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errr... I'm ready for my close up now...

Posted by dave c (A) on September 22, 2008 at 14:31:33

In Reply to: Dave C: point of follow up from Posts below re: JD posted by Sordidman on September 20, 2008 at 09:26:51:

"One would think that watching that film, that Joy Division were simply a northern England rock band. WTF??"

S'man, to Debbie Curtis wasn't a star, a poet, a performer or anything other than a man who was her husband and the father of her child.
Your sense of an apocalyptic early-Thatcherite north of England may be pretty accurate in a Blake-ian satanic mills way, but that was just life in a northern town.
It's grim oooop there.
But at that time Manchester and the north east in general had a good claim to have replaced London as both party and culture central.
Joy Division came out of a healthy music scene and if the clubs and venues were not much by today's standards then they weren't much anywhere in Britain, and believe me I used to go to them all over the country far too much!
But there was not a great sense of being ground down in those scenes.
Also there are a lot of people who are prone to fits and they do not all kill themselves.
Now it is a moot point whether or not it is better to be in a position where some type of fit is seen by your audience as part of the "performance" and post punk Britain had become the atrocity exhibition that that suggests.
The Warholian NY scene had been lionised for some time, aging junkies and beat poets were all the rage. Iggy was having one of his periodic rebirths.
Something had to bring Nico to Salford!
Although if memory serves me correctly she was living in London at that time. I only really remember seeing her around London, not the north east, but that might be anything from bad memory to coincidence.
Anyway, there was a support network around Manchester and Curtis was, I think, seen as someone special within that.
So his life could have been a lot worse.
For every Curtis there are a thousand other young wanna-bes taking boring jobs and waving goodbye to secondary school poetry, taking wives and mortgages who do not kill themselves.
I think you are unfair to dismiss Debbie as a "jilted, bitter, young housewife who neither understood the significance of the music, nor Ian."
First, I think you misused "jilted", but who wouldn't be bitter after their spouse committed suicide?
And was literally left holding the baby, as she had done each time he went off on tour, to record or whatever.
Did they marry too young? Of course.
But, at least to my way of thinking, you stand by your responsibilities.
This was not a case of a highly talented young man being held back by a shrewish woman.
It wasn't.
But of a troubled man whose signalling for help was seen as "art", as "performance", and who was ultimately, in my opinion, let down by those around him.
His safety net had a rip through it.
Curtis found a too strong appeal in the 18/19th century vision of the sick artist; and so did his audience.
I know that he did not enjoy the music BUSINESS, in the sense of touring and everything that went with it, any more.
But I don't think he had any idea of what to replace it with.
As an aside, I had previously worked with a circus (a proper circus!) and Curtis was not the only person/muso/punker fascinated by that older form of travelling show.
Seen as a place where freaks and all sorts of outsiders could find a home.
The reality is not as comforting.
The band was certainly the way out for all of them.
Traditionally in working class Britain it is either boxing or soccer and since the 60s, music and fashion had added alternatives to the mix.
My roots in the east end of London were not so different.My dad played for Arsenal youth teams but went back to the factory (literally) to pay the rent.
I trialed for West Ham.
Everyone from that background (who can conceive of it) wants a way out.
That is the nature of the British class structure.
But do you think Curtis caved in because he couldn't see past the grim greyness?
He of all people was actually in a position to "get out".
He was the last person who would/should/could have given up under the weight of British history.
Perhaps, like Morrison, (in my opinion) he found his newly made world a bit of a let down.
Every bit as superficial and cheap as the one he had left behind.
Morrison chose to hide his good looks under fat and a beard, disdainful of his own golden goose.
Curtis was different.
Ultimately, and before I start to think of the chances of turning this into a book, I think he was a coward.
Rather than face the consequences of his own choices and the hand he was dealt, but with a future that 99% of people would take in a flash, he gave up.
He couldn't face it.
He wasn't a heroic figure. He was a man.
He wasn't a godlike artist who could have saved the world. He was a man.
If you think that "most importantly, he was keenly aware of Herzog" outweighs "a stupid, insipid, whiny, stereotypical northern English housewife" then that is your choice to make.
But in view of your awareness of class strictures and oppression I am surprised at those words.
If you think that he couldn't face the "subtle, evil, socialized oppressions that prevent anything from ever changing" then that is your choice.
But I think he couldn't face himself.

I haven't gone back to rewrite or edit this so any errors are as they are.

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