Watch Brandon Flowers pay tribute to Joy Division during online celebration of Ian Curtis' life
Brandon Flowers paid fresh tribute to Joy Division frontman Ian Curtis last night (May 18) as he took part in a charity livestream event to mark the 40th anniversary of Curtis’ death.
Moving Through The Silence was broadcast online last night, which saw the likes of Joy Division’s Bernard Sumner and Stephen Morris taking part to help celebrate the life and legacy of Curtis, who died on May 18, 1980 at the age of 23.
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Read more: Joy Division’s ‘Unknown Pleasures’ at 40: How they made the unimpeachable proto-goth masterpiece
Flowers recorded a short piece to camera for broadcast during Moving Through The Silence in which he spoke about how he came to discover Joy Division after first falling for the music of New Order.
“My journey to Joy Division started at New Order. I distinctly remember being a young man and seeing ‘Bizarre Love Triangle’ on MTV and knowing that this was something I could get behind,” Flowers recalled (you can watch his segment at 54:10 in the below video). “As I got older and more invested in music, I traced that New Order lineage back to Ian Curtis and Joy Division. This unparalleled, stark, beautiful, primitive, soulful music: it had a profound impact on me, just like it did many others.
Flowers then spoke about working with Anton Corbijn on his 2007 Curtis biopic Control, for which they covered Joy Division’s ‘Shadowplay’.
“We were lucky enough to have [Corbijn] do the artwork for our second record, and he was just starting to get into the film Control,” Flowers said. “He wanted to show how far Joy Division had reached; four kids from the desert in Las Vegas, 5000 miles from Manchester.
“So he asked us to do ‘Shadowplay’, which was the last thing we did when recording ‘Sam’s Town’. So there’s a little bit of that DNA in the track, and it was a privilege and honour to be a part of it and work on the film. It’s also become a staple in our live shows, and it’s something I look forward to performing.”
Moving Through The Silence was also held to raise money for the Manchester mental health charity Manchester Mind while marking the beginning of Mental Health Awareness Week.
Joy Division’s Peter Hook also honoured the anniversary of Curtis’ death yesterday by streaming a gig in which he played every Joy Division sing with his band The Light.
