Love Will Tear Us Apart (1980)

"Love Will Tear Us Apart" is a song by the English rock band Joy Division, released in June 1980 as a non-album single. Its lyrics were inspired by lead singer Ian Curtis' marital problems and struggles with epilepsy. The single was released one month after Curtis' suicide.

"Love Will Tear Us Apart" reached number one in New Zealand and was certified double platinum in the United Kingdom, selling and streaming over 1,200,000 units. The song has an ongoing legacy as a defining song of the era. In 2002, NME named "Love Will Tear Us Apart" as the greatest single of all time, while Rolling Stone named it one of the 500 greatest songs ever in 2004, 2010, and 2021.

Background

"Love Will Tear Us Apart" was written about Ian Curtis' troubled relationship with his wife, Deborah Woodruff, whom he married in August 1975. Additionally, it deals with his own struggles with epilepsy, which he was diagnosed with in 1979, and the overwhelming stress of holding down a day job and his growing career as a singer.

At a Joy Division gig in October 1979, Curtis met Belgian journalist and music promoter Annik Honoré and the two began a relationship; this caused further distress between Curtis and Woodruff.

Speaking about her relationship with Curtis in a 2010 interview with Belgian magazine supplement Focus, Honoré said:

It was a completely pure and platonic relationship, very childish, very chaste... I did not have a sexual relationship with Ian. He was on medication, which rendered it a nonphysical relationship. I am so fed up that people question my word or his. People can say whatever they want, but I am the only person to have his letters... One of his letters says that the relationship with his wife Deborah had already finished prior to us meeting each other.

According to drummer Stephen Morris:When we were doing "Love Will Tear Us Apart" there were two records we were into: Frank Sinatra's Greatest Hits and "Number One Song in Heaven" by Sparks. That was the beginning of getting interested in Giorgio Moroder. Especially "I Feel Love". There was another one, ["I Lost My Heart to a Starship Trooper"]: I remember going in a transit van to King's Lynn with Ian and hearing it and saying, "It would be good to do one like this, wouldn't it?"The title to the song can read like an ironic response to "Love Will Keep Us Together", a song whose version by Captain & Tennille was a hit in 1975. According to record producer Warren Huart, its intro was influenced directly by the Neu! song "Hero".

Recording

Joy Division first recorded "Love Will Tear Us Apart" at Pennine Studios, Oldham, on 8 January 1980, along with the B-side, "These Days". This version was similar to the version the band played live. However, singer Ian Curtis and producer Martin Hannett disliked the results and the band reconvened in March at Strawberry Studios, Stockport (where the Neil Sedaka song "Love Will Keep Us Together" had been recorded in 1973), to re-record it. Each instrument was recorded separately. As Morris recalled:

Martin Hannett played one of his mind games when we were recording it – it sounds like he was a tyrant, but he wasn't, he was nice. We had this one battle where it was nearly midnight and I said, "Is it all right if I go home, Martin – it's been a long day?" And he said [whispers], "OK ... you go home". So I went back to the flat. Just got to sleep and the phone rings. "Martin wants you to come back and do the snare drum". At four in the morning! I said, "What's wrong with the snare drum!?" So every time I hear "Love Will Tear Us Apart", I grit my teeth and remember myself shouting down the phone, "YOU BASTARD!" ... I can feel the anger in it even now. It's a great song and it's a great production, but I do get anguished every time I hear it.Though guitarist Bernard Sumner played guitar on the song, the band convinced Curtis to play Sumner's part live. According to Sumner, "We showed [Ian] how to play D and we wrote a song. I wonder if that's why we wrote 'Love Will Tear Us Apart', you could drone a D through it. I think he played it live because I was playing keyboards." The guitar heard on the recording was a 12-string Eko.

Curtis' singing style on the later version of the song is an imitation of Frank Sinatra, after Factory Records owner Tony Wilson had given him a record of the singer to use as a model. As Hannett felt this was a special song, he kept remixing it, even as many as 15 times.

While Joy Division were recording, U2 were in the studio to see Hannett about producing their single "11 O'Clock Tick Tock". U2 singer Bono said of the encounter: