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Unknown Pleasures Quotes Showing 1-11 of 11

“I suppose in the end it's almost too easy to look back and say what you should have done, how you might have changed things. What's harder - what's much, much harder - is to accept what you actually did do.”
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“Atmosphere' is a massive song. A lot of people say it's their favorite Joy Division song, but it's not mine; it reminds me too much of Ian, like it's his death march or something, and it figures that it's one of the most popular songs to play at funerals: Robbie Williams has got 'Angels' for weddings and we've got 'Atmosphere' for funerals.”
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“I remember feeling as though I’d been sitting in a darkened room all of my life—comfortable and warm and safe and quiet—then all of a sudden someone had kicked the door in, and it had burst open to let in an intense bright light and this even more intense noise, showing me another world, another life, a way out. I was immediately no longer comfortable and safe, but that didn’t matter because it felt great. I felt alive.”
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“That was the thing about Joy Division: writing the songs was dead easy because the group was really balanced; we had a great guitarist, a great drummer, a great bass player, a great singer.”
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“Nobody was better at moving between different groups of people than he was. But I also think this was an aspect of his personality that ended up being very damaging to him. He had three personas he was trying to juggle: he had his married-man persona, at home with the wife; the laddish side; and the cerebral, literary side.”
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“I don’t think the Cure liked us. I think they resented us in some way, because we’d managed to stay cool, credible, and independent and they’d, well, sort of sold out a bit. The problem was on their side; it wasn’t on our side. But I think they thought, Wish we were Joy Division.”
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“What I loved about Anton was that he did the pictures really quickly, with no fuss, no fucking about: bang, bang, bang, and it was over. At the time, I thought, Now, that’s how a photo shoot should be. Those shots he took of us in the tube station: absolutely brilliant.”
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“I watched John Frusciante of the Red Hot Chili Peppers play it acoustically at their gig at the MEN Arena. I think I can safely say that, of the 19,000 people there, 18,950 didn’t know what it was—but I did, and it brought a tear to my eye, definitely. Monster bass line. A bass line that every bass player dreams of and I got it, so thank you.”
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“Everything up to and including Unknown Pleasures really existed only when the four of us were in a room together playing it. Not written down, not recorded, just from memory.”
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“It was only after we recorded Unknown Pleasures that I could hear and begin to take notice of the words, and it was quite startling then to see how they changed between that album, where they were still quite detached and aggressive, to Closer, which is even darker and not detached at all but really introspective and quite frightening—especially of course when you listen to it in light of what later happened.”
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“I remember driving there in the afternoon, and I remember getting there and loading the gear in. I don’t remember the sound check. We had one, I think, but we had no idea what to do because we’d never done one before. No one had the foggiest. Not knowing what to do made it exciting, though. Like, now, everybody’s got a stage manager and a sound guy, lights, and so on. The bands know all about sound checks and levels, equipment and all that. Now they even have music schools to teach you that kind of stuff. Back then you knew fuck-all. You didn’t have anyone professional, just your mates, who, like you, were clueless; you had a disco PA and a sleepy barmaid. It’s something I find quite sad about groups today, funnily enough, the careerism of it all. I saw this program once, a “battle of the bands” sort of thing. It had Alex James from Blur on it and Lauren Laverne and some twat from a record company, and they’d sit there saying what they thought of the band: “Your bass player’s shit and your image needs work; lose the harmonica player.” All the bands just stood there and took it, going, “Cheers, man, we’ll go off and do that.” I couldn’t believe it. I joined a band to tell everyone to fuck off, and if somebody said to me, “Your image is shit,” I’d have gone, “Fuck off, knob head!” And if someone had said, “Your music’s shit,” I would have nutted them. That to me is what’s lacking in groups. They’ve missed out that growing-up stage of being bloody-minded and fucking clueless. You have to have ultimate self-belief. You have to believe right from the word go that you’re great and that the rest of the world has to catch up with you. Of us lot, Ian was the best at that. He believed in Joy Division completely. If any of us got downhearted it was always him who would cheer us up and get us going again. He’d put you back on track.”
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