“We just wanted to lop people’s heads off”…so said Peter Hook, bassist and co-founder of Joy Division, when discussing the difference between the live and recorded versions of the band. Anyone with knowledge of the Joy Division story knows that Bernard Sumner and Peter Hook were notoriously disappointed with how their debut album, Unknown Pleasures, sounded. The producer Martin Hannett had mined the songs for paranormal elements and encased them in the ambience of a crumbling city, giving the album an ethereal and haunting quality that whilst innovative and influential, only tells one side of the Joy Division tale. Now, with Eternal, we get the other side, where we discover the Joy Division that was born out of Punk and youthful venom and you know what? Hooky may just well have been right….
Covering fourteen CDs and two DVDs, Eternal is the most comprehensive insight into Joy Division as a live entity and even though the story is an incredibly short one, these recordings help highlight how rich and unstoppable the band and their songs were. Collected here are songs in development, false starts and incendiary statements. We hear a version of Disorder taken from the famous Hope and Anchor gig in 1979 that has a most ridiculous synth wobble through it yet only a few months later they have pitched the synth lower, adding a far more aggressive tone and they have lowered it in the mix, making it less conspicuous and awkward. An early highlight of the collection is She’s Lost Control taken from the same Hope and Anchor gig. This version speeds along all agitated and uncomfortable with Stephen Morris’ drums never faltering, driving this song into ever more urgent alleyways. More Punk than Post. Another example of the difference between the Joy Division on record and that live is the thrillingly oppressive I ‘Remember Nothing’. On Unknown Pleasures the song is baked in ambience, shutting lift doors and empty streets whereas here we get a version where the band experiment with dynamics and arrangements making it a far more interesting listening experience than its final recorded form. This recording also helps highlight the humour of Ian Curtis as he introduces the song by saying “we don’t know anyone here so….” before starting the verse of the song “we were strangers”. It’s a quality dad joke by the young man and evidence of the bands often discussed silliness.
Due to the band’s short lifespan, songs are often repeated throughout the box set and the first few discs carry very similar set-lists, however as a listener it never feels boringly repetitive. In fact, the opposite is true because we hear how the band are reacting to their surroundings and issues such as sound/tech failings, enthusiastic crowds, and emptier rooms. This is the tale of a jobbing band, grafting away, building an audience and allowing songs to find their final form. Hear how the ‘Dead Souls’ intro changes ever so slightly between the 13th July at The Factory, Manchester and only a few weeks later at the YMCA in London where you hear Sumner being more playful in the introduction, trying a few new ideas before settling on the riff that fans know and love. Whilst we are on the subject of the YMCA gig, check out the version of ‘Atrocity Exhibition’ that features here. A pure slab of menace that amps up the grim scenarios within Curtis’ lyrics.
Some of these recordings have existed via well known bootlegs and official releases with the Live Les Bains Douches, Paris gig being one of the better known and well recorded. It is on this disc where we hear for the first time Love Will Tear Us Apart and whilst it is still not in its final form, with the sound mix not quite right, you can completely understand why, on hearing it for the first time, artist Peter Saville said to himself “oh fuck, they now have a hit single”.
As we progress through the set, and songs that would form the bands second, and final album Closer, we get a better representation of both sides of Joy Division with songs that are obviously influenced by their work with Hannett and still full of the aggression that they started with. The CD collection finishes with the song ‘Digital’, recorded at Live Hall, Birmingham on the 2nd May 1980. Curtis sings about it “closing in” and ends with a “thank you, goodnight”. Sixteen days later he would be found dead. This is the part of the story where the myths begin and the legend explodes, a tragic ending that colours all that goes before it, however this is where the real strength of Eternal is found because since that awful ending in a Macclesfield kitchen, the story has mostly been focused on Ian and his personal life yet this collection helps to really bring to the fore the strengths of the other three members of the band. On record their music is often blurred and warped into an admittedly brilliant new sound, but here we really can grasp the enthusiasm, energy and songwriting skills of the band as a whole. For a bunch of amateurs they learned their instruments fast and the sheer outpouring of songs is a testament to a band that were thoroughly well rehearsed and dedicated to their mission. Quite a few of these audio recordings do not centre Curtis’ vocals in the mix (not helped by his now famous dance moves) so it gives Hook, Sumner and Morris plenty of scope to flex their musical muscles. This is a brilliant encapsulation of a young band learning their craft, including fluffed notes and not-quite-right song arrangements. It is a long overdue spotlight on Joy Division as a whole entity. There is no way of knowing if they would have proven to be as influential as they are if they hadn’t met Martin Hannett and allowed him to produce them the way he did, however on the evidence provided here they would have stood a good chance as being remembered as one of the most thrilling and complex bands to have emerged from 70s England.
Eternal also contains two DVDs featuring the famous Something Else performances of Transmission and She’s Lost Control, Malcolm Whitehead’s film (featuring footage of of the Bowdon Vale Youth Club gig with Curtis, in particular, a domineering figure as he stands above the crowd, singing and contorting.), and the well-documented Plan K, Brussels concert. This is where the focus now returns to Ian because, due to the camera angle and lighting, he is the more visible throughout, with Hook to his left and a Morris just in view behind. Here we have the full Ian Curtis in flight footage. Mesmerising, disturbing (its awful seeing the stage lights shone straight in his face considering what we know about his epilepsy) and thoroughly brilliant, this is where the icon is really born, not in a crematorium, but on stage, commanding the audience pay attention to him and his droogs. It’s remarkable watching this band “lop the heads” off people here but it will forever remain bittersweet because this footage alone shows us the amazing amount of potential Joy Division had.
Aside from any other books or documentaries that may arise, Eternal should serve as the ultimate final word on Joy Division as a band. It proves Hooky and Barney right when they talk about the intensity they had as a live band. It showcases the already brilliant musicianship of the band (especially Morris…we drummers have to stick together) and just how fast they evolved from their snotty Warsaw days into the post-punk genius of the Joy Division we know so well. Eternal redresses the balance in the storytelling somewhat and helps shine a vital light on the three musicians in the band. It is easy to see why, as New Order, their first album (Movement) sounds like it does. This was their sound and after losing Curtis they obviously leaned into the sounds and styles that they were already so accomplished at.
Joy Division is eternal and this collection is essential.
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Review by Simon Tucker
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