Full disclosure - I don’t really like Joy Division or New Order, but if ever a book was going to make me like them, then “Decades” by John Aizlewood would be the closest thing to it.
Forever the darlings of the music critics, there has always been a sense that both groups are bulletproof and beyond true criticism. Like Berlin-era Bowie, Morrissey and The Smiths, someone has decided that THEY ARE IMPORTANT, and we need to keep talking about them, even when they’re being rubbish. Luckily, John Aizlewood is very good at talking about Joy Division and New Order. This book is for both hardcore fans and those whose knowledge extends only to knowing that Joy Division did “Love Will Tear Us Apart” and New Order did that surprisingly good World Cup song.
As author John Aizlewood maintains in his history of the two bands, Ian Curtis “meant it”. Indeed, I think this is a crucial factor in their lasting importance. Dying young, ostensibly on the cusp of greatness, his legend remains preserved in aspic because he didn’t live long enough to become rubbish. Aizlewood writes vividly and economically on the early years of the band members and offers insightful analyses on each album and single; this is a real fan speaking. Lucid “sleeve notes” sidebars accompany the dissection of each album.
Emerging from the “dirty old town” of postwar Manchester, a deprived yet indomitable city, grammar school boys Bernard Dicken (later Albrecht then Sumner) and Peter “Hooky” Woodhead bonded at school (sort of) over a shared love of music and misbehaviour. On meeting the intense and married Ian Curtis, the band Warsaw was formed, to some acclaim, with Stephen Morris eventually warming the drum stool. As Aizlewood memorably puts it, only death would change the lineup. After a necessary name-change, Joy Division were born, honing their dystopian music as a reaction to the post-industrial surroundings of Manchester. Aizlewood writes unsensationally on the suicide of Ian Curtis, quoting music press obits of the time, one of which claimed Ian’s death “froze” Joy Division in an eternal moment of almost making it. To do that, they would have to reinvent themselves as New Order, recruiting Stephen Morris’ girlfriend, Gillian Gilbert, on keyboards.
All of that band’s hits & misses, highs & lows, splits & reunions, solo projects of varying quality and nightclub-owning shenanigans are examined by Aizlewood as New Order initially struggle to exorcise the ghosts of Ian Curtis and Joy Division. The biggest-selling 12” record (remember them?) of all time, “Blue Monday”, would change all that. New Order’s latter years are a litany of strained inter-band relationships, financial mismanagement and Hooky’s alcoholism; painful to read but sadly essential when discussing this particular band’s history.
Saturated with cultural references from one of the greatest ever music eras and fully illustrated with photographs, (complete with irreverent captions), “Decades” is erudite but also incredibly funny; John Aizlewood eschews the usual pretentiousness that Joy Division engender in favour of a writing style which borders on satire. But his admiration for the music comes through strongly. The result is as good a history of Joy Division and New Order (including all the awkward things associated with them) that we could ever hope for. “Decades” is an outstanding, coffee-table-friendly history of two of the most interesting bands ever to come out of Britain.
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