Rhino Factoids: Joy Division’s Last Gig

36 years ago today, Joy Division performed a concert which would, as a result of frontman Ian Curtis subsequently performing what one of his bandmates famously referred to as “the dirty deed,” turn out to be their last.

The performance in question took place at Birmingham University’s High Hall, and it started very late, but at least it actually took place. Joy Division had been doing their best to ride their success, but it was proving to be a struggle as a result of Ian’s battle with epilepsy, which was taking its toll on him.

As bassist Peter Hook recalled in a 2011 piece for The Guardian, “We recorded the (Closer) album in March. He made his first suicide attempt in April, so it was pretty close. When he was really drunk, he self-harmed – chopped himself up with a kitchen knife, which I think was an Iggy Pop moment out of sheer frustration. Then he took an overdose. Tony Wilson, the boss of our record label, Factory Records, brought him to rehearsal – straight from the hospital, I think. We’d ask, ‘Is everything all right, mate?’ and he’d reply, ‘Yeah, fine, let’s carry on.”

And so they did, at least to the point of performing in Birmingham on May 2, 1980, when they played a 45-minute set featuring 11 songs, one of which was the debut of a new composition entitled “Ceremony.” Indeed, they thought so much of it that they led off with it.

Here’s the full set list for that fateful evening:
“Ceremony”
“Shadowplay”
“A Means to an End”
“Passover”
“New Dawn Fades”
“Twenty Four Hours”
“Transmission”
“Disorder”
“Isolation” “Decades”

Encore “Digital”

It was only two weeks later that Curtis unfortunately failed to unsuccessfully commit suicide, and he did so just as Joy Division was on the verge of embarking on their first US tour. As history reveals, of course, the surviving members of the band rose from the ashes left by Curtis’s death and formed New Order, but Curtis’s legacy remains formidable even now.