New Dawn Fades

It was 31 years ago today that Joy Division’s Ian Curtis took his own life.

Even though demographically I’m supposed to relate more to Kurt Cobain’s death (I was 18 when Nirvana’s Nevermind was released; 21 when Cobain punched his own ticket), Curtis’ suicide has always been the one that’s bothered me most.

Curtis was long dead by the time I discovered his music, and the rest of his band had already gone on to great fame by turning into New Order.  I was fifteen years old, mopey, self-absorbed, way too hung up on girls, sort of superficially interested in suicide because Morrissey told me it was romantic – it was like they had incubated the ideal Joy Division fan in a petri dish, and I was what emerged.

I came upon them through the side door with the 1988 compilation Substance, as opposed to their two staggeringly confident proper albums, 1979′s Unknown Pleasures and 1980′s Closer.  Substance had made Rolling Stone‘s year-end list of notable albums, and there must have been something in the write-up that made me seek it out.  I bought it at a music store at the Salem Mall in Dayton, OH (back when malls still had music stores and the Salem Mall was safe for families), and, unable to wait, popped the tape in my Walkman in the backseat of my parents’ car on the ride home.  I was hooked from the very first song, non-album track “Warsaw,” which smacked me around good and proper.

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I mean, holy shit, right?  This was like nothing I had ever heard before.  Curtis’ singing went beyond Morrissey’s foppy, melodramatic angst into something altogether bleaker and angrier.  And even though the other members of the band have said Curtis seemed to be a generally happy guy offstage, it was the torment in his voice that really got to me.  I’d never heard anything so raw before, and when I was lucky enough to catch archival live footage of the band in action, that pain – suppressed though it might be – came out on stage.

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The term possessed always comes to mind when I watch those clips, and it’s hard not to think about the fact that Curtis’ depression was supposedly exacerbated by his worsening epilepsy.  I think we generally look to rock stars to play a role for us, to be larger than life, but for me, even in death, Curtis was always right there. He wasn’t larger than life.  His pain was all too human, all too real, and it came out in his vocals – either howling with rage or so apathetic that they seemingly bordered on catatonia – and the way he thrashed about onstage.

But here’s the thing, and it’s the thing that means the most to me about this band.  It wasn’t all anger and despondence and shrieking helplessness.  That shtick only goes so far, and while it plays well with adolescents, it doesn’t have much staying power into your 30′s and 40′s.  It was when the band introduced light and shade into their music that they really did something special, taking rage and turning it into a sort of bittersweet surrender.

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Maybe it’s the sense of wasted potential that’s always bothered me about Curtis’ suicide, or the feeling that two albums’ worth of material just wasn’t enough.  Maybe.  But what I really think it is is the feeling that there’s never been someone whose music has quite so accurately reflected who I was at 15 and who I am at 38.  There was more than enough anger and depression to go around when I was young.  And now?  Now it’s just the feeling that there can never be enough beauty in our lives.  Curtis captured both those poles, and he was at his best when he did it in the same song.  He manages that here, which, for me, distills everything that was great about Joy Divison and Ian Curtis into four minutes of perfection.  Thanks, Ian.