JOY DIVISION
Tony and I have this joke about the Joy Division room in purgatory . . . it's the place where people go to pay for sins perpetrated by others in their names . . . so, they're essentially innocent, but they have to pay for what they hath wrought, dig? Burroughs is there, John Fahey has to answer for "new age" music, and of course Jesus and Mohammed and Marx belong there . . . maybe it should really be called the Jesus room instead of the Joy Division room, but that's a whole ‘nother rant, and I'll let that rest for now, ‘cause I'm talking about Joy Division here, and things seem just a wee bit heavier now than when we were joking about this anyway . . . .
The point is this: at one level, Joy Division was able to pull off something that precious few others do without drowning in self parody . . .and while we are fond of talking about artists "dancing on the edge", rarely is that edge the line between the sublime and the ridiculous, at least when that line is drawn in such broad and self-consciously apocalyptic strokes. Joy Division has to answer for the "goth" crap that spread like mold on its corpse . . . but no, they don't, because the point that almost everyone misses about Joy Division is just how much they were an anti-goth band.
See, everyone went down the checklist, like
alienation: check.
nihilism: check.
apocalyptic world view: check.
minor chords: check.
detachment: check.
keyboards: sometimes, at least, check.
neurotic self-consciousness: check.
grandiose lead vocals: check.
existential free-floating anger: check
lead singer who killed himself in a fit of depression just when fame and riches were about to be realized: check.
and nobody checked in on the sum of the parts.
Several members of the band went through their own little Joy Division phases, and there is little doubt that some of what attracted us to the band are the same sort of base fixations that led to the whole goth mis-interpretation, but when we (musically speaking, at least) left those fixations behind, Joy Division was still left. Speaking for me personally, I initially fixated on "Love Will Tear Us Apart" . . . it was like a case study in the resignation of suicide. It did help a bit that I had a very close friend commit suicide when I was in the middle of this whole thing - it made it even more real - but, hell, I was a flannel guy from way back, so that was just a phase. The thing is, once the phase was over, I still loved the band, and I think that once I got past the cheap, sensationalistic sentimentality of what was going on, I could appreciate them even more.
The thing is, they didn't go in for the overt drama: they wore non-descript gray clothes on stage. They were fond of minimalist graphics. They tried to shrink their public personas (egos) rather than expand them. And they weren't interested in a cult of anything, much less themselves. In these ways, Joy Division is much more like its descendant New Order than the goth bands that supposedly used them for a model. There is no question the drama is there, but rarely is it as naked as it is in Joy Division.
While we were putting together the tribute set, we always had to check in with Tony about the lyrics: were they too embarrassing? Could he sing them with a straight face? The answer was often "yes, they are on the verge of silly, but they still work". We also had to deal with the odd tension between the dramatic and the detached in the music: at what point is the drama essential, and at what point is it fluff, & therefore ripe for reinterpretation?
Through it all, I think we discovered a few keys . . . to wit:- The balance between the drama and the detachment is vital. A listen to the Warsaw demos will clue you in on this: what, really, is the difference between the good but not great punk band that was Warsaw, and the same songs done much better as Joy Division? The answer is tension - tension between the detachment and the drama. To cover Joy Division, you have to deal with drama at an almost ironic distance. Joy Division was as much an art band as Pere Ubu, they were just dealing with a more familiar currency. As long as you take this point as a given, you can mess with Joy Division songs as much as you want.
- Once again, going back to the Warsaw demos, you have to understand that they were a British punk rock band at heart. Especially dear to me on this count is an insanely fast version of "Disorder" that I have on a live bootleg called Amsterdam. As a matter of fact, there was a bit of an argument about just how fast we should play that song. Don't worry, our version is still pretty damn good.
- You have to do the lyrics naked. Ian Curtis often fell over the line to self-parody; but, more often than not, when he did, the band saved him. The vocalist has to trust his band on this one. It seems to help if you can channel Tony Bennett occasionally.
- After taking these points to heart, you need to realize that there was a whole lot Joy Division didn't do with their music. The fun for us has been figuring out where to expand, where to contract, and where to play it straight. Turns out that there are a hell of a lot of possibilities here. We could spend even more time on the set, but we probably won't.
Joy Division were ultimately a bunch of guys who wrote pretty decent punk rock songs. Along the way, they found a producer (Martin Hannett) who was able to help them recontextualize these songs. Unlike most bands, they seemed to know exactly how good they were, and in what ways they were good. And they didn't find it necessary to dress in black, worship the night, or start a subculture to define their alienation. The music was enough, and they never went beyond the music.
By the way, I rarely listen to any New Order, and when I do, it's never anything recorded after Power, Corruption, and Lies. I find it completely fitting, and maybe even comforting, that Joy Division mutated into New Order after Curtis killed himself. Anything else would have been silly.
[Bill]
