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Ian Curtis
Singer. Different person to everyone. Touched by the hand of God.
Bernard Sumner
Guitarist in Joy Division and New Order frontman.
Peter Hook
Hooky. The man with the bass.
Steven Morris
Drummer. Later to become member of The Other Two.
'The introduction doesn't normally go on this long. It's just that we're waiting for our singer. I think he's in the toilet.'
And Bernard Sumner leant back into his guitar and continued winding up those bar chords. It was late. Approaching two o'clock. The plugs would be pulled soon. The guitars and drums churned on. There was a throb about the chord progression. Something mighty going on even before Curtis began pushing his way through the crowd from the back of the room.
He jumped on stage, took the mike and a song called 'Digital' took off. Like a Saturn Five to which every fuckwit in the room was tied by a big piece of bungee chord. The guy in centre stage was at the centre of a storm. His own storm.
A chorus exploded, words stark and short, repeated over and over and over again.
Wilson had seen this kind of stuff once before - Van Morrison, late-sixties God, gone soft in the seventies.
You breathe in you breathe out you breathe in you breathe out...
He recognised again the miracle of afflatus; Dionysiac revelry, automatic voices, content pouring from the mouth and the soul. Unbidden, unstoppable.
And there were other elements to this enchanted evening. The rhythm section. Peter Hook, bass low-strung, notes played high on the fretboard, beginning the reinvention of bass melody. Steve Morris, nice lad from Macclesfield, with nice lad from Macc jumper, and the pounding beat that comes from a youth spent listening to rock and roll. Barney, arm insistently dragging up and down the face of his guitar, chords shimmering like brittle metal before returning to noise. F shapes, boys, F shapes.
And the lead singer. Later pinned to the specimen board as 'the dead fly dance', Curtis's movements were jerky, abrupt, an insane twitching response to what the music was doing to him.
From 24 Hour Party People, by Tony Wilson.
Click here to buy a copy
John Simm
Ralf Little
Sean Harris
Anton Corbijn
Guitars and Other Machines
Shooting the Past
Top Tune - John Simm
