Joy Division Page #3

is unbelievable, you know.

So we banged it down, heard it in the studio.

We thought it sounded great.

A couple of weeks later, we got the vinyl.

You know, Ideal For Living,

I draw on the sleeve.

"All right, I know what we'll do.

We'll take it to Pip's,

a local club that we go."

Went to the deejay...

"Hey, mate, play our record.

It's us, you know, us."

This guy's like,

"No, f*** off."

"No, no, come on, come on.

It's us.

We've been coming in for years, bloke."

So those people on the dance floor...

he puts it on, and they listen to it.

And the pressing was so bad,

it was, like, completely muffled...

so quiet, you wouldn't believe it.

And it just cleared the dance floor.

Everyone...

Everyone just walks off,

and he took it off halfway through.

We were like,

"Oh, sh*t. What have we done?"

We didn't play for six months.

We couldn't get a gig.

Nobody would give us a gig as Joy Division.

It was really difficult.

I think they thought we were yobs,

which we were.

He spurred us on

to rehearse and rehearse and rehearse,

and write and write and write,

and get really, really tight,

so that when we did get a gig

we would show the bastards.

We used to rehearse twice a week.

And in those three and two hours,

we'd invariably get a song.

One.

We had an enormous factory floor to ourselves.

In the winter,

we used to just brush all the rubbish

to one end of the room

and set fire to it to just keep warm.

We were all on our own island,

what we're doing,

and we just really made sure

that what we were doing sounded great.

So I didn't pay attention

to what the others were doing.

When I played low,

I couldn't hear anything.

I saw when I played high,

I could pick it out,

because of the row ,

because Barney's amp was really loud.

Then Ian just latched onto you playing high,

and he'd say,

"That sounds good when you play high."

Barney plays guitar.

"We should work on that.

That sounds really distinctive."

Just a happy accident like that

gave us our sound, you know.

Ian always had a box of words,

and we just pulled some words out

and started singing them,

so we already had them, really,

because he would be at home

writing every night anyway.

They had, like,

a "Battle of the Bands" night

for young bands that were just starting out.

I remember Paul Morley being there in a band.

Kevin Cummins was in his band,

I think Richard Boon was in it.

It was like a joke band,

you know, having a laugh.

Everybody, including Joy Division,

turned out to be...

to be, you know, to win.

You know, like, some weird prototype X Factor.

This is when I first saw the other side of Ian.

Ian was a really lovely,

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