Control

You remember the band Joy Division, right? from the late 70's? Don't remember that far back? It's ok, I don't either.

In 1983, a friend turned me on to the band New Order, my first real taste of "alternative" music (as it was called back then - now they call it "indie rock"; today's "alternative" is bland and commercial). Shortly thereafter I learned that New Order formed out of the ashes of the band Joy Division after singer Ian Curtis hung himself. What little Joy Division I heard at that time sounded primitive and dark in comparison to New Order, so I wrote it off and put my interest in current bands.


Years later I had the chance to revisit Joy Division and found I really liked them, and have periodically gone back to their music ever since. And recently the film "Control" was released, a biopic on the life of Ian Curtis. I went to see it at the Shattuck Cinema in Berkeley. It really was a beautiful film. Shot in black & white, it really captured the industrial decay that defined Manchester, England at the time. It was the perfect backdrop to Ian Curtis's dark and often tortured lyrics. The film was based on the book "Touching From a Distance" by Ian's widow, Debbie Curtis. Ian Curtis was practically doomed from the start; very intelligent and insightful but moody and depressive, he married way too young while still in his teens. As the band became more popular he battled with increasingly frequent epileptic seizures, the pressures and demands from the band and feelings of being trapped in a loveless marriage with a child. After releasing only two albums, Ian Curtis hung himself in his kitchen in May of 1980. He was only 23.

What's amazing is that such a short life and burst of creativity could have such a profound and lasting impact. They essentially invented "post-punk" and created the template for almost all the alternative music of the 80's and beyond. The film does a fantastic job of capturing his life and what his art was about without romanticizing it in any way. I highly recommend seeing this film if you have even the slightest interest in Joy Division, New Order or alternative music.