Ceremony

 

“Savoir qu’on n’a plus rien à espérer n’empêche pas de continuer à attendre.”
– Marcel Proust, À l’ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Je me souviens d’avoir longtemps rangé le premier maxi et le premier album de New Order avec les disques de Joy Division pour former un sorte de triptyque comme en peinture, composé de paires, avec l’album Unknown Pleasures et le 45tours Transmission, puis Closer et le 45tours Love will tear us apart, et, sans la présence de Ian Curtis, Movement et Ceremony, cette dernière étant en quelque sort une suite posthume accouchée dans des conditions plus que particulières, parce qu’il fallait bien continuer.

Je me souviens bien que dans son livre intitulé Joy Division : Piece by Piece, l’écrivain journaliste Paul Morley décrit Love will tear us apart comme la meilleure chanson du monde, puis, une page plus loin, dit de Ceremony qu’il s’agit de la meilleure chanson du monde (comme ça tout le monde est content).

Je me souviens aussi que cette chanson n’a été jouée qu’une fois en live du vivant de Ian Curtis, et qu’après sa disparition, les membres restant du groupe – devenu New Order -, ont du réécouter bon nombre de fois la cassette démo où elle était enregistrée pour pouvoir retranscrite son texte et se le réapproprier correctement, et que dans le cas similaire de la pochette de l’album Closer, très solennelle mais n’ayant aucun rapport direct avec la mort de Ian Curtis, le titreCeremony renvoie bien sûr au chanteur suicidé alors que c’est une chanson qui parle d’amour, avant tout, et écrite de son vivant :

This is why events unnerve me,
They find it all, a different story,
Notice whom for wheels are turning,
Turn again and turn towards this time,
All she ask’s the strength to hold me,
Then again the same old story,
World will travel, oh so quickly,
Travel first and lean towards this time.

 Oh, I’ll break them down, no mercy shown,
Heaven knows, it’s got to be this time,
Watching her, these things she said,
The times she cried,
Too frail to wake this time.

 Oh I’ll break them down, no mercy shown
 Heaven knows, it’s got to be this time,
 Avenues all lined with trees,
 Picture me and then you start watching,
 Watching forever, forever,
 Watching love grow, forever,
 Letting me know, forever. 

Dans ce court roman, qui s’apparente à un monologue intérieur, Bertrand Schefer parle d’enterrement sans jamais prononcer ce mot, auquel il préfère Cérémonie. Dans un style sobre et délicat, il déambule dans Paris et dans Rome, mais aussi dans ses souvenirs, ses années de débauches notamment. C’est aussi une bonne façon de parler du frère, de l’oncle et d’autres personnes encore, d’acheter un beau costume, de parler de l’absente, de comprendre la relation qu’il entretenait avec, d’afficher, à l’extérieur du moins, une peine détachée, jusqu’aux obsèques où il fait ce constat final : il faudra bien continuer. Les éditions POL nous ont habitués à de beaux textes modernes sur la mort –Perfecto de Thierry Fourreau ou, bien sûr, le magnifique Suicide d’Édouard Levé -, et Cérémonie vient s’ajouter à cette liste de publication, pour le plaisir du lecteur pour qui écriture rime avant tout avec littérature, celle-là même qui est l’opposée de l’éphémère et de l’urgence, du temps présent et de l’actualité, celle où l’on peut se perdre, celle de Virginia Woolf (Promenade au phare) ou Julien Gracq (Le Rivage des Syrtes)…

extrait de Cérémonie, de Bertrand Schefer :

“Nous nous sommes vus pendant près de dix ans et pendant deux ou trois ans, je ne saurais dire combien de temps exactement, car tout se déréalisait de mois en mois, nous avons pour ainsi dire cohabité au milieu des disques et de l’alcool, toujours plus bas à chaque visite, mais tenant des discours qui semblaient aussi de plus en plus lucides, des paroles aiguës et acérées sur les productions musicales et littéraires, sur les connaissances, les fausses amitiés, les tentatives amoureuses désespérées, sur ceux qui perçaient et ceux qui s’effondraient, et rien ne semblait à la hauteur de nos exigences car nous raisonnions de plus en plus vite dans les méandres du son qui nous portait, dans le mélange d’alcool et de fumée qui ouvrait de nouvelles perspectives à l’intelligence des choses et nous permettait de déchiffrer l’actualité, les textes et les tendances du moment. Nous avions du mal à interrompre le vertige de cette descente une fois engagée dedans, et c’était toujours la même chose, englués dans la critique de tous les systèmes, des échecs et des réussites, il fallait chaque fois attendre la fin d’un morceau et la dernière goutte d’une bouteille pour réussir à nous arracher au milieu de la nuit à ce monde fait de bribes de phrases lancées dans les vides et conclure par une formule incantatoire, toujours la même : il faut s’y mettre.”

© Yann Courtiau & Manoeuvres de Diversion (Publié le 18 mai 2015)

 

Masterclass

35 Years Ago: Joy Division Play Their Final Concert

On May 2, 1980, Joy Division took the stage at Birmingham University’s High Hall for what would be their final concert. As fan David Pryke recalls, “They were very late! We hung around for a long time listening to ACR [A Certain Ratio, who opened] sound check. [It was] a mixed audience of students, punks and rockers.”

When Joy Division finally took the stage, the band tore through 11 songs in 45 minutes, and used the show as an opportunity to debut a brand-new track, “Ceremony” — this would be the only time Joy Division ever performed the song live, which eventually became New Order’s debut single in 1981:

For fans who picked up tickets ahead of the show, they cost a cool £1.50 (about $2.50 today); they were £1.75 at the door.

About two weeks after the gig, on May 18, frontman Ian Curtis — who reportedly had a tough time at the High Hall concert, having to be helped off the stage during the second-to-last song — took his own life. Joy Division were set to hit the road for their first-ever North American tour on May 19.

Sadly, the place where Joy Division played their last-ever concert is no more; High Hall was eventually renamed Chamberlain Hall and, in January 2014, it was tore down (after sitting empty for six years). The legacy of the gig lives on, though, as the official soundboard recording was released as part of the 1981 compilation album, Still.

The last song of the night — and the final song ever performed by Joy Division — was “Digital,” from the 1978 double-EP, A Factory Sample.

Thirty-five years later, looking back on the legacy of Joy Division and the historic moment of this concert, the lyrics (and Curtis’ intense performance) take on an extra-haunting significance: “I need you here today / Don’t ever fade away / Don’t ever fade away / Fade away / Fade away / Fade away ...”

Joy Division — Setlist, May 2, 1980
“Ceremony”
“Shadowplay”
“A Means to an End”
“Passover”
“New Dawn Fades”
“Twenty Four Hours”
“Transmission”
“Disorder”
“Isolation”
“Decades”

Encore
“Digital”

El nervio de Ian Curtis

 

De una banda como Joy Division parece que ya se ha llegado al punto límite en cuanto a alabanzas recibidas para compensar las no recibidas en su momento, que ya se les aplaude de más o que ya está dicho todo lo decible sobre ellos. Para colmo hasta Inditex venden camisetas suyas (a saber qué porcentaje de los que las compran saben quienes son). Yo, personalmente, creo que nunca sobran buenas palabras sobre ellos, incluso aunque se llegue a la náusea. Claro que es difícil para mí llegar a cansarme de ellos, lo voy a reconocer.

Los mancunianos llevan conmigo desde mis primeras andadas serias en esto de escuchar música, siendo casi una rara avis dentro de una biblioteca donde los géneros predominantes distaban bastante del Post-Punk que el cuarteto ayudó a definir y moldear. No se me caen los anillos para reconocerlos como una de mis bandas predilectas, con la que me podría pasar en bucle varios días tan alegremente. Me sobran los motivos, y quería centrarme en uno de ellos, que es Ian Curtis como vocalista.

 

 

No era un virtuoso ni era particularmente talentoso, pero contaba con una actitud inimitable y, en ocasiones, capaz de transmitir una energía sin igual. No empleando grandes recursos para ello, sólo transmitir tensión, ese nervio característico que en canciones como en ‘Digital’ se hace más palpable que nunca, haciendo de ella una de las canciones más movidas y electrizantes de Joy Division.

 

 

La mera aparición de su inconfundible voz es capaz de levantar toda una canción y darnos un chute de adrenalina como bien ocurre con ‘Transmission’. Un canción así no sería igual ni de lejos sin un excelso Curtis gritando con garra ese “Dance, dance, dance, dance, dance, to the radio” que, efectivamente, nos invita a marcarnos un buen baile. Igual no tan mítico como los que hacía Curtis pero sí para moverse bien a gusto.

 

Esas mismas palabras que componían las letras de Joy Division no sonarían tan sinceras y creíbles con cualquier otro vocalista. Pienso en concreto en una escena de la película Control, centrada en la (corta) vida de Ian, donde el susodicho es incapaz de salir al escenario con su banda y el manager tiene que recurrir a un sustituto, con el consiguiente enfado del público asistente. El tema que tenía que cantar el suplente era ‘Disorder’, y era de ilusos pensar que podría acercarse mínimamente a lo que Curtis logra en la pieza original, especialmente en los instantes finales tan intensos y magníficos.

 

 

Y en terrenos tan oscuros y densos como podían ser esos los de Unknown Pleasures (Factory, 1979), gracias sobre todo a su producción, Ian Curtis era capaz de con su sola voz hacerse dueño de toda la atmósfera. Aunque por su manera de aferrarse al micrófono pueda parecer más frágil, sus cuerdas vocales le consiguen colocar al frente de todo. Él sólo necesita cantar con decisión los versos de ‘Shadowplay’ para que todos nos rindamos ante su superioridad.

 

 

Su capacidad para erigirse como pilar sobre el cual sus compañeros van produciendo el caos con sus instrumentos hablan más que bien de su poderosa actitud y su brillantez para adaptar sus escritos a la canción. No hay mejor prueba que ‘Twenty Four Hours’ de cómo Curtis se muestra sereno y decidido ante el micrófono mientras el resto de Joy Division van formando y deformando el sonido alrededor suyo.

 

 

Un temple decidido, inamovible y que en canciones como ‘Colony’ supone el plus necesario para redondear un tema afilado e intenso como éste. Hay que repetirlo, no es tanto su registro vocal o su virtuosismo, sino la actitud que transmite y la seguridad con la que escupe sus versos. Una de esas interpretaciones que te dejan sencillamente helado.

 

 

Y no podía cerrar este repaso a la figura de Curtis y de sus momentos más vibrantes como cantante sin hacer mención a ‘Ceremony’, la canción más Ian Curtis de toda la carrera de Joy Division y también una canción que podría ser tu vida, la mía o la de cualquier otro. A pesar de que las versiones que podemos encontrar de la canción tocada por Joy Division no son de la mejor calidad posible, tampoco es necesario para poder apreciar a ese Ian tan intenso, tan sincero y tan profundo. Una canción que cobra mucho más valor tras todo lo que sucedió tras terminar de ser escrita y ahora las palabras no terminan de hacerle justicia.

© Black Gallego

Galaxie 500’s Dean Wareham performs Joy Division and New Order’s ‘Ceremony’

“Ceremony” is known in most music fans knowledge as the song that bridged Joy Division’s transition to New Order following the death of the former’s frontman. As one of the last songs Ian Curtis wrote, there are recordings of Joy Division performing it but there is sadly not a fully realised studio version out there.

When the remaining members of Joy Division regrouped as New Order following the death of their frontman they realised the song was too good to be thrown away and recorded it with Bernard Sumner on vocals. It went on to be the Manchester band’s first single. It was a song that still sounded heavily like Joy Division but the new lighter vocals by Sumner definitely gave it a more defiant, even optimistic, sound.

Fast forward to 1990 and the shoe-gaze type band Galaxie 500 decided they would give the song their own spin, slightly slowing it down, giving it an almost Velvet Underground sound. Despite it being a cover, it went on to become one of the band’s most revered recordings.

Dean Wareham, Galaxie 500′s guitarist and vocalist, is currently touring a new solo album and so, while playing a recent session for KEXP, he wheeled out the much loved cover from his previous band. Listen below for a great, chilled out version of a song that was so important in the transition of one great band to another.

 

The role of “Ceremony” as the bridge between Joy Division and New Order

 

The album may or may not be obsolete, but the fact remains: Listeners have long obsessed over individual songs. The Single File is The A.V. Club ’s look at the deep cuts, detours, experiments, and anthems that make us reach for replay.

When Steve Coogan, playing Factory Records founder Tony Wilson in Michael Winterbottom’s 24 Hour Party People, authoritatively proclaims, “No band ever survives the death of their lead singer,” he offers it as a generally accepted rule with one specific exception: New Order. Ian Curtis’ suicide shortly before the release of Joy Division’s second album, Closer, and first North American tour is one of the great “what if”s in rock history. What Bernard Sumner, Peter Hook, and Stephen Morris did afterward, regrouping and forging a new direction, remains an improbable rebirth. And the song that best epitomizes that tumultuous, grief-stricken process is “Ceremony,” New Order’s debut single.

At the time of Curtis’ death, Joy Division had been rehearsing new songs, including “Ceremony,” which made it into the band’s live show on a number of occasions. When Sumner, Hook, and Morris reconvened, they were left with “Ceremony” and “In A Lonely Place,” songs Curtis had contributed to but hadn’t yet been released in any official capacity. Those songs were Joy Division’s unfinished business, the last remaining work to be done before any symbolic forward progress could be achieved.

Three recorded versions of Joy Division’s “Ceremony” exist. The first, a live version, appears on Still, the 1981 compilation album that contains previously unreleased material and a recording of the band’s final show at University Of Birmingham’s High Hall from May 2, 1980. The second is a studio rehearsal take—recorded in Prestwich, at a space listed as “Graveyard Studios”—from four days before Curtis’ suicide, and it appears on the Heart And Soul box set. The third, a fan-recorded sound check take from the afternoon of the High Hall show, exists only as an online bootleg.

Listening to any of those three versions is a cryptic exercise in grasping at an unattainable past. Curtis’ alternately quavering and soaring screeches are so low in the mix that his lyrics—which shift widely between the recordings—range from muffled to entirely unintelligible. Only the back half of the High Hall recording from Still contains a clear vocal track, leaving at most one incomplete version. Bitter fans have long blamed errors by recording engineers or live mixers for failing to preserve even one pristine Curtis vocal track among these opportunities. But in terms of symbolism, it’s grimly poetic that Curtis sounds as though he’s lost and fading away from the rest of the band over the course of each take. “Ceremony” was a song Curtis was still working out—hence the shifting lyrics—and the hanging thread of the incomplete recordings gave the remaining members a foothold to hang on to as they regrouped.

Closer was released in July 1980, and the rest of the band took nine months to put out a re-recorded version of the final two Joy Division tracks, in part as a tribute to Ian Curtis’ memory. Over the course of that time, each of the three remaining members tried out as lead vocalist. A New Order demo session from September 1980 at Western Works in Sheffield contains a full recording of “Ceremony” with drummer Stephen Morris as lead vocalist. It’s arguably more haphazard that any of the Joy Division recordings, as the fledgling band struggles to work out a new identity.

Eventually, guitarist Sumner emerged as the new vocalist, and Martin Hannett, Joy Division’s frequent producer, was again behind the console to work on what would become New Order’s message to the world that the band wasn’t finished yet. The March 1981 single version contained both unfinished Joy Division tracks, sealing off that catalog and providing Sumner, Hook, and Morris with a blank canvas. On this version of “Ceremony,” just like the Joy Division versions before it, the drums punch and echo, the cymbals are high in the mix, and are matched only by Hook’s high bass line. Sumner’s vocals are awash in reverb behind the instrumentation, a tentative foray into singing Curtis’ words, which required putting those three demos—specifically the Graveyard Studios take recorded in the same session as “In A Lonely Place”—through a graphic equalizer to decipher.

 

Though the single was commercially released, the lineup of New Order had yet to be solidified, and that lingering instability carried over into the March 1981 single version, recorded at Easter Artists Recording Studio (E.A.R.S.) in East Orange, New Jersey. New Order still sounds manic and unpolished, yet airy and dreamlike, caught between the fierce post-punk of Joy Division and something waiting just around the bend. To round out the lineup, on the advice of longtime manager Rob Gretton, they asked Morris’ then-girlfriend Gillian Gilbert to join on guitars and keyboards.

Until Gilbert joined the band, Sumner, Hook, and Morris were simply the remaining members of Joy Division. With her, as evidenced by the 12-inch re-release of “Ceremony” recorded in September 1981, they became New Order. Debate can rage on about whether the March single is better, or whether the Joy Division originals would have been the best had Curtis’ vocal tracks remained unmarred. (A 2011 Record Store Day re-release of New Order and Joy Division versions of “Ceremony” and “In A Lonely Place” on opposite sides of the same record only added fuel to that fire.) But the final one with Gilbert should be considered the definitive version of the song, because after frantically searching for a foundation without a talismanic leader, and rotating through the remaining members in search of a new voice, it’s the sound of a newly complete whole settling into place.

 

Whereas the Joy Division takes and earlier New Order attempts at the song still radiate bits of chaos, this final version projects a calm demeanor right from the start. Peter Hook’s notable high bass line floats over the top, Morris’ drums echo through the studio atmosphere. The tempo is slower, but the rhythm is no less insistent than on “Transmission” or “Love Will Tear Us Apart.” And once the second guitar line kicks in, the picture is complete. Where once there was a trio written off to the footnotes of history without Curtis, there is now a quartet taking the first step in a new direction. The band has always been prickly when asked about the meaning of lyrics in its songs. (The final line of “Your Silent Face” on Power, Corruption, & Lies addresses this directly: “You’ve caught me at a bad time / So why don’t you piss off?”) Still, it’s hard not to read most of “Ceremony” in light of the turbulent year following Curtis’ death, especially the final lines of the last chorus, “Picture me and then you start watching / Watching forever / Watching love grow forever / Letting me know forever.” The guitar line keeps lilting, and Sumner’s voice repeats “forever” as his vocals fade into the mix, and New Order achieves a small piece of sonic catharsis.

In the end, Steve Coogan’s Tony Wilson was probably right in his summation: Joy Division is yet more proof that band’s do not survive the death of a lead singer. But the recording history of “Ceremony”—from the sketchy studio rehearsals, to the live takes, to fledgling experiments after Curtis’ death, to the multiple official singles—positions New Order as a band building on Joy Division’s legacy, but with a separate and alternately influential style all its own.

 

© A.V. Club

Ceremony

 

Ecco perchè gli eventi mi snervano
per ognuno una storia differente
guarda bene per chi stanno girando le ruote
girano ancora e girano avanti questa volta
lei vorrebbe solo avere la forza per trattenermi
poi ancora la solita vecchia storia
le parole viaggeranno, oh così velocemente
viaggieranno per e si sporgeranno in avanti questa volta

Oh, li distruggerò tutti, senza nessuna pietà
Il cielo lo sa, deve essere per forza ora
Guardarla, quelle cose che ha detto,
Le volte che ha pianto,
Troppo fragile per risvegliarmi questa volta

Oh, li distruggerò tutti, senza nessuna pietà
Il cielo lo sa, deve essere per forza ora
I viali tutti affiancati da file di alberi
Mi dipingi e dopo inizi a guardare
a guardare per sempre, per sempre
a guardare l’amore crescere, per sempre,
facendomelo sapere, per sempre

‘I’ll break them down, no mercy shown’

Ceremony