Touching from a Distance Read online

  Stephanie was a tall, eccentrically dressed girl, whose soft voice belied her stature. I hadn’t got to know Steve and Stephanie very well, mainly because Ian had always insisted that Steve didn’t want me in his car as there was only room for his ‘friends’. So when tales of Stephanie’s inability to accept the end of the relationship began to filter through via Ian, I took little notice.

  One afternoon I came home to find Ian seemingly in a panic. ‘Stephanie’s in the bathroom,’ he whispered. ‘She’s got razor blades in her handbag and she says she’s going to kill herself.’ Stephanie descended the stairs like a woman who was not intent on ending her life, but had merely visited our bathroom. I was surprised to see her, especially as she was acting as if she was an invited guest. Ian ushered me into the kitchen and urged me to leave by the back door and telephone Stephanie’s father so that he could retrieve her. It wasn’t easy to tell a man that his daughter had just threatened suicide, but I relayed Ian’s story just as he had told me to. The three of us sat around drinking coffee and chatting. Stephanie still gave the impression that she had been invited to come and see us. She was perfectly at ease. There was no mention of suicide, razor blades or anything else unpleasant.

  Some time later, Stephanie’s father turned up in a taxi to take her away. She had no idea why we sent for him. She looked questioningly from Ian to myself and all I could say was that I was sorry. I remember the confused hurt in her eyes and Ian’s refusal to discuss the event afterwards. For the rest of the day there was a look I interpreted as smug satisfaction on his face and I convinced myself that I had betrayed Stephanie. I could see no reason why Ian would cause such pain by setting Stephanie up and yet I felt as confused as Stephanie had looked. It crossed my mind briefly that he was in fact vetting Stephanie’s suitability as a girlfriend of one of the band, just as he had vetted and dismissed my school friends. A comment made by Steve Morris when I interviewed him does little to clarify Ian’s attitude towards Stephanie. He said, ‘Sympathy was one of his qualities, particularly with regard to Stephanie. You can’t be in a group without someone getting on your nerves – everyone did at some time.’

  After coming into a small inheritance, Tony Wilson used his good fortune and financed the recording of the A Factory Sample EP. When asked to collaborate, Martin Hannett was able to realize his interest in Joy Division by producing two tracks for them: ‘Digital’ and ‘Glass’. Peter Saville began to establish himself as Factory designer and chose the silver and black simplicity. Appearing to be encased in an extended sandwich bag, this double EP gave the public the opportunity of sampling what Factory Records would have to offer. Joy Division, the Durutti Column, John Dowie and Cabaret Voltaire each had room for at least two tracks, a sticker of their choice and a rectangle containing information about the individual recordings, which Joy Division left almost blank. Paul Morley said of their offering: ‘How much longer before an aware label will commit themselves to this individual group?’ Martin Hannett’s production gave them a much cleaner and colder sound than had been previously heard on An Ideal for Living and which lacked the warmth and emotion he would later achieve on Closer.

  One of the very few gigs I attended outside Manchester was the Check Inn, Altrincham, in November 1978. A young fan named Dean tried to persuade me that should we have a son, Dean was a nice name. His apparent shyness when asking Ian for his autograph was appropriate to a demigod rather than an up-and-coming young singer. Although it was exciting seeing the acceleration of Joy Division’s popularity, and I had believed in them from the beginning, there was a surreal quality as Ian’s predictions and dreams began to come true.

  Towards the end of 1978 my pregnancy became all too obvious and on 27 December Ian had his first recognizable epileptic fit. Joy Division were to play their London debut at the Hope and Anchor, but Bernard was in bed with flu. After some discussion it was decided that the gig had to come first, so Bernard was bundled into the back of the car wrapped up in a sleeping bag. As a first London gig the Hope and Anchor was a disappointment. Expecting the glamour of the capital city, Joy Division hadn’t realized they would be playing in a pub cellar and that all the equipment would have to be lowered in through a trap-door. The small audience was not enough to spark the exhilaration needed to spur the band on.

  Disappointment turned to turmoil on the way home. Bernard remembers that Ian’s conversation about the gig had taken a rather negative turn and Ian had told me when he came home that there was even talk of him leaving the band. As Bernard tried to keep himself warm, Ian began to tug at his sleeping bag. A struggle followed and once Ian had the bag he wrapped it around his head so tight that Bernard couldn’t wrestle it from him. Eventually, Ian’s seizure surfaced and he lashed out, seeming to punch at the windows. Steve pulled over to the side of the road and when the fit was over they took him to the Luton and Dunstable Hospital.

  I was dumb struck when Steve Morris and Gillian Gilbert finally brought Ian home. He had a letter for his doctor and some Phenobarbitone tablets. ‘I’ve had some kind of fit,’ he said, but I didn’t really believe him. I thought someone must have made a mistake or perhaps he had faked it. All of us were astonished and unable to believe it. We took it for granted that the incident had been a one-off and that if there was any illness, it could be cured. I rang his office and mine and we both stayed at home the following day, expecting something else to happen. When I rang his parents they appeared stunned and unable to swallow the information I was giving them.

  Ian’s GP was disinterested. The most he could do was put Ian on the waiting list to see a specialist. In the meantime, Ian was expected to carry on with his life. His fits became quite frequent and frighteningly violent. We tried to keep a record of how often and how serious they were. It seemed extreme to go from having no fits at all to having three or four a week, and to become epileptic so soon after studying the illness was too much of a coincidence for me. I decided that it must be something else and waited for them to diagnose it so that it could be put right.

  Ian never left the room without telling me where he was going even if it was only to the bathroom and then he always left the door unlocked. One evening he returned from walking Candy looking badly shaken. The next morning the bruises on his back appeared so severe that I thought he had been beaten rather than suffered a fit. I went with him to the doctor again that morning, hoping Ian’s injuries would entitle him to more speedy treatment, but to no avail. Ernest Beard came with us for that appointment. The doctor seemed mildly amused when we all trooped into his surgery and after examining Ian’s back he merely shrugged his shoulders and sent us away to wait for Ian’s hospital appointment. Ernest Beard was a retired Navy man who had worked on destroyers and had been involved in the evacuation of Crete, and although he was experienced in working with people who had all manner of problems, Ian did not really give the appearance of needing his help.

  ‘When Ian got epilepsy it didn’t affect him, didn’t stop him. I think he accepted his epilepsy. He was very happy-go-lucky. He had a great sense of humour. He would come in, in the morning, and it was obvious that he had travelled overnight from a gig. It never affected his work. I was amazed.’

  Ernest Beard

  I knew Ian was quite knowledgeable about epilepsy and tried to pump him for information. I wanted to help him but until he had seen a specialist no one really wanted to use the word ‘epilepsy’. Ian’s provisional driving licence arrived, but by now there was no question of him using it. An epileptic can suffer from convulsions of one or several types and for obvious reasons they are not allowed to drive. However, apart from this Ian had told me that once such a person had been prescribed the right anti-convulsant therapy, they would be able to lead a normal life. As the description ‘normal’ is somewhat ambiguous, it would have been easy for Ian to substitute it for ‘boring’.

  My parents began to worry about me and our unborn baby. As we couldn’t afford to install a telephone, they paid for us to have one as this reduc
ed the risk of my being isolated in an emergency. Ian registered himself as disabled. He told me benefit claims are processed as a matter of urgency for disabled people.

  While Ian was busy rearranging his personal life, the band were becoming more and more in demand. On 13 January 1979 Ian appeared on the front cover of NME sporting the soon-to-be-famous long green raincoat and the inevitable cigarette. This honour was down to Paul Morley’s persistence. Morley’s earlier attempt at getting Ian that particular spot had been thwarted when the editor insisted on using Joe Jackson instead. At the end of the month the first John Peel session was recorded. Joy Division had definitely arrived and although they had worked so hard for so long, it all seemed sudden and bizarre. Sandwiched in between these two important landmarks in the band’s career was the realization that Ian’s illness was something we would have to learn to accommodate.

  It was 23 January 1979 before Ian saw a specialist at Macclesfield District and General Hospital. He arranged for various investigations to be carried out into Ian’s condition and prescribed Phenytoin Sodium and Phenobarbitone. Phenytoin Sodium is a long-term treatment most commonly used to treat epilepsy. Its side effects include slurred speech, dizziness, confusion and gum overgrowth. Phenobarbitone is an anti-convulsant used in combination with other drugs and its side effects are drowsiness, clumsiness, dizziness, excitement and confusion. I am sure Ian was warned of all these side effects and he did tell me that he would need to see the dentist more often to keep a check on his gums. The possibility of confusion was also mentioned. I thought, ‘Hell, what’s a bit of confusion if it stops the fits?’ I felt that Ian was safer now because he was in the hands of the hospital, but at the same time there was a certain finality, an impotent acceptance.

  We realized that there was no turning back the page – Ian was now EPILEPTIC. He was open about it at first, but that soon ceased. I thought he had begun to settle into a new, more careful way of life, but in fact he became withdrawn, moody, and reluctant to discuss anything except the most mundane and necessary. He appeared to resent my cheerfulness, my willingness to carry on, but I was determined to keep our lives on an even keel. It was Ian who may have joined the British Epilepsy Association, but I had to read the newsletters and magazines. They were crammed full of advice on how to lead a normal life, including case histories, how to look after epileptic children, details of outings and holidays, and advice on the problems of epileptics themselves – how to deal with other people’s attitudes, how to get a job, etc. There was almost everything you needed to know, yet there was no mention of the problems epileptics could cause within the family. There was no talk of depression or other behavioural difficulties with adult sufferers.

  Bernard Sumner had been aware of Ian’s manic personality; his moods would fluctuate between ultra-politeness and blind rage. Now that Ian was taking medication for his illness, these mood swings seemed more extreme. One minute he was high and the next, he wanted to cry. It crossed Bernard’s mind that the tablets were making him more unhappy than the epilepsy itself.

  ‘I think there was something a bit special about Ian. I know people say that, but I really do mean it. I can’t stop saying this … I really do think it was the tablets that killed him. I really do. I know it.’

  Bernard Sumner

  As my pregnancy continued, I found that I wasn’t able to get enough rest. I had to wait up for Ian even later than before. After a gig he would not go to sleep until he’d had a fit, and it became a ritual for him to sit there and wait for an attack. He was afraid to go to bed in case he died in his sleep, as (so he told me) one of his clients who was epileptic had choked in her sleep. Very often he would go into an absence seizure, where he would be motionless and seemingly unaware of his surroundings. I would watch him perched on the edge of his seat with a lighted Marlboro still hanging between his lips. Because he was so much taller than me, I felt rather helpless. For those few minutes, I could only make sure he didn’t hurt himself. We would both lie in bed at night and listen to his breathing, waiting for the change in pace that would signal an attack. It was as if these fits were an insurance against having one while he was asleep.

  Ian told me of the band’s decision to change its name if one member ‘left’. I thought this was a strange thing to have discussed and wondered if they were expecting something to happen to him, or whether they were planning to throw him out.

  Although he was very well liked by staff and customers at the Job Centre, Ian still had to work full time and this caused problems if he needed to leave Macclesfield early. Not all Ian’s colleagues were sympathetic to his dilemma. Once, when Joy Division had to play a gig during the week, Rob Gretton arranged for Tony Wilson to pick Ian up at the Job Centre. Tony left Granada Studios in Manchester to collect Ian at exactly four o’clock, as that was the earliest they would allow him to leave. They drove down to London, not knowing precisely where the gig was. They decided to ask a queue of young people if they knew the way, only to find that the queue was for them! It made the hassle at work worthwhile, but Ernest Beard was worried about Ian. He found the reviews in the music press disturbing. In his opinion they were like psychiatric reports, even using the appropriate terminology and references. Journalists and fans seemed to have picked up on Ian’s instability all too soon. Ernest himself left work early one day so that he would be able to see Joy Division on Granada Reports. He said he thought the presentation was terrific, but asked Ian if he had taken any drugs to help him. Ian replied that all he had needed was a ‘Gold Label’. Indeed Ernest remembers, ‘He was always laughing and joking. When I was in the business, they used to say that an overdose was like a common cold. They see such a lot of it.’

  Certainly Ian’s dancing had become a distressing parody of his offstage seizures. His arms would flail around, winding an invisible bobbin, and the wooden jerking of his legs was an accurate impression of the involuntary movements he would make. Only the seething and shaking of his head was omitted. This could have been a deliberate imitation, but his dancing was not dissimilar to the way he had danced at our engagement party four years previously.

  ‘The first time anyone saw him do it there were only about four people there, so he had the entire floor. He leapt off the stage and was doing it all over the place. I thought it was cracking. I didn’t get any feedback that anyone thought it was comical, because it was obviously so intense. One or two people did things like that around that time in that city and you might have thought he was a bit … but he just seemed like he was on the edge. He was scared.’

  Paul Morley

  The lyrics Ian chose to match the band’s already haunting music were increasingly depressive and if you wanted to believe that he was writing about someone else’s experience, then you also had to believe that he was capable of enormous empathy. Journalists and fans alike tried to decipher his words and now, of course, many feel that Ian’s melancholy was staring them in the face. It was too incredible to comprehend that he would use such a public method to cry for help. Peter Hook was consistently described as surly and defensive about the meaning of the lyrics. He never considered Ian’s lyrics to be more than a part of Joy Division’s work and definitely not the guiding force it was purported to be. In fact Pete didn’t take any notice of Ian’s lyrics until after his death; only then did he recognize that Ian was (in Pete’s words) ‘a real beautiful wordsmith’.

  Ian carried a plastic bag around which was full of notebooks and paper on which he wrote frantically when the mood took him. He would listen to the music, which was more often than not arranged by Bernard, and choose lyrics that seemed appropriate. If the lyrics worked well with the melody and gave the listener something of depth to think about, then there was no reason to question Ian’s means. Undoubtedly, Joy Division’s audience wanted more.

  In an interview in the fanzine Printed Noises, Ian said, ‘We haven’t got a message really; the lyrics are open to interpretation. They’re multidimensional. You can read into them whatever you like.
Obviously they’re important to the band.’ Ian himself had always enjoyed reading into other people’s lyrics. We used to argue about the last line of Lou Reed’s ‘Perfect Day’. I thought the words were ‘You’re going to reap just what you sow’, but Ian’s interpretation was ‘You’re going to read just what you saw’. One of his ambitions was to witness events as they happened, before reading about them in the press.

  ‘He fooled around more than anybody. He would do anything for a bet. He made writing songs a lot easier. He had a lot of words in his book. He would just sit there with his book and not move very much, mumbling something and getting a few bits of paper out. We didn’t have quality gear and wouldn’t quite know what he was singing, but just the fact that someone had got some words and got something to sing meant that we could write songs very easily.’

  Steve Morris

  ‘He was a catalyst for the rest of us. He would … cement our ideas together. We would write all the music, but Ian would direct us. He’d say, “I like that bit of guitar, I like that bass line, I like that drum riff.” And then I would arrange it – mostly I would arrange it, with additional suggestions from the other members of the band. He’d put the lyrics in later, but he always had some ready. He had a big box with lyrics in. He brought our ideas together in his own way, really. That was the first thing we missed … He came up with all the vocal melodies … He did some guitar on one or two, but it was pretty straightforward. He hated playing anyway. We made him play. He played in quite a bizarre way and that to us was interesting, because no one else would play like Ian. He played in a very manic way. We thought it was good; we liked the way he did it.’

  Bernard Sumner