Top 25 Joy Division Quotes

Over the years, Joy Division has become a huge part of music culture.

I would be more familiar with Janet Jackson than I was with the Teardrop Explodes or Joy Division, because I didn’t want to listen to my competitors for fear of nicking ideas off them.

If something I do now sounds like something I did in the past, it’s because I played it. I can’t help sounding like myself. That’s going to happen. The things that I play on guitar that resonate with me are probably the same things that resonated with me when I started playing in Joy Division.

We looked at Ian Curtis from the band Joy Division. He was a very ultra cool, non-expressive character. Cutler is confident, but people sometimes mask their insecurities with confidence.

It was nice doing my own Joy Division book to be able to put forward the fact that Ian was actually quite a nice guy and very hardworking, ambitious and loyal. But the thing was, he was battling such a dreadful illness in an era when they really didn’t know how to treat it.

Joy Division finished the 1970s on a high. Our debut album, ‘Unknown Pleasures,’ was doing well; we’d just finished a hugely enjoyable and successful tour. The band’s profile was higher than it had ever been, and it seemed to be growing by the day.

We didn’t play any Joy Division songs for 10 years after the start of New Order, which was a very honourable thing to do even if it meant shooting ourselves in the foot.

Joy Division sounded like Manchester: cold, sparse and, at times, bleak.

When I play a gig and look out at the audience, you’re literally looking at a sea of Joy Division T-shirts.

I was very good friends with Ian Curtis from Joy Division. In fact, I was the last person he spoke with before he died.

I don’t pretend to be Joy Division or New Order. What I do is very straight forward: it’s an interpretation and a celebration of the music, with different people. Everyone looks at it and knows exactly what I’m doing.

The reason Joy Division and New Order are as influential and successful as they are is because of the unique playing of all the individuals.

What is remarkable about Joy Division is the way they are bereft of two of the mainstays of most other rock and pop: longing and supplication.

If it wasn’t for John Peel, there would be no Joy Division and no New Order. He was one of the few people to give bands that played alternative music a chance to get heard, and he continued to be a champion of cutting-edge music throughout his life.

In 1979, I moved to England and photographed Joy Division and Bowie and Beefheart. At that time I got images that I felt had that special, well – power is a big word to say – more like intimacy and ambition that outlasted the photo shoot. I felt that they would have a longer life.

I have a tattoo of Joy Division on my chest, and I like One Direction.

I was very into New Order, Joy Division, all of that when I was younger. I had a lot of bootlegs that I saved up my pocket money to buy. I had all the obscure early EPs.

There are lots of Joy Division songs that are so powerful when played live, some of which we did either never play or played very rarely.

Part of the reason I joined Joy Division was so that I really wouldn’t have to grow up.

New Order never celebrated anything to do with Joy Division.

There are so little outtakes from the Joy Division era. We didn’t have much money. You couldn’t be very generous in recording, so we were very thrifty in how we recorded. Everything was very, very well looked after financially because we just couldn’t afford it.

I’m very proud of New Order and Joy Division, that heritage of songs.

When I listen to Joy Division, it doesn’t sound particularly English.

Factory Records would not have existed and my life would not have been what it was without Joy Division.

I was reading an article about Kings of Leon’s bass player, who said that he was directly influenced by Joy Division and by me. I was like, ‘Woah!’ It surprised me. It’s a great compliment.