How a singular D chord changed music history forever
So much of Joy Division‘s closing work is tied up in the lore of frontman Ian Curtis’ suicide that one wonders if the doomed fatalism that shrouds 1980’s Closer and final single ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’ is an embellishment indulged in by fans lost in the band’s tragic mythos. While Curtis can suffer from serving as a reductive avatar of tortured romance – an impression at odds with the complex and reportedly incredibly funny man he was – it’s undeniable that their final work is charged with a eulogical urgency both sonically and thematically.
From Closer’s final introspective wanderings on ‘The Eternal’ and ‘Decades’, it’s difficult to imagine what new depths of existential rumination Joy Division could have explored next. Clues to their creative direction can be found in the scattered demos that appear across various compilations and album bonus discs over the years.
‘Ceremony’ and ‘In a Lonely Place’—later recorded with successor band New Order—would likely have served as single and B-side/future album tracks upon return from their scheduled US tour the day after Curtis’ death, the latter an electric and cinematic chiller that stands as one of the best Joy Division songs they never cut.
Curtis’ enthusiasm for electronic music, in particular Kraftwerk’s pioneering 1970s synth work, may well have seen Joy Division pursue a direction not dissimilar to New Order. With their frontman’s insistence on playing ‘Autobahn‘ before taking the stage right up until their last show, ‘Blue Monday’ probably would have been realised by a Joy Division that continued into the 1980s. Its mordant lyricism and icy techno-strut have Curtis’ spirit hovering all over it.
Recorded during the Closer sessions at London’s Britannia Row Studios two months before Curtis’ death, the Joy Division frontman poured the turmoil of his disintegrating marriage into every lyrical sinew of ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’. Lines like “There’s a taste in my mouth as desperation takes hold” captured a visceral sense of domestic alienation, pulling Curtis even deeper into a state of disquiet.
“Ian didn’t really want to play guitar, but for some reason we wanted him to play it,” guitarist Bernard Sumner revealed in 2011’s Instrument. “We showed him how to play D and we wrote a song. I wonder if that’s why we wrote ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’, you could drone a D through it. I think he played it live because I was playing keyboards”.
According to Austrian composer Franz Schubert, the D chord signalled stirring feelings of triumph and valour, an interesting musical read at odds with ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’s anxious ferment. Again, one can lapse into furrowed-brow dissections of likely innocuous band decisions, but one can wonder whether the ‘chord of triumph’ serves as a musical counterweight to the song’s cold confrontation of extinguished love.
As ever, separating fact from fiction is the eternal conjecture that shapes Joy Division’s work and legacy. Whatever the circumstances of its making, ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’ stands as their defining moment and an epochal single of the post-punk era, a chilly masterstroke that marries a coating of shimmering indie pop with an acidic lyrical sting for those who are paying closer attention.
