Remember those socially awkward kids in the smart-kid classes who all wore black Joy Division t-shirts as if they were the school uniform? You do if you went to high school in the late 1980s. Well, now they have a movie about their hero.
Have you ever heard Joy Division's 1980 classic "Love Will Tear Us Apart"? It is one of the best songs ever recorded. Sonically and attitudinally it is the primordial ooze from which '80s alternative comes. One hears the lead bass, the occasional snare crash amidst the drummer constantly riding the high-hat, and atmospheric keyboards. It's been copied, and copied, and copied. It's The Cure. It's Echo and the Bunnymen. It's Morrissey. They've all taken bits and pieces from Joy Division. Hearing the haunting vocal for the first time made me wonder how its author avoided killing himself thus far. And then I heard of Ian Curtis's fate.
In 1980, on the eve of Joy Division's first American tour and a month before the release of "Love Will Tear Us Apart," Ian Curtis hung himself. Like Kurt Cobain, Curtis had the cry-for-help overdose before committing suicide. And like Cobain's mate Dave Grohl, who went on to success as/with the Foo Fighters, Curtis's mates carried on as New Order. That New Order enjoyed more mainstream success than Joy Division only makes Curtis's legend, amidst fans who savor being part of the underground, larger.
Now, Anton Corbijn, the acclaimed photographer and director of such music videos as U2's One, Coldplay's Talk and Joy Division's Atmosphere, has made a movie about Ian Curtis. It's called Control. And it debuted to acclaim at the Cannes Film Festival earlier this year. It won't enjoy widespread distribution to the fall, but, despite the many, many bad movies about rock musicians, I anxiously await a viewing. How wonderful it is that more than a quarter century after his death, Ian Curtis is remembered. How much better it would have been had he never killed himself. Alas, critics and fans alike prefer their rock geniuses to have left a youthful corpse.
Those kids you speak of, I know one, he goes by asdf.
