June 15 – Joy Division Album Pleased Unknown Masses

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Few and far between are albums as relatively “unknown” yet utterly ground-breaking as one released this day in 1979. Punk had largely run its course in Britain and the kids were ready for something new, something that took the anger and negativity of punks and made it… different. Less hostile, more hopeless. That was what Joy Division offered up with Unknown Pleasures.

The comparison to punk is no coincidence. Peter Hook and Bernard Sumner of the band both decided to be in a band after seeing the all-important Sex Pistols show in Manchester back in 1976. Hook actually borrowed money to buy a bass guitar the very next day! By the following spring, they were playing the clubs in the city as “Warsaw.” Along the way they changed to the equally-gloomy sounding “Joy Division”, a phrase taken from WWII Nazi concentration camps. They financed their own EP in 1978, An Ideal for Living. It caught the attention of Melody Maker which said that while the record had the “Familiar rough hewn nature of home-produced records” there “are a lot of good ideas here” and summed up that they “could be a very interesting band.” Tony Wilson thought so too; he signed them to his Manchester label, Factory Records.

Martin Hannett, a young producer on the rise in the punk and post-punk scene, was brought in to run the controls on the first album, which was recorded over just three weekends. He was known for creating a “sparse” sound which would go on to define the band. Unlike many record producer/artist energies, they seemed to get on well together. Hannett said “they were a gift to the producer… they didn’t argue.” The band would later disagree over whether he captured the real essence of Joy Division, but ultimately it defined the group and to some degree, a whole genre! Peter Hook grudgingly agreed years later “(he) did a good job on it…Hannett created the Joy Division sound” and made it possible to hear Ian Curtis’ voice much better than people in crowds at live shows did.

The Joy Division “sound” had little joy to it. Alan Cross notes that “drums and bass seem to have been treated as lead instruments” and “gloomy” seems the dominant adjective used to describe them. That mattered little to critics though; the album was and remains, a certified favorite of the decade. At the time, the NME gave it a perfect-10, saying it was “extraordinary” and visited “a labyrinth that is rarely explored with any smidgeon of real conviction.” Smash Hits called it a “bleak nightmare soundtrack,” which we gather was a good thing. Even the cover became a popular icon. The strange graph by Peter Saville is a reversed image of a printout of radio waves received from space. Stark, dark and slightly menacing looking, the image has gone on to be a popular design for t-shirts and even tattoos for the fans.

For all the critical adoration, the record was no smash hit. Wilson originally printed up 10 000 copies; they sold by the end of ’79, allowing him to make 5000 more. At the time, it failed to chart at all. Not helping was the fact the record had no single drop from it. “Transmission” was their single at the time, and it was a standalone 7” not put on Unknown Pleasures. The single didn’t do much at the time either, except in New Zealand where it inexplicably took off and got to #2. Only after their second album, and the death of singer Ian Curtis did the record make it onto the lower levels of the UK chart and eventually topped the “indie” chart , selling enough to earn them a gold record.

Time has been kind to it though. List after list has retroactively lauded the LP. Rolling Stone would later grade it a perfect 5-star and rank it as the 20th best debut album ever, appreciating how “they sound like they’re performing in a meat cooler,” conducive to making its sound “a model for countless brooding rock bands to come.” The NME has put it among their 50 greatest albums of alltime on three separate occasions since.

As we know, the gloom was real – Curtis commit suicide the following year, and the rest of the band lightened up a little in the guise we know them as now – New Order.