23 hours Ago By Brooke Ivey Johnson
Do you know the origin story of Joy Division’s band name?(Picture: Rob Verhorst/Redferns)It’s incredible how quickly facts that were once common knowledge become obscure tidbits, and it seems that the meaning behind the English rock band Joy Division’s name is no exception. Formed in 1976, the band – which was comprised of lead vocalist Ian Curtis, bassist Peter Hook, guitarist Bernard Sumner, and drummer Stephen Morris – became one of the most influential acts of the post-punk era. The eventual tragic suicide of lead singer Ian Curtis in 1980, on the eve of the band’s first North American tour – and the remaining member’s subsequent transformation into New Order – only added to the mythos surrounding the band.
It’s impossible to overstate how influential Joy Division was on popular music, particularly their first album, Unknown Pleasures. As NME puts it: ‘There can’t be many people left in the civilised world who haven’t, at one time or another, sat down and discussed the influence of Unknown Pleasures over the last few decades.’But before any of that could go down in music history, the group of lads from Salford needed one important thing to make them a band: A memorable name.
A recent thread on Reddit revealed that there are plenty of fans who are unaware of the story behind the band’s name, with one writing: ‘What does “Joy Division” mean anyway? Like happiness divided or what?’ Joy Division was comprised of Bernard Sumner (left), Ian Curtis (right), Peter Hook, and Stephen Morris (Picture: Rob Verhorst/Redferns)Another chimed in: ‘Apparently it’s a World War II reference?’ More informed fans soon chimed in with bits of the real story, but if you don’t have time to trawl Reddit to gather the facts, here’s the whole story all in one place. How was Joy Division formed?Sumner and Hook, childhood friends both around 19 or 20 years old in 1976, were so inspired after attending a Sex Pistols concert in Manchester that they decided to form a band of their own to follow in their punk hero’s footsteps. Hook later told Rolling Stone of that fateful night: ‘I’d been to see most groups — Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin, loads and loads of bands — and I’d never seen anything as chaotic or as exciting and as rebellious as that.
It was how I felt: You just wanted to trash everything. It sounded awful, and for some insane reason you had the blinding realization that you could do it.’Sumner agreed, telling the publication: ‘I thought they destroyed the myth of being a pop star, or of a musician being some kind of god that you had to worship.
In fact, a friend who was with me said, “Jesus, you could play guitar as good as that.”’The founding members of Joy Division saw Sex Pistols at Free Trade Hall in 1976 (pictured here) and were inspired to start their own group (Picture: Paul Welsh/Redferns)Certain that if the Sex Pistols could create a musical car wreck so chaotic it was impossible to look away, anyone could do it, Hook bought a bass guitar the very next day, and he and Sumner began recruiting members. Sumner found a used guitar, their friend Terry Mason, who had also attended the gig, bought a drum kit, and the trio attempted to recruit their school friend Martin Gresty as vocalist.
However, he declined because he had work lined up at a local factory. Around the same time, Ian Curtis and his friend Iain Gray – also barely 20 years old – were also toying around with the idea of creating a new band in the Manchester area. Sumner later said of the Sex Pistols gig: ‘I thought they destroyed the myth of being a pop star.
’ (Picture: Paul Welsh/Redferns)Gray remembers it: ‘We toyed with a few names, and he [Curtis] picked Warsaw, because that Bowie album was a big influential record with Ian at the time.’Sumner later recalled Curtis joining the band, telling Rolling Stone: ‘I first met Ian at a gig at the Electric Circus. It might have been the “Anarchy” tour — it might have been the Clash.
Ian was with another lad called Iain, and they both had donkey jackets, and Ian had “hate” written on the back of his.’He continued: ‘I remember liking him. He seemed pretty nice, but we didn’t talk to him that much.
I just remembered him. About a month later, when we decided to try and find a singer, we put an advertisement in Virgin Records in Manchester, which was the way that all groups formed during the punk era.Curtis was known for his distinctive and energetic performance style (Picture: Chris Mills/Redferns)‘We put an advertisement in there, and I got loads of headcases ringing me up.
Complete maniacs. Then Ian rang up, and I said, “Weren’t you the one I met at that gig, that Clash gig? With the other Iain?” — “That’s me,” he said. So I said, “Right, OK, you can be the singer then.
”’Leaving Gray behind, Curtis joined the band. After trying out three drummers, Stephen Morris joined, and the group was finally complete.What was Joy Division’s original name?Richard Boon, another friend of the original members who became their touring manager, first suggested the band go by ‘Stiff Kittens’ which the musicians rejected.
He printed the name on the poster for their first gig anyway, causing the band to declare they were named ‘Warsaw’ once on stage, the name Curtis and Gray had toyed around with previously. As Peter Hook remembered it: ‘We didn’t have a name, and Richard Boon wanted to advertise us. And we couldn’t decide, and in the end he said, “Well, what about Stiff Kittens?” Pete Shelley came up with it, and we said, “Oh, no, we don’t like that.
” He said, “Oh, all right then,” and then put it on the posters. On the night, we had to announce that we were called Warsaw, and not Stiff Kittens.’The band played a series of gigs as Warsaw and saw some success opening for Buzzcocks and playing various punk gigs around Manchester.
But it quickly became evident they required a more memorable name.Boon found, while booking some concerts in late 1977, that their name collided with Warsaw Pakt, a Ladbroke Grove-based act that was gaining some buzz after releasing an album within 24 hours of its recording.Why did Joy Division choose their name?While the rest of the band members were just excited to play music and hang out in the punk scene, Curtis was more of a visionary.
Gray recalled that Curtis ‘always had great fashion sense. He had these really smart Tonik pants, and he used to wear this RAF greatcoat all the time — it was utilitarian, Berlin 1935, that type of style.’Indeed, Curtis was obsessed with the wartime Berlin aesthetic, as well as the Roman empire, many aspects of which Nazi germany replicated.
Curtis was interested in the aesthetic of wartime Berlin(Picture: Rob Verhorst/Redferns)Sumner told Rolling Stone: ‘Ian used to have this really thick hair, and he used to go to this dodgy barber’s and ask the barber to cut his hair like a Roman emperor. We used to be quite into the Romans. He used to read a lot of Nietzsche.
I don’t know — I never read it, I just thought they were beautiful uniforms, and beautiful architecture. So aesthetically I was always attracted to classicism. Ian liked it through Nietzsche.
’In need of a new name after Warsaw was no longer workable, the band decided to stick with something with World War II associations and chose Joy Division, after a well-known prostitution wing present in a number of concentration camps during the Holocaust. These brothels were called Lagerbordell or Freudenabteilungen (which translates to Joy Division) and were intended to increase productivity among the more privileged Aryan inmates in concentration and work camps. The women forced into these brothels came mainly from the women-only Ravensbrück concentration camp, except Auschwitz, which used their prisoners in its brothel.
It is estimated that around 35,000 female inmates were forced into sexual slavery during this period in history.Metro's Rock Rewind SeriesOur new series on the history of rock and roll will dig into the stories, myths, dramas, songs, people, and legendary events that have shaped the greatest music genre over the last 50 years.From the inspirations behind songs everyone knows to the antics and little-known drama of iconic bands, Metro is excited to offer readers informative content that allows them to revisit the golden days of rock.
The term was discovered in holocaust survivor Yehiel De-Nur’s book House Of Dolls by Curtis. Initially, it sparked controversy, with some fans convinced the new name indicated that the band had right-wing politics. The musicians were reportedly drawn to the darkness of the name, liking how the innocuous and even positive words themselves juxtaposed with the phrase’s macabre meaning.
One Reddit user observed: ‘A lot of New Wave acts took their names from Third Riech inspirations. Spandau Ballet, etc etc etc. I’m still not sure why.
New Wave came out of punk so maybe it was to be edgy or something.’Joy Division was hugely impactful in the realm of graphic design as well as music (Picture: Unknown Pleasures Vinyl)Another fan chimed in: ‘Yeah, it was an “up yours” to the establishment (parents, grandparents, teachers, politicians, etc.), most of whom had lived through the horrors of WWII.
It wasn’t just in music, but comedy as well. Comedian Craig Ferguson had an schtick called “Bing Hitler” that brought that sensibility to his music/comedy.’Were the members of Joy Division Nazis?In a 1978 interview for The Guardian, the interviewer asked the band: ‘When everyone thinks of Joy Division they automatically think of this Nazi thing.
Perhaps it’s because of your previous name (Warsaw). What have you to say about that?’Bernard replied: ‘We picked Warsaw simply because it is a very nothing sort of name. We didn’t wish to be called “the” somebody.
’Manager Rob Gretton then chimed in: ‘Back to this Nazi thing. It’s good if people can jump to conclusions. I think that people can be very naive sometimes.
’Despite their short career, Joy Division remains one of the most influential bands in music history (Picture: Rob Verhorst/Redferns)Bernard then clarified his original statement, saying: ‘People tend to take a radical viewpoint on everything, whereas if they would just think for a change they would see that it was absolutely nothing.’Mostly, the band refused to discuss the meaning behind its name or the fan outrage about its Third Reich associations. As New Statesman writes, an early audio interview with Curtis reveals the following dialogue:Reporter: ‘Where’d you get the name Joy Division from?’Curtis: ‘It could mean a lot of things.
’Reporter: ‘You get these kind of wartime images from the songs; do you ever think of things like that?’ Curtis: ‘No, not at all.’Why did Joy Division change their name to New Order? Bassist Peter Hook, drummer Stephen Morris, and lead vocalist/guitarist Bernard Sumner were joined by keyboardist Gillian Gilbert to form New Order. (Picture: Bob Berg/Getty Images)After Ian Curtis took his own life on May 18 1980, just 24 hours before the band’s US tour, the surviving members were forced to make a difficult decision.
All the founding members had agreed in their early days that Joy Division would only ever refer to the band in its complete iteration, with all band members performing. Honouring this commitment, the three remaining band members risked taking a major commercial hit by changing their name. In July 1980, manager Rob Gretton suggested an array of names that included The Sunshine Valley Dance Band, The Witch Doctors of Zimbabwe, Steve and the JDs, Black September, The Immortals, and Khmer Rouge which was also the name of a terrorist group in Cambodia.
Finally, Gretton suggested ‘The New Order of the Kampuchean Front,’ a phrase he read in the newspaper. Eventually, the band settled on New Order and continued to amass fans globally under the new moniker.Got a story?If you’ve got a celebrity story, video or pictures get in touch with the Metro.
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