New Order preserved Joy Division’s magic by refusing to understand it

Evidence

It was clear, in the best interviews the band ever gave – to Jon Savage, a decade and a half after Curtis’s death – that they had no idea what they were doing, and no desire to learn. Of Curtis’ disturbing-compelling hyper-charged stage trance spasms and of his disturbing-compelling catatonic downer words, they said nothing and asked nothing, for fear of destroying the magic. They were unwitting necromancers who had stumbled on a formula for channelling voices, apprentices without a sorcerer. — Mark Fisher, Ghosts of My Life, 120

Categorization

• SHARE: A fascinating bit for anyone into Joy Division lore: the band’s deliberate non-understanding as protective ritual.
• XREF: connects to: All Britain offers Smiley’s adversaries is disillusionment and unbelief — Mark Fisher, Ghosts of My Life: Writings on…, 168; Faith’s debt to Joy Division both enabled it and doomed it to derivative status. — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 1060; Ian Curtis’s suicide made post-Joy Division musicians feel their survival was inauthentic — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 1060

Broader Connections

• Faith’s debt to Joy Division both enabled it and doomed it to derivative status. #qualifies (0.75) — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 1060