Joy Division’s post-punk masterpiece “Unknown Pleasures” turns 40 this year. NME just republished an interview with two of the three surviving members of Joy Division — bassist Peter Hook and drummer Stephen Morris — about creating what is arguably one of the most influential albums of all time. Meanwhile, the surviving band members have invited ten video directors to create new music videos for each song on the album. Below is the first video for “I Remember Nothing,” directed by Helgi & Hörður. From the NME:
Was there anything that (producer) Martin Hannett did or asked you to do that was a bit too much?
Morris: “I was alright with what he was asking us to do mostly, although he did make me use the aerosol can on the 12-inch version of ‘She’s Lost Control’ like you see in Control. He shut me in a room with a can of tape-cleaning fluid and made me press it in time with the song. By the end, the booth was just filled with noxious fumes. I think he was just trying to kill me. If I’d have lit up a fag, the whole of Strawberry Studios would have gone up in smoke.”
Is it strange seeing that (album cover) design getting reproduced on just about anything and everything?
Hook: “We never actually did an official ‘Unknown Pleasures’ T-shirt until 1994 but they got bootlegged all over the world. When we got investigated by the taxman because of the Haçienda being all fucked up, he said that he couldn’t find any receipts for ‘Unknown Pleasures’ T-shirts. We told him we were a punk band and we didn’t believe in that kind of self-promotion. He said that he thought we were either lying or just completely stupid and he ended up fining us anyway. So we had to pay a load of money for not declaring profits on a T-shirt that we didn’t do!”
“Joy Division’s ‘Unknown Pleasures’ at 40: How they made the unimpeachable proto-goth masterpiece” (NME)
“Joy Division’s Unknown Pleasures reimagined for new video series” (Vinyl Factory)
And of course for the definitive story of Joy Division, don’t miss Jon Savage’s excellent new book This Searing Light, The Sun and Everything Else: Joy Division: The Oral History.
