Joy Division ..

 

 

 

 

 

 

It's now forty-six years since I took these pictures of Joy Division, and I post them again in memory of Ian Curtis. Here's a little video I made of my photographs ..

Getting fresh ..

 

 

 

 

 

It was forty-six years ago today that eighteen-year-old me spent a couple of hours walking the mean streets of Sale with The Freshies. This was the band fronted by Chris Sievey, who transformed himself into Frank Sidebottom a few years later. On February 28th, the group had played Bowdon Vale Youth Club - scene of my 'famous' Joy Division photographs - and, after the gig, I asked if I could do a shoot. Why I didn't ask Joy Division I will never know!! ..

Anyway, here are three of the lads, larking about in Tesco's car park and outside the Blue Rooms disco in Sale. Great memories, great times ..

Sievey/Sidebottom

 

 

 

 

 

Like a doddery grandad that won't shut up about the past, I'm following yesterday's musical memory with another 'date-in-the-diary' that I thought you'd like to know about. We're going back to February 28th, 1979, meaning it's forty-five years to the day since The Freshies played the youth club at Bowdon Vale. Does that name ring any bells? Yes, it's the same venue in which I photographed Fast Cars and then Joy Division just two weeks later. (Recognise the wallpaper?) Anyway, here's poor old Chris Sievey (right) giving it his all in an effort for world domination. He'd later become Frank Sidebottom, of course, gaining fame and no fortune with a papier-mâché head stuck on his shoulders. Following the gig, I asked the band if we could arrange a photo-shoot, then spent a fun-filled morning snapping them all around the streets of Sale. Sadly those photographs, like the band, got nowhere ..

Thirty seven years ..

It's very strange to think that 37 years have now passed since I took this photograph but today is the anniversary of that Joy Division gig at Bowdon Vale Youth Club. Thirty seven years ago, as a wee 18 year old lad, I rode on my little Honda 50 motorbike to the gig and took two rolls of film of a band that 'felt good'! Unfortunately, I failed miserably in getting my local newspaper to use the shots and they sat unused for the next 25 years! It's good that they're out there now. It's just a shame that Ian isn't ..

Move on up to the Kwik-Save Disco..

I had another of those amazing photographic coincidences yesterday when a piece popped up on Facebook to say that a film was being planned on the life and times of the late Chris Sievey. (He was the singer in Timperley pop/punk band The Freshies, though will always be better known as the head in the head of Frank Sidebottom - if you see what I mean!) I contacted the director of the film to say I'd photographed a Freshies gig at Bowdon Vale Youth Club just two weeks before I shot Joy Division there, and had then set up a photo-shoot with them which we did around Sale, just south of Manchester city centre. Amazingly, he said that he'd been going through Chris' personal possessions, and had come across two sheets of contact prints featuring those very shots. However, being a dimbo of an eighteen year old I'd not put any ID on the contacts, so he didn't know who'd taken the pictures. Then a mutual friend of ours - the writer Mick Middles - identified them as being mine, and the director was just on the verge of contacting me when I dropped him that email. So, with any luck the shots will feature in the film, and I've been asked if I'll be interviewed myself to talk about the work. The funny thing is that last year I photographed Mick's Wedding to the lovely Vicki, and we recreated one of my Freshies' shots down the ramp of the Tesco car-park! Have a look at it here .. and now please join me in a rousing chorus of "The men from banana island whos (sic) stupid ideas never caught on in the western world as we know it" Two, three four....