i first heard them when i was maybe 10 or 11.
my mum's boyfriend was new to my life and in the process of getting to know him i discovered it was joy division.
one of our earliest bits of in-jokey bonding we did was for him to sing the bass line of 24 hours and i'd beatbox the drums. in athens airport he told me it was the purest distillation of pain.
though none of us will ever admit it, things didn't go right between our family unit. on a general level he's a simple, home counties bloke. not particularly quick witted or articulate having to live in the shadow of my hyper-intelligent, hyper-funny dad. not only did he have to come to terms with the fact he would always be the number 2 paternal figure, he also had to come to terms with the fact that my mum was and forever will be still in love with my dad. still bitter by him leaving. still broken by it.
this was compounded by the fact i was insanely (occasionally violently) jealous of him for the first couple of years of him being in my life. i was very possessive of my mum. sadly just at the point where i'd matured enough to embrace him he'd seemingly given up and descended into a work addiction he's never got out of. he doesn't sleep. he doesn't spend weekends with my mum. he's just hiding in a world of work.
there was also a point- presumably after becoming disillusioned with me and my sister- where he wanted kids and my mum refused.
he'd had a difficult life before that. his dad died of cancer when he was 10 and his mum followed suit in his 20's. i later found out some incredibly dark things happened to him as a child.
so joy division speaks to all that really. a man who'll have to live the rest of his life haunted by his demons and his perceived failures and a sense of isolation from his own family. the music also speaks to me of my failure in all of this. my failure to support him and to be a son to him. it speaks of a broken man and the failure of my relationship with him.