About 40 people went to a concert in Manchester’s Lesser Free Trade Hall, watching an underground band called Sex Pistols. Four people out of 40 were inspired. They went on to be  the best post punk group, Joy Division.

Joy Division was a band formed in Salford, 1976. Formally known as Warsaw in 1977, changing the name in 1978 as Joy Division as to not be confused with a London based band called The Warsaw Pact. The group consists of vocalist, guitarist and lyricist Ian Curtis, guitarist and keyboardist Bernard Sumner, bassist Peter Hook and drummer Stephen Morris.

Joy Division would go on tour and perform a total of 40 concerts. Throughout these concerts, Ian Curtis would suffer severe epilepsy attacks during and off stage.

I think Joy Division shows how small things can really impact your life in some way or another. I say this because a simple Sex Pistols concert inspired four friends to make a band. When I listen to Joy Division it sounds like those gothic type of songs. It’s interesting to listen to, listening to the abstract instruments in the background and wonder off within the song.

The more you listen to the songs you can easily tell how the lead singer is feeling, or is going through. If you watch his performance he has melancholy eyes but he is really into his music. Throughout all of this, Ian was really suffering in his life. He had depression, continued to have seizures, and his affair with a Belgian journalist. On May 18 1980, Ian Curtis would kill himself. The band would disband in the honor of Ian Curtis.

“Ian’s lyrics were great, you were very lucky to have someone who wrote such fantastic lyrics, but we thought, ‘that’s really clever, he’s writing about somebody else, it’s great how he can get in the mind of another person.’ And then after his death, you look at it and think, ‘oh, it was all about him,’” said Morris.