Chapter and Verse: New Order, Joy Division, and Me

“Los Angeles produced the Beach Boys; Manchester produced Joy Division,” writes former Joy Division band member Sumner. The Beach Boys’ music was full of “warmth and sunshine,” while Joy Division’s music was “cold, sparse, and, at times, bleak,” like Manchester. In meandering style, Sumner tells a story that is also sparse and bleak. In the absence of a stable family life, Sumner and his friends, including his future bandmate Peter Hook, discover music on the rough-and-tumble street corners of Manchester; he acknowledges that the music from the movie The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly was the first music to “knock him sideways.” From his first gig—at the Electric Circus in Manchester—he learns how to be a performer, and the songs that make up Joy Division’s most famous album, Unknown Pleasures, grow out of that gig. Singer Ian Curtis’s suicide on the eve of the band’s first American tour dramatically alters the musical landscape for Joy Division, but out of the ashes of that band rises New Order, fronted by Sumner and Hook, whose music grows increasingly popular through the 1980s. Rock and roll success leads to excess, as the members of New Order descend into endless partying and drug abuse. Sumner’s writing can flatten at times, but to fans of Joy Division and New Order, this will be a mere respite from an otherwise good story,. (Nov.)