Widow’s Liverpool family tribute to tragic singer

Oct 12 2007 by Vicky Anderson, Liverpool Daily Post

THE Liverpool-born widow of Joy Division singer Ian Curtis invited her extended family to a special screening of a film about his life last night.

Deborah Curtis wanted her relatives to see Control, which she co-produced, to mark the end of her involvement in the exhausting process.

Ian Curtis hanged himself in 1980, aged 23, on the eve of his band’s first American tour.

The surviving members of Joy Division, best known for their single Love Will Tear Us Apart, went on to become New Order.

Control, directed by photographer Anton Corbijn, who shot some of the most iconic pictures of the band, is based on Ms Curtis’s book about her husband, Touching from a Distance.

Although Ms Curtis did not want to watch the film alongside her family at Fact last night, she took the opportunity to answer questions and sign books for fans.

She told the Daily Post: “Because I was born here, it seemed like really a lovely way to finish all the furore.

“It is a chance to see family I haven’t seen for years.

“I wanted a family get together to make it a happy occasion, because it is such a sad film.

“And they were there at the beginning, they were at our engagement party, so they will remember.

“I just hope it doesn’t upset them.”

Softly spoken and modest in nature, Ms Curtis had deliberated whether to get involved with the film but decided her input would ensure she had some say in how the story was told – something she had not had with the making of 24 Hour Party People, the first film to chart the rise of Joy Division.

Before Touching from a Distance was published in 1995, the public knew little of Curtis’s personal life and inner turmoil, and his widow “just started writing for my own peace of mind, to get my thoughts down on paper and try and sort out in my own mind what happened and what went wrong”.

Epileptic Curtis struggled with debilitating fits, and at the time of his suicide was conflicted between his loyalties to his wife and their baby daughter Natalie at home in Macclesfield, and his feelings for his lover, Belgian journalist Annike Honore.

Ms Curtis, portrayed by Samantha Moreton in Control, says she is happy with the end result.

“It is a very powerful film, and I’m glad it’s been made because it puts someone else in those roles.

“It kind of helps me to get out of it and distance myself from it, I think.

“It all comes back to just how long ago it was. The black and white helps that. It’s like looking at a photograph, it brings it all home.”

Harder to watch, she says, is a new documentary, just called Joy Division, that interviews many people who were close to Curtis.

It is a question his widow must be asked wherever she goes, but Ms Curtis knows why the appeal of her husband lives on more than 25 years after his death.

“It’s got to be the music. The lyrics and his voice are just timeless. There are a lot of artists who have gone on who are still going and people are interested. If the music can stand up, that’s all you need.”

vickyanderson