---
product_id: 297136803
title: "Joy Division's Unknown Pleasures Paperback – 1 April 2004"
brand: "chris ott"
price: "€ 9.29"
currency: EUR
in_stock: true
reviews_count: 5
url: https://www.desertcart.es/products/297136803-joy-divisions-unknown-pleasures-paperback-1-april-2004
store_origin: ES
region: Spain
---

# Joy Division's Unknown Pleasures Paperback – 1 April 2004

**Brand:** chris ott
**Price:** € 9.29
**Availability:** ✅ In Stock

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- **What is this?** Joy Division's Unknown Pleasures Paperback – 1 April 2004 by chris ott
- **How much does it cost?** € 9.29 with free shipping
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## Customer Reviews

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐ 







  
  
    A little thin on the work in question
  

*by G***D on Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 23 November 2011*

As a start point, let me just say that I think that Siriam's review is pretty much on the money and he has expressed much of what I might have written in this review.This is not so much a book about Unknown Pleasures, more a book about Joy Division that manages to avoid anything much to do with Closer. In this respect, it doesn't do precisely what it says on the cover, but having started on the tack it has, you sort of wish that it had kept going and dealt with Closer too.This is the first book I have read in the series, so I am not sure what to expect. I think what I might have expected was a real in depth analysis of the album in question. In this analysis, I would want to know more about the lyrics and would probably expect to see them reproduced. It wouldn't be much to ask. There is a general discussion of some of Curtis' lines, but nothing that really approaches textual analysis. As a guitar player, I would also really have liked to have known what amps and equipment were used and if possible, how these choices were decided on. Reading around this suggests that Sumner used Vox guitars, which are an unusual choice. Why? How did they contribute to the Joy Division sound, if indeed they did?The writing is OK but at times typical rock journalist, which has a tendency to be slightly bombastic ,as if it has real literary pretensions. It isn't easy to write about music, though, to get the reader to experience what the author as listener has experienced. There was a passing comment on Proust which just betrayed deep ignorance of his work, but I can't be bothered to leaf through the book to tell you what it was.In summary, a good and interesting book on Joy Division for the fan, though if you have read around the subject, I am not sure that this work is going to enlighten you over much. It won't tell you a huge amount more about the album in question than perhaps you already know.

### ⭐⭐⭐ 







  
  
    Too much emphasis on the tragic outcome and not the music
  

*by S***M on Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 10 December 2004*

"Unknown Pleasures" is a recording that like Jeff Buckley's "Grace", has become near mythical as a memorable initial recording followed by the singer's early death with no time to subsequently disappoint fans by later output. As a result many writers on limited evidence feel able to extrapolate their views and this book is sadly no exception.Chris Ott is clearly a long time US based devotee of the group and their output and as an American has done a lot of homework on the Mancunian rock scene of 1976-1980. He covers well how it grew out of copying the London led punk scene and was then left behind by Joy Division as they moved on from their initial incarnations as the Stiff Kittens and Warsaw. His detailed coverage of the early recordings and John Peel "Top Gear"sessions and the growing contact with Rob Gretton and Tony Wilson plus producer Martin Hannett (whose cutting edge if erratic approach to new recording techniques was used so effectively but at the cost of alienating group members by his control freak approach), is the best retelling of the story I have seen to date.Where the book starts going astray is half way through as we move to the recordings of the songs that made it to the final LP and the remainders that were used on later releases and compilations. That Ian Curtis developed quickly as a great lyricist and singer and that he was a major catalyst with other members of the group in how songs were developed is well covered - however the haliography with which Ott imbues him and the interaction of his private life (relying heavily on his widow's recent biography) lead to an overemphasis on the tragic suicide that occurred shortly after and little evaluation of the LP and its subsequent impact (the small sales of 15,000 in six months being little explanation of why the recording is cited in many "best of" lists). Instead what is provided is a retelling of Curtis's quick and sad decline in health and the tragic interaction of drugs and manic live performances reflecting the growth of intensity in his epilepsy seizures. One sad result is the rest of the group become a mere backdrop, which as New Order subsequently showed they were clearly not.

### ⭐⭐⭐ 







  
  
    Ian more than Joy
  

*by M***A on Reviewed in Germany on 13 May 2015*

Is it possible to be a Joy Division fan without succumbing to Ian Curtis mythology? Apparently not, and this book is no exception.Though author tried to avoid it for the better part he only managed to fall into dry listing of chronology in which even events like Ian running around in the rehearsal room with a bucket on his head make no impression nor inspire emotion. Barely few facts are new in this book - it mostly caters to the hardcore devotees comparing every possible rendition of the songs fueling further that Curtis myth.Image keeps springing in my mind of a poster that covered better part of the wall in my best friend's room - Ian sitting on an amplifier with head bowed down and a hand over his eyes. For some reason or another (being more or less the same age as Ian was then) my friend took to worshipping Joy and all that weight of the world on shoulders posture and demeanor. Unfortunately it also had an air of being better than the rest, too (apparently because of that same huge weight).Another image that follows it along the same lines is of a guy from my high school who tried to be a film director while being an overtly huge fan of Joy and was walking around all misunderstood evoking weltschmertz. Unfortunately, even Ott slides towards it in the end, mentioning Goethe and young Werther. The very last sentence in the book is overflowing with pathos: However casually, critically or romantically we approach Joy Division's music, we can only mourn the overwhelming, frustrated agony that Ian Curtis could not bear.If only someone could approach that music without mourning...

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*Product available on Desertcart Spain*
*Store origin: ES*
*Last updated: 2026-02-02*