Unknown Pleasures: Inside Joy Division (31 page)

“This was the gig where Dave Pils and his girlfriend, Jasmine, introduced themselves to us. They ran Walthamstow Youth Centre, which is why we ended up playing there. Dave would become a big part of our lives. He became our roadie and friend and stayed with us for years. Every time we played in London we crashed at their place, which saved us a lot of money. A pair of lovely people. I wonder where they are now . . .”

“There’s a set list from this still knocking around, written by Steve: it starts with a track called ‘Soundtrack’, which became ‘Exercise One’; we thought it sounded soundtrack-y . . . It was exciting being in the Marquee, for obvious reasons, and it was really crowded, but the night was ruined by the fact that we had to drive home afterwards. The Cure never even acknowledged us. Everyone was rocking
except us: we just played then got dragged off to drive home, which was a bit of a downer.

“A band with a name like the Fireplace could only be in a collective.”

“Absolutely cracking. A fucking great set list, that one. I wouldn’t put ‘Disorder’ after ‘Glass’, mind you; I’d change that bit round. But that’s a great set list. Maybe it’s a bit up and down, though, come to think of it... So maybe it’s not that great a set list. Great songs, though.”

“That was very exciting, being filmed. Malcolm was a lovely geezer. His idea was to use us in a film he was doing, but in the end the film became more about us than anything else. There are photographs of that gig, too, taken by a very young Martin Ocomin, who started crawling round the stage while we were playing, right up into the drums. I kicked him up the arse and told him to piss off. Photographers, they think they’re it. If you want to annoy one just say ‘shared copyright’ – that should see them off.”

I met him years later and we laughed about it; he wanted an autograph, and I wrote, ‘I told you to fuck off.’

‘No,’ he said, ‘You told me to piss off.’”

Dave Pils’ girlfriend, Jasmine, was a youth worker looking after kids in Walthamstow, presumably trying to keep them on the straight and narrow or whatever, so it was a weird crowd. Very young kids there, running about, ignoring us, like a school-hall-type gig. I do remember being horrified when we saw the poster, though. Dave had designed it: a bunch of Nazis on a tank. We were hoping to put all that stuff behind us! Dave was also the singer in SX, the support band.

When Joy Division left the stage I felt emotionally drained. They are, without any exaggeration, an Important Band.

Ian Wood,
NME

“I liked OMD a lot as a group. I always thought they were really, really good; nice guys, too. Although it was those two who got me into cocaine, the bastards, at the premiere of
Pretty in Pink
. And come to think of it, wasn’t one of them responsible for Atomic Kitten?”

“This would have been the first gig for Final Solution, which was Colin Faver, who went on to become a big DJ – one of the house music pioneers in the South of England – and Kevin Millins, who went on to run Heaven for Virgin and became a great friend of ours. It led to some great gigs, more for New Order than Joy Division. Acklam Hall became a club later on, and Davina McCall used to do the door. I have a wonderful memory of her bending over the table in my hotel room, with her silver hot-panted bottom stuck right up in the air. I always remind her of it whenever I see her.

OMD also had a guitar stolen and were very upset.”

“Stuart James went on to become New Order’s roadie. I saved his life once in Texas.”

“I don’t think the Cure liked us. I think they resented us in some way, because we’d managed to stay cool, credible, and independent and they’d, well, sort of sold out a bit. The problem was on their side; it wasn’t on our side. But I think they thought,
Wish we were Joy Division.
”

“We did a series of three gigs with Fashion, both of us supporting John Cooper Clarke, and the idea was that we’d switch: Fashion would open one night then us the next. They were pretty big at the time but I hated their music. It was awful. They were supposed to open in London and us in Manchester. But we ended up being stiffed in London. They left us off the bill then insisted we went on first. It was bedlam backstage that night. Rob threatened everybody. The upshot was that we ended up going on before the doors had even opened. It was either that or don’t play. We played ‘Atmosphere’ and ‘Disorder’ to a completely empty room. Three people came in during ‘Digital’. The place was beginning to fill up when we finished our set.”

“Horrible gig. Fucking Fashion. I fucking hated ’em.”

“They went on first. HA!”

“Quite a pleasant session, this one. I remember Martin being very nice and helpful.”

“This was the first time we ever went over the Snake Pass and the van was so knackered it was really struggling up the hills. Twinny was really annoyed and reckoned he could run faster. So we took him up on it and he jumped out of the van to race us. Of course we beat him up the hill easy. By the time he joined us up at the top he was huffing and puffing, all red-faced, calling us bastards for not stopping. Me and Terry had eaten all his sweets while we waited. He didn’t talk to us all night for that.

If I remember rightly Phil Oakey and the other lads from the Human League helped us load in. They were very nice. I met the drummer from Manicured Noise here. It was her twenty-first. Stephanie. Lovely girl. She had a pet rat.”

“I’m pretty sure this was where Right Said Fred supported us.”

“I remember looking out the dressing room window and seeing a Ford Escort sat outside with the
Unknown Pleasures
logo on its bonnet. Cool, that was. This was also the gig where we met Section 25, who became great friends of ours. Ian and Rob took a shine to them and ended up producing their first single, which came out on Factory. That must have been a scream and I would have loved to have been there, because Rob and Ian were both hopeless at that sort of thing. Rob’s only advice when you were recording was, ‘Make it go
Woomph
.’ That was it. ‘Make it go
Woomph
.’ And Ian, well, he had the ear but he was useless at anything technical.

You may or may not know, but Larry out of Section 25 died recently, in 2010. Very sad. I’ll tell you one story about him that made me laugh so much. I mean, he was a proper ‘character’, and enjoyed fully the rock-’n’-roll lifestyle and some of its foibles, shall we say. His one true love was those flight simulators you get on the computer. What he used to like doing was staying up all night flying long-haul flights in real time. His brother Vinny was telling me that he’d done one where he’d been up all night, flying to New York from London, off his head, and crashed on landing. It had taken him eleven hours to get there! I tell you what, heaven’s got to be a lot livelier with that lot there. Him, Ian, Tony, Rob and Martin. What a crew.

But yes, the relationship between us and Section 25 was really very solid, much more so than with A Certain Ratio. They never had the acclaim we had and that was something that I think never bothered Section 25, whereas I think A Certain Ratio got annoyed because they felt in our shadow.”