How much does production matter? Before Martin Hannett recorded their debut Unknown Pleasure, Joy Division sounded like every other band that formed because they saw a Sex Pistols’ concert: yelled vocals, barre chord guitars, sloppy musicianship, you know, punk rock. You can hear this embryonic band on the first two tracks of the compilation Substance, which come from their first EP, the self-produced An Ideal For Living. The songs “Warsaw” and “Leaders of Men” show a talented punk band, but a punk band nonetheless. The songs are not altogether different than the artsy, shouty, quasi-political punk-sized bites that appeared on Wire’s Pink Flag, which was released that very same month, December 1977. But, like the similarly adventurous Wire, Joy Division continued to develop. And their next batch of singles and their debut album Unknown Pleasures would show us a much more refined, creative, and moody band. It would introduce listeners to the spacious, detailed production of Martin Hannett.
If there’s an essential post-punk album, it’s Unknown Pleasures. (Gang of Four’s Entertainment, Public Image Limited’s Metal Box, Wire’s Chairs Missing, and Siouxsie and the Banshees’ Juju are runners up. They’re all elemental classics, but UP is the ne plus ultra of the genre.) It has it all the post-punk signifiers: chilly vibe, driving bass, danceable drums, a guitar that’s comped rather than strummed, a smidge of synthesizer, slower tempos than punk, downbeat lyrics sung in a funereal baritone, and EFFECTS – tons of chorus and reverb and delay. While the band is certainly responsible for the songs, their less insistent pace, and singer Ian Curtis finding his lower register, I think you can attribute the effects to Hannett – especially because half the band hated them. Guitarist Bernard Sumner thought all the chorus gutted his instrument, robbing the album of the energy of their live show. Bassist Peter Hood said he “couldn’t hide [his] disappointment then. It sounded like Pink Floyd.”
They’re both kind’ve right. The music that Hannett produced for the band (everything after their first EP) sounds much different than their live shows, which was as visceral as any punk band’s of the era – but it works better on record than their live show would’ve.
Lee “Scratch” Perry, the world’s most famous reggae producer, was said to have played the studio like an instrument: recording non-musical sounds, sampling existing recordings, and swamping the entire mix with delay and reverb. It would prove to be the foundation for dub music, which, to many punks, was almost as influential as The Ramones and The Sex Pistols. Certainly inspired by the creativity of dub production filled the corners of Joy Division’s records with little sonic details that only become apparent on second listens. The sounds of bottles breaking, toilets running, and potato chips being eaten get processed through then-state-of-art delay and modulation processors to give the records an ambiance that until that time had been unique to dub. Though unlike dub, Joy Division’s music couldn’t service a mellow reefer buzz; it was mood music for paranoiacs. (I should note, the “Joy” in their name was entirely ironic. The term “Joy Division” comes from what Nazis called sex slaves in concentration camps. This name would not fly today.)
The music, as interesting and innovative as it is, isn’t the only reason that Joy Division became the archetypal post-punk band. There’s the biography as well. Joy Division is one of the few bands with a perfect discography: two classic LPs, a classic singles collection, and that’s it. No reunions. No “experimental” releases. No failed bids for fame. There’s a reason for that.
Curtis, who often sang about oppression and loss of control, suffered from epilepsy. Sometimes fits happened on stage, which I can only imagine, is one of the most vrutal ways to end a show prematurely. In 1980, while dealing with the end of a marriage and his ongoing health problems, he listened to Iggy Pop’s Lust For Life, watched Werner Herzog’s Stroszek, and then died by suicide.
And, almost instantly, Joy Division became legends. The music most immediately influenced The Cure and Bauhaus, who would give birth to goth rock. Curtis would join the club of musicians who died too young (he was only 23!), and the more exclusive group of tortured artists who took their own lives. And the band’s discography, biography, and aesthetic would become the Platonic ideal of “post-punk.” Hell, even the iconic cover art for Unknown Pleasures – a line diagram of radio waves from a plusar – has transcended music geekdom, appearing on everything from posters to coffee cups to people’s skin.
With Curtis’s death, Joy Division ceased to be, but its members would continue on together, forming New Order, a phoenix rising from the ashes. They, of course, would own the 1980s. In 1987, they released their own singles compilation called Substance. But that’s an album for another Wednesday.