Touching From a Distance (12 page)

In August Ian made another appearance on the front cover of
NME
, this time with Bernard Sumner. Ian was minus the raincoat and cigarette, looking surprisingly relaxed, but Bernard’s face was turned from the camera, his tight clothing and undersized tie making him look more schoolboyish than ever.

That same week Joy Division were booked to play at Eric’s in Liverpool. As Liverpool is my birthplace, I was looking forward to
going back immensely. I took great pleasure in driving there myself, found my own way to the club and Ian had remembered to put me on the guest list. He didn’t often forget, but I was always shy about asking to get into a venue for nothing. When I went into the dressing room to look for Ian, two of the lads were in there talking to a couple of young female fans. I thought nothing of it at the time, but the day after the gig Ian asked me not to go any more unless I had the other girls with me, as it wasn’t fair if I went without them. It was gradually made plain to us that wives and girlfriends were no longer welcome. It had been OK for us to boost the numbers in the audience in the early days and we had become used to sitting on the amplifiers to stop them being stolen. It was taken for granted that we would wash and iron clothes, pack cases and make excuses to employers, but now it seemed we were bad for the image. Rob Gretton shouldered the blame, but to be fair all the boys had tongues in their heads. If they had disagreed with the ‘no women’ policy, they could have spoken up. I was very disappointed – the whole scenario was reminiscent of when I was pregnant. Too big for my jeans, I had been panicked into borrowing a dress from my mother. That evening as Tony gave me the once over and then looked away without greeting or comment, I felt for the first time that my presence might be unwelcome or even unsuitable.

Only Steve Morris continued to take his girlfriend wherever he went. He
didn’t
voice any objections, but just ignored what the others said. In some ways, from the point of view of managing a band, it made sense to keep their respective women away. It strengthened the relationship between the band members and allowed them to concentrate on the task in hand. If Ian was going to play the tortured soul on stage, it would be easier without the watchful eye of the woman who washed his underpants.

However, this policy helped create a rift between us. We never spoke about the easier access to drugs once the band got off the ground, but Ian knew how I felt about them. I had seen his depressive moods, knew about his earlier overdose and was aware of his apparent schoolboy death-wish. On top of all this was the questionable
wisdom of mixing other substances with his prescribed drugs. When I did go to gigs, there was often a sudden silence when I walked into the dressing room. Joints were hurriedly handed back to Tony in the pretence of Ian never having touched them, and the rest of the entourage didn’t comprehend my dislike of them. It never occurred to me to tell them about Ian’s past – with hindsight I realize that I cherished the fact that I had known him longer too much to share it.

The Leigh Festival at the end of August 1979 was a collaboration between Zoo and Factory. It should have been a festival to remember and at the very least the first of many. I was wary of what I had been told about turning up at gigs without the other girls, so I made sure I collected Sue Sumner from her flat before driving on to the festival. It was a bright, warm day and I was disappointed because it hadn’t occurred to me to take Natalie along. I mentioned this to Ian, but he was so busy discussing the size of a particularly large turd in one of the toilet tents that he didn’t seem to hear me.

Thanks to James Anderton and a profound lack of publicity, the town of Leigh was closed for the day and the police presence almost outnumbered the festival-goers. After a fruitless journey into Leigh for a bite to eat, we were confronted by a road block. A short, fat thug in jeans motioned to me to stop the car and after showing me what could have been a bus pass (I wasn’t allowed to read what it said), we were made to get out. While two policemen and one policewoman searched us and the Morris Traveller, the fat stupid one made jibes about the car, perhaps trying to provoke some reaction. Ian told me that someone else from Factory was in fact carrying the dope, but of course his car was not stopped. Ian and Bernard took it all in their stride.

The name Joy Division always provided a talking point for the press. Rather than make up an obscure reason for the choice, the lads remained silent. I was surprised that none of them, especially Ian, had some clever answer up his sleeve, but the lads were tired of explaining themselves. As Dave McCullough found out when he interviewed them for
Sounds
just before the ‘Stuff the Superstars’ gig,
their attitude was one of players beginning a game in which the rules had been set out, but only the band were privy to them. Eventually they stopped giving interviews because the press tended to focus mainly on Ian and he felt he should resist that. Joy Division were in danger of being seen as a backing band when in fact the four of them made a cohesive and dynamic force.

By now, Ian was putting more of an emotional distance between us. He did bring a couple of books home about Nazi Germany, but in the main he was reading Dostoyevsky, Nietzsche, Jean Paul Sartre, Hermann Hesse and J. G. Ballard.
Photomontages
of
the
Nazi
Period
was a book of anti-Nazi posters by John Heartfield, which graphically documented the spread of Hitler’s ideals.
Crash
by J. G. Ballard combined sex with the suffering of car accident victims. It struck me that all lan’s spare time was spent reading and thinking about human suffering. I knew he was looking for inspiration for his songs, yet the whole thing was culminating in an unhealthy obsession with mental and physical pain. When I tried to talk to him, I was given the same treatment as the press – a stony face and no words. The one person he did talk to about it was Bernard.

Bernard also remembers that Ian liked to consider Nietzsche’s theory that there exists a race which is
reincarnated periodically and they were the Egyptians, the Greeks, the Romans and the Nazis. However, I think Ian’s obsession with the Nazi uniform had more to do with his interest in style and history. Since his infant-school days he had loved
to draw soldiers from different periods – up until this point, the appeal always lay in the uniform, never warfare itself.

I also had a childhood full of wartime reminiscences. The air-raid shelters, the prefabricated houses, the holes where the iron railings used to be at the front of my grandmother’s house, were there for everyone to see. I was accustomed to talking about the Second World War with my family. There was never any need for sensationalism; there was sensation enough in the facts. For me the past was a little a too close. My great grandfather was Jewish and I preferred to look at the newspaper cutting of my six great uncles who served during the war, buy my poppy and watch the Remembrance Day service every year. In the past, the only war Ian and I had discussed had been the one in Northern Ireland. He did not speak of politics, but of the romance of his ancestors being bayoneted by Black and Tans. I had no wish to reincarnate the horrors in my own mind. Ian had moved on to a higher plane by this time. If I didn’t understand this sudden interest in Nazism, then he wasn’t going to explain it. Band policy seemed to be interfering with our relationship. Ian regarded me with disdain, perhaps trying to ignore the fact that I had seen both sides of his personality. Much worse than his previous ambivalence towards me, I began to see in his attitude the same disdain he had shown for other members of his family.

As the pressure of playing and travelling built up through July and August, Ian’s fits became more frequent and I found it increasingly difficult to communicate with him beyond finding out what kind of sandwiches he wanted. Although his doctor at the hospital changed Ian’s tablets when it seemed necessary, and was apparently constantly expressing his concern about Ian’s lifestyle, I found myself shut out of Ian’s problems. His resentment towards me seemed to be building. Perhaps it was my imagination, but I thought he held me responsible for his condition. I knew nothing of the mental side effects of his therapy and even if I did, I would not have expected such an adverse effect on Ian’s personality. As far as I was aware, his medication was being monitored and any imperfections would eventually be ironed out.

Ian’s Aunty Nell and Uncle Ray came over from Tenerife for a month’s holiday. Knowing how close Ian had been to Nell in his childhood, I decided that if anyone would be able to help me it was her. Ian’s family still seemed unaware that anything was wrong and, frustratingly for me, he behaved perfectly normally at his parents’ house. I took deep breaths and braced myself to bring the subject up, but was so afraid of their disbelief that I kept silent. There was never an opportunity to speak to Nell alone. On the day she left I cried. I had seen her as my last hope and was angry with my own lack of resolve.

The end of August 1979 was make or break time for Joy Division. They were lucky enough to be offered the chance to be support band on the Buzzcocks tour, so it was ‘give up the day job’ time. Ian had no qualms about this as it was what he had been waiting for. His relative contentment is borne out by the fact that he had only one
grand
mal
attack during September, compared with the great number in August, when he was effectively going without sleep. I sighed with relief as this change in lifestyle should have helped Ian’s affliction. The other members of the band took good care of him. Their time was spent surreptitiously watching him for signs of an impending fit and they were always there to help him recover or take him to hospital if he was particularly poorly.

To some extent Joy Division’s future seemed almost rushing to greet them and in the excitement it wasn’t long before Ian began to take advantage. Much to the annoyance of the rest of the band, just as they were hurtling towards fame and fortune, Ian contracted what was known as LSS (Lead Singer Syndrome). This involved disappearing into the distance while the van was being unloaded and, although he was not yet lead singer, Bernard Sumner joined in the fun. Their heads would cautiously peep around the corner to make sure the van was empty before reappearing on the scene. Anton Corbijn’s photograph of the two of them carrying a flight case is indeed unique! Ian’s reluctance to do any donkey work seldom caused problems as Peter Hook and Steve Morris were quite tolerant. Peter took the view that Ian was a lazy bastard and that Bernard just brought out the worst in him.

Futurama ‘79 at the Queen’s Hall, Leeds, was supposed to be a sci-fi music festival, but no one seems to be able to say what made it sci-fi. Joy Division played on the Saturday (the first of the two dates) and were said by Ian Penman to be the real stars of the night. This was no mean feat, considering that seventeen bands played, including the tough competition of Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark and Cabaret Voltaire. Mark Johnson wrote in his book about Joy Division: ‘It was one of the rare occasions that the band’s wives and girlfriends were seen at a Joy Division concert.’ Neither myself, Sue, nor Iris were there, so I’m not quite sure to whom he was referring.

As autumn approached they played the Factory for the last time before it closed down for an indefinite period, as the Russell Club’s, licence had expired. It had been ‘our place’ for sixteen months and there was a feeling that we were about to begin the next chapter.

When Ian felt the beginnings of an epileptic fit, he lay down on the office floor and someone was dispatched to fetch me. It was unusual for Ian to have a fit before going on stage. There were too many people buzzing around when he should have been left in peace, but Ian did manage to recover in time for Joy Division’s performance. As if the evening wasn’t memorable enough, there was a fracas between
Peter Hook and a member of the audience. Jumping down from the stage, he chased through the crowd and didn’t return to play.

Mountford Hall in Liverpool was the first of the twenty-four dates that Joy Division played supporting the Buzzcocks on their autumn tour. The season began extremely well for Joy Division, who effectively blew the Buzzcocks off the stage on this first night. They earned a rave review from Penny Riley who wrote: ‘It’s music that washes over you, music to surrender to. Only then do you receive the maximum excitement – personal response is vital.’ The Buzzcocks, meanwhile, had to make do with: ‘There shouldn’t have been an encore, but they did one anyway.’ If further reviews are anything to go by, then by the close of the curtain on this gig, the shape that the tour was going to take had already been set.

The theme continued at Leeds University. Des Moines commented that Ian ‘symbolizes Joy Division’, putting the lid on the fact that whether the band as a whole liked it or not, Ian Curtis was the star of the Joy Division show. Idolaters may have loved the music, but Ian’s on-stage orchestration of his own body ensured which direction they were looking towards.

Ever since I had known him, Ian had always had little catchphrases which he insisted we both use. These seemed to me to be a kind of obsessive insurance against anything going wrong between us. For instance, ‘good-bye’ on the telephone could never be just ‘good-bye’; it always had to be followed by both of us saying ‘I love you’ in exactly the same sequence. Any deviation and Ian would begin the whole process again. If I ever went anywhere on my own, the last thing Ian would say to me was, ‘Watch yourself.’ This wasn’t to signify that I must look out for my safety, but rather that I must not speak to any other men. As the band began to be away from home, these little overprotective touches disappeared. When I asked Ian about groupies he said, ‘As if I could. I’d probably have a fit.’ There was no reassurance there. In fact, he turned the situation around and told me that Bernard was in the habit of bringing girls to the room for them both and pushing Ian into sleeping with them. I wasn’t impressed with him trying to blame Bernard for any extramarital
sex, so typically I pressed no further. I preferred my state of ignorance.

On 16 October 1979, during a break in the Buzzcocks tour, Joy Division played Plan K in Brussels. They had understood the venue to be an oil refinery with an arts centre, but it turned out to be a sugar refinery which had been magically transformed into an arts centre by the addition of two or three bars. A hotel was not forthcoming and instead they were given cramped rooms in a hostel, where the only windows looked out on to a corridor. Yet this didn’t excuse Ian’s behaviour when he was unable to find the toilet. Having been caught urinating in a huge floor-standing ashtray, he proceeded to try to placate the member of staff in slow, loud English.

It is purported to have been at this gig that Ian first met Annik Honoré, though some say it was at one of the London gigs. Either way, having an attractive girl around must have provided some much-needed excitement during an arduous two months. Rather than not mention her at all, he told me about a chubby Belgian girl who was a ‘tour arranger’, although Steve Morris says she was posing as a journalist and she was certainly not chubby! Ian said he felt sorry for her and had taken it upon himself to act as her protector against Rob Gretton’s cruel wit. Knowing Ian’s caring nature, I thought nothing more about it.

During the time he spent with Annik, Ian’s personality became more serious. She seemed to have quite an influence on him and almost managed to talk him into becoming a vegetarian. At home, Ian stopped sharing his life with me. Rather than tell me amusing stories and gossip, he began to name drop and use catch-phrases which meant nothing to me.

The day before the first Apollo gig, I fell down the stairs at home while carrying a kettle of boiling water up to the baby bath. I sat in the Apollo dressing room with my bandaged, scalded foot and wearing the clothes my mother had bought for me. I was totally unaware of my husband’s mistress looking me up and down from across the small room. Naturally, Ian removed me from the dressing room as
quickly as possible. After introducing me to a few people who seemed embarrassed and befuddled, he announced that he was going to buy a portion of chips and left me in the crowd. After the gig, I found my way backstage with the other girls.

Presumably to celebrate playing their home town, there was a party being held in one of the upstairs dressing rooms and Ian was reluctant to go. Not realizing why he had been so difficult on the first night, I decided not to go to the second gig, and Lesley Gilbert and I spent the evening at the flat she shared with Rob Gretton. I consumed a more than sufficient amount of wine, and when we telephoned the Apollo and I realized that Ian did not want to come home with me, I had even more to drink. My parents were baby-sitting and I wanted to get home at a reasonable time. Whether I was thick skinned or thick headed I’m not sure, but I couldn’t believe that Ian did not want me with him. Rob Gretton managed to get
Ian away from the party and Annik. He and Lesley spent the rest of the evening arbitrating between the two of us and Rob eventually persuaded Ian to go home with me. By then I was in no fit state to drive and Rob paid for a taxi to take us all the way back to Macclesfield. Neither of us uttered a word throughout the journey and it was left to me to give an explanation to my fuming parents. This was impossible for me as I didn’t understand the situation myself. I still didn’t know about Ian and Annik’s relationship.

The signs are so obvious now that I’m embarrassed at my stupidity. The cricket match Ian went to which no one else knew about, but everyone was supposed to have played in, should have at least pointed me in the right direction. When I found Ian pressing his own trousers I should have been suspicious. I was hurt when he said he was going to see
Eraserhead
without me, but terribly worried when he didn’t come home. One of his greatest fears was to be arrested for drunkenness if no one realized that he’d had a fit. I rang his parents and everyone in the band, but he was nowhere to be found. Peter Hook gave me Terry Mason’s number, but by the time I dialled the digits, the line was already engaged. His father and I rang local hospitals and police stations to see if he had been taken in. When he
strolled in later the next day, he was very angry that I had told anyone about his disappearance. I never found out where he’d been.

November should have been a particularly happy time for us. Ian had had only two attacks in two months and these were probably owing to the fact that he had been unable to take his tablets for a couple of days. We were relying heavily on my parents to do more than their fair share of baby-sitting and so journeys between our house and theirs became frequent. One sleeting afternoon while taking Ian on a rare visit to my parents, I skidded on Catherine Street, right into the back of another car.We weren’t going at any great speed, but it frightened Ian enough to make him curl up in a ball and hide in the foot well under the dashboard – not easy for someone who was over six feet tall.

By the end of 1979 the downward spiral of our financial situation had reached the bottom. Each member of the band was on a weekly wage, Ian having negotiated an extra
£15
per week.This was slightly more than the others and was given on the understanding that when the real money began to come in, Ian would pay them back. I was grateful for that concession, but it still didn’t compensate for the loss of both our wages. I gather from the rest of the band that he argued frequently with Rob over this payment. From what Ian told me it wasn’t the fact that Rob didn’t want to part with the money, but rather that he couldn’t comprehend the need for regularity. I asked around and heard that they were looking for bar staff at Silklands, a local disco. My mother offered to baby-sit while I earned some money in the evenings. As Ian had been so overly protective in the past, I thought he would try to dissuade me, but he didn’t seem remotely concerned. It was just as well, as we were desperate for the money. It was a very tiring time. I looked after the baby from early in the morning, working evenings, returned home late and then waited for Ian to arrive so that I could make sure he was safe in bed. Ian was either asleep or out. It didn’t matter how little money was in my purse for food, he still took it for cigarettes. My parents fed me and Natalie on Sundays when Ian was rehearsing, and took over the bills for the car, letting me use it when I needed.

Meanwhile, Joy Division continued wih their support spot on the
Buzzcocks tour. Joy Division were fairly new to the type of stunts touring bands pull, so when Buzzcocks warned about tricks on the last night at the Rainbow Theatre, they took their task seriously. The Buzzcocks were tame enough to remove the battery from Steve Morris’s syndrum, but Joy Division had more radical things in mind. Piles of maggots were placed on the lighting and mixing desks, every window of the crew bus was covered with shaving foam and six mice were released inside the bus for good measure. Trying to leave the theatre was also hazardous, as Joy Division circled around in Steve Morris’s car throwing eggs at whoever was there. The most disgusting trick of all happened in Guildford. After removal of the fluorescent light tubes in the gents toilets excrement was smeared over the light switch and the taps.

Chris Bonn’s review of the Rainbow Theatre gig accused the Buzzcocks of scuppering Joy Division’s sound because they were more competition than the Buzzcocks had bargained for. Despite the vast improvement in actual sound quality when the Buzzcocks came on, it was to no avail. Joy Division had already won their audience against the odds: ‘they treated their guests to a lousy sound, which dampened Ian Curtis’s passionate vocals, throwing him into an uneven struggle with superior forces of technology. Inevitably, he lost, but the spirit of resistance was there.’

On 13 December 1979 my parents gave us the money to dine out. We celebrated my birthday at a small, cold Chinese restaurant in Wilmslow. Ian was miserably silent and merely ate his food in slow motion. I hadn’t ordered a first course, so I sat looking at him and thinking. As a couple we had long since ceased to socialize with other members of the band and I still hadn’t figured out why. Any suggestion of a night out with them was shot down, often with the excuse that Ian disliked one of the girls in particular. In fact he ridiculed her so viciously that I guessed she would be next to follow Stephanie into the cold.