There have been a number of times in the last twenty years when I have put one track or another as the soundtrack to accompany a break-up, travesty, or disaster, and I highly recommend them. Few bands affected the punk/goth scene quite like Joy Division, which also left a deep an impression on their fans. Although the death of the frontperson bestows legendary status and critical praise on a band, the music of Joy Division was, and still is, a special sound.

Formed in the summer of 1976 in Manchester, England, Joy Division's initial line-up consisted of Ian Curtis (vocals), who answered an advertisement for a band seeking a singer, placed by Peter Hook (bass), Terry Mason (drums), and Bernard "Dicken Albrecht Rubble" Sumner (guitar). The band went through a few drummers (Mason, due to reported lousy drumming, went on to manage the band for a time), first with Mason, then Tony Tabac, then Steve Brotherdale, and finally settling upon Steven Morris.

Choosing a name for the band was another hurdle. "Stiff Kittens" was bandied about at one point, but no one liked it. The guys spent a year or so as Warsaw, taken from the Bowie-Eno song, "Warszawa", on David Bowie's 1977 album Low. In November 1977, a London metal-band called Warsaw Pakt released their Needle Time album, so Warsaw, with nothing still officially released, changed their name to "Joy Division."

The way the story reads in every single source for Joy Division information is: the band took their name from the term "joy divisions," described in a sado-masochistic novel by Karen Cetinsky, called The House of Dolls, as the "line of huts where women conscripts were to service German soldiers with sexual pleasure." This may not necessarily be exactly what the German’s were doing, but they did have something along those lines. The band's first gig as Joy Division was on January 25th, 1978.

After being introduced to Rob Gretten (April 14th, 1978), who became their manager (replacing Mason), they began to garner increased attention, including praise from English TV personality Tony Martin. In May that year, they recorded what was to be their debut album, but due to a producer mixing in synthesizer sound, the band balked at releasing it. This is now available as the self-titled recording, Warsaw.

Playing the opening night at The Factory, Tony Martin's club in Manchester lead to playing the Granada television show, Granada Reports. Then they signed to Martin's new Factory label in October. Joy Division contributing two tracks to Factory's first EP, A Factory Sample, the sales of which earned Factory a tidy profit of 87 pounds. On December 27th, 1978, Joy Division played its first London concert, and for another first, actually charged people to get in to hear and see them, a whole 60 pence (about $1.00, give or take). Ian Curtis was diagnosed with Epilepsy, the same month, after a seizure in the band van. In January, 1979, John Peel recorded them in the first of his legendary Peel Sessions. They recorded the first Joy Division album to be released to the public, Unknown Pleasures, in April.

Things were finally taking off for the band, and success was at their feet, begging them to take it. In November 1979, and again in May 1980, Joy Division received two offers of $1 million from Warner Brothers US for distribution rights and videos, but the loyal Factory label band did not take WB up on their offer.

Joy Division toured Europe between December 1979 and January 1980. The band was recording the material, by March 1980, that would become the single Love Will Tear us Apart, as well as the full-length record Closer.

On May 19th, 1980, Joy Division was scheduled to leave on their first American tour. The night before, singer Ian Curtis went home to his Macclesfield, England home that he shared with his wife Deborah and young daughter Natalie. His wife figures that sometime after midnight, after drinking a bottle of whisky, putting Iggy Pop's The Idiot (1977) on the record player, and writing her a long rambling goodbye note, he then tied a rope to a clothes rack and hung himself in the kitchen. Deborah found him kneeling on the floor, with the noose around his neck.

One popular urban myth is that Curtis stood on a block of ice and waited for it to melt, but this just isn't so, according to his wife, and she's the one who found him. Although the theories and speculation as to why abound, about whether it was the depressants that he had been prescribed to try and keep at bay the epilepsy, or the guilt and sorrow of having an affair over which his wife planned leaving him, no one really knows. But with the suicide of Curtis, Joy Division had been killed as well. The rest of the band continued playing as New Order, but it was definitely not the same band, nor the same sounds.