…the almost right word

From the sleeve notes to the Factory sampler Palatine.

On ‘Transmission’
I remember leaving a Secret Affair concert at the London Rainbow, oh, during some month or other in 1979, or was it ‘80? Anyway, I’d left early, being an NME critic and all that, and some skinheads attacked me, thinking for some crooked reasons that I was a ‘mod.’ They slashed my mouth with a Stanley knife. I remember crying out, ‘I am not a mod, I am a brave, rigorous and austerely clad fan of Joy Division,’ but they took no notice, and just kicked me a big in the ribs before smartly leaving me to feel sorry for myself. I really did struggle home, and as the blood poured out of me, I spent hours playing and replaying this track, taking it seriously, cursing every ignoramus and ass in the world that didn’t. By morning I’d played it, oh, 50 times, and found that I was writing about Joy Division using words a little like the following: ‘With instinctive unanimity, they hate all firmitas, because it bears witness to a healthiness quite different from theirs, and seek to throw suspicion on firmitas, on conciseness, whilst celebrating a fiery energy of movement, on abundant and delicate play of the muscles. Joy Division have agreed together to invert the nature and names of things and henceforth to speak of health when we see weakness, of sickness and tension when we encounter true health. Why the fuck aren’t they being played ten times a day on Radio One?’ I don’t know why, but people started to say that I took Joy Division just a little too seriously. So what! I had the scars, I felt the holy wrath, and even today when I play this track anywhere up to 50 times a day, I still feel, after everything and after all that, that any number of astonishing things are possible. The greatest song ever written.

– from Joy Division: Piece by Piece, Writing about Joy Division 1977-2007 by Paul Morley