Peter Hook, Ian Curtis, Stephen Morris and Bernard Sumner in Manchester
Share
15 July 2020 11: 35 am
Share
Joy Division: Closer to 40 years, always worship!
Philippe Grelard
Agence France-Presse
PARIS — 40 years, always worship: the re-release of Closer, by Joy Division, released in 1980 just after the suicide of their singer Ian Curtis, allows us to measure the persistent influence of this musical cathedral in the gothic style.
This is the second and last album of the quartet from Manchester. The icy beauty of the pieces is still there. The cover throne in a prominent place on the shelves of fans of vinyl. This is a photo of funerary statues from a cemetery in Genoa (Italy), chosen before the disappearance of the leader of the group, and magnified by the design of Peter Saville, a guru of the visuals of the legendary label Factory.
Under the envelope index, the transparent vinyl offered this Friday for the 40 years (Rhino Records/Warner), should delight collectors. The simple out-album of the group, Transmission, Atmosphere and Love Will Tear Us Apart are also reissued.
Rewind. The spring of 1980, is that of all the potential for Joy Division. Closer was recorded in march and a u.s. tour is scheduled in the month of may. The excitement was at its height in Factory, label mancunien cornaqué by the mercurial Tony Wilson.
Closer was born in Britannia Row, london studio frequented by Pink Floyd. Behind the consoles, we find Martin Hannett, producer iconoclast — after studies failed chemistry already at work on Unknown Pleasures (first opus of the group, 1979).
“Incredible modernity”
“There is a close intellectual and artistic, one might even say symbiotic, between Hannett and Curtis’, depicts for AFP Pierre-Frédéric Charpentier, author of Joy Division, Sessions 1977-1981.
“Closer, after 40 years, remains an album of an incredible modernity, ” continues the specialist. There is such a depth of sound, as on the Heart And Soul or these songs out of time as The Eternal or Decades. The group gives clues that others will explore in the future.”
Sam Riley in the skin of Ian Curtis in the film Control (2007) Anton Corbijn on the life and death of the singer of Joy Division.
Library The Sun
The heirs, claimed or not, are legion, from Interpol to the young English Working Men’s Club, who will not leave their first album in October (in Pias) and lying around already this awkward comparison.
At the time, Curtis likes the result, but his life is crack. Seizures — evil, taboo at the time, which gnaws at him — arise in concerts and he has trouble managing her private life, between a new relationship and burning of his marriage. On 18 may, he hangs himself in his kitchen, the day before departure for the United States. He was 23 years old.
“Coast poignant”
“We have not wept at her funeral, it was first released in the form of anger. We were absolutely devastated,” says Peter Hook, the bassist, in The Factory, grandeur and decadence of Factory Records, book of James Nice.
Then comes the guilt when the group realizes that the supposed references to literary texts of Curtis were not the expression of ill-being.
“It is the side poignancy of Closer, this is the diary of a depression, decrypts Pierre-Frédéric Charpentier. “Insulation, the title of the most danceable, electro-pop, is one of the darkest there is. And Love Will Tears Us Apart (love will put us in parts) is a text ripping on the impossibility of the choice in love.”
With the release of Closer, two months after the death of Curtis, the NME, magazine british music, reference, salutes “the most beautiful memorial that a popular artist, post-Presley, could have”.
When the inevitable question arises, the three remaining members — Hook, Bernard Sumner and Stephen Morris decide to continue the music. “I didn’t think we had the slightest chance of leading to something without Ian,” recalls Hook in The Factory.
Place to New Order. The training will be high — the success of Blue Monday — and-down between cycles separation-reunion and departure of Hook. But that is another story.
