Morrissey is not like Ian Curtis. Other than some basic similarities like a love of books and a passion for music their personalities diverge on almost every point one might name.
Out of an admirable sense of respect for the dead, and probably also out of respect for what Joy Division meant to Manchester, Morrissey has always maintained silence about Ian Curtis (although he has slagged off the music of Joy Division and New Order, usually referring to it as "boring" or, when he's being nice, he says "their music never did anything for me"). In fact I would imagine that, privately, Morrissey would be as scathing about Curtis as he is about Robert Smith. Not that he'd be correct, of course-- about Ian I mean.
For those in this thread who have knocked Curtis, I won't even bother defending Ian from a depiction of him in a film, but to the point about Ian failing to live up to the image he projected in the music, his wife, ex-bandmates, and biographers all agree that Ian kept his intellectual side hidden from view. He lived a double life. Even someone like Peter Hook, who knew Ian as well as anyone, has told of his shock at his suicide because he couldn't see it coming, so convincing was Ian at making the inner turmoil he described in his lyrics seem like impersonal artistic expression and not, as some of the lyrics turned out to be, chillingly autobiographical. No one really knew Ian Curtis. We have only the lyrics to decipher for clues.
I think the lyrics of Ian Curtis are brilliant!!
Anyway there was an article in MoJo about Joy Division, the other
band members and other friends said that he was just a 'normal
bloke', Hook said that he was "quiet and polite. Dead nice, really."
A few months before he died, he had a seizure on stage at the
Rainbow. Right after that, it happened again in West Hampstead.
It was April. On Easter Monday he went back home and tried
to kill himself with pills.
In May according to Steve Morris Curtis seemed 'content', and had
not had any bad seizures in two weeks. They dropped him off at
a Mexican restaurant on Friday night and that was the last time
they saw him, his wife found him monday morning, he had hung
himself. Bernard Sumner said he had no idea he would do that....
Steve Morris thought at first it must have been an accident.
The article also mentions that Buzzcocks show-'a Factory myth'
Anyway, great article.
I like the book
Touching From a Distance because it has all of
the lyrics, including a bunch of untitled and unfinished.