This Is the Crisis I Knew Had to Come Revisiting Ian Curtis’s Suicide

On the evening of Monday, 19 May 1980, the late BBC DJ John Peel told his listeners about the unexpected death of Joy Division’s singer and lyricist Ian Curtis. A long-time champion of Joy Division, Peel expressed his sympathies to Curtis’s family and friends, and, in tribute, he played ‘New Dawn Fades’ (1979). A very short report – just two paragraphs – published in the Manchester Evening News on the same day offered a slightly more detailed account of the tragic event. It cited a police spokesman as saying: ‘A rope was round his neck, but there are no suspicious circumstances’ (1980, 8). The report also included a comment from Factory Records’ manager Tony Wilson who stated, ‘Ian found life a bit complicated. It’s a tragedy. He was a very talented boy’ (1980, 8). His remains were cremated six days later. The subsequent inquest on 13 June 1980 confirmed that Curtis had killed himself, with the cause of death being attributed to asphyxia resulting from a ligature tied around his neck (Curtis Death Certificate 1982)....