Vocalist and genius lyricist of Joy Division, Curtis committed suicide in 1980. The suicide was thought to be related to combination of anxiety over an upcoming North American tour the band was embarking on as well as his severe epilepsy. His on stage seizures were often mistaken for an erratic style of dance which resulted in Curtis having to be carried off stage at some performances. His legacy has grown and continues to grow World wide since his death.
Words meant such a lot to Ian,” says Deborah Curtis. “If he put a record on, we’d have to listen to absolutely everything. He used to talk about what the lyrics meant and the story behind them. He didn’t like songs that didn’t mean anything.”
Deborah is talking about So This Is Permanence, a book out next week that gathers together writings by her husband Ian, the Joy Division frontman who took his life in May 1980. Featuring handwritten lyrics and prose drawn from his notebooks and scraps of paper he kept in ringbinders, the selection was put together with the help of journalist Jon Savage. It is an attempt, says Deborah, to showcase Ian’s writing in a way he would have wanted.
Ian was 23 when he died, on the eve of Joy Division’s first US tour. He left behind a wife, a baby daughter, and a music career that had barely begun. In the decades since, his brief but incendiary career has achieved cult status. He is the iconic frontman, whose band’s pioneering post-punk documented late 1970s Manchester in all its grit and grime. His life story – epilepsy, depression, extramarital affair – aches through songs such as Love Will Tear Us Apart and She’s Lost Control. It has also been dissected on page and on screen, following Deborah’s memoir, which Anton Corbijn turned into the 2007 biopic Control. Unlike her own memoir, she says, this book is for Ian. “It can’t be subjective,” she says. “Because he did it. It’s all Ian’s work.”
