Joy Division : Isolation
On July 18, 1980 Joy Division released Closer, the band's final album and one that is impossible to separate from the tragic circumstances of frontman Ian Curtis's suicide. It would be years before we learned what led to the tailspin that ended with Curtis hanging himself May 18, 1980: his worsening grand mal seizures due to epilepsy, his marriage falling apart and the pressure to try to shelve all of his troubles away to prepare for the band's first American tour.
In retrospect the album reads like a suicide note but at the time the young members of the band really weren't paying attention to the lyrics.
"We'd go to rehearsals and sit around and talk about really banal things," says guitarist Bernard Sumner."We'd do that until we couldn't talk about banal things any more, then we'd pick up our instruments and record into a little cassette player. We didn't talk about the music or the lyrics very much. We never analysed it."
They have all had to carry on with a certain amount of guilt, especially as the album's legacy has grown. Bass player Peter Hook says "people that are left behind are the ones that suffer".
The cover of the album is a photograph of a family tomb, selected before Curtis's death.
The band were not happy with producer Martin Hannett's studio wizardry but his reverb and delay treatments are part of what makes the album so haunting. It sounds like it was recorded behind the "doors of hell's darker chambers".
Closer has become one of the best regarded albums of the entire decade. This review is from Smash Hits.
The band never got to promote Closer. They barely had time to grieve before reforming as New Order, adding drummer Stephen Morris' girlfriend Gillian Gilbert on keyboards.
In 2011 Peter Hook finally got to play some of the Closer songs live, standing next to his son. He said he got chills down the spine and that it was a wonderful moment he wished he could share with the other band members.
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