The Ned Wood Archive

Just a mortal with the potential of a superman

That last summer, right at the end of term, just after I’d finished in London, I was on my way over to see Elsa in her parents’ new place in Barton.  No, this would have been just before I finished down in London, cos I was on my way back with the motor to pick up all my stuff.  This would be late June, early July.    

Anyway, it’s a Saturday morning.  I’m in the car with the radio on.  And they play Joy Division, She’s Lost Control.  It’s one of those “What on earth is that?” moments.  One of those “I’ve never heard anything like that before” moments.  Who on earth are these people?  You don’t often get moments like that where you hear something so different, so out of the blue.  Maybe Roxy Music the first time.  Perhaps some of the stuff Kershaw used to play, like Cheb Khaled or Ithulamsindo or Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan.  Stuff from another world.  Joy Division were like that.  That different.

So I spent all of my time with Elsa standing in her kitchen talking about what I’d just heard.  Well, I tried to talk about them.  I tried to describe them. But I failed dismally.  

I bought the album that same day.  First thing I did when I got down into London town was go over to Rough Trade and get it.  It’s a work of art.  Before you even get the vinyl out of the sleeve, it’s art.  The mysterious, black, textured cover, torn between the light and dark. In the centre a small diagram: a wave form picture like the seismic graphs I was familiar with but actually signals from a pulsar.  No names of the folk in the band on the album, none of the musicians, just the producer, the engineer, and the bloke that designed the sleeve.  On the inner sleeve, there’s a picture of an open door and a hand.  Are they opening the door wider or closing it?

A thing of beauty.  A relic.  A souvenir.  Closer to the golden dawn.  But I still don’t know who on earth these people are.

And then the music.  Two sides labelled inside and outside.  I play the inside first.  The white side.  It feels more natural that this is the start.  What that means is that I’ll forever view She’s Lost Control as the first track on the album and New Dawn Fades as the last.  

She’s Lost Control.  The strange drum beat.  That high pitched bass riff.  Those background voices.  Those low pitched lead vocals.  That guitar, low in the mix.  That clean, separate production.  That relentless controlled power of the music as the drums keep going, the bass keeps going, the guitar gets louder.  All of that set the tone for the album.  It’s all about control.  But who is she and how has she lost it?  

Shadowplay.  This time the drums are natural.  The guitar is natural.  But the overall feel is the same.  Dark shadows.  Sadness,  Mystery.  Some of the words are indistinct.  Some clear.  So you use your imagination to fill in the gaps.  Is this some film?  If so, it’s in black and white, set in some European town.  Vienna?  Munich?  During the cold war?  Berlin maybe…  Then he’s alone in a room watching the world turn bad outside his uncurtained window…  “In a room with a window in the corner I found truth”  

Wilderness.  All of these titles are forbidding. Foreboding.  The sound and the structure are all new; all different.  The blood of Christ.  The guitar decoration as riff not solo.  “Tears in their eyes”.

“I saw all knowledge destroyed.”  Maybe this is a Bergman.  A dystopian Swedish film.  The Seventh Seal brought (slightly) up to date.  Living proof of Churchill’s lies.  Or am I reading too much into these half heard lyrics?

Interzone.  This is definitely Billy Burroughs.  Rocky Riff, punky, faster, groovy.  Is that someone else singing?  A duet with the normal vocalist?  If so, the lyrics seem to interlock seamlessly.  Looking for some friends of mine.  Scraps reminiscent of other bands, but I can’t put my finger on them.  The stuff they’ve borrowed from elsewhere has been changed beyond recognition.  And even the car has decayed, its metallic blue turned red with rust.

I Remember Nothing.  Such a haunting start.  Bowie’s Low at its worst.  Bass notes, spider creeping guitar, long deep keyboard tones, broken glass, long vocal syllables.  “Strangers for way too long.”  The drum beats slow you down.  Helpless vocals.  A voice sings the word violent in the background.  These are obviously not 24 hour party people!!!   The rhythm is like a clock ticking down…  seems like the drummer varies the tempo to sync with your emotion.  Or do they manipulate your emotions for you?  You feel both that the end is coming too quickly … and that it is being dragged out.  More broken glass.  Then slowly all of the sounds die…  “Strange, mad celebration.  So softly a supergod dies”  A single figure, alone, on a deserted platform.  The viewer the only other presence.  Solitude.

There is so much emotion here.  So much wisdom.  So much experience.  It can’t be a bunch of kids releasing their first record.  This is one of those albums you never get to the bottom of.  You keep coming back, straining to hear the words.  Inventing meanings.  Are they yours or the band’s?  So you come up with half visualised scenes.  Fragments of a dream.

Now I flip it over.  The outside.  The dark side.  It’s just as good.

Disorder.  This one has a groove to it.  Like the first side, this side starts with a faster, more upbeat track.  It rocks along almost with an upbeat, groovy feeling.  That’s deceptive.  This is still getting out of hand.  Cars are crashing.  Still it moves on, until, finally, right at the end, it blows up and breaks down.

Day of the Lords.  More dread, ominous waves crashing in.  Where will it end?  A doom laden and dark, distorted affair.  Irregular, uneven drums yet still keeping time.  The bass always high in the mix as it is all over the album.  It’s amazing that this is mostly just drums, bass, guitar, & voice with assorted weird noises in the background.  Even so, it’s a wall of sound but so much darker than anything Spector came up with on record.  The lyrics steer you toward making your own vision.  They provide the prompt.  You fill in the rest…  “This is the room, the start of it all …”

Candidate.  (Is this like any other candidate?  Will you make me a deal?  “I’ve since lost the heart”).  More dark drum beat, dark bass, dark voice.  Mournful.  Please keep your distance.  The instruments step away, retreat, leaving just the singer.  On his own.  Alone again.  Or?

Insight.  Starts with noise.  Distant machinery, closing doors.  Where are we?  Then a gentle melody on the bass, sharp drums, wistful vocals… I’m not afraid anymore.  This is science fiction.  The instrumental break an excerpt from a space invaders video game battle … what’s that mean?  Now I just don’t know where the hell we are.  Maybe we’re somewhere in the future.   Lift up your feet and put them on the ground.  You used to walk upon when you were young.

New Dawn Fades.  The end.  A false, hesitant start, the bass comes in leading us down, a low guitar over the top, trying to fly, trying to soar, yet tethered to earth… stuck in quicksand.  The quicksand of my thought.  Beautiful melody.  A loaded gun won’t set you free.  Yet there’s a chiming guitar.  Or a guitar aspiring to chime and failing.  Falling short.  The guitar arpeggios that normally sound so positive (like with REM or Steve Cropper’s southern soul or the La’s There she goes…) is desperate here, is heart breaking here. Stuck in the quicksand. (And I ain’t got the power anymore.)   Yet it builds, hoping for something more… and then it dies, the drums beat faltering then finally failing.  Sunk in the quicksand.

What an album.  Really dark black music, strong and powerful like the proverbial irresistible force.  I heard that Jim Kerr was dead chuffed with Simple Minds’ first album after they’d made it and then when they heard Unknown Pleasures they all realised they weren’t even close.  I’m convinced that these guys must be some well established musicians.  Yet the closest I could come was suggesting they sounded like John Cale. John Cale!

And it turns out they’re just four kids from round Manchester.  They met at that gig at the Free Trade Hall.  You know, the one where Bowie met Ronno and Ferry met Eno.  The one where Radiohead and Blur were formed.  The one where Penicillin was discovered and the first world wide web page was created.  The one where Alex Turner was conceived and Jude Bellingham too.  That one.

I collect all of the NME articles.  I read Max Bell’s NME review of Unknown Pleasures.  He calls it “Uncomfortably claustrophobic.” and “Memorably Psychotic.”  I see the photos of the band.  The monochrome image.  Grey.  Smart, but grey.  Grey shirts, grey trousers, black macs, grey ties.  Perhaps they don’t want visuals to get in the way of the sounds.

They’d been recording for ages, too.  An EP in the middle of 78.  Four tracks: two punky, two closer to their current sound.  A live track on a Virgin compilation released at the same time, but recorded earlier.  A proper punk performance with shouted vocals.  And then the Factory Sampler from right at the end of 78.  Recognisable as the same band that recorded the album.  One track (Digital) pretty much as good as anything they did.  The other track not so hot.  Of course, the northerners had heard of them and had most of their stuff.  Those of us from London had missed out.

Apparently, they’d almost signed with Fast Product up in Edinburgh.  That would have been fun, having them up those stairs near the Grassmarket looking out over the Castle.  Suitably Kafkaesque, nicht war?    

Except, now, they are playing the Odeon.  That’s right.  The Odeon just along from the hotel.  Walking distance.  One of the most important bands there is.  Up here on Newington/Minto/Mayfield/whatever Street.  Supporting Buzzcocks.  It’s, what, the beginning of October?  This is all before all that jazz with Pete and the students and searching for the sword or the stone or whatever that I was telling you about.  It was after I’d been up for, what, ten days?  I’d been looking forward to this since the tour was announced and I’d got my hands on a ticket.  

They were magnificent that evening.  Ian Curtis dancing like a busy London commuter battling his way through Euston station, elbows flying left and right to push through the crowds.  Most folk you go and see are having fun.  Or playing because it’s a job.  Ian Curtis was singing because that’s the only thing he knows.  Singing with all of his heart and soul.  Singing because his very life depends on it.  Don’t think I ever saw anyone else so committed to the performance as Ian Curtis.  Maybe that guy from the Amazing Snakeheads much later on.  

And there’s Hooky weighed down by the weight of his bass, staggering around the stage,  bent double over it, as if he’s struggling to drag it off somewhere.

And Barney Albrecht studiously practising his chords like a diligent schoolboy.  And Stephen Morris also clean cut and neatly cracking out the beat.

But I can’t take my eyes from the great salvation.  Ian Curtis. Out in front, leading us through the magic, arms flailing around like he’s trying to get out of a sweater that’s he’s got stuck over his head.  

Paul Morley in a live review about Curtis calls his “stage movement a visual representation of the struggle inherent in Joy Division.”  Later, he quotes Richard Jobson as saying that the music is genuinely violent.

It’s true.  Joy Division make music with such physicality, you can touch it, hold it in your hands, weigh it.  But you can’t shape it, it’s too strong, too hard, too solid, too concrete for that.

After that, Buzzcocks fly past in a flash. It’s like we’re at a different gig.  Just fun: light, enjoyable. … Well, everybody’s happy nowadays. Most of us.

And Mark Ellen in the NME review of the tour complains that Joy Division are “depressing … oppressive … laboured … and …excruciating.”  Can’t please all of the people…