“Is the music of Joy Division beautiful?”
“Some of it is. But some of it is not meant to be beautiful.”

Transmission is such a legendary song because of the way it draws you in. The bass and drums don’t change for the first two minutes, the guitar and vocals are just variations on a theme. The Kraftwerk-style repetitiveness of the song serves to intensify the peak when it comes, as Curtis screams down the mic and Strumner thrashes his guitar. Then the foot comes off the gas and the whole thing grinds to a halt. But you don’t need me to tell you how great Joy Division were.

Joy Division front man Ian Curtis hung himself at the age of 23, and is one of the most misunderstood figures in rock history. Whenever a rock star dies, the music press trot out the tired old clichés of stars burnt out on their own egotism and self-indulgence. The pattern was set by Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison and Jimi Hendrix during the first couple of years of the seventies, reinforced by Elvis’ bloated and undignified exit and the fate of semi-fictional rock star ‘Pink’ from Pink Floyd’s The Wall. It was even parodied in the legendary film This Is Spinal Tap, as the band explain to an interviewer curiously resembling Michael Moore the fate of one of their previous drummers.

Marty: What happened to Stumpy Joe?
Derek: Well, uh, it’s not a very pleasant story…but, uh, he died… uh…he choked on…the ac- the official explanation was he choked on vomit.
David: He passed away.
Nigel: It was actually, was actually someone else’s vomit. It’s not….
David: It’s ugly.
Nigel: You know. There’s no real….
Derek: You know they can’t prove whose vomit it was…they don’t have the facilities at Scotland Yard….
David: You can’t print, there’s no way to print a spectra-photograph…
Nigel: You can’t really dust for vomit.

Indeed, you can’t. But not all rock musicians die due to excessive use of drugs and hamburgers, and it’s not fair or accurate to lump Ian Curtis in with the rest of them. Richey Edwards from the Manic Street Preachers is another unusual rock casualty. In fact, the similarities between the death of Ian Curtis and the disappearance of Richey Edwards are incredible and it’s hard to accept that the similarities between them are just coincidences, especially considering that Edwards was such a huge admirer of Curtis.

Anyway. Recently Control, a biopic of Ian Curtis, was released to the cinema, and it’s easily the best thing I’ve seen this year. It’s not perfect- the other members of Joy Division are unfairly portrayed and the latter stages of Curtis’ life are rather dragged out- but these are minor flaws in a superb piece of work. If you’ve seen Twenty-Four Hour Party People, think of the first half of that film stretched out to over two hours, shot in gloomy monochrome with no famous actors but some excellent atmospheric camera work. Co-produced by Curtis’ widow Deborah and recently deceased Factory records founder Tony Wilson, the film is surely as accurate a portrayal of Ian Curtis as will ever be made.

So, what do we learn about him? Curtis grows up in a council flat in Macclesfield in the north of England, reading Beat poetry and listening to Lou Reed. He gets married young and takes an unexciting job finding work for people like himself at the local employment exchange. A less rock and roll guy would be hard to find; his demeanour, looks and dress is what you see every day in Britain. He’s just another cog in the machine, someone who you would expect to work the same job for forty years, raise some kids, grow fat and die from a heart attack or lung cancer.

Only difference is, Curtis has the poetic skill to express the frustration, stress and strain we experience when faced with the inevitability of such a future. Punk is the outlet for his rage and alienation. He joins a band after seeing the Sex Pistols play live and puts all this into his lyrics. Joy Division are a success, kick starting the scene which became known as post-punk.

But success does not bring Curtis escape. He is desperately poor until the band’s first album is released (1979’s Unknown Pleasures) and now has a child to support. After a seizure on the way back from a concert he is diagnosed with epilepsy and proscribed a cocktail of drugs whose side-effects are almost as bad as the illness itself. He has an affair with a Belgian music journalist and realises that his marriage was a mistake. He begins to lose control.

You can guess where this all ends up. The point is, this is not an Icarus story of a rock star who flew too high and was consumed by his own egotism. It is the story of a painfully ordinary person who faced the dilemmas that people face all the time. What makes his story continually fascinating is that Curtis had the talent to capture some of this in his lyrics during his short but prolific creative period with Joy Division. And it is no longer possible to listen to the music they created without thinking about Curtis’ death, particularly their second and final album (1980’s Closer, released after his suicide) and the last few singles the band released. Enjoy Atmosphere and Love Will Tear Us Apart, and go see Control if you at all can.