As we wind our way through the history of The Cure, we’ll inevitably find that their story is intertwined with that of another post-punk band – Joy Division, and their successor New Order. It’s fair to say that no love has been lost between the two camps over the year, but it seems that in the 21st Century an atmosphere of mutual respect has been reached. After all, they’ve both been at the same game, playing to much the same audience for 40 years now.
The Cure have always come off worst in this battle of the bands – many see records like Faith as a watered-down version of Joy Division, and we’ll talk about the connection between “Blue Monday” and “The Walk” at a later date.
Joy Division’s emergence as Warsaw happened around the time that Smith, Tolhurst, Dempsey and Thompson were becoming involved with Hansa, the German label who were running a talent-finding campaign in the UK. A month after Easy Cure recorded their second demo session for Hansa, Warsaw made their way to Pennine Sound Studios in Oldham to tape the tracks that would form their first EP: An Ideal For Living.
Easy Cure’s dalliance with showbiz floundered as their punk songs failed to impress the executives. “Even people in prison wouldn’t like this,” Tolhurst recalls them saying. By the Spring of 1978, the Hansa deal was over, and both bands decided on some changes. Warsaw changed their name to Joy Division to avoid being confused with the Ladbroke Grove based band Warsaw Pakt; Easy Cure became The Cure because Smith thought the longer form of the band’s name was rubbish and “too West Coast”. They’d also decided to offload lead guitarist Porl Thompson in an attempt to become more punk.
In April ’78, Joy Division met one of the most influential people in their short career: Rob Gretton, a part-time DJ that saw them play the terrible talent contest, the Stiff/Chiswick Challenge and was immediately converted. He became their manager soon after. At the beginning of May, Joy Division recorded what they thought would be their first album, for RCA. The LP has never been officially issued in full, but the eleven-track collection sees the band move away from the raw punk sound of Warsaw to the more intense material that would eventually appear on Unknown Pleasures.
Similarly, The Cure spent the late May Bank Holiday weekend producing a demo tape that would show off their music in a more favourable light than the crappy Hansa recordings. A few days later, Joy Division’s Ideal For Living EP slunk onto the streets; a four-track 7” of terrible sound quality with a dubious poster sleeve that featured World War II imagery. They’d spend the next few years denying the rumours that they were Nazi sympathisers.
The summer of 1978 saw huge advances for both The Cure and Joy Division. The Manchester band played The Factory club for the first time in June, their name appearing on the poster FAC 1. The following month, Smith – having heard nothing from the record labels he’d sent The Cure’s demo to – received a letter from Chris Parry at Polydor. They met in early August and soon learned that the A&R man was interested in signing them to his new label, Fiction.
On Wednesday 20 September 1978, Joy Division made an appearance on the TV programme Granada Reports. It only aired in the North West of England (including the cities of Manchester and Liverpool), but this was a type of exposure that was unheard of for a young band. It all came about, of course, via Anthony H. Wilson, the Granada television TV anchorman and part-time music mogul. In his quest to become the face of hip young Manchester, he was casting around for what he described as the “most interesting” new music that the city had to offer. The people of the North West who were “having their tea” and tuning in to watch the comedy The Cuckoo Waltz could have seen Joy Division performing the song Shadowplay in a darkened studio as video effects were superimposed over the top.
Meanwhile, 200 miles away at Morgan Studios in Willesden, North West London, The Cure were recording their first tracks for Fiction, with Chris Parry at the helm: according to the official biography Ten Imaginary Years, the songs committed to tape this evening were “Killing An Arab”, “10.15 Saturday Night”, “Fire In Cairo”, “Plastic Passion” and “Three Imaginary Boys”. Three weeks later, on 11 October, Joy Division also found themselves recording a “proper” studio with a “real” producer, Martin Hannett. The results of this session were two tracks: “Digital” and “Glass”.
In one final parallel for 1978, both Joy Division and The Cure rounded off the year with shows at London’s Hope And Anchor. The basement of a pub in Islington, the tiny stage was home to a number of punk and “new wave” acts in the late 70s. NME journalist Rick Joseph noted that the freezing cellar caused the crowd to “risk frostbite” and that the band’s natural talent overcame the shortcomings of the venue. Robert Smith had the flu, a fate that befell Joy Division guitarist Bernard Sumner when his band played the same venue a week later. Joy Division’s Hope And Anchor show was to become a milestone in the band’s story.
The excitement of performing in London for the first time quickly evaporated when, after traveling down from the North West during the day, ended up performing to a handful of disinterested people. “They stutter on stage wearing sulky long looks,” scoffed Sounds’ Nick Tester. “They may have gathered a tight following in home town Manchester but they failed to ignite a similar impression in front of a new (though not necessarily more objective) audience.”
The return journey to Manchester became fraught – despondent after the show, singer Ian Curtis began behaving oddly, working himself into a full-blown fit. Pulling over into a motorway siding, his bandmates dragged him out of the car and held him down on the road before taking him to the nearest hospital. In the following weeks,Curtis was diagnosed as an epileptic – he’d had a grand mal seizure. The diagnosis would have an impact on the rest of his short life.
Crying For Yesterday 