This Searing Light, the Sun and Everything Else: Joy Division: The Oral History

by Jon Savage

Overview

The SUNDAY TIMES Top Ten Bestseller
#1 Book of the Year, UNCUT
#1 Book of the Year, ROUGH TRADE
Book of the Year, MOJO
Over the course of two albums and some legendary gigs, Joy Division became the most successful and exciting underground band of their generation. Then, on the brink of a tour to America, Ian Curtis took his own life.
In This Searing Light, the Sun and Everything Else, Jon Savage has assembled three decades' worth of interviews with the principal players in the Joy Division story to create an intimate, candid and definitive account of the band. It is the story of how a group of young men can galvanise a generation of fans, artists and musicians with four chords and three-and-a-half minutes of music. And it is the story of how illness and inner demons can rob the world of a shamanic lead singer and visionary lyricist.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780571345380
Publisher:	Faber and Faber
Publication date:	04/02/2019
Sold by:	Bookwire
Format:	eBook
Pages:	160
File size:	5 MB

About the Author

Jon Savage is a bestselling author, broadcaster and journalist. His books include England's Dreaming: Sex Pistols and Punk Rock, Teenage: The Creation of Youth, 1875-1945 and 1966: The Year The Decade Exploded. He has written sleevenotes for Wire, St. Etienne and the Pet Shop Boys, among others, and his compilations include: Meridian 1970 (Heavenly/EMI 2005); Queer Noises: From the Closest to the Charts 1961 - 1976 (Trikont 2006); and Dreams Come True: Classic Electro 1982-87 (Domino 2008). His most recent book is the top ten bestselling This Searing Light, the Sun and Everything Else: Joy Division: The Oral History.
Jon Savage is the author of England's Dreaming: Sex Pistols and Punk Rock and Teenage: The Creation of Youth, 1875-1945. He is the writer of the award-winning film documentaries The Brian Epstein Story (1988) and Joy Division (2007), as well as the feature film Teenage (2013). His compilations include Meridian 1970 (Heavenly/EMI 2005) and Queer Noises: From the Closet to the Charts, 1961-1976 (Trikont 2006).

Table of Contents

Dramatis Personae ix

Introduction xi

1 The Cities Speak 1

2 1966 - 76 11

3 June 1976 - June 1977 33

4 July 1977 - April 1978 61

5 May - June 1978 82

6 June - December 1978 102

7 October 1978 - May 1979 127

8 June - September 1979 160

9 October - November 1979 192

10 November 1979 - February 1980 216

11 February - March 1980 254

12 April - May 1980 275

13 May 1980 300

A Note on Sources 321

Acknowledgements 323

Editorial Reviews

03/01/2019

Joy Division, a post-punk band in Manchester, England, in the late 1970s, achieved cult status in the UK and Europe and was about to embark on a U.S. tour when lead singer Ian Curtis died by suicide in May 1980. Savage's (England's Dreaming: Sex Pistols and Punk Rock) riveting oral history draws heavily on candid interviews with the surviving band members—Bernard Sumner, Peter Hook, and Stephen Morris—along with Curtis's wife, the group's manager, and journalists and friends. The result is a revealing portrait of four young musicians and the dynamic music scene in Manchester. Curtis and the others were influenced greatly by the Sex Pistols, Iggy Pop, and the Velvet Underground, as well as the writings of William S. Burroughs and J.G. Ballard. Joy Division's music was described as dark, despairing, and menacing, yet their concerts were mesmerizing and usually garnered rave reviews, and Curtis was a charismatic performer. In the late 1970s, he began having epileptic seizures, sometimes on stage, and his mental health declined. The final chapter offers a powerful account of his last days and the shock of his death. VERDICT Joy Division recorded only two albums but deserve to be better known. This title will appeal to anyone interested in punk, post-punk, and 1970s rock music.—Thomas Karel, Franklin & Marshall Coll. Lib., Lancaster, PA

Library Journal

Curtis and Joy Division have been thoroughly historicized—in books, documentaries, biopics—so one of the more striking things about This Searing Light is how fresh and necessary it feels. An oral history can be an evasion of authorial responsibility. Not this one. Savage's book, exquisitely organized, will drive you back into Joy Division, into the uncanny processes that created (and then destroyed) the band, into the everyday dourness and the soaring, transcending solemnity, into the interstellar shimmer that the producer Martin Hannett put around the massive chords of "Transmission."

The New York Times Book Review - James Parker

01/28/2019

In this excellent oral history, Savage (England’s Dreaming) chronicles the short life of Joy Division, the band that married punk’s anger with hypnotic bleakness. Joy Division was born of northern English postindustrial stoic despair; Manchester, where the band was formed, had fallen from industrial might to blighted “concrete gulags,” Savage writes. The dozens of interviews with band members, friends, family, and hangers-on tells how singer Ian Curtis, bassist Peter Hook, guitarist Bernard Sumner, and drummer Stephen Morris were inspired by the Sex Pistols’ infamous 1976 Manchester show (“learn three chords, write a song, form a group, that’s it,” Sumner says). While Joy Division’s performances were characterized by the crowd’s punk energy and Curtis’ possessed dancing, his haunting lyrics—inspired by atrocity-laden military texts, J.G. Ballard, and William S. Burroughs—made them stand out in the British music scene. Savage doesn’t shy from the band’s obsession with Nazism (the band’s name was taken from a brothel at a Nazi concentration camp, and according to music writer Bob Dickinson, “they were haunted by the ghosts of Nazism and by what it did to Europe”). Just as the group achieved notice, Curtis’s epileptic seizures worsened, and he killed himself in 1980. His widow Deborah Curtis notes, “People admired him for the things that were destroying him.” Savage wonderfully captures the spirit of the band and an era. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly

"English music writer Savage turns his eye to one of the most iconic bands of the post-punk era. More than a dozen observers, including Joy Division members Peter Hook and Bernard Summer, tell the story of Ian Curtis' short-lived but endlessly influential band."—LA Times (Buzz-worthy Books to Look Forward To)

“Excellent ... it’s the ultimate oral history of one of rock’s most haunting legends” — Rob Sheffield Rolling Stone

"As much as the story of this band has been pillaged, This Searing Light proves that there were still more Joy Division stories to be told." — Popmatters

“These are some of the nearly 40 people from Joy Division's inner circle whose accounts Savage, who was also there at the time, has deftly woven into an almost detective-style MRI of the band and the forces and factors that formed it. Almost particle by particle, from descriptions of Manchester's industrial beginnings to the area's cultural void, Savage makes you understand that the members of Joy Division were driven to create something of immense beauty, as if there were no other choice.” — Los Angeles Times

“Excellent ... it’s the ultimate oral history of one of rock’s most haunting legends”—Rolling Stone

"Fans of the band will delight in the intimacy of the many stories and anecdotes, some of which are being shared publicly for the first time.... This Searing Light, The Sun And Everything Else represents the consolidated authoritative history of this important band, and as such it may in fact prove to be the last word on the topic. For fans of Joy Division, and of punk, post-punk, and British music generally, this is a must read."—Brooklyn Rail

From the Publisher

★ 2019-01-06

A deep dive into one of rock music's most path-breaking bands and cautionary tales.

The story of Joy Division has become post-punk folklore. Launched in 1976 in Manchester, a grimy and declining British industrial city, the quartet masterfully harnessed the Sex Pistols' energy, Krautrock cool, and Doors-ish pretension. Commercial success and critical acclaim arrived fast, but the band ended with singer Ian Curtis' suicide in May 1980, on the brink of its first U.S. tour. Veteran U.K. music journalist Savage (1966: The Year the Decade Exploded, 2015, etc.) was on the scene at the time, and this oral history reflects a level of access and attention to detail worthy of the band's importance, including band members Peter Hook, Bernard Sumner, and Stephen Morris, producer Martin Hannett, record-label impresario Tony Wilson, designer Peter Saville, and more than two dozen scenesters, photographers, and writers. (Curtis' contributions are mostly taken from newspaper articles; commentary from his estranged wife, Deborah, comes mostly from her own memoir.) Savage's quote-selection process emphasizes the youthfulness and naiveté of the band, who were holding down day jobs, flirting with fascist imagery, and barely competent as musicians when they began. Their much-imitated innovations—e.g., integrating electronic drums or having bass carry the melody line—emerged as the happy accidents of unschooled 20-somethings. Naiveté cut both ways, though. Everybody involved confesses being at a loss to address Curtis' worsening epilepsy and depression and paid little mind to his lyrics, which plainly read as cries for help; shamefully, they hastened Curtis to a gig just after he was hospitalized for a suicide attempt. "People admired him for the things that were destroying him," his widow says, and the agonizing closing pages reveal how tragically blinding that admiration was.

Neither easy hagiography or melancholy Curtis elegy, but a sober and illuminating account of a brilliant band's too-short career.

Kirkus Reviews