Trivia / Joy Division

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• Colbert Bump: Not strictly accurate (they were gone before anyone noticed) but just about the only high quality recordings of live performances are from guest spots on TV shows that otherwise would've fallen into complete obscurity.
• Creator Backlash: Sumner and Hook (and Morris as well) were not fond of the production on their albums, claiming that Hannett took them too far away from their live sound. Hook and Morris eventually came around and are quite fond of the albums' overall sound now, but Sumner never has.
• Creator Breakdown: Closer showed it in full, but the first signs were already present in Unknown Pleasures.
• Executive Meddling: To the opposite extreme. Curtis took his own life only weeks before Closer was due for release, but Tony Wilson decided to keep Peter Saville's cover which depicted the front of the Appiani Family tomb in Italy (itself a sculpture of Christ being laid to rest).
• Follow the Leader: The band's 1988 Substance compilation collects the band's non-album singles and EPs, just as the New Order compilation of the same name released a year earlier did.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: The 1990 Boxed Set 1977-1980 had only one print run in Japan, and the unique masterings on it were never re-released in any form (not even as standalone CDs). As this set provided the only Joy Division CDs that were both uncompressed and sourced from the original master tapes (other releases either come from second-generation copy tapes or are noticeably compressed), this has resulted in import copies becoming highly coveted by fans.
• Late Export for You: The career-spanning Heart and Soul Boxed Set originally came out in 1997, but took an additional four years to see an official US release.
• No Export for You: Neither the 1977-1980 Boxed Set nor the masters on it ever made it outside of Japan.
• Pop-Culture Urban Legends: Because Ian never wrote down the lyrics to "Ceremony" and because his vocals are near-inaudible on all surviving recordings of it, Bernard had to use a graphic equalizer to approximate the lyrics for New Order's re-recordings. This has fueled quite a bit of speculation over the years regarding how Ian had originally envisioned the song's lyrics, especially in light of reports indicating that Curtis was constantly changing up the lyrics as time went on (itself corroborated by the fact that the sole live recording of the song features an audibly different chorus from the studio tape).
• The Production Curse: A number of people affiliated with the band have died at an early age, making Joy Division the possible musical equivalent of the Poltergeist films or Babylon 5:
  • Lead singer Ian Curtis took his own life in 1980 at 23.
  • Producer Martin Hannett died in 1991 at the age of 42 after years of drug abuse.
  • In a non-living example, the band's label, Factory Records, went bankrupt in 1992 after just 14 years of operation, which despite spanning a generation's worth of time is still remarkably short compared to other indie labels of similar success (e.g. Mute Records and 4AD Records, both of which are still active to this day).
  • Manager Rob Gretton died in 1999 of a heart attack at 46.
  • Factory Records founder Tony Wilson died of renal cancer in 2007 at 57.
  • Ian Curtis' lover and founder of Factory Benelux, Annik Honoré, died in 2014 of cancer at 56.
• Production Posse: The band's Factory releases were produced by Martin Hannett and the cover art designed by Peter Saville.
• Referenced by...:
  • Talking Heads composed their song "The Overload" (from Remain in Light) as a pastiche of Joy Division, albeit based entirely on press descriptions due to the fact that none of the band members had actually heard Joy Division's music at the time. The end result was actually fairly similar to Joy Division's slower material, such as "I Remember Nothing" or the "In a Lonely Place" demo.
  • In a case of intentional Recursive Translation, Argentine band Sumo named their debut album Divididos por la felicidad ("Divided by Joy") after the band.
• Short-Lived, Big Impact: They only released two albums owing to the death of their lead singer (who died at 23), but are the first thing almost everyone thinks of when they hear the term Post-Punk, in addition to helping lay the groundwork for what would become Goth Rock. If The Doors did not influence them, usually Joy Division did.
• What Could Have Been:
  • The band was due to start their first American tour the day after Ian Curtis killed himself. The exact result of Ian living to see the tour is still very much up in the air, considering that a successful run likely would've been the band's American breakthrough, but at the same time Ian's epilepsy was rapidly worsening to the point where his bandmates would sometimes have to bring in a substitute vocalist on-stage, if not have one of themselves Step Up to the Microphone.
  • The fact that "Ceremony" only exists in a variety of poorly-mixed live and rehearsal recordings (wherein Ian's vocals are so muted you can hardly make them out) has raised quite a bit of speculation about how it might've turned out had Ian lived long enough to see it completed. The January 1981 recording by New Order is considered the closest official approximation to what Joy Division's "Ceremony" might've sounded like in a finished form, but even then it's not exact given Ian's obvious absence.
  • Joy Division could have gone in the direction New Order went had Ian not died. Ian became a fan of artists like Kraftwerk ("Trans-Europe Express" was part of their warm-up set) and introduced them to the other members, which would have more than likely resulted in Joy Division going in a more Synth-Pop-based direction and probably emphasizing more dance elements, though likely keeping their Gothic core to a more overt degree than the sardonically-inclined New Order. This also fits considering how New Order's debut Movement sounds like Joy Division with Bernard and Peter on vocals.
  • Bernard Sumner believes that if Ian hadn't killed himself, he would have eventually been unable to tour with the band due to his epilepsy.
  • Curtis himself professed a wish to someday own a bookstore. Given everything mentioned above, it's likely that even if he hadn't died by suicide, he'd still retire from the band relatively early as a result of his health issues (assuming they didn't try some sort of Brian Wilson-style arrangement where Curtis still wrote and recorded with them in the studio; the band was already known to bring substitute vocalists on-stage or Step Up to the Microphone whenever necessary), focusing on the bookstore instead. Thus, New Order would've still come about, but under much less emotionally strenuous circumstances.
  • Despite their close association with Factory, Joy Division was briefly associated with other labels:
    • In 1978, they signed with RCA Records, but the deal didn't work out and the material the band recorded there wasn't released until 1994 on the semi-official compilation Warsaw (some of it had already been included on the An Ideal for Living EP, and other songs were re-recorded on Factory, but the full sessions didn't emerge until Warsaw).
    • The group came close to signing with Radar Records (via Genetic, a sublabel owned by producer Martin Rushent); they recorded a few demos before deciding to stay with Factory. Radar's parent label, Warner (Bros.) Records, was also trying to sign Joy Division directly before Curtis' death. The band's back catalog would eventually end up on Warner Bros, first in the U.S. on the heels of New Order's deal with the Warner-owned Qwest, and later via London Records in the U.K. and Europe following Factory's demise.

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