“Absolutely heartbroken”: Why Joy Division initially hated ‘Unknown Pleasures’
There aren’t many albums which have experienced the same legacy as Unknown Pleasures. Joy Division’s 1979 debut came to define the moody sounds of England’s post-punk movement, but it also proved itself to have a lasting hold over artists all over the world. As far as changing the lineage of rock music, Unknown Pleasures is up there with the likes of The Velvet Underground & Nico or Raw Power. Despite all of this, Joy Division themselves hated the record upon initial listening.
A lot was riding on Unknown Pleasures for Joy Division. Their self-released debut EP, An Ideal For Living, had been a disaster owing to its terrible sound quality. As a result, the young band were desperate to hear their legendary live performances properly translated into the studio. After all, Joy Division first formed in the wake of the UK’s blossoming punk scene, attempting to reflect the anger and energy of groups like Buzzcocks or the Sex Pistols. Indeed, if you look at their early material, it is not so different from the rest of Manchester’s punk scene at that time.
Despite all of this, the band’s Factory-released debut album didn’t end up sounding like a punk record at all. There are no abrasive guitar tones or aggressive, confrontational lyricism – there wasn’t a safety pin in sight. Quite the opposite, Unknown Pleasures helped the UK’s DIY music makers to move on from the primitive sounds of punk into something much more mature and considered. However, this was a development that the members of Joy Division were wholly unaware of.
“We wanted it to sound like the Sex Pistols, The Clash because that’s what we loved,” bassist Peter Hook shared in a 2019 interview. “The power, the raw, the ‘argh!’. And when it wasn’t, I was absolutely heartbroken.” The songs on the album had been written with that punk sound in mind, so why did it end up sounding completely different? The answer lies with one man: Martin Hannett.
Employed by Factory Records for his innovative and original approach to music production, Hannett had taken the essence of Joy Division’s sound and created something entirely new from it. In fact, it would not be egregious to claim that Hannett was as responsible for that distinctive Joy Division sound as the band themselves, crafting it from the embers of these adolescent DIY punk tracks. “I wasn’t enamoured by the mixes,” Hooky admitted.
Aligning himself with Hook for a change, Bernard Sumner affirmed, “Martin Hannett was very strange. He took two days to mix it, but we weren’t allowed there when it was being mixed. So, the first time we heard it was when it was finished.”
Explaining Hannett’s approach to the project, the guitarist theorised, “I think his attitude was ‘These idiots, who have managed to write this superb album by mistake, don’t know what they’re doing. So get them out from under my feet, and then I can do what I want without their stupid comments.”
Hannett used the songs, as they were recorded by Joy Division, as a kind of raw material from which he could carve out his own unique sound. Unknown Pleasures did not sound like any other album that had been produced at the time, and, as with anything new, the band members were incredibly apprehensive about it. “You always had an idea in your head of how it was going to sound,” drummer Stephen Morris said in a 2015 documentary, “And when it doesn’t sound like that, you’re disappointed.”
Luckily, Factory boss Tony Wilson was on hand to reassure the group that all would be well, and Unknown Pleasures was released into the world in 1979. Although, at the time, its impact was fairly limited – it did not make Joy Division a household name, and it did not see the band showered in commercial success or acclaim – the album has certainly stood the test of time.
Every single indie and post-punk band out there today—of which there are legions—owes an incredible debt to Unknown Pleasures and, by extension, Martin Hannett. The producer created a truly timeless album that has been beloved by various new generations since its release, even if the band did not appreciate his groundbreaking production work at the time.
