Unknown Pleasures: Inside Joy Division (16 page)

In fact, from the moment he stepped on board things changed for us: because we couldn’t organize shit and he could. You watch
Control
and the character comes into our lives like a whirlwind, with a big personality right from the start, but in real life it wasn’t really like that. At first, he was calm, rational, quietly spoken and very logical, always scribbling away in his notebooks. Later he got more like his character in
Control
, when he became a very domineering, almost intimidating personality – he was a big guy and he used it. He could cut you dead and often did. He had a biting tongue. But in him we knew we had someone who shared our vision and had the same ideals, who wasn’t going to suggest we hired backing singers or recorded northern soul covers. He was like us, but a larger-than-life version of us, a more forthright us.

Things started to happen right off the bat. I mean, apart from what I’ve already mentioned, just look at the way we started to develop when he became our manager: the relationship with Tony Wilson began, and we all know where that led; he got us involved with the Musicians’ Collective, so we started playing gigs regularly; and we began getting known among the promoters. All of that gave us confidence to grow, leave Rob to go off and to do the shit we didn’t like to do and concentrate on doing things we did. (Writing songs.)

We got better and better – we could tell, because a song like ‘Transmission’ suddenly was stopping traffic. I remember the first time. It was at the Mayflower club, Belle Vue on 20 May 1978, a gig we did with Emergency and the Risk. The Mayflower was a horrible hole with a pond of rainwater in front of the stage where the roof had gone and let all the water in like a moat. Normally we wouldn’t have gone within a mile of the place but we did it as a favour to Emergency, who we knew very well. It was a bit of a you-scratch-my-back-and-we’ll-scratch-yours set-up: we used to borrow their PA for out-of-town gigs and in return would help them out when we could. At this particular gig at the Mayflower they were promoting themselves as headliners, so they wanted decent support; they asked us if we’d do it, knowing we’d bring a few people along.

Rob was there with us that night – his first gig in charge – and it was also when we first met Oz McCormick and Ed, from Oz PA, who did the gig on the night and ended up being our sound guys for years. Right through Joy Division and New Order, out-front and fold-back respectively.

Not only that but we got plenty of time for a sound-check, during which we played ‘Transmission’. We’d recorded it for the awful Arrow album but we hated that version and we’d worked on it a lot since – so this was the first time anybody outside of our circle had heard it as we wanted it to be heard. The funny thing about writing a song – any song – is that you never know how good it is when you write it. The last one always seems the best. We were lucky in Joy Division that we wrote several songs that are regarded as absolute classics: ‘Digital’, ‘Disorder’, ‘Transmission’, ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’, ‘Atmosphere’, ‘Shadowplay’, ‘She’s Lost Control’. But we never thought,
This is a classic.
That isn’t your place. We knew they were all right, mind you. But the best we hoped for was that they matched up to the calibre of the other stuff, the stuff we knew people liked. It was only when we played them live and gauged the reaction that we started to get an idea of how good they really were.

Playing ‘Transmission’ there was probably the first time that we had a real stop-the-press moment. I distinctly remember playing it at that sound-check and the crew turning around, the guys in Emergency and the other support band, the Risk, coming front of stage to watch us; the PA guys, too, were watching us instead of getting on with stuff.

We were looking at each other, like,
What the fuck’s going on here?
because we’d never experienced that kind of reaction before. Looking at each other we were thinking that, maybe, just maybe, we might be able to make a go of this, a living out of it. We might just be able to pull this off. It was a big moment for the band. A big confidence-booster.

The gig itself, well, it went off all right, apart from the Risk’s bassist getting a hiding from some of the crowd. Poor bloke was wearing a T-shirt that said, ‘My fists are my side-arms’ and I can distinctly remember standing there during sound-check, seeing this T-shirt and thinking,
That’s a bold statement.
You’ve got to be fairly confident to carry off a T-shirt like that.

His band were a bit of a nuisance, to be honest: they spent the whole night arguing with us and Emergency. So I’ve got to say – and
God strike me down for it – I wasn’t that bothered when a section of the crowd took exception to his T-shirt, dragged him off the stage and leathered him. Funnily enough, his fists weren’t his side-arms.

Otherwise it was a great gig and as a band we were breathing one long, giant sigh of relief because Rob had parachuted in to take a whole load of pressure off us. Before, with managers – well, Terry, then each other – we’d always be looking over the shoulder of whoever was doing it, to make sure everything was being done properly, and then moaning accordingly. It was strange: when someone else was doing it you knew you could do it better, but when you did it everything went wrong. With Rob we didn’t do that. He’d have told us to fuck off and kicked us if we’d dared.

Another of Gretton’s managerial duties involved corresponding with Tony Wilson about his new protégés. On 19 April 1978 Wilson replied to his letter saying the band were the best thing he had heard in Manchester ‘for about six months’. Nevertheless, Ian’s desire for Joy Division to appear on
So It Goes
was not to be. Wilson’s music programme had ended, and as a result he was looking for new ways to stay involved in the music business. At the same time his friend Alan Erasmus ended his association with Fast Breeder and the two cast about for ideas, taking on management of the fledgling Durutti Column. They looked into venues in the hope of featuring the band and settled on the Russell Club, which they booked for four Fridays over two months. Located on Royce Road in Hulme and run by colourful local character Don Tonay, the Russell Club had been used by drivers for the bus company SELNEC and was well placed to appeal to the nearby student population. Erasmus saw a sign saying ‘Factory Clearance’ and suggested ‘Factory’ as a name for the club. To design a poster Wilson hired the services of graphic designer Peter Saville, who had introduced himself to Wilson at a Patti Smith concert. Saville earned £20 for the design, which used the colour scheme of the UK’s National Car Parks and included a ‘warning’ sign from his college workshop; he also misspelt the club’s name as ‘Russel’ (this error was repeated – perhaps intentionally – for the next two Factory club posters). Famously Saville delivered his poster – which was later given the catalogue number FAC 1 – two weeks into the four-week run.

In the meantime, Tony Wilson had written to Gretton a second time, on 9 May, reiterating how much he liked
the An Ideal for Living
EP and
inviting Joy Division to play at the new club. They did, on the fourth night of the initial run, 9 June 1978, supporting the Tiller Boys.

The Tiller Boys were very wacky. They stood chairs up in front of them on stage so you couldn’t see what they were doing and played tape loops, probably inspired by the Pop Group and Throbbing Gristle. Cabaret Voltaire without the songs, really, which is saying something. That’s about all I remember about that gig, funnily enough, despite the fact that it was the first Factory event to involve us and that it marked the beginning of a period during which we started to play a lot more regularly, really honing our sound and getting the message out there.

Rob had got us to join the Manchester Musicians’ Collective, which used to meet in a room above the Sawyers Arms pub in the city centre. Dick Witts from the Passage was chairman and the idea was that all Manchester’s musicians would get together and support each other, to stop some of the backbiting and treachery that generally went on between local bands. If truth be told, we revelled in the backbiting and treachery (would we have been as good at the Stiff/Chiswick night if the Negatives hadn’t pissed us off? Probably not) but we wanted to get gigs. So despite that, and the fact that we secretly thought the whole thing was a bit poncey, we went along and listened. We’d heard they were going to put on a gig a month at the Band on the Wall, and we desperately wanted to play.

The collective was on to them. In the sleeve notes to the album
Messthetics #106: The Manchester Musicians’ Collective 1977–1982
, Kevin Eden of the Elite says, ‘Joy Division joined and there was initially some grumbling that they were trying to grab gigs, but they allowed MMC to use their gear when possible.’

So on the one hand we got to play more but this did mean that every now and then we had to meet to discuss music, which I thought was a monumental drag because they were so earnest and arty about it all and frankly it was like being back at school – like in a society or something. Steve didn’t go, as far as I can remember, but me, Ian and Barney had to. Ian thought it was all right, mind you. He liked anything arty.

Meanwhile, the
An Ideal for Living
twelve-inch EP came out, and at
last we had a record we could be proud of. Then the
Short Circuit
album came out, and suddenly we looked like part of a movement. As well as playing loads of gigs around that time we had a go at promoting; one such instance was at Band on the Wall, where we got a bit more ‘Insight’ into Rob’s character.

What he’d done was spend all our money on a big PA because he believed we should sound the best we could and present ourselves in the best possible way. Not a bad philosophy, of course – no one’s going to argue with that. Got a gig, all sold out, lots of profit? Let’s put it all into a bigger PA and more lights. Nobody I’ve ever never met was as talented at spending money as Rob Gretton: he was the proverbial Big Spender – and that gig at the Band on the Wall saw the seeds of his philosophy being sown.

Only one of us noticed at the time, though: Ian. Before Rob came on board he was the one with the ideas. Musically he’d introduced us to loads of new stuff – Kraftwerk, Throbbing Gristle, Velvet Underground, the Doors, Can and Faust – and when it came to the direction of the band he was always the most forthright. He had the plan and the rest of us were his tools to carry it out, if you like. Having someone new arrive with plans of his own – notebooks full of them, in fact – well, there were bound to be problems. The rest of us were going, ‘Yeah, yeah, do whatever you want, Rob.’ Might as well have had rings through our noses, we were that easily led. But not Ian. It didn’t take long for the pair of them to bang heads, the two dominant personalities of the group fighting for control.

The other thing Ian had to deal with was Debbie being pregnant. Not that Ian ever announced it as such; the news just gradually leaked out, but there it was – soon he’d have another mouth to feed. So there was even more reason why Rob’s grand gesture didn’t go down too well. Ian was probably thinking,
My slice of that PA would have bought a pram.

Tell you what, though: it was a good PA and we did sound amazing. So Rob was right, I suppose – particularly because it turned out to be one of those gigs that did wonders for our profile. We got two good reviews from that gig, one in
Sounds
and one in
NME
, from Paul Morley, our former mortal enemy, who was comparing us to Magazine and the Fall, the two big post-punk groups. Then – at last – we got on the telly.

Joy Division’s first TV appearance was on
Granada Reports What’s On
, which was then in the habit of pre-recording local bands to broadcast when news slots suddenly became vacant. So it was that on 20 September 1978 presenter Bob Greaves, speaking live, introduced Joy Division by saying, ‘We hope that we’re launching them on a real “joy ride” as we have so many other others, haven’t we, Tony?’ Then there was a cut to a prerecorded Tony Wilson, who said, ‘Seeing as how this is the programme which previously brought you first television appearances from everything from the Beatles to the Buzzcocks, we do like to keep our hand in and keep you informed of the most interesting new sounds in the North West. This, Joy Division, is the most interesting sound we’ve come across in the last six months. They’re a Manchester band (with the exception of the guitarist, who comes from Salford – very important difference). They’re called Joy Division and this number is “‘
Shadowplay
’”.’

Fucking tosser – ‘the guitarist who comes from Salford’? Two of us came from Salford. I was really annoyed. I was proud of my roots, whereas Bernard always played them down.

It was a momentous day, though. Rob again decided that we needed to invest in ourselves and took us to town shopping. We all got new shirts to wear on
Granada Reports
. Two pounds fifty each, they were, and we felt dead spoilt, like dogs with our bellies tickled: fantastic. But also another example of Rob’s – what would you say? – ‘unique’ managerial style, because he’d never just give you the money to go and get a shirt for yourself; oh no, he’d have to buy it for you. Me, Barney and Steve: fine about that. We all lived with our parents; we were used to being mothered (it turned out Steve’s mum bought all his clothes anyway) and were over the moon with our new shirts. Ian: not so fine. Whether it was Debbie bending his ear or what, I don’t know, but he always took exception to things like that.

Later on, in New Order, Rob would behave the same, except the stakes were higher then, so it would be, ‘Look, here’s two grand, give yourself a holiday.’ Or, ‘Here’s money for a car.’ But it all started off with that blue shirt that I’m wearing to play ‘Shadowplay’ on
Granada Reports
.

The other thing about that performance is that I had blond hair. The reason for that is that after we’d changed our name to Joy Division we thought we needed a gimmick; and, during a group meeting in a pub in
Piccadilly, it was decided that we were all going to bleach our hair. The next day I bought a hair kit called ‘Born Blonde’. It cost £1.25, dead expensive. Got home, put the plastic cap on, bleached my hair, got a clip round the ear from my mum for it. She hated it – hated anything like that, God rest her soul. She kicked the shit out of me when I got my first tattoo, then didn’t speak to me for three weeks. I was thirty-two!