Thurston Moore talks about Joy Division & “Control”

“I just went to see Anton Corbijn’s film, Control . I really liked it. Usually, a biopic like that— I’ve had a lot of feelings of conflict about a short-lived and precious kind of band in a way. And this is going to be hard to watch. But he really nailed it by not really making so much a biopic about Joy Division, but just basically really relying on Ian Curtis’s wife’s account of her relationship with this guy. And the fact that they got married at such a young age and had a baby at such a young age and started singing in this band, and they became pretty popular pretty quickly and dealing with his own epilepsy and his obvious problems with self-doubt and immaturity at that age. Being at such a state of reponsibilty at parenthood and having a band that were so demanding of his time, and getting involved with another relationship— I thought Anton really captured that in a very— not in an exploitative way at all. It’s a very simple film because it only takes time between this guy when he’s 17 to when he’s 23. But what really kind of excited me, was as soon as he becomes the singer of this band called Warsaw who later become Joy Division, the way he captured it on film, the way they’re playing music, was really startling. I had never really seen a movie where a director captured a band playing as a punk band in a way where it wasn’t just exploiting the fact that they were a punk band, and having all of this shock-vibe to it…it was all about the idea of these young people making radical and marginalized music. He shows the band doing their first performance, and that nervous-energy of playing that kind of music in front of a crowd at a club. It sounded so good. The way that band sounded was real minimal, direct, aggressive, yet very artful; Ian as a lyricist and a vocalist was so personal. It really comes across. It really inspired me; how heavy a band they were. I remember buying a ticket to see them play in New York when they were coming over, and I certainly remember really liking Unknown Pleasures because it was such a mysterious kind of record. And it was only, like, days before that concert that we got a report that the singer killed himself and they’re not coming over. I remember at the time, I couldn’t really process that. I was like the same age, living in New York, and thinking, “What could bring somebody like that to that point?” Being in a band, a great band like that— what could possibly be the reason? And I remember holding onto the ticket for awhile, but then I got evicted from my apartment and I lost everything. I don’t have it anymore. But then, six months later, New Order came over. I didn’t go to that. I invested most of my interest in that band as a band with that singer. And then gladly rediscovering their music. But their music has become so culturally important to so many people, like Siouxsie and the Banshees or something. I kind of have a reaction to that kind of thing in a way. And I think Anton did a really fabulous job as far as giving a band like that an interesting story. “

(Source: pitchfork.com)