Fandom, Image and Authenticity

Note to readers: While I have meticulously edited and researched this work, I did find when going back to edit/add/proof-read my references an interesting phenomenon: many of the more ‘gossipy’ style websites I had previously used do not have a backlog of ‘stories’ past a certain date. I have included all websites where information originated from here. However, this situation creates an interesting illustration of how even the ‘news’ can be edited, destroyed or evolved — and how quickly these changes can spread.

The main facts within the mythology of Joy Division remain unchanging, there will always be a handful of truisms which time cannot erode. Dates of birth, where the band recorded songs, shows performed, and place of death for Curtis are unshakeable, known. Yet the theme of whom and what the band was differs depending on location. Thus Joy Division continues to evolve long past the suicide of Curtis, the demise of the band, the release of any new material.

Ian Curtis was the lead singer and lyricist for post-punk Joy Division. Curtis, the band’s front man, presents an ideal archetype to closely examine the rapid evolution and rupture, via image, of mediated memory and speed of technology. Born in Manchester in 1956, Curtis lived in and around Macclesfield for the entirety of his life. Though a good student, Curtis always wanted to be a part of the music business, his youthful idols included Iggy Pop, David Bowie and the Velvet Underground. A fateful concert, the Sex Pistols at Manchester’s Free Trade Hall in 1976, gave Curtis the confidence that he, too, could perform in a band.¹

Hagiography, the study of saints, provides a template to analyse the increased importance placed on specific mediatised figures in popular culture. The creation, evolution, problems and maintenance of the canonising process bears striking similarities to the mechanisms propelling the idolisation of Curtis and Cobain. In this section, I will be examining the similarities between the hagiography process, the making and sustaining of saints in many contemporary organised religions, with the apparatus of media, marketing and evolution of the dead celebrity as a valued icon of commodity.

The branding of Joy Division and Ian Curtis, as well as Nirvana and Kurt Cobain, offer a complex montage of the importance of the brand in relation, especially, to a perceived authenticity. While the posthumous similarities between the ideas attributed to Curtis and Cobain are many, a glaring difference exists in the sales of the actual albums sold by the bands that made them famous. While Nirvana have one of the best-selling albums of all time with Nevermind ( Prince.org , 2014), McLaughlin (2012: 104) points out that, ‘Joy Division’s sub-cultural standing has never translated into straightforward commercial success’, as ‘… the mystique surrounding Joy Division has always been way out of proportion to their record sales’. The band, in Simon Frith’s (1996: 15) view, ‘are one of the significant “market failures” in rock’. Curtis biographer Lindsay Reade (Gee, 2007) notes, ‘I worked out from the start to the end of his life until the end, he [Curtis] only made $4167.75 [£2,500] in total’. Yet the actual sales and financial success while the band was active seem unimportant to the 21st -century audience; the lasting ideas which can be recycled and repeated have become the true lasting value as illustrated through the ubiquitous items available bearing images related to the singers. Using the lens of their ‘brand’, the perpetuation of tattoos, pop culture reference and consumer goods around the world provide a tangible body of material to examine the pursuit of capturing the intrinsic quality of ‘realness’: an impossible task, as it is only the replicated image left.

Curtis’s own former bandmate, bass player Hook, has been accused of cashing in on the Curtis myth. After the 2007 break-up of New Order,¹ Hook (Bainbridge, 2010) was ‘… approached by the city council of Macclesfield, Curtis’s hometown’, to perform with the rest of the living members of Joy Division (who created New Order after Curtis’s death) (ibid.). When that did not get off the ground, Hook decided to put his own group together and perform Joy Division songs. He originally wanted to recruit guest vocalists to fill the role of Curtis; however, ‘they were all scared by the rabid online criticism’, Hook was accused of riding the ghost of Joy Division and ‘… capitalising on his dead friend’s legacy’ (Nissim, 2011b).² He then created his own band, the Light, which initially embarked on a world tour playing Joy Division’s first album, Unknown Pleasures. A year later, the group followed up by criss-crossing the globe and performing Joy Division’s second, posthumous record, Closer. The concert promised to reveal never-before-seen videos and photographs of the band, along with anecdotes about the group, provided by Hook. The tours showcase Hook’s seeming uncanny ability to recall, in detail, events that took place over 30 years ago. His photographic memory, whether regurgitating tales of the long-dead Curtis, or literally (re) writing the history of Manchester in the late 1970s/early 1980s for a 21st century audience, has drawn criticism.³

Film has proved to be a perfect vehicle for the dead to further their influence and expand their reach to modern audiences from beyond the grave. Cinema offers another opportunity for the post-mortem canonisation that creates an idealised icon, re-invented and re-imagined for the big screen. The audience is interacting with this recapitulation of the singers, as produced to perpetuate interest and draw in ticket sales. This character comes to replace the rocker in popular memory, as the real and the virtual become intertwined in meaning, ‘… real life … becoming indistinguishable from the movies’ (Adorno and Horkheimer (1944/1972: 12)).

In their track ‘Novelty’, Joy Division exemplify Andy Warhol’s famously predicted 15-minutes of fame dilemma. What is the antidote for staying relevant, fresh and hip eternally? The front page of the ‘news’ places seeming equal importance on weight loss, war and celebrity break-ups. Who is to ‘blame?’