May 18, 1980 – One day before they would embark for their first US Tour, Joy Division’s lead singer Ian Kevin Curtis hangs himself in the kitchen of his Macclesfield home.
His Death meant the end for Joy Division, a band that would prove itself to be extremely influential to many other bands and artists to come, and with this review, I plan to contextualize Joy Division’s first full length album Unknown Pleasures by putting in perspective of its time as well as the bands it would later on influence.
Before they became Joy Division, Peter Hook, Bernard Summer, and Ian Curtis were Warsaw. Formed in 1976, they went through several drummers before they decided to keep Stephen Morris for the recording of their first EP An Ideal for Living.
Musically, An Ideal for Living was pretty much straight-forward punk rock, but still laid the foundation to Joy Division’s post-punk sound later on. The cover of the EP depicts a Hitler Youth beating on a drum, and, together with their now newly found name Joy Division, the band sparked some controversies around their use of Nazi imagery (groups of sex slaves in concentration camps were called Joy Divisions).
However, Joy Division were never a Nazi punk band. As a matter of fact, many punk bands at that time experimented with Nazi imagery and Nazi chic, e.g. Siouxie Sioux or Sid Vicious, and they were anything but Nazi.
In April 1979, the recording to Joy Division’s first album began. The entire album was produced by Martin Hannett, whose production would prove himself to be essential to the Joy Division sound.
