Exhibition: Unknown Pleasures
Macclesfield Silk Museum’s Heritage Centre - July 29 to August 7, 2010.
In 1978, journalist Jon Savage received a letter from Joy Division’s manager Rob Gretton. It read: “Oh, hi Jon. I saw you wrote about Joy Division. Here’s a tape of our new LP. It’s crap but I thought you’d like to hear it.
“And by the way, here’s our new EP, Ideal For Living, and that’s crap, but we thought you’d like to hear it, and we are going to be recording new records and releasing them soon.”
The self-deprecating face of Joy Division’s big family – which also included Factory’s Tony Wilson and Martin Hannett, artist Peter Saville and photographer Kevin Cummins – has been well-documented on the silver screen, in films Control and 24 Hour Party People.
But Jon says this self-deprecation doesn’t tell the story of Joy Division’s real self-belief.
He said: “It was all very different then – Joy Division were on £25 a week, it was all very small time. The music and the ambition wasn’t small time, but Manchester was not what it is now – it was a very different city. It wasn’t plugged in like it is now.”
To recall the life of Joy Division – from their origins in Macclesfield to their international success with songs such as Love Will Tear Us Apart – Jon has spent a year working with the band’s former drummer Stephen Morris and Abigail Ward, from Manchester District Music Archive which celebrates music in Greater Manchester, to curate Unknown Pleasures, a collection of Joy Division related artefacts sourced from all over the world.
Music, lyrics, artwork, posters, setlists, business memorabilia, even a handwritten gig rider feature in the show, hosted by Macclesfield’s Silk Museum. But between the handbills and collectable vinyl are very personal touches, including a letter from a 22-year-old Ian Curtis about second album, Closer. It reads: “This LP is a disaster.”
And yet Jon believes that seeing such a private memento of Curtis’ life on display would have pleased Ian. Jon said: “There’s one side of Ian that really wanted to be a rockstar. I like to think Ian’s in a bookshop somewhere and he’ll either be laughing about all this or he’ll think it’s really great. He definitely wanted to be famous, and he wanted his story to be told.”
Of late, Ian’s tragic story has been told more often than ever as fans marked the 30th anniversary of his death on May 18. But, says Jon, this exhibition takes a bigger aim; with around 150 artefacts, many from private fan collections and never shown in public before, the show takes a comprehensive look at the band in front of and behind the scenes.
Jon adds: “The artefacts tell the story not only of the fans who have been kind enough to loan us things, but there’s an element of proper scholarship in there.
“We’ve tried to put together a pretty good collection of artefacts from right across their life – of post punk design, of the group, right up to poor Ian’s tragic demise. Originally it was going to be a commemoration of the 30th anniversary of Ian’s death, but I wasn’t necessarily keen on that. I’d much rather celebrate the achievement; it’s 30 years since Love Will Tear Us Apart was in the charts, and I’m much happier to mark that.”
£2. Information at www.joydivisionexhibition.com.
Published: Fri, 23 July, 2010
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