The economic and cultural climate of England at the time of Joy Division and the advent of goth-rock is important to understand how exactly the genre came to be. Art is reactionary, it isn’t created in vacuum, rather, it is a direct response to outside stimuli. Large parts of Manchester were destroyed during World War Two, and the city continued to decay as the British economy weakened in the decades following the war. Manchester lost 150,000 jobs in manufacturing between 1961 and 1983, leaving the postwar generation without many options for higher education or even a steady blue-collar job. The Cold War cast a grim mood, and creeping fears of nuclear warfare contributed to the nihilistic worldview of Ian and his peers. They were also very, very bored, and the high that came with acting out was addictive. The name “Joy Division” originally referred to the prostitution wing of a Nazi concentration camp mentioned in a novel Ian had read. Joy Division’s bassist, Peter Hook replied with the following when asked about Joy Division’s use of Nazi imagery:
The first [Joy Division] sleeve was Germanic, and the name was because there’s a certain physical sensation you get from flirting with something like that, which we enjoyed when we started and tried to put it across because we thought it was a very, very, strong feeling.
We mustn’t forget that at the time, most of the members of Joy Division were in their early twenties, and the love of controversy and shock-value that is such a part of youth-culture is quite evident in their usage of Nazi imagery. But Hook also gets at the sense of excitement that comes from flirting with taboo images and concepts. Goth-rock, nu-goth, and 1800’s Romanticism all share this ecstatic desire to push boundaries and explore the forbidden.
Simply looking at the track titles on Unknown Pleasures tells us to what kind of world Joy Division was born, and on what kind of a universe they attempted to comment. “Disorder,” “Insight,” “Shadowplay,” and “Wilderness,” to name a few, evoke Romantic notions of revelation, nature, and chaos. Even the title, Unknown Pleasures, conveys a dark sensuality—that there are strange and seductive things yet to explore.
One of the bands that developed after the collapse of Joy Division was Swans, an American group who released their debut EP, Swans, in 1982, and continue to be active today (their most recent album came out September 2010). The EP showcases the brutal, repetitive sound that Swans is known for. Like Joy Division, Swans is carried along by a relentless, driving bass line, topped off with disenchanted, monotone vocals, typical of most 1980’s goth-rock compositions. The music of Swans is often physically painful to listen to; it is full of dissonant, clanging cymbals, tortured, howling lyrics, and bare-it-all song titles (examples include, “You F****** People Make Me Sick,” “My Buried Child,” “Eden Prison,” and “Killing For Company”). Michael Gira, the vocalist, songwriter, and veritable soul of Swans once said the following of his music:
We’d like to present an animal alternative to ‘civilized’ behaviour, negating for a brief interlude the dull nullities of everyday life. When we reach the peak of animal rhythm, that negates everything else around it. Depending on the live situation, we can either be ecstatic or mundane. That’s how it should be.
Gira recognizes this relationship between the mundane and what he calls the “animalistic” and the “ecstatic.” The unbridled intensity of Swans is Gira’s proposed alternative to rational living. Gira also emphasizes the importance of live shows and the dialogue between the musicians and the listeners. The live performance component of music is crucial to understanding its message. Though the majority of the time we are exposed to music in mp3 or CD format—live shows allow for a complex set of interactions and the genesis of a unique group psyche that builds upon itself. This group psyche is quite similar to the traditional notion of the “Bacchic frenzy,” stemming from the name of the Roman god of ritual madness and ecstasy (used interchangeably with his Greek name, Dionysus). The Bacchic frenzy originally connoted a Greco-Roman form of ritual worship of Bacchus-Dionysus. The cult festivals involved all sorts of deviant sexual activities, copious amounts of wine, theatrical and musical performances, and storytelling. The Roman historian, Livy, wrote of the “Bacchanalia”:
There was no crime, no deed of shame, wanting. More uncleanness was committed by men with men than with women. Whoever would not submit to defilement, or shrank from violating others, was sacrificed as a victim. To regard nothing as impious or criminal was the sum total of their religion. The men, as though seized with madness and with frenzied distortions of their bodies, shrieked out prophecies; the matrons, dressed as Bacchae, their hair disheveled, rushed down to the Tiber River with burning torches.
Indeed, music (live music especially) seems to invite these types of reactions more than any other art form. Livy’s description of Bacchic worship sounds very much like a hardcore punk show—limbs flailing, hundreds of sweaty bodies crammed into a small space, shrieking, singing, and dancing. Even Woodstock can be seen as a prime example of Bacchic worship—a festival of drugs, sex, and types of music that at the time were seen as eccentric and forbidden. Live music is a way for listeners to step away from their headphones and engage in a communal experience.
The energy of 1980’s goth-rock didn’t disappear when the 1990’s began, rather, it developed and was replaced by two different genres: trip-hop and grunge. In the UK, bass-heavy compositions were going out of style, and synthesizer-based compositions were becoming more and more popular. In the U.S., bands like Swans continued to release material, but faded into the background to be replaced by stylistically different music. Probably the most influential American band of the 1990’s was Nirvana, defined by their drug-addled aura and nihilistic lyrics. The style of the 1980’s goth-rock movement: leather jackets, Doc Martens, and heavy eyeliner were replaced by flannel shirts, Converse sneakers, unwashed hair, and ripped blue jeans. The deep, prophetic vocals and staccato drumlines of Joy Division compositions were replaced by lurching, grimy guitar solos and acidic lyrics of grunge rock bands. One review of Nirvana’s 1991 album Nevermind writes of the song “Smells Like Teen Spirit” (undoubtedly Nirvana’s most popular of all time), “ [it] magnifies and distills the wounded rage of 15 years of the rock underground into a single impassioned roar. Few albums have occupied the cultural consciousness like this one; of its 12 songs, roughly 10 are now standards.” Though stylistically different than goth-rock, Nirvana’s message is no different, and as an icon, Kurt Cobain is quite similar to Ian Curtis. Cobain was an artistic genius who turned to heroin and other narcotics to combat a myriad of underlying health issues. He married young, had one child, but in the end he was consumed by the cynicism and darkness that he flirted with in his music, and took his own life on April 5, 1994.
If Nirvana was America’s outlet for darkness and uncertainty in the post goth-rock epoch, then what was happening in the UK at the time? One of the groups that defined the sound of British alternative music in the 1990’s and early 2000’s was “Massive Attack,” an electronic duo from Bristol, England that formed in 1988 and released their first album, Blue Lines, in 1991. Massive Attack’s third album, Mezzanine, released in 1998, is a perfect example of the direction that dark music took in the 1990’s. Mezzanine’s sound is unlike anything the music world had ever experienced before, sensual, ethereal, alienating and yet fascinating. Composed, shadowy, mechanical—Mezzanine can be aptly described by its cover: a large, sinister looking beetle, serrated jaws poised to destroy. If one looks closer at the cover, it is evident that certain parts of the beetle’s exoskeleton have been replaced with car parts. It is a beast of mechanized destruction and a call to the coming millennium. In 1998, a chapter of human history was ending, and a new one beginning, bringing with it reticent fears of a technology-wrought apocalypse. At the same time Massive Attack comments on these fears, they also fully employ these new technologies: increasingly complex synthesizers, music mixing software, and superior recording tools. Mezzanine is regarded as being one of the most well produced albums in music history, technically complex and immaculately edited. Massive Attack set the stage for further experimentation in electronic music, which over the course of time has given birth to countless subgenres—allowing for new growth, and overwhelming variety in sound and style.
(May, 2011)
