IAN CURTIS DEPRESSED GENIUS, 3. April 2000

AL LEER ESTE LIBRO ME HE DADO CUENTA DE MUCHAS COSAS QUE YO NO SABIA SOBRE TAN FABULOSO CANTANTE , COMO LO ES IAN CURTIS , UNA DE LAS RAZONES POR LA CUAL COMPRE ESTE LIBRO ..FUE PARA ENTERARME MAS DE LA VIDA INTIMA DE TAN GENIAL CANTANTE , QUERIA TRATAR DE INTRODUCIRME EN SU CABEZA Y DARME CUENTA DE DONDE SALIAN TAN EXTRANAS CANCIONES ..DE DONDE SALIA TANTA OBSCURIDAD..(LO CUAL ES LO QUE MAS ADORO)LA OBSCURIDAD DE VUESTRAS CANCIONES ME HAN DEJADO SIN ALIENTO MUCHISIMAS VECES Y NO ME CANSO DE OIR SUS CANCIONES UNA Y OTRA VEZ ...ES UN BUEN LIBRO PARA TODO AQUE QUE SEA UN FANATICO DEL GRAN GRUPO BRITANICO ."JOY DIVISION" Y AUN SI NO LO SON .POR LO MENOS SI SON AMANTES DE LA LITERATURA ..ES UN BUEN LIBRO EN TODO EL SENTIDO ..OS GUSTARA ..OS LO PROMETO

      A brave, personal & unique insight into a genius, 25. März 2000

Ian Curtis was, after Dylan, the most talented, visionary poet ever to grace the skimpy depths of pop. His writing bore the distilled intensity of the greatest poets, best exemplified on Joy Division's posthumous masterpiece Closer, a peerless, terrifying, airless work which in its final two songs suddenly transforms into a beautiful, war-torn smile of relief, a wonderful, liberating acceptance of death.

Deborah Curtis tells her story - and her husband's - with terrifific passion and urgency but with a heatbreaking, neverending determination to understand who he was and what led him to take his own life. This book is a must for all Joy Division fans and anyone interested in the scaffolding behind the dazzle of genius and celebrity - not to suggest that Curtis wasn't the former, because he most certainly was.

      Demystifying a rock God, 20. Februar 2000

Deborah Curtis certainly takes much of the luster off of thisextraordinary artist. Getting away from the "he said, shesaid" banter that dominates most of these reviews, she does make clear something none of the myth-makers has given enough attention to: Ian Curtis was suffering from a very serious neurological illness, and no one surrounding him in the music business was taking this enough into account, either before or after his suicide. When you and others don't understand the extent and scope of your illness, it leads to feelings of failure and despair. The combination of his illness and the drugs he was on would be enough to drive anyone over the edge, with or without a "Bizarre Love Triangle." I know whereof I speak, because I also have a neuroligical illness and have taken some of the same powerful medications prescribed for epilepsy. Ian was pushed beyond his limits by his "adoring" manager and sometimes bullied by his bandmates for his inevitable collapses.

There may be many things Deborah didn't understand about her husband, but in all fairness, he got what he asked for in a wife. Women's lib hadn't reached the outskirts of Manchester in the early seventies, apparently, and Ian falls firmly into the retro male chauvinist pig category, despite his forays into eye shadow and fluffy pink funfur jackets. (Her first description of seeing him looking out over the wasteland below his housing project, thus attired screams out for film treatment.) The dead-end jobs, the stifling working class mores, the getting married straight from home is all too depressingly reminiscent of the lives of some of my own relatives. Listening to Joy Divisions music it's easy to read a more sophisticated backdrop into it. Seeing where the darkness actually came from is interesting.

This is a very sad and true book. The only reason I gave it four stars instead of five is that it is missing essential information about Deborah. Did she ever remarry? Find happiness with someone else? Did she get any decent money from record sales? And what about daughter Natalie? I'd have liked to know more about how Deborah developed and matured as a person, but,as in her marriage to Ian, she still seems to think her place is in the background. In pandering to the fans, she loses sight of the fact that we're reading this because we also want to know about her. Photographs of the teenaged young couple are absolutely priceless.

      ...further all the time, 15. Januar 2000

In this memoir written by his wife, Ian Curtis is painted in drab colors and lonliness. Much more than young man angst was going through Ians mind during his lifetime. His attempts at normalcy (marriage, children and employment) are alternately sincere and patronizing. He seems to love and despise his family within the space of days.That he killed himself on the eve of Joy Division first U.S. tour is another major paradox in his life, especially after devoting so much energy and time into making the band a success. He was lonely, angry, frightened, bitter and pitiful. And brilliant. The addition of lyrics at the end of the book is a wonderful treat. For the Joy Division fan that had canonized Ian Curtis as a victim this book will be an eye opener. For those of us that prefer he remain human we will now know that most of his problems were self-inflicted and his nihilistic philosophy was self-fullfilling.

      Missing from nearby, 12. Januar 2000

When I bought this book I thought I would get to know a bit about Ian Curtis, but the person who wrote this book (his ex-wife!) doesn't seem to have been living in the same country as Ian let alone the same house. 'Debby' never had any meaningful conversation with him, didn't know lyrics until after the albums were published and hardly ever went to a concert. It's not a biography of Ian Curtis, it's the depressing story of an abandoned mother somewhere on the outskirts of Manchester. You get a glimpse of the exciting things that were going on at the time, concerts by all kinds of (to me) legendary bands like The Buzzcocks, but Ms Curtis doesn't bring us any closer to the excitement. The discography and the lyrics are what makes the book worth it's money (and I bought it 2nd hand).