The Holy Grail of Joy Division vinyl: how two masterpieces were gifted to a tiny label
For a bunch of self-taught young musicians in Manchester, Joy Division managed to produce a vast plethora of utterly groundbreaking tracks. While the seminal release of ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’, released shortly after the tragic death of frontman Ian Curtis, became their defining track, it is merely one among many incredible tracks released by the Factory Records band. Seemingly, the group were so awash with songwriting quality that they could afford to give songs away to tiny, obscure record labels. That was the original fate of ‘Atmosphere’.
An incredibly melancholic, haunting track which took on a much darker atmosphere following the suicide of Curtis, ‘Atmosphere’ is among the most well-known songs released by Joy Division. The track was released by Factory Records as a single, backed with ‘She’s Lost Control’ shortly after Curtis’ death, and it even broke into the UK singles chart upon its 1988 re-release. However, originally, the track could only be heard by those lucky few who managed to snag a copy from the tiny French independent label Sordide Sentimental.
The label seemed to make sense for Joy Division. After all, groups like Throbbing Gristle and their Factory contemporaries, The Durutti Column, had had releases on the label, too. For those other bands, the label would release fairly obscure, largely unnoteworthy material that would not make sense to include on albums or as single releases in the UK. In contrast, Joy Division sought to release ‘Atmosphere’ and ‘Dead Souls’ on the French imprint, not knowing that they would become some of the most popular tracks ever recorded by the band.
As bassist Peter Hook explains in his memoir Unknown Pleasures: Inside Joy Division, “The tracks Throbbing Gristle previously put on their Sordide Sentimental EP were never going anywhere else, but we put two of our best songs on [ours].”
The tracks were pressed onto a limited run of 1,578 seven-inch records under the title ‘Licht und Blindheit’. The release was fairly special, with each copy numbered and housed in a fold-out sleeve with inserts, but you could only buy it from select retailers in France.
After ‘Atmosphere’ was played by John Peel, and the band, along with Factory Records, were altered to its true potential, they orchestrated their own release of the song. For Joy Division obsessives, though, the original ‘Licht und Blindheit’ record quickly became a Holy Grail of record collecting. It has been bootlegged countless times over the years, with even some of those copies demanding a high price, but the original version is likely to set you back over £2,000 – a grand for each piece.
In spite of its high price tag, Hooky affirms that the band never made any money from the release, writing, “It was a limited edition that we never got any money for.” Adding, “Having said that, it didn’t bother us at the time. This came during a period when we were continually writing great songs, so it didn’t seem like such a big deal, to be honest.” After all, Joy Division was not a commercial endeavour; to paraphrase the immortal words of Factory Records boss Tony Wilson, they didn’t make money. They made history.
