Joy Division: The Story of a Band

The most exciting underground band of their generation, join Stephen Morris and Jon Savage to revisit this extraordinary time, drawing on their new books on the band

Joy Division emerged in 1970s at the start of Manchester’s musical and urban revolution. Across a handful of releases and some legendary gigs they were the most exciting underground band of their generation. Then, on the brink of a tour to America, their shamanic lead singer and visionary lyricist Ian Curtis took his own life. At this special event, drummer Stephen Morris talks about being part of this story, drawing on his new memoir Record Play Pause: Confessions of a Post-Punk Percussionist: Volume 1. He is joined by one of our key music writers, Jon Savage, who has now published In This Searing Light, The Sun And Everything Else: Joy Division: The Oral History, which collects the words of Bernard Sumner, Peter Hook, Stephen Morris, Deborah Curtis, Peter Saville, Tony Wilson, Paul Morley, Alan Hempsall, Lesley Gilbert,Terry Mason, Anik Honore, and many more to paint an intimate and candid history of the band. The event is hosted by journalist and broadcaster Miranda Sawyer. Stephen Morris went to school with Ian Curtis, and joined Joy Division as their drummer while they were still known as Warsaw. After Curtis’s tragic suicide, the remaining trio – Morris, Bernard Sumner and Peter Hook – reformed as New Order, with the addition of Morris’s future wife Gillian Gilbert on keyboards and guitars. He has played with New Order ever since, across world tours, headlining appearances at festivals, and the closing concert for the 2012 Olympics. Jon Savage is a writer and film maker and the author of England's Dreaming: Sex Pistols and Punk Rock, Teenage: The Creation of Youth, 1875 –1945 and 1966: The Year the Decade Exploded. Miranda Sawyer is journalist and broadcaster who grew up in the same area of Lancashire as Ian Curtis and Stephen Morris . Her career began in 1988 with Smash Hits and through the 1990s she wrote for Select, Time Out The Mirror Mixmag andThe Face. She is now a feature writer for The Observer and its radio critic and her writing also appears in The Mirror, GQ, Vogue and The Guardian. She makes radio documentaries for Radio 4 and BBC 6Music and interviews musicians and artists for The Culture Show. Her latest season is Sound and Vision for 6 Music, which invites actors and directors to discuss key musical moments from their films Bar open from 18.00. Followed by a book signing.