Saturday, August 10, 2019

This Searing Light, the Sun and Everything Else - Jon Savage

Subtitle: "Joy Division: The Oral History"

You probably don't know this but I am a huge Joy Division fan. I have loved their music since the beginning (I'm old, kids, ha ha) and I have enjoyed the relatively recent biographical movie chronicling how the band formed and their career up until the moment of Ian Curtis' tragic suicide. This book, published very recently, is a compilation of first-person accounts of the band's history, and it makes for fascinating reading. It really evokes the feeling of what Manchester was like in the late 70s/early 80s (not that I was there, mind you, just that the book is evocative) and the music scene that spawned this amazing band. If you have already read a lot about the band, there aren't going to be huge surprises or anything in this book, but it's still a fascinating read all these years later.
For some reason I was out of the loop of this author's previous book about the band, and I will have to rectify that. Highly recommended.