Touching From a Distance: The only in-depth biographical account of the legendary lead singer of Joy Division.

The fact that most of Ian’s heroes were dead, close to death or obsessed with death was not unusual and is a common teenage fad. Ian seemed to take growing up more seriously than the others, as if kicking against it could prolong his youth.

He had a gentle charm and enthusiasm, two vital ingredients – mixed with brains and style they can take you a long way. As Ian didn’t have a tape machine, I left with a cassette of Warsaw demos to listen to and learn.

Did people admire Ian Curtis for the very things that were destroying him?

There were four in Joy Division – Curtis, Bernard Sumner, Peter Hook and Stephen Morris – but Ian was their eyes and ears: it was he who propelled them into uncharted territory – songs like ‘Dead Souls’ which, cold as the grave, has the infinity of a Gustave Doré hell.

Does singing about desperation come from being desperate or is it empathy?

The thing that amazes me the most is all the near-misses – how we lived in the same town, went to the same school, both indulged in the same bizarre combinations of drugs and solvents for kicks, yet never met; drank at the same pubs, yet our paths never crossed; frequented and robbed the same record shops, bought the same albums, went to the same g

When you’re young, death often isn’t part of your world. When Ian Curtis committed suicide in May 1980, it was the first time that many of us had had to encounter death: the result was a shock so profound that it has become an unresolved trauma, a rupture in Manchester’s social history which has persisted through the city’s worldwide promotion as M

the tortured artist, too fast to live, too young to die. This

Ian never did anything by halves; any interest became a vocation. Speedway rider Ivan Majors was Ian’s hero and he drew parallels between himself and the dashing world champion,