This Is The Way, Step Inside - Joy Division/Control

1987 -

"If you like Bauhaus, you should check out Joy Division. Have you heard of them?"

"No," I say. "I haven't."

"Yeah, you'd like them. Plus, their singer hanged himself before they were to tour the US."

"You don't say? Interesting…."

I stole, purchased or otherwise acquired the John Peel Sessions 1 tape of Joy Division soon after. I was very much Alice Cooper's "Eighteen;" confused, part boy, part man. I put the tape in my cheap little stereo and pressed play. A few seconds later, the silence was splintered by a beautiful noise. The first track, Exercise One had begun. A whirling, creaking, electric discord oozed out of the speakers. Like a wounded hearse taking a corner too fast and hitting the brakes as the casket grips the deck rails, pressure, aching, metal on metal.

The tension of this gorgeous cacophony involuntarily caused my hands to grip the side of my chair, fingers pushing, knuckles taught. The doom laden bassline took over from there and it was clear that the late afternoon sunlight slicing through my blinds didn't stand a chance. When Ian Curtis made his first appearance, he sounded as if he were singing from the bottom of an empty well. And he said to me -

When you're looking at life in a strange new room
Maybe drowning soon - is this the start of it all?
Turn down your TV - turn down your pulse
Turn away from it all - it's all getting too much

From that moment forward, Joy Division fused itself to my DNA. They were the audio diagnosis of all my adolescent symptoms; depression, disquiet, melancholy, rebellion, disconnection. There are few times in life when a band, an album, a book or piece of art instills in you a feeling far beyond mere enjoyment. They provide enlightenment.