Customer Reviews

Touching from a Distance: Ian Curtis and Joy Division

5 star:		(29)
4 star:		(24)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

In this book, Deborah Curtis gives an honest account of the story of her life as she became involved with Ian Curtis, as teenage friend, wife, and mother of his child. She does an excellent job of expressing her thoughts and feelings as she describes how their life was together, from when they first met, the time she was first introduced to punk music by Ian, their marriage at a very young age, the evolution of Joy Division and Ian's "stardom," the struggles she faced with balancing the care of their child while trying to make ends meet while her husband was out and about with the band and/or his mistress, as well as coping with the violent mood swings and epileptic fits that Ian underwent. In addition, the reader gains an insightful and behind-the-scenes look at Joy Division and the workings of the music world. The lifestyles of musicians may look all glamorous on the outside, but the road getting there is far from being anything glamorous, as well as pitted with weasels and parasites preying to latch onto the next rising star.

I think that Deborah Curtis' story clearly illustrates that if one is not wanting help, no matter how many people there are willing and able to help, there is no helping to be had by that person. Ian Curtis clearly did not want help. Deborah Curtis honestly portrays the helplessness she felt as well as, understandably, the exhaustion one cannot help feeling when dealing with a difficult person. As Deborah Curtis points out in her book, despite all the turns of circumstances and dire outcomes that could make someone want to commit suicide, dying at a young age is something Ian had always wanted to achieve. Ian Curtis chose his lifestyle accordingly for the inevitable to occur, to reach his desire to become a legendary "James Dean" figure. Deborah claims that she felt like she was being played upon as a character in her husband's "drama' of a life. There is only so much relating one can do with such a controlling person, only so much one can learn about him, thus creating the enigma that he still is today and still has people wondering.

Ian Curtis, a mesmeric frontman and renowned lyricist, is every bit deserved of his mythical-iconic status. So, do you want to hear 'the story' recounted from the perspective of his cheated wife? Well, I did. And admittedly, it WAS an intriguing read, revealing a man full of faults but ultimately a dedicated, hard-working person who painstakingly forged a promising musical career. Sadly, however, it was his escalating personal problems that ironically became his group's 'selling point'.

Before the suicide that boosted record sales and confirmed Curtis' status among legends, the music press were already drawing attention to his burgeoning problem with epilepsy. Spurred on by his frantic, spasmodic dancing, live audiences must have seemed like eager spectators in a freak-show, baying for the crescendo of an on-stage fit. While this focal-point may have generated the hype the band needed in a highly-competitive industry, to Ian - whose depression was compounding his illness - the press reviews struck some disturbing parallels close to the bone ("In his opinion they were like psychiatric reports, even using the appropriate terminology and references"). Deborah reveals a man deeply embarrassed of his illness, yet obviously aware of its play in his desperate will for success. She portrays a man of contradictions, a Jekyll-and-Hyde figure: 'one-of-the-lads' to his bandmates and friends, while concealing a darker personality that sought refuge in thoughtful literature (Hesse, Dostoyevsky, Conrad, Ballard), held an interest in Nazism, and was fascinated by "extreme concepts and philosophies". Not to mention a death wish.

The book briefly dips into Ian's trouble-free childhood and drug-experimenting adolescence, but concentrates mainly on the period of their courtship/marraige that coincided with the rise of Joy Division and hit the rocks when Ian began his affair with the Belgian woman Annik Honore. Deborah interestingly sheds light on Ian's strongly-held (and very serious) romantic notions of rock'n'roll suicide and death, and expresses her shocking opinion that "he engineered his own hell and planned his own downfall". He is described as a habitual depressive whose problem took a marked dive for the worse as his epileptic condition became debilitating, exacerbated by the barbiturates he was issued. Little was known about effective ways to treat epilepsy. Doctors showed Ian little sympathy or care. Remember, this was back in the 'pull-yourself-together' age of 1970's Britain which, particularly in this book, appears like the Dark Ages. Mental illness and 'mysterious' conditions such as epilepsy were airbrushed from public-consciousness, and dubiously treated.

Nowadays, in hindsight, Curtis' lyrics may read as obvious cries-for-help or predictions of tragedy - even suicide notes -but at the time, nobody close to Ian was paying enough attention to realize the danger in their increasingly extreme content. Deborah was shocked upon hearing the darkly-confessional lyrics of the 'Closer' LP (released just after his death). She says that had she heard it beforehand she "could have gained an insight into what was happening in his mind". And got some help. Couple this with the fact they had a one-year-old daughter, and it simply adds to the tragedy. However, she does suggest Ian's suicide as something probably inevitable.

Deborah's dicovery of Ian's body in the kitchen of their Macclesfield terraced house - he'd polished off a bottle of whisky and hung himself, Iggy Pop's 'The Idiot' still spinning on the turntable - is sequenced in chilling dreamlike flashback. And, an example of the shameful heartlessness of the music industry is given as bassist Peter Hook (gererally good guy throughout) is shown as offering Deborah "one of the few expressions of sympathy shown to me by Ian's music business friends". Ian died at just 23 years old.

The book is an emotional trawl through a dark, difficult past that raises many unanswered questions and much speculation. Being the only biography of Ian's life by somebody close to him, it cannot help but present a one-sided view that - for Ian's sake - could do with some counterbalance from elsewhere. While Deborah DOES glance over the kinder aspects of Ian's nature (he loved animals / took an "exremely personal interest" in his job helping the disabled etc.) she seems a little too-eager to emphasize his negative traits, frequently listing his selfish, cruel and sometimes bizarre behaviour towards her. In places, her writing makes you wonder what she actually saw in him in the first place. There are also some petty moments, such as when she complains about Ian's "racism" while forgetting that she earlier mentioned his love for reggae and going to clubs "where white people didn't normally go".

Ultimately, the book is a riveting - if one-sided - read. However, with Deborah's recent solo-insistence upon pushing ahead for 'the movie' (always a bad idea), it quite naturally throws suspicion upon what the project was actually accomplished for. Nevertheless, to any Joy Division fan, or indeed anybody interested in Ian Curtis' writing, the inclusion of the full lyrics alone makes this book not only well-worth the cover price but an essential possession.

I read Deborah Curtis' book a couple of months ago and have been surprised that I have not felt the same about the memory of Ian Curtis that I had since I heard he had died so many years ago. I saw Joy Division in concert when I was 15 years old in London and a couple of times on TV, I was hooked. I grew up wondering what kind of life this man had, what he was experiencing, what made him so bizarre on stage (see the video "Here are the Young Men"). I have grown up and for the most part still wondered about these unanswered questions. I hoped that reading Deborah's book would help me understand a bit more and I was not disappointed. The book was not about the music, but about the man, his dreams and his failures. This is what we as fans did not see, we only saw this pail white man with thrashing arms singing about stuff that we did not necessarily understand, but knew he saw singing for us. Thank you Deborah for a wonderful insight into your life with Ian Curtis. Hopefully he can now rest in peace.

This is brilliant. For the first time, Joy Division fans are given an insight not only into Ian Curtis, the mysterious captivating frontman of a band, but also Ian as the person; the family man, the human being.

This isn't (as other reviews might suggest) the memoir of a bitter and resentful wife, desperately wanting a small piece of the limelight that her husband so coldly denied her. She gives credit where it is due. She continually refers to Ian's 'caring and generous' side, the love she felt for him before and during their marriage, and how lost she felt when her love eventually wasn't returned. The reader is taken on a journey through the life of Deborah Curtis after she met Ian, how she was made to feel at the different stages, what it felt like to be caught in the trappings of mundane 'everyday' life as her childhood sweetheart realised his dreams of a successful band.

It is true, Ian was a troubled person. Deborah Curtis, instead of pretending to understand the motives for his actions, tells the situation from her point of view; she felt alienated, misinformed, lied to, isolated, abandoned. She doesn't pretend to know her husband well enough to be able to say 'this WAS the reason he did this' etc. Although she was his wife, the closest person to Ian, she, like everyone else, ultimately had no clue as to what went on in his sadly tormented mind.

A common problem I've noticed with books such as this is that, when the 'facts' are not entirely clear, the author will infer truths and make it dramatic. This doesn't happen in this book. When Deborah is sure of what happened, she writes it. But so often, she seems as alienated as everyone else in Ian's life, and she expresses this also. This is effective because it makes the book so real. When a person, especially a successful musican, commits suicide, it's so easy to get caught up in what THEY must have been feeling at the time. This book makes such a topic all the more 'real', because it shows exactly how others close to the person can be affected. It's a sad read, at times confusing, and entertaining. But above all, it is honest.

Essential.

Deborah Curtis certainly takes much of the luster off of thisextraordinary artist. Getting away from the "he said, shesaid" banter that dominates most of these reviews, she does make clear something none of the myth-makers has given enough attention to: Ian Curtis was suffering from a very serious neurological illness, and no one surrounding him in the music business was taking this enough into account, either before or after his suicide. When you and others don't understand the extent and scope of your illness, it leads to feelings of failure and despair. The combination of his illness and the drugs he was on would be enough to drive anyone over the edge, with or without a "Bizarre Love Triangle." I know whereof I speak, because I also have a neuroligical illness and have taken some of the same powerful medications prescribed for epilepsy. Ian was pushed beyond his limits by his "adoring" manager and sometimes bullied by his bandmates for his inevitable collapses.

There may be many things Deborah didn't understand about her husband, but in all fairness, he got what he asked for in a wife. Women's lib hadn't reached the outskirts of Manchester in the early seventies, apparently, and Ian falls firmly into the retro male chauvinist pig category, despite his forays into eye shadow and fluffy pink funfur jackets. (Her first description of seeing him looking out over the wasteland below his housing project, thus attired screams out for film treatment.) The dead-end jobs, the stifling working class mores, the getting married straight from home is all too depressingly reminiscent of the lives of some of my own relatives. Listening to Joy Divisions music it's easy to read a more sophisticated backdrop into it. Seeing where the darkness actually came from is interesting.

This is a very sad and true book. The only reason I gave it four stars instead of five is that it is missing essential information about Deborah. Did she ever remarry? Find happiness with someone else? Did she get any decent money from record sales? And what about daughter Natalie? I'd have liked to know more about how Deborah developed and matured as a person, but,as in her marriage to Ian, she still seems to think her place is in the background. In pandering to the fans, she loses sight of the fact that we're reading this because we also want to know about her. Photographs of the teenaged young couple are absolutely priceless.

I found Touching from a Distance by Deborah Curtis to be very honest. I don't feel she is a bitter person trying to slam the legend of gothic god Ian Curtis. Instead I found her to be very kind in her memories of the husband who abandoned her and their daughter when he found something more interesting to do. She was loyal to her husband then and she is loyal to him now. I enjoyed the book for many reasons, first it is an easy read, not too much of the boring history most biographies have. You experience England's pop culture of the late 70's from someone who was there, and I learned a little of the suffering epilepsy brings. I suggest this book only to those who want truth, not for those who insist on seeing Ian Curtis as a martyr for youth or a dark misunderstood genius. He was human and at times inhuman, but he did leave an invaluable legacy. I was disappointed in the lack of photos and would love to know what happened to Deborah Curtis (who I grew to like very much while reading Touching from a Distance) after her husband's death, what became of Annik, did Ms. Curtis ever get the royalities she so deserved and especially how was Natalie's life affected not only by losing her father but her father's fame? Deborah Curtis is not a door mat like some reviewers claim, she was in love and was desperate to save her marriage (she was 19 at the time of the wedding and 23 at the time she was a widow give her a break!!!!), she is honest and opened her life to a lot of strangers. Great book Ms. Curtis...bon couarge.

"Touching from a Distance" is an interesting book written from the most intimate persective possible. Ian Curtis is held in a very high regard by his fans and some strange mythology has evolved around him. He is often viewed as someone who was above human nature and above his fellow artists. His anti-glamorous appearance and epilepsy as seem to have given hima light of meek innocence by his most subjective of historians, his die-hard fanbase. I am a die hard Joy Division fan but I am in no way surprised by the violent controlling behavior of Ian Curtis as described in this book. So I guess he was (and is) toching from a distance but up close he was a troubled individual. While I am sure that that Deborah Curtiss, is still working out the trauma of a relationship that ended abruptly 25 years ago I certainly don't think the story is exaggerated. I found it amazing that even though she allowed him to follow his ambitions, she wanted to remain a normal family and did not become a "rocker wife". This book is a fine and interesting look into the life of a troubled soul and how fame was the catalyst for his final decision. I recommend the work highly and it is a must read for JD fans as well as anyone who is trying to figure out the Artist-Suicide connection. I thought Repeatedly about Sylvia Plath, Elliot Smith and, of course, Kurt Cobain while reading it.

I Found a couple things particularly interesting about the book and the first one is that Mrs. Curtis repeatedly blames Ian Curtis' behavior on managers, band mates and record execs who want to exploit or simply influence him. I couldn't tell if this was some sort of strange apology for his behavior or simply that she loved him too much to see reality as many abuse victims do. In reality there should be no excuse for his bahavior but admitedly Curtis was a visionary who really worked toward his singular goal of making music. From reading this work and reading between the lines I get a feeling that he was emotionally despondent and all together unsympathetic as a man and even had his managers not pushed him toward it, he would have certainly still not been the family man Mrs. Curtis wanted him to be. I am sure that he had emotions of love, I have heard his music, I think the problem was in the expression. Interestingly my struggle with Deborah's portrayal of her husband didn't get in the way my apreciation for how she portrayed him tenderly even while she described his affair.

Another thing required for discussion is Curtis's alleged right wing affiliations. The Author and his wife explains his (...) fascinations and his love of order and organization but any definite (...) relation is only alluded to requiring a cognitive leap to make the connection. By this logic Michael Jackson too should be a die hard (...) Many artists and thinkers who grew up in the wake of WWII were deeply affected by the tumult of the war and what facist governments were. By writing songs such as "They walked in a Line" Curtis is not describing his fascist lust but simple interest in the goings on of the 20th century's most important event.

I am getting completely off subject and returning to the book I will sum it up by saying that it certainly must take courage to pen such a work. I am glad that Mrs. Curtis wrote it and am actually smitten by her lucid style and the way she knew how to highlight the important stuff, not dwell on dull and sad things and make there relationship seem loving even during the worst moments was amazing. In a relationship that seemed like a drawn-out practical joke the punch line of which being a dead husband in the kitchen this book is not sarcastic or gloomy. It is important that we do our best to understand why suicide occurs and my conjecture is that it would have happened to Ian Curtis regardless of his fame. I recommend this book highly: It is a quick read and well written. JD Fans need to read this one.



Ted Murena

When I first started going out with my girlfriend, the first book she lent me was this one. She knew Joy Division was one of my favorite groups so it was fitting. I severely enjoyed this book and I definetly recommend this to anyone who wants to know the story closest to the truth. We will never know why Ian killed himself but at least this gives us a backstory to one of the most mysterious frontmen in music history. What I liked most about this book is how Deborah described Ian. She didn't try to sugarcoat the myth by telling the world what a great husband and father Ian was. No, she told the outright truth. Ian was a controlling, malipulating person. Although he wrote some of the most touching songs ever, it doesn't excuse his actions as a person. It also told about the affair he had with a groupie. Another good point to this book was the fact that all the Joy Division lyrics were printed in the back of the book including some unfinished songs and lyrics. i also enjoyed the recollections of Ian's early life and the starting of Warsaw and Joy Division. It is real sad that Ian couldn't have been around to write most touching songs such as Atmosphere and Decades, but at least we have the music he and Joy Division left behind and a book written by his widow, Deborah. An excellent read, front to back!

This book is billed as the insider's account that I had been looking for on the life of Ian Curtis. But it didn't really paint a clear picture of this influential musical genius for me. It didn't reveal who Ian Curtis really was. For the most part the book seemed to consist of chronological facts ("Ian did this...then we did this...and then such and such...") listed in a detached style as opposed to written, almost like the style of a simple diary. So I never got the inside confession of where the lyrics for "Dead Souls" came from, or if Ian's epilepsy had started before he wrote and recorded "She's Lost Control." What I concluded at the end was that this book was a disappointment because the author, Ian's own wife, never got to know him. Then it hit me, that this book conveys something very sad in crystal clear fashion about the music industry's idol- he never let his own wife get to know who he was, nor anyone else. Never in 10+ years. And that tells us very indelibly who Ian Curtis was. So now my disappointment lays with the truth of Ian's coldness and selfishness, and not with the book which turns out to be pretty succesful in its biographical portrait after all. Don't expect the world, but read it all the same. You won't learn the inside thoughts and motivations of this great singer and songwriter, but you will be able to feel the choking emotional isolation with which he imprisoned those who loved him most.

Realistic fans of Joy Division will love this book for the intimate window it provides on a troubled but brilliant man. Silly groupie-types who prefer the doomed-angst-angel myth that has grown around Ian Curtis will be outraged, because the book portrays him as he was: a flawed human being. I suggest these kids stick with their fantasies. Reality is so much more fascinating, though. Deborah Curtis writes with great economy, fairness, and insight, and her book is a godsend to the serious alternative music fan.