On this day in 1980, Ian Curtis, the frontman of post-punk legends Joy Division, took his life after years of suffering from depression and debilitating epilepsy. I can think of no better way to memorialize Mr Curtis than to blast Transmission, my favorite Joy Division song (this particular video is preceded by a snippet of Jonathan Cooper Clarke's Evidently Chickentown):
The band's best known single, the posthumous Love Will Tear Us Apart, is a dark eidolon set up to mock the sunny Love Will Keep Us Together:
The sonic profile of Love Will Tear Us Apart prefigures the sound of New Order, the band which rose from the ashes of Joy Division. One can draw a line directly from "LWTUA" to New Order's Ceremony, with Bernard Sumner's lead vocal seeming to emulate Mr Curtis:
Mr Sumner would develop his own vocal style, and go on to record some of the finest dance music in the history of ass-shaking:
Twenty-five years after Ian Curtis' death, New Order memorialized him by performing a live version of Transmission in concert:
Pity Mr Curtis did not live long enough to leave us a more extensive body of work.
In late February, 1960, Melvin Purvis, FBI Special Agent, Retired, blew his own brains out with a pistol given to him by his colleagues when he retired. I think it's fairly easy to draw a line from his inhuman acts in pursuit of "justice" to his inability to face another long dark night.
ReplyDeleteNow what this has to do with your musician's suicide is hard to pin down, but it's the place my mind went. Perhaps there are just things that wear on you, stick in your throat and there's just no good way to reconcile your life with those events.
Perhaps...
Now what this has to do with your musician's suicide is hard to pin down, but it's the place my mind went. Perhaps there are just things that wear on you, stick in your throat and there's just no good way to reconcile your life with those events.
ReplyDeleteIn his case, I think it could be chalked up to deeply entrenched depression and the debilitating effects of hard-to-treat epilepsy.
I have such a hard time with the Joy a Division/New Order split. I like them both, and always think of them as separate entities.
ReplyDeleteI saw a hipster here in Seattle wearing a Joy Division tour shirt, and it just depressed the f*** out of me. Not just because the band was gone before this joker was born, but because to him it was just another bit of irony.
Rgds,
Tengrain
PS thanks for this post. As always, very thoughtful and very smart. I always learn something here!
Those are great tunes. As I've confessed before, I never got it, at the time.
ReplyDeleteWas too busy playing my Clash and Ramones records.
~
Also, too: Mt. St. Helens. Coincidence or conspiracy, hmmmm...!?!
ReplyDelete