Joy Division

Joy Division: University Of London, London

Live Review by Paul Morley, NME, February 1980

I DIDN'T KNOW which way to turn. In every corner of the second floor of the anonymous university building there seemed to be some group ...

Buzzcocks, Penetration, John Cooper Clarke, Warsaw: Electric Circus, Manchester

Live Review by Paul Morley, NME, June 1977

THERE IS undoubtedly a great deal of refining and cleaning to be done on Buzzcocks' material before the album they can so definitely record comes ...

Buzzcocks/Magazine/John Cooper Clarke/The Worst/The Fall/The Prefects/The Negatives/Warsaw: Electric Circus, Manchester

Live Review by Jon Savage, Sounds, October 1977

Prime Manchester venue closes... Power cut at the Electric Circus ...

Joy Division: Band On The Wall, Manchester

Live Review by Paul Morley, NME, September 1978

THOSE FAMILIAR with this young quartet. mainly through their excitable appearance on the "Short Circuit" pretty package, and to a lesser extent with their self ...

Joy Division: Band on the Wall, Manchester

Live Review by Mick Middles, Sounds, September 1978

IT WAS during the unforgettable summer of '77 that I had my first encounter with Joy Division (then named Warsaw). Through a steamy Electric Circus ...

Joy Division

Interview by Mick Middles, Sounds, November 1978

THROB,THROB, THROB, THROB. "Hey Miss, a bottle of Newcastle please, what? Oh, a bottle of Pils then." THROB, THROB, THROB, THROB. ...

Joy Division: Unknown Pleasures (Factory)

Review by Max Bell, NME, July 1979

JUST WHEN the year's vitality was threatening to be expunged by a non-stop parade of rehashed fashions, 'ordinary geezers' with French Riviera yachts and the ...

Joy Division: Unknown Pleasures

Review by Jon Savage, Melody Maker, July 1979

"To talk of life today is like talking of rope in the house of a hanged man." Where will it end? ...

Joy Division: Take No Prisoners, Leave No Clues

Profile and Interview by Paul Rambali, NME, August 1979

LET ME DRAW BACK the curtains on a probably wet and no doubt freezing night last winter. A mid-week night of no special significance, save ...

Joy Division/Echo & The Bunnymen/OMD/Teardrop Explodes/The Distractions/ACR: Leigh Valley Festival, Lancashire

Live Review by Jon Savage, Melody Maker, September 1979

Angst in an East Lancs wasteland ...

Joy Division, Teardrop Explodes, OMD, Echo & The Bunnymen et al: Leigh Rock Festival, Lancashire

Live Review by Mick Middles, Sounds, September 1979

A movement with no name... and a festival with no people (But a 'staggering event' all the same, says our man Middles) ...

Factory Records: Food For Thought

Report by Mary Harron, Melody Maker, September 1979

Lots of people thought that Operation Julie was a bit of an anachronism. Who, in the late Seventies, could be dropping all those tabs? It ...

Buzzcocks/Joy Division: Rainbow, London

Live Review by Chris Bohn, Melody Maker, November 1979

ON CURRENT FORM, Joy Division should have been the best thing happening on Friday night, and the Buzzcocks camp knew it too. Consequently, they treated ...

Joy Division: University of London Union

Live Review by Chris Bohn, Melody Maker, February 1980

AH, THE HORROR, the horror... where's Colonel Kurtz? Somehow the demented Brando figure is there, spiritually leading the new dance. Like him, today's purveyors have ...

Joy Division: Osbourne Club, Manchester

Live Review by Mick Middles, Sounds, March 1980

TO THE centre of the city in the night waiting for Joy Division. ...

Joy Division: From Safety To Where?

Comment by Jon Savage, Melody Maker, June 1980

ABOUT MIDDAY on Sunday, May 18, Ian Curtis was found dead by his wife in the kitchen of his house in Macclesfield. Although the exact ...

Division On: Joy Division

Interview by Len Brown, NME, May 1990

"FUNNY. I WAS IN the car with Barney the other day and I just hit Unknown Pleasures into the CD. And Barney shouted, 'Get that ...

An Interview with Martin Hannett, 29th May 1989

Interview by Jon Savage, Touch-Vagabond, 1992

JS: How did you come across Joy Division? ...

Joy Division: Someone Take These Dreams Away

Retrospective and Interview by Jon Savage, MOJO, July 1994

HERE ARE THE young men, a weight on their shouldersHere are the young men, well where have they been?We knocked on the doors of hell's ...

Deborah Curtis: Touching From A Distance: Ian Curtis And Joy Division (Faber & Faber)

Review by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, 1995

AS THE JOURNALIST and pop historian Jon Savage Suggests in his foreword, for one narrowly defined sub-generation, Ian Curtis's suicide was a first personal encounter ...

She’s Got Control

Interview by Len Brown, Q, 1995

Fifteen years after he hanged himself in their Macclesfield kitchen, Joy Division leader Ian Curtis has been "outed" by his widow, Deborah, as an ill-tempered, ...

Joy Division: Permanent

Review by Mark Cooper, MOJO, August 1995

WHEN JOY DIVISION'S UNKNOWN PLEASURES was released in June, 1979, it sounded like it came from another planet. Of course, it's easy now to historicise ...

Joy Division: Heart & Soul

Review by David Stubbs, Uncut, January 1998

JOY DIVISION were the last British band who mattered, for whom something was truly the matter. Forget Oasis' last-gasp efforts to bring the rock community ...

Joy Division: Heart And Soul

Review by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, January 1998

The complete JD story, from Warsaw to 'Atmosphere', compiled by the band’s surviving members with Jon Savage and including dozens of outtakes, unreleased demos, and ...

Joy Division: The Making Of Unknown Pleasures

Retrospective and Interview by Johnny Black, Q, November 1998

Joy Division settle into 10cc's Strawberry Studios in Stockport to record one of the greatest albums of the 70s. But Ian Curtis has just discovered ...

Ian Curtis

Profile by Stephen Dalton, Uncut, August 2000

IAN CURTIS has amassed more disciples since his death 20 years ago than he ever attracted as singer with Manchester post-punk legends Joy Division. ...

24 Hour Party People: directed by Michael Winterbottom

Review by Djuna Parnes, Rock's Backpages, May 2002

MUCH TO MY surprise, this self-serving cinematic essay about and around Anthony H. Wilson of Factory and Haçienda fame is a resounding success. It's extremely ...

Ian Curtis

Book Excerpt by Linsday Reade, Mick Middles, Torn Apart: The Life of Ian Curtis (Omnibus Press), 2006

The authors of this new biography are uniquely qualified to reveal the extraordinary events surrounding the life and death of Ian Curtis. ...

Closer, Still — An interview with Control director Anton Corbijn

Interview by Ken Scrudato, Filter, September 2007

THE ESSENCE of death, much like that of war, rests in how it has irreparably changed those left to grapple with its aftermath. Its effects ...

Closer Still: An Interview with Control director Anton Corbijn

Interview by Ken Scrudato, Filter, September 2007

THE ESSENCE OF DEATH, much like that of war, rests in how it has irreparably changed those left to grapple with its aftermath. Its effects ...

Joy Division: Music to Brood by, Desolate and Stark

Retrospective by Simon Reynolds, New York Times, October 2007

THE MYSTIQUE surrounding Joy Division has always been way out of proportion to its record sales. Far bigger bands, like the Clash and Pink Floyd, ...

Joy Division: The Joy Division Industry

Comment by Chris Roberts, Quietus, The, April 2008

More offcuts from the Factory ...

The Right Way To Remember Joy Division

Essay by Jude Rogers, Quietus, The, July 2009

As Unknown Pleasures reaches its 30th anniversary, Jude Rogers looks behind the commercialisation and Paul Morley's jowls at Joy Division's eternal truth ...