Free Unknown Pleasures: Inside Joy Division by Peter Hook Page A

we’d do one of his songs and it sounded so much better – and that was before we even knew what he was saying. What was obvious about Ian was that he was pouring everything into it; he wasn’t playing at being in a band. My lyrics were just words on a page whereas his were coming from somewhere else, his soul.
    We were getting to know him a bit better, too. When we first met him he and Debbie lived in Oldham, but they sold up – either because she wanted to move back to Macclesfield or they just weren’t getting on in Oldham, whatever. But while they sorted out the house in Macc he lived at his gran’s in Stretford. Me and Barney would go round there to practise and usually go out to gigs and, as he was spending so much time with us . . . Well, I suppose you’d have to say we corrupted him a bit. Like, when we first met him he was a married man and behaved like one. If a fit girl walked by on the street, me and Barney would look but Ian wouldn’t give her a second glance. He was just that bit more of a gentleman than we were, I suppose you’d have to say. Well, a
lot
more of a gentleman.
    But he didn’t stay that way for long. Soon enough he was behaving the same way: if a fit girl walked down the street, he’d be looking too. But that was his personality, though I’m not sure I realized this at the time. (Probably didn’t, if I’m honest.) But looking back that’s exactly what he was: a people pleaser; he could be whatever you wanted himto be. A poetic, sensitive, tortured soul, the Ian Curtis of the myth – he was definitely that. But he could also be one of the lads – he
was
one of the lads, as far as we were concerned. That was the people pleaser in him, the mirror. He adapted the way he behaved depending on who he was with. We all do a bit, of course, but with Ian the shift was quite dramatic. Nobody was better at moving between different groups of people than he was. But I also think this was an aspect of his personality that ended up being very damaging to him. He had three personas he was trying to juggle: he had his married-man persona, at home with the wife, the laddish side and the cerebral, literary side. By the end he was juggling home life and band life, and had two women on the go. There were just too many Ians to cope with.
    I’ve realized all this in the years since, of course. At the time I just thought he was a great guy. And he was a great frontman. You could tell.
    Now, if only we could find a drummer.

‘I can’t actually think of anything less “us”
than a wet-towel fight’
    So we asked around for a drummer and when that drew a blank we tried advertising. Our first reply was from a student whose name I can’t remember. We took him on but he really got on our tits, so even though he was an okay drummer we decided to get rid of him. Being a right pair of shits, me and Barney decided that the only way to ditch him was by telling him he was ‘too good’ for us.
    We drove to Middleton College to give him the good news to his face – it’s where Steve Coogan went, funnily enough, a famous college in the area – and made our way up to his dorm, only to find him and his mates flicking each other’s bare arses with their towels. If we’d had any doubts about sacking him they were laid to rest at the sight of that, because offhand I can’t actually think of anything less ‘us’ than a wet-towel fight.
    Out of breath from his jolly larks he came bounding up to us: ‘All right, lads! How’s it going?’
    ‘We think you’re too good for us,’ we said as rehearsed, heads down. ‘You know, the sound we’re going for, you know, it’s . . . And . . . You’re too . . . Good.’
    ‘Right,’ he beamed and ran back to whipping his mates’ arses with his towel while we sloped off to wrestle with the thorny issue of finding another drummer – an issue that was about to get even thornier: we had our first gig coming up.
    When we’d started the group, me and Bernard had got in