The musicians that inspired Ian Curtis
Looking at the bands that emerged from the post-punk boom in the late 1980s, you would be hard-pressed to find any with the same cultural impact or lasting legacy of Joy Division. The Salford quartet was formed in 1976, and with the help of genius producer Martin Hannett and Factory Records founder Tony Wilson, they produced two seminal albums with Unknown Pleasures and Closer.
The songwriter and frontman Ian Curtis were at the forefront of the pioneering group. He is now hailed for his monotonous baritone voice, intense dance moves and stunningly powerful poetic lyrics. Tragically, Curtis, who suffered from depression, was found dead by suicide in his Macclesfield home in 1980, shortly before the release of the group’s second album. Despite their relatively short time together as a band, the influence of Joy Division can be heard in the likes of Interpol, The Cure, Fontaines D.C. and pretty much any alternative band worth their salt.
The ethos of the punk scene that Joy Division emerged from was to burn down the musical Library of Alexandria and start again, away from the pomp and pretentiousness of the music that had come before it. However, a few bands and artists were spared from the flames and, in fact, Ian Curtis seemed more influenced by some of those groups, in addition to literary greats and romantic poets, than any of his punk contemporaries.
One such artist that grabbed Curtis’ imagination was, of course, David Bowie. His 2007 biopic Closer features a scene where a young Curtis takes home Aladdin Sane and is blown away by it, but it was his collaborations with Brian Eno on the ‘Berlin Trilogy’ that had a lasting impact on Curtis and the rest of the band, according to guitarist Bernard Sumner in his book Chapter and Verse: New Order, Joy Division and Me.
Like Bowie, Curtis was drawn to other legendary rock stars, particularly Jim Morrison of The Doors, whose vocal style was sometimes compared to Curtis’ for its deep qualities. Ian’s wife and author of Touching From a Distance, Deborah Curtis, once suggested that his admiration of Morrison was darker than just an admiration for his music, “I think he wanted to be like Jim Morrison, someone who got famous and died,” she wrote. “Being in a band was very important, he was very single-minded about it. He’d always said that he didn’t want to live into his 20s, after 25”.
Another influence on Curtis when it came to Joy Division was the German electronic music pioneers Kraftwerk. Bassist Peter Hook said in his book Unknown Pleasures that the Düsseldorf innovators, particularly the album Trans-Europe Express, were a massive influence on Curtis. The group was known to regularly play the album over the PA system before they took to the stage, something which Curtis originally suggested. Hook once told NME that “Joy Division were very tied to Kraftwerk”, and New Order, who formed from the remainder of Joy Division after Curtis’ suicide, famously sampled Kraftwerk on their smash hit ‘Blue Monday’. It is fair to say that neither band may have existed without the influence of Kraftwerk.
If there was a punk musician that Curtis was particularly influenced by, then it was Iggy Pop. Hook has said that, at a time when he and Bernard were listening to pop and classic rock, Curtis had introduced them to the music of Iggy Pop. It is thought that he was particularly drawn to Iggy’s intense and energetic stagecraft which influenced Curtis’ own on-stage anarchy. Unfortunately, tragedy ties Curtis and Iggy together too, as it was Iggy Pop’s album The Idiot found on Ian’s turntable when his body was discovered in May 1980.
