had. The fourth one, from the 7″, is the version that you could suggest is the first, legit, New Order version. The tempo is faster, its getting further away from a reverby punkish sound and into something more electronic and studio-esque. It’s only a matter of months between these but the direction is there. This is also where Sumner is singing more as himself and less as an Ian Curtis impersonator, although that it definitely still there. You hear a bit of both, which is why that version is the absolute coolest. It maintains the rawness and DIY feel of Joy Division yet you start to get a little bit more melody and the more outgoing passion of Sumner and New Order. Its my fave.
The final version, which was put on the 1987 album Substance, is where the transition is complete. Its important to note that while that last one appeared on an album six years later it was actually recorded in the same year as the 7″ – in 1981. In fact, all five of these were done within just over a year. And by a group of people in their early 20′s who had just lost their friend and leader.
Joy Division, 1980, from Heart and Soul
Joy Division, 1980, live, two weeks before Curtis’ death
New Order, 1981, single
New Order, 1981, 7″
New Order, 1987, Substance
This is why events unnerve me,
They find it all, a different story,
Notice whom for wheels are turning,
Turn again and turn towards this time,
All she ask’s the strength to hold me,
Then again the same old story,
World will travel, oh so quickly,
Travel first and lean towards this time.
Oh, I’ll break them down, no mercy shown,
Heaven knows, it’s got to be this time,
Watching her, these things she said,
The times she cried,
Too frail to wake this time.
Oh I’ll break them down, no mercy shown
Heaven knows, it’s got to be this time,
Avenues all lined with trees,
Picture me and then you start watching,
Watching forever, forever,
Watching love grow, forever,
Letting me know, forever.
