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    #26
    If You Could Save One Life

    Guy Profumo wrote: Other - Brian Jones - if only to spare us "Mick'n'Keef"
    Nah. The Stones with Mick Taylor was the best version of the band.

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      #27
      If You Could Save One Life

      Geoffrey de Ste. Croix wrote: Ian Curtis is an intriguing one. It is difficult to see how Joy Division would have developed musically, given their entire output was dominated by Curtis’s interior monologue. Musically, Closer shows that they were going down the synth and drum machine route (Isolation and Decades in particular) but to what extent would Curtis have embraced Larry Levan and the Paradise Garage, Moroder, electro and freestyle? Joy Division was the platform for one man’s inner turmoil. The lyrics with their disturbing delivery was the raison d'ętre of Joy Division despite the celebrated production values of Martin Hannett. New Order was the complete opposite- Sumner’s shitty lyrics and shittier voice was an afterthought, the music and production came first. I simply cannot see Curtis in “Power, Corruption and Lies”.

      It was Curtis sad death that unleashed the shackles of the rest of the band and resulted in them producing some of the most seminal music of the decade. I disagree with Reed's point that New Order were not as good as Joy Division, I don't think the two can be compared due to their radical differences.

      “What if New Order had never existed?” would be a very interesting question.
      I agree that Curtis would have split and gone into hiding, probably on the continent, and then come out with a book or unusual art project years later.

      But I think we would have got at least one more JD albums

      To me, the more intriguing possibility is that they were about to do a US tour That might have changed American "college music" and American teenage saddo culture in the 80s and 90s, which would have changed what ended up being "Alternative music" in the 90s. I can imagine "I saw Joy Division in 1980 with Mission of Burma and it changed my life" becoming one of those interview staples in the same way as the Sex Pistols at the Lesser Free Trade Hall 1976 is a big thing.*

      If nothing else, we'd have a somewhat better version of "Ceremony" available.

      As for JD not being better than New Order, well, that's just like, your opinion, man. I like them both, but Joy Division makes more sense to me.

      *But, as it is, it seems that Americans have only started to pay attention to Joy Division at all since maybe the mid-90s at the earliest. I can't prove that but it seems to be true. I didn't get into them until I read a bit about them on the earliest version of OTF back in 1999 or 2000 or whenever that was. I think maybe I'd seen the video for Love Will Tear Us Apart on 120 minutes in the late 80s or early 90s, and thought "oh, that's nice," but it didn't sink in.

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        #28
        If You Could Save One Life

        Like a lot of others here it would be interesting to see how Buddy Holly's career would've panned out,I can imagine he'd have moved into country and western as he got older, other than that Kirsty Mc Coll, if only for the stupid and senseless manner of her death

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          #29
          If You Could Save One Life

          But, as it is, it seems that Americans have only started to pay attention to Joy Division at all since maybe the mid-90s at the earliest. I can't prove that but it seems to be true. I didn't get into them until I read a bit about them on the earliest version of OTF back in 1999 or 2000 or whenever that was. I think maybe I'd seen the video for Love Will Tear Us Apart on 120 minutes in the late 80s or early 90s, and thought "oh, that's nice," but it didn't sink in.

          Really? I shared studio space in the mid-late 80s with several designers/writers most of who were ten10-15 years younger than me, and New Order/Joy Division and the Cocteau Twins were never off our speakers. Plus Joy Division's heyday — pre and post Curtis's death — was covered extensively in Rolling Stone. Which, though it was past its best, was still mostly a proper music paper back then. I find it hard to believe that the US East Coast could be that much different from the Canadian West Coast at the time.

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            #30
            If You Could Save One Life

            Two things I've learned at 30 years' remove: The Smiths were as good as I thought they were. New Order were nowhere near as good as I thought they were.

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              #31
              If You Could Save One Life

              I can't believe none of you are agreeing with SRV, you cloth-eared heathens.

              Texas Flood is one of the best blues guitar albums ever committed to vinyl.

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                #32
                If You Could Save One Life

                One that is a fascinating thought experiment and similar, in a way, to the Joy Divison/New Order scenario is Richey Edwards and the Manics. Of course, musically, he wasn't really vital at all but he was integral to pre-"Everything Must Go" Manics and "The Holy Bible" was his album but it seemed informed by the spiral that he was in that led to his death/disappearance. Also, we have seen, to an extent, what he wanted to do in "Journal For Plague Lovers".

                Would he have wanted to carry on in a "Holy Bible/JPL" style while the rest of the band wanted to do an EMG? Would we have got JPL with Richey then EMG? If it were the latter, would Richey have been in the band for EMG and "If you tolerate this..."? Would the Manics have ever become as big a band as they did had Richey not disappeared? I genuinely don't know whether they would have been a better or worse band.

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                  #33
                  If You Could Save One Life

                  Amor de Cosmos wrote: But, as it is, it seems that Americans have only started to pay attention to Joy Division at all since maybe the mid-90s at the earliest. I can't prove that but it seems to be true. I didn't get into them until I read a bit about them on the earliest version of OTF back in 1999 or 2000 or whenever that was. I think maybe I'd seen the video for Love Will Tear Us Apart on 120 minutes in the late 80s or early 90s, and thought "oh, that's nice," but it didn't sink in.

                  Really? I shared studio space in the mid-late 80s with several designers/writers most of who were ten10-15 years younger than me, and New Order/Joy Division and the Cocteau Twins were never off our speakers. Plus Joy Division's heyday — pre and post Curtis's death — was covered extensively in Rolling Stone. Which, though it was past its best, was still mostly a proper music paper back then. I find it hard to believe that the US East Coast could be that much different from the Canadian West Coast at the time.
                  Canada has always been a bit more tuned-in to Britain than us and no doubt your friends were way cooler and into interesting stuff than mine.

                  Perhaps they made more of a stir when they were actually active. As you said, Rolling Stone covered them. But I don't remember that time. I only can really speak about the MTV era. 1981 onward and I didn't start reading Rolling Stone, and later SPIN, until the late 80s. Until 120 Minutes came along later in the decade, I don't think MTV ever played much "post-punk" or punk from the late 70s early 80s. They had a "retro" show, but that was all the 60s and 70s stuff that punk was reacting against like Peter Frampton, as I recall. Plus Hendrix.

                  I could be completely misremembering it because I was pretty isolated. Our only rock station in town played "classic rock," even the college station only played "college music" a few hours a day, and we've got a notoriously shit music scene for a such a big college town - no cool venue like Athens has, for example. The bars have cover bands. Students who are interested in something better road trip to Philadelphia or Pittsburgh or DC or York,

                  The saddo/goths/theatre kids were into the Cure, REM, Depeche Mode, and The Smiths and the skate punks were into skate punk stuff plus Jimi Hendrix. And there were a few metal heads and a lot of kids into "rap," as it was still called. Artsy kids like Frank Zappa and weird shit. The 60s were cool, but anything identified as being from the 70s was considered embarrassing.

                  But even when I was in college and met people who'd grown up near New York and DC and had a lot more exposure to cool stuff, I don't recall any mention of Joy Division. A few people were into New Order, but I can't recall hearing Joy Division or the Cocteau Twins on college radio or heard of anyone who were into them. REM and The Smiths were big and The Pixies were the height of rock sophistication, I guess. Some of us like Nirvana and Pearl Jam and the Smashing Pumpkins, but most students were into U2, Phish, The Connells, Dave Matthews Band, the Dead, Led Zeppelin and Bob Marley's greatest hits along with garbage like Billy Joel.

                  Speaking of garbage, Garbage was big on the "alternative" radio when I was in grad school in Boston 95-97 and listening to WBCN and WFNX. They played a lot of good stuff, but still no Joy Division. Like they'd been forgotten. And not a lot of Pixies either, as I recall, even though they were from Massachusetts. And I never heard of Mission of Burma until I read about them years later.

                  That's a very long answer to a short question. I guess I have an endless need to vent my frustration about how much cooler I should have been.

                  Comment


                    #34
                    If You Could Save One Life

                    WOM wrote: Two things I've learned at 30 years' remove: The Smiths were as good as I thought they were. New Order were nowhere near as good as I thought they were.
                    The Smiths were a bit better than I thought they were, though Morrisey seems like a complete twat.

                    Comment


                      #35
                      If You Could Save One Life

                      Re Joy Division vs. New Order...

                      I think I might have made this embarrassing confession on here before, but it bears repeating because it's true (and speaks of the innocence of youth / a former age). In 1980 I would have been 14/15. I was a fan of Joy Division. However, because I didn't read 'the music papers' and only occasionally the music columns in the dailies (and my parents used to buy The Sun, so you can imagine, etc.*) I actually didn't find out about the death of Ian Curtis until months after the fact. Six months+, in fact, I think. You can call me a terrible person or a bad fan all you like, but back then we didn't necessarily 'live in the pocket of' celebrities like it's possible to, these days, with 'live' social media and the 24hr microscope that enables.

                      The upshot of this was that I only found out about Curtis' death when the Old Grey Whistle Test did their 'end of year show' for 1980 ...and I was gutted! (Btw - I was pretty much the only Joy Division fan in my year at school at the time, so it wasn't like I had fellow fans to alert me, either.)

                      Anyway... this weird perspective - that of having quite a narrow experience of JD and then watching as New Order 'evolved' (which they did very quickly) - was quite a strange experience, in retrospect. It went from having a band that I worshipped, to thinking "hey, New Order can make a fist of this!", to "okay, they're expanding their horizons", to "Okay, they're just shit and a half-arsed pop band now"!

                      Would they have evolved the same way with Curtis around? Unlikely, I feel, even given the prospect of a U.S. tour. Yes, that might have steered them slightly towards the dancier side of electronic pop (much as it did with Soft Cell, a year or two later) but it's worth bearing in mind that they were probably leaning that way anyway - see the flexidisc of 'Komakino' / 'Incubation' / 'As You Said' for evidence ...plus 'Turn the Heater On' as well, I suppose. I think it would have ended up as a slightly more austere path (of dance music) that they took, if they'd stayed together, though. Cabaret Voltaire were also becoming interested in the burgeoning U.S. club music scene at the beginning of the 80s and it was they who 'produced' New Order's first post-Curtis sessions in their Western Works studio space in Sheffield. (As friends of JD, they went to Curtis' funeral.)

                      Another intriguing, though far more speculative, aspect is that if Curtis had gone to America and experienced the U.S. club scene including the early, pure forms of Ecstasy (as Soft Cell did in 1981, inspiring 'Memorabilia') might this have helped with his depression? Advocates of such 'treatment' might say yes while sceptics might say no. I tend to err towards the latter, though.

                      Another, different, parallel with the otherwise unconnected Soft Cell is that I feel Joy Division might well have split, as others have mooted. But - similarly - I think this might have led to Curtis 'mastering' his voice more, just as Almond (originally a terrible singer, frankly) has, over the years, until he is now a 'proper' singer, with a technique as good as it can be, with the raw materials at his disposal.

                      It has always felt, though, like New Order have been playing safer and safer over the years, whereas Curtis' absence and the associated decline in New Order's 'experimentation' makes me feel that, even if Curtis had gone solo, he might have gone down a more Nick Cave / Michael Gira / Swans route. Maybe even something like Clock DVA, around 'Advantage' or 'Buried Dreams'. I think it's safe to say he would have hated New Order's later 'pop' stylings, though.

                      Who knows, though? No-one, really!

                      (* - Bizarrely, as it might now seem, Ann(i)e Nightingale was The Sun's weekly pop columnist at that time. Thus, I used to read her column every week and it was her who turned me on to OMD, in 1979, recommending them as "if you like Joy Division, then you'll probably like..." and it was on that basis that I went out and bought (blind) the Dindisc version of the 'Electricity' single that she was reviewing at the time.

                      Sadly, I missed out on the 'black-on-black' Factory version (which infamously set the printing press on fire during the manufacturing process!) but I'm perfectly happy with my 'white-on-black' Dindisc version. I briefly chatted to Peter Saville at the last day of his 2003 exhibition, interrupting an interview that he and Tony Wilson were doing for (I think) a Japanese magazine. He was very accommodating and a generally lovely chap, but he inferred that the Dindisc version was also the better pressing, so I'm not too miffed really! :-) )

                      Comment


                        #36
                        If You Could Save One Life

                        It's testament to the enduring legacy/mystique of Joy Division – and perhaps specifically Ian Curtis – that a thread like this can so swiftly and firmly derail into being a discussion almost all about them/him even now, 36 years and more after his death, such that we get tremendous posts like Clive's there inspired by it.

                        Of course, it's probably undeniable that a significant part of that mystique is due to his death, which forever froze him in that undiluted moment where all he/they'd left was two seminal albums, a handful of astonishing singles, a small pool of memorable live performances and a limited collection of arty black-and-white photographs. We never got to hear the 'difficult' third album where he fell out with Hannett midway through recording and brought in Jim Steinman to get that impossible massed choral sound he could hear inside his head. We never saw him put on makeup and spike his hair for their 1982 Top of the Pops appearances, nor grow a mullet two years later prior to employing a saxophone on their fourth album. We never had to try to forget their disastrous Live Aid performance where a reluctant and allegedly wasted Curtis lost the crowd instantly when he opened their set with a completely tuneless rendition of Day Of The Lords, had to restart Love Will Tear Us Apart three times, publicly called out Howard Jones for a fight and passed out onstage during the mass singalong of Do They Know It's Christmas. Maybe some things are better left.

                        elguapo4 wrote: Like a lot of others here it would be interesting to see how Buddy Holly's career would've panned out,I can imagine he'd have moved into country and western as he got older
                        Buddy Holly had already gone in the opposite direction, really. To quote the opening paragraph of his Wikipedia page, which I read a couple of days ago after mentioning him upthread:
                        In 1955, after opening for Elvis Presley, Holly decided to pursue a career in music. He opened for Presley three times that year; his band's style shifted from country and western to entirely rock and roll.
                        Arguably he'd have revisited the genre as it was part of his roots, the way Elvis throughout his career happily recorded country, gospel, rock'n'roll and pop songs. It's interesting to speculate if Holly would have ended up a Vegas cabaret act had he lived, but he was gone so soon there was little time to even hint where he might've ended up. It would be like Elvis getting killed in a freak accident while in the army in Germany in 1962: no-one then could have foreseen all the jumpsuits, rhinestones and cheeseburgers, surely.

                        Oh, and per Sam's suggestion a little previously – yes, sodding Mozart, how could I not think of that? I'm no great fan myself but there's no denying his extraordinary prodigal talent and genius, or prodigious and evolving output of all manner of classical 'classics' from concerto to opera. Had he lived past 35 he'd probably have written a Sgt. Pepper's, invented disco and ended his career with a jukebox musical.

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                          #37
                          If You Could Save One Life

                          1970s: Nick Drake

                          1980s: Marvin Gaye

                          1990s: Jeff Buckley

                          2000+: Prince

                          But all these would also presuppose some kind of intervention: Drake had been desperately ill for 3 years; Gaye was in a coke-filled frenzy and seems to have committed suicide-by-dad; Buckley I'm not sure was destined to live long; Prince was downing tons of painkillers because of his back, as I understand it.

                          Regarding Ian Curtis, I just don't see him surviving, given the death wish that runs through his songs and the despair over his epilepsy.

                          As was noted above regarding Kirsty MacColl, the most difficult deaths to reconcile are the ones where the cause of death was unrelated to age or to self-destructive behaviour beforehand: Lennon was just in the wrong place, wrong time; Terry Kath and Johnny Ace both died mishandling a gun; Bolan dies in a car driven by his girlfriend; Robert Johnson is shot; Buddy Holly should have taken the bus; Eddie Cochran another car smash; Sandy Denny fell down stairs.

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                            #38
                            If You Could Save One Life

                            But all these would also presuppose some kind of intervention: Drake had been desperately ill for 3 years; Gaye was in a coke-filled frenzy and seems to have committed suicide-by-dad; Buckley I'm not sure was destined to live long; Prince was downing tons of painkillers because of his back, as I understand it.

                            Regarding Ian Curtis, I just don't see him surviving, given the death wish that runs through his songs and the despair over his epilepsy.
                            As somebody smart once said, "History is a series of surprises that look inevitable in retrospect."

                            Yeah, I'm assuming, in Curtis' case at least, some kind of intervention and somebody somehow getting him on a different path. I mean, lots of very very ill people try to kill themselves a few times before doing it, but a lot of people almost try or try and are stopped and somehow survive and turn it around. It happens. Nothing is inevitable.

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                              #39
                              If You Could Save One Life

                              BTW, I feel like there's a joke to be had here about saving U2 from that horrible accident in which we lost a promising Irish rock band to the overwhelming suction power of their own collective anus. But I can't quite pull it.

                              There may also be a Sting joke to be had, but I think he was always a prick. The Police were just a convenient vehicle for getting him from non-fame to his dream of Jaguar ads and albums of lute music.

                              BTW, has anyone mentioned John Bonham? If not, then John Bonham. Although he might fall into the category of "he was doomed regardless." He drank an unbelievable amount.

                              If they'd been around in the 80s, LZ could have sold out NFL stadiums. I'm not sure of the implications of that for rock more widely, but I feel like there would have been some.

                              Comment


                                #40
                                If You Could Save One Life

                                Arthur Russell.

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                                  #41
                                  If You Could Save One Life

                                  Various Artist wrote:
                                  Originally posted by elguapo4
                                  Like a lot of others here it would be interesting to see how Buddy Holly's career would've panned out,I can imagine he'd have moved into country and western as he got older
                                  Buddy Holly had already gone in the opposite direction, really.
                                  I was going to post something similar. Holly's roots were in C&W. The older he got the further he moved away from them. It's always possible he'd have returned at some time, but there was no indication of it at his death

                                  Arguably he'd have revisited the genre as it was part of his roots, the way Elvis throughout his career happily recorded country, gospel, rock'n'roll and pop songs. It's interesting to speculate if Holly would have ended up a Vegas cabaret act had he lived, but he was gone so soon there was little time to even hint where he might've ended up.
                                  I'm not sure that's quite true either though, at least in an immediate sense. A couple of months before his death he'd finally cut all ties with Petty and The Crickets. He was married, living in New York and immersing himself in the city's music business. So far as we can tell he was listening to — and recording at home — a lot of R&B, especially Bo Diddley — he was a huge fan — also Chuck Berry and Little Richard. Some of these "apartment" recordings were overdubbed by Petty after Holly's death, but it's questionable how close the productions are to Holly's intent. From the clues available it's likely he was searching for a sound that was more raw and direct than the string and echo laden productions Petty favoured.

                                  Comment


                                    #42
                                    If You Could Save One Life

                                    Billie Holiday & Hank Williams maybe.

                                    I was also going to mention Nick Drake & Jeff Buckley purely from the lack of musical out put they left us with, same for Amy Winehouse - if you listen to radio stations playing her music you would never know she made 2 albums, I can't recall the last time I heard a radio station play anything off Frank.

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                                      #43
                                      If You Could Save One Life

                                      delicatemoth wrote: Arthur Russell.
                                      I'm with delicatemoth.

                                      Bernard Sumner is my favourite singer and a still underrated guitarist, programmer and producer.

                                      I'm always a bit baffled how people can profess to like New Order while at the same time saying that they think that both the singer and the songs are shit.

                                      Comment


                                        #44
                                        If You Could Save One Life

                                        I don't know, I've liked a fair bit of New Order's output, but I'd always say that Barney is a lousy singer and has written some truly appalling lyrics along the way. His (and their) argument has always been that this doesn't really matter. Which is probably true. As a Joy Division fan since 1979, however, I had to battle with my inner self to accept quite a bit of what New Order were doing as the eighties progressed (a misguided sense of loyalty made me buy Thieves Like Us, for example), but I think that they kind of 'found' themselves with the electronica stuff eventually.

                                        Returning to the ongoing Ian Curtis discussion, I reckon that had he left Joy Division and later returned to music, he'd - after a long period in the wilderness - have put out a series of mysterious avant-garde electronic albums (possibly recorded in Berlin, or maybe Rejkjavik) called something like 'Dissolutions 1-5', '6-19' and '20-24'. It would only be on the second of these that the media would start to twig that this might actually be him.

                                        All that said, I still think he'd more likely have jacked it in during recording of the third (incomplete) JD album, disappeared for years and then be reported dead, around 1997 or so. After which there'd be a couple of rare collections of his poems plus an unfinished novel that would emerge and change hands for several grand a pop.

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                                          #45
                                          If You Could Save One Life

                                          Yeah, that's a better and more likely prognostication than mine, Jah. I like the album titles in particular, and I reckon Reykjavik is a good pick. I like the idea that he might have actually survived there to this day, though, entirely silent and invisible until John Grant found him there in c. 2011 and persuaded him to contribute some authentic doominess to his own sweeping, agonised, '80s-synth-laden Pale Green Ghosts.

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                                            #46
                                            If You Could Save One Life

                                            Yup, Jah nails it- a post punk Scott Walker.

                                            Comment


                                              #47
                                              If You Could Save One Life

                                              Fussbudget wrote: Trish Keenan or Mary Hansen
                                              Another vote for Trish. Who knows where the last six years would have taken her? But it would have been glorious.

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                                                #48
                                                If You Could Save One Life

                                                I'm surprised no-one's mentioned Tim or Jeff Buckley yet. (Or have they? - I possibly missed some things, skim-reading!)

                                                Mind you, would either of them have evolved much either, past what they had already done?

                                                Brian Wilson. He might not have evolved much, but what he did, he did very well.

                                                Comment


                                                  #49
                                                  If You Could Save One Life

                                                  I am not really a fan and don't know much about him but am surprised that no-one has mentioned Tupac.

                                                  Comment


                                                    #50
                                                    If You Could Save One Life

                                                    Sam wrote: Actually it probably has to be a top four since we can't very well talk about Biggie's influence without also mentioning Tupac.

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