So This is Permanence: Joy Division Lyrics and Notebooks

By Ian Curtis, Deborah Curtis and Jon Savage

A treasure trove of personal writings by the great post-punk singer-songwriter—with a foreword by his wife Deborah and an introduction by Jon Savage.

So This Is Permanence presents the lyrics and personal notebooks of one of the most enigmatic and influential music artists of the late twentieth century, Joy Division’s Ian Curtis.

The fact of the band’s relatively few releases belies the power and enduring fascination its music holds, especially in light of Curtis’s tragic suicide in 1980 on the eve of the band’s first American tour.

This volume features Curtis’s never-before-seen handwritten lyrics, accompanied by earlier drafts and previously unpublished pages from his notebooks that shed fascinating light on his writing and creative process.

Also included are an insightful and moving foreword by Curtis’s widow Deborah, a substantial introduction by writer Jon Savage, and an appendix featuring books from Curtis’s library and a selection of fanzine interviews, letters, and other ephemera from his estate.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Feb 24, 2015
• ISBN: 9781452146508

Book preview

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Ian Curtis and Joy Division

also by Jon Savage

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the faber book of pop:

edited with Hanif Kureishi

teenage:

The Creation of Youth 1875–1945

First published in the United States of America in 2014

by Chronicle Books LLC.

First published in Great Britain 2014

by Faber & Faber Ltd

Bloomsbury House, 74–77 Great Russell Street,

London wc1b 3da

Typeset by Faber & Faber Ltd

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form

without written permission from the publisher.

Lyrics © Fractured Music / Universal Music Publishing

Foreword © Deborah Curtis, 2014

Introduction © Jon Savage, 2014

The right of Ian Curtis to be identified as author of this work

has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright,

Designs and Patents Act 1988

The right of Deborah Curtis and Jon Savage to be identified as editors

of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the

Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

Pages 273–274 constitute a continuation of the copyright page.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data available.

isbn 978–1–4521–3845–9 (hc)

isbn 978-1-4521-4650-8 (epub, mobi)

Chronicle Books LLC

680 Second Street

San Francisco, California 94107

www.chroniclebooks.com

CONTENTS

Foreword vii

Introduction xiii

Editorial Note xxix

the handwritten lyrics 1

Warsaw (1977) 5

Leaders of Men (1977) 9

No Love Lost (1977) 13

Failures (1977) 17

Ice Age (1977) 19

The Kill (1977) 21

They Walked in Line (1978) 25

Exercise One (1978) 27

Glass (1978) 31

Disorder (1979) 35

Day of the Lords (1979) 37

Candidate (1979) 41

New Dawn Fades (1979) 43

She’s Lost Control (1979) 45

Shadowplay (1979) 49

Interzone (1978) 53

I Remember Nothing (1979) 55

Transmission (1978) 59

Autosuggestion (1979) 61

From Safety to Where . . . ? (1979) 65

Atmosphere (1979) 67

Dead Souls (1979) 69

The Sound of Music (1979) 71

The Only Mistake (1979) 73

Something Must Break (1979) 75

Love Will Tear Us Apart (1980) 77

These Days (1980) 79

Atrocity Exhibition (1980) 81

Isolation (1980) 83

Passover (1980) 87

Colony (1980) 89

A Means to an End (1980) 91

Twenty Four Hours (1980) 95

The Eternal (1980) 99

Komakino (1980) 101

She’s Lost Control (12" version) 103

appendix one 105

Early versions, alternatives, new songs, prose

appendix two 219

Artwork, fanzines, books, letters

Acknowledgements 273

FOREWORD BY DEBORAH CURTIS

I was introduced to Ian in Macclesfield in 1972 by a boy he called his brother. This singular teenager, who didn’t go to the youth club with the other kids, stood posing on the balcony of his parents’ flat. He was wearing eye makeup, tight jeans and a fun fur jacket; some would have laughed but there was a reverence about that first encounter. He appeared to be waiting for the introduction. It felt preordained.

He was studious: winning a school History prize in 1971 and the Divinity prize in 1971 and 1972, enjoying Ted Hughes and Thom Gunn and later Chaucer. He had a black ring binder with subject dividers which he had marked ‘Lyrics’ and ‘Novel’, and I felt privileged that he had trusted me enough to let me see the extent of his ambitions.

I was hooked; the romance of him being both a poet and a writer was too much to resist; and it was easy to settle into the lifestyle of being around him. He took me to gigs, introduced me to the diverse people in his life and when I realised that our future was to be together nothing else seemed to matter.

Apart from his vinyl collection and reams of music papers his bedroom was impersonal, especially considering his complex theatrical personality. There were no piles of clothes or makeup or clutter of any kind. He was tidy and cared obsessively how things looked and sounded, always striving for perfection. He juggled his relationships easily, moving between different peer groups, collecting other people and their experiences.

He approached difficult subjects so obliquely that I couldn’t detect whether they were pertinent to him personally. I didn’t understand why he wanted to talk about a local boy who was said to be suffering from manic depression; it seemed like gossip and was uncharacteristic of him. He explained any of his own unusual behaviour, absences or seizures as ‘flashbacks’ and it was made clear that they were not up for discussion.

There were rumours that Ian had been in trouble at school but his friends laughed, the Curtis family moved to Manchester and it was all brushed away. Their front lounge became his bedroom; again it was tidy and functional, all he seemed to need in life were his records, the music press and cigarettes.

When I stayed at the weekend he would put on a record and we would sit on the floor. Each album had to be listened to from beginning to end uninterrupted and he loved explaining the story behind the lyrics to me. He liked to read Oscar Wilde or Edgar Allan Poe and he would make sure we were home on Saturday nights in time to watch the horror films.

We married and for a while we lived with his grandparents. Ian began buying reggae music; he would wait until we were alone before he carried his record player into the lounge, the thick net curtains and the heavy drapes blocking the daylight. Ian no longer had a room of his own but he didn’t put a