Read Touching From a Distance Online
Authors: Deborah Curtis
Tags: #Biography & Autobiography, #Entertainment & Performing Arts, #Music, #Genres & Styles, #Pop Vocal, #General
We realized that there was no turning back the page – Ian was now EPILEPTIC. He was open about it at first, but that soon ceased. I thought he had begun to settle into a new, more careful way of life, but in fact he became withdrawn, moody, and reluctant to discuss anything except the most mundane and necessary. He appeared to resent my cheerfulness, my willingness to carry on, but I was determined to keep our lives on an even keel. It was Ian who may have joined the British Epilepsy Association, but I had to read the newsletters and magazines. They were crammed full of advice on how to lead a normal life, including case histories, how to look after epileptic children, details of outings and holidays, and advice on the problems of epileptics themselves – how to deal with other people’s attitudes, how to get a job, etc. There was almost everything you needed to know, yet there was no mention of the problems epileptics could cause within the family. There was no talk of depression or other behavioural difficulties with adult sufferers.
Bernard Sumner had been aware of Ian’s manic personality; his moods would fluctuate between ultra-politeness and blind rage. Now that Ian was taking medication for his illness, these mood swings seemed more extreme. One minute he was high and the next, he wanted to cry. It crossed Bernard’s mind that the tablets were making him more unhappy than the epilepsy itself.
‘I think there was something a bit special about Ian. I know people say that, but I really do mean it. I can’t stop saying this … I really do think it was the tablets that killed him. I really do. I know it.’
Bernard Sumner
As my pregnancy continued, I found that I wasn’t able to get enough rest. I had to wait up for Ian even later than before. After a gig he would not go to sleep until he’d had a fit, and it became a ritual for him to sit there and wait for an attack. He was afraid to go to
bed in case he died in his sleep, as (so he told me) one of his clients who was epileptic had choked in her sleep. Very often he would go into an absence seizure, where he would be motionless and seemingly unaware of his surroundings. I would watch him perched on the edge of his seat with a lighted Marlboro still hanging between his lips. Because he was so much taller than me, I felt rather helpless. For those few minutes, I could only make sure he didn’t hurt himself. We would both lie in bed at night and listen to his breathing, waiting for the change in pace that would signal an attack. It was as if these fits were an insurance against having one while he was asleep.
Ian told me of the band’s decision to change its name if one member ‘left’. I thought this was a strange thing to have discussed and wondered if they were expecting something to happen to him, or whether they were planning to throw him out.
Although he was very well liked by staff and customers at the Job Centre, Ian still had to work full time and this caused problems if he needed to leave Macclesfield early. Not all Ian’s colleagues were sympathetic to his dilemma. Once, when Joy Division had to play a gig during the week, Rob Gretton arranged for Tony Wilson to pick Ian up at the Job Centre. Tony left Granada Studios in Manchester to collect Ian at exactly four o’clock, as that was the earliest they would allow him to leave. They drove down to London, not knowing precisely where the gig was. They decided to ask a queue of young people if they knew the way, only to find that the queue was for them! It made the hassle at work worthwhile, but Ernest Beard was worried about Ian. He found the reviews in the music press disturbing. In his opinion they were like psychiatric reports, even using the appropriate terminology and references. Journalists and fans seemed to have picked up on Ian’s instability all too soon. Ernest himself left work early one day so that he would be able to see Joy Division on
Granada
Reports.
He said he thought the presentation was terrific, but asked Ian if he had taken any drugs to help him. Ian replied that all he had needed was a ‘Gold Label’. Indeed Ernest remembers, ‘He was always laughing and joking. When I was in the business, they used to say that an overdose was like a common cold. They see such a lot of it.’
Certainly Ian’s dancing had become a distressing parody of his offstage seizures. His arms would flail around, winding an invisible bobbin, and the wooden jerking of his legs was an accurate impression of the involuntary movements he would make. Only the seething and shaking of his head was omitted. This could have been a deliberate imitation, but his dancing was not dissimilar to the way he had danced at our engagement party four years previously.
‘The first time anyone saw him do it there were only about four people there, so he had the entire floor. He leapt off the stage and was doing it all over the place. I thought it was cracking. I didn’t get any feedback that anyone thought it was comical, because it was obviously so intense. One or two people did things like that around that time in that city and you might have thought he was a bit … but he just seemed like he was on the edge. He was scared.’
Paul Morley
The lyrics Ian chose to match the band’s already haunting music were increasingly depressive and if you wanted to believe that he was writing about someone else’s experience, then you also had to believe that he was capable of enormous empathy. Journalists and fans alike tried to decipher his words and now, of course, many feel that Ian’s melancholy was staring them in the face. It was too incredible to comprehend that he would use such a public method to cry for help. Peter Hook was consistently described as surly and defensive about the meaning of the lyrics. He never considered Ian’s lyrics to be more than a part of Joy Division’s work and definitely not the guiding force it was purported to be. In fact Pete didn’t take any notice of Ian’s lyrics until after his death; only then did he recognize that Ian was (in Pete’s words) ‘a real beautiful wordsmith’.
Ian carried a plastic bag around which was full of notebooks and paper on which he wrote frantically when the mood took him. He would listen to
the music, which was more often than not arranged by Bernard, and choose lyrics that seemed appropriate. If the lyrics worked well with the melody and gave the listener something of
depth to think about, then there was no reason to question Ian’s means. Undoubtedly, Joy Division’s audience wanted more.
In an interview in the fanzine
Printed
Noises,
Ian said, ‘We haven’t got a message really; the lyrics are open to interpretation. They’re multidimensional. You can read into them whatever you like. Obviously they’re important to the band.’ Ian himself had always enjoyed reading into other people’s lyrics. We used to argue about the last line of Lou Reed’s ‘Perfect Day’. I thought the words were ‘You’re going to reap just what you sow’, but Ian’s interpretation was ‘You’re going to read just what you saw’. One of his ambitions was to witness events as they happened, before reading about them in the press.
‘He fooled around more than anybody. He would do anything for a bet. He made writing songs a lot easier. He had a lot of words in his book. He would just sit there with his book and not move very much, mumbling something and getting a few bits of paper out. We didn’t have quality gear and wouldn’t quite know what he was singing, but just the fact that someone had got some words and got something to sing meant that we could write songs very easily.’
Steve Morris
‘He was a catalyst for the rest of us. He would … cement our ideas together. We would write all the music, but Ian would direct us. He’d say, “I like that bit of guitar, I like that bass line, I like that drum riff.” And then I would arrange it – mostly I would arrange it, with additional suggestions from the other members of the band. He’d put the lyrics in later, but he always had some ready. He had a big box with lyrics in. He brought our ideas together in his own way, really. That was the first thing we missed … He came up with all the vocal melodies … He did some guitar on one or two, but it was pretty straightforward. He hated playing anyway. We made him play. He played in quite a bizarre way and that to us was interesting, because no one else would play like Ian. He played in a very manic way. We thought it was good; we liked the way he did it.’
Bernard Sumner
Between 24 January and 13 March 1979 Ian had several more
grand
mal
attacks. During these, his body would twist violently and I would worry in case he bit his tongue or banged his head. He had attended Macclesfield Hospital for an electroencephalogram (EEG), where metal tags are glued to the scalp to record the electrical activity of the brain. His medical records state that no abnormalities were found. Presumably no one was any closer to finding out what was causing Ian’s illness.
Gradually, his prescription was changed to try to bring the attacks under control. Each time Ian collected his new tablets he was full of renewed enthusiasm, convinced that this time the formulation would help him. Over the following months he took Carbamazepine, Phenobarbitone, Phenytoin and Valproate. Carbamazepine reduces the likelihood of convulsions caused by abnormal nerve signals in the brain. It has less of a sedative effect than similar drugs, unless mixed with alcohol. I lost track of which tablets he was meant to be taking and which ones he had finished with.
There was so much happening in the Spring of 1979. It seemed that everything we had planned was finally coming to fruition, from the birth of our child to Joy Division’s first album. Rob Gretton was keen to tie up any loose ends and eradicate anything that might jeopardize the band’s future. The recording for the RCA subsidiary had long since been finished when Rob Gretton became the band’s manager, and Richard Searling raised no objection to his involvement as he felt the band needed someone who really understood what they were trying to do. The first thing Rob Gretton did was to suggest a complete remix.
‘Because RCA had shown quite a bit of interest, we didn’t feel that we wanted to do a remix. We felt that RCA would pick it up as it was and any remixes that needed doing would be done by RCA from their budget. But the guys were very determined. I’m sure they were right that they didn’t want to go with a major. They didn’t want to be seen as another Sweet, or Bonnie Tyler, or whatever.’
Richard Searling
The album was outmoded and under-produced and although Joy Division were quite right to request a complete remix, it would not have sufficed and there was not an infinite amount of cash available. They had reached a stage where they desperately needed Martin Hannett’s diverse ideas before they could go any further. So much time had elapsed since the initial recording that Joy Division were no longer the same band. In the ensuing inertia Richard Searling had lost control of the project and despite RCA’s obvious interest, a year after the recording was made it was decided to abandon the project altogether.
One Monday evening in January, Joy Division, Rob Gretton, John Anderson, Richard Searling, his wife Judith and I met in the Portland Bars beneath the Piccadilly Hotel. The master tapes were handed over in return for £1,500 – the same amount of money that had been spent on the project originally. The publishing contract had never been signed, leaving the band free to re-record the songs if they wished and retain the publishing rights for themselves. The subsequent bootlegs appear to have been taken from a cassette copy and not from the original master, as has been previously suggested.
Unknown
Pleasures
was recorded in April 1979 at Strawberry Studios in Stockport. This and the initial pressing of 10,000 copies were paid for by Tony Wilson. To say Ian was impressed by Martin Hannett’s work would be an understatement. He came home enthusing about the sampling of glass-smashing and hand-clapping. Hannett already had considerable experience recording unusual sounds and atmospheres, and his marvellous production of Joy Division’s drums became an integral part of the music. His ability to translate their thoughts and needs into a co-ordinated work of art was the catalyst Joy Division badly needed. Ian appeared to be happy with his new playmates, and I did everything I could to help him organize his life and reduce any stress he might be under.
Whether it was intentional or not, the wives and girlfriends had gradually been banished from all but the most local of gigs and a curious male bonding had taken place. The boys seemed to derive their fun from each other. Ian intensely disliked foam rubber and hated
touching it, and when Joy Division could at last afford flight cases, they amused themselves by pulling bits of foam from the insides and dropping them down the back of Ian’s neck. Nevertheless, he managed to overcome this fear when he had to help Candy out of trouble. One afternoon I arrived home from a hospital check-up to find the lounge ankle-deep in foam rubber. Heavily pregnant, I had walked all the way there and back and was exhausted – seeing what Candy had done to the settee made me want to cry. Ian got down on his hands and knees, picked up every scrap and restuffed all the cushions. Then he went out and bought me a box of chocolates – this was typical behaviour from the Ian I married.
When things began to go well for Ian and his band, he thought of his old friend Tony Nuttall and decided to include him in the excitement. He wrote to Tony and invited him to design a sleeve for the album. Unfortunately Tony was in the final year of his degree and was unable to take up his offer. I was surprised to learn that Ian had been in touch with him as he never mentioned it.
I confess I showed little interest in the recording of
Unknown
Pleasures.
My main concern was that Rob Gretton didn’t book any gigs for the week the baby was due as I desperately wanted Ian to be at the birth. Ian was amenable to this. In October we attended talks at the ante-natal clinic and he never appeared remotely squeamish about the prospect. While some husbands were visibly panicked by the graphic video we were shown, Ian had an embarrassing fit of giggles.
As the 6 April came and went my doctor decided that the birth should be induced on 16 April, which was Easter Monday. The evening before, Ian and I sat watching a documentary about the. Nuremberg trials when he suddenly turned to me and said, ‘I can’t imagine there being another person here with us.’ I thought to myself indignantly that he wouldn’t have to imagine for much longer! I went upstairs and climbed the stairs to our room. As I plonked down on the bed, my waters broke.