Part of an irregular series of bite-sized posts about 7″ singles I own – shameless nostalgia from the days of vinyl. (Search ‘Backtracking’ to collect the set!)
JOY DIVISION – Love Will Tear Us Apart b/w These Days / Love Will Tear Us Apart
(A Factory Record – Fac 23- 1980)
I’d hazard a guess that the majority of music fans who came of age in the seventies has at least one version of this song in their collection.
It might be any one of the numerous covers by artists like José González, Bjórk, Paul Young, Swans, U2, Arcade Fire, Calexico, Mark Owen and, my favourite, Susanna and the Magical Orchestra.
Serviceable as some of these are, there’s no improving on the original.
It was released in April 1980, just one month before Ian Curtis committed suicide. This makes the plain grey sleeve design, which resembles a gravestone, look like some spooky premonition of the singer’s tragic death.
This is doubly ironic given that Curtis’ headstone in Macclesfield (the original of which was stolen in 2008) also bears the words of the band’s most famous song.
Any accusations of bad taste were refuted by the record label. The sleeve was conceived by designer Peter Saville as an image of solid, grey metal rather than a tombstone and the picture was taken months before Ian Curtis’ death.. Factory boss Anthony Wilson said “It is a piece of metal, about eight inches by four, with the words stamped into it, which was then left to rust in the rain. After that it was cleaned up with acid and the photo taken”.
The A side plays at 45 rpm while the B side is 33 rpm. The earlier, slightly faster, recording is not credited on the sleeve or on the record itself. The A side is far superior, recorded at Strawberry Studios in Stockport in early March 1980. Also on the B side is These Days, one of Joy Divisions weakest songs
Martin Hannett’s distinctive production for the A side makes the drum and bass the twin driving forces to drown out the slightly wimpy synth backing and add weight to Curtis’ haunting vocals.
It is still one of the most chilling songs of a disintegrating relationship ever recorded. “Do you cry out in your sleep? – all my failings exposed” is the line that always gets to me because it suggests not that the couple are tearing apart through one being unfaithful but because they are ill-matched and bad for each other.
I always imagine them not having sex either because the man is impotent or because desire has faded (“something so good just can’t function no more”).
The closing chords remind me of the intro to The Monkees’ ‘I’m A Believer’, obviously a more optimistic song but one which opens with the curiously apt line “I thought love was only true in fairy tales, meant for someone else but not for me”.
