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Joy Division cancelled US / Canada tour 1980
Little was known about the venues that Joy Division intended
to play on their US tour and the following list was subject to
ongoing speculation and amendments for several years. We
used information from various sources including Rob
Gretton's notebooks and the MDMA
web site fully in the knowledge
these were not the final notes, and may have reflected ideas
and aspirations rather than concrete arrangements.
Then, in 2019 Peter Hook auctioned
off a huge number of Joy Division, New Order, and
Factory related items including an itinerary for the tour
given to him after Ian's death. We were pleased to find this
final version matched quite well to our speculation.
Naturally we have used this itinerary
to update this page, but we have also left some listings in
which do not appear on it. This is in line with our policy
of including cancelled gigs in our listings (it's just a bit
more complicated here because all the gigs were cancelled)
and if the venue had gone as far as to advertise a gig it
was clearly a realistic prospect at some point in
time.
This is the final tour itinerary and
the concerts below that appear on it and therefore make up
the finalised tour are marked with a
We know that New Order played at some
of the same venues when they got out to the States in
September and those events are also documented below.
Nick Blakey spent a lot of time
working on this and drawing together disparate information
and talking to people who were involved in the US gig
circuit back in the day, It is wonderful to see this
finalised with the definitive tour dates.
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19th May 1980 Joy Division arrive in
the US
Source: Rob Gretton's notebooks
21st - 23rd May 1980 (3 nights): Hurrah, New
York
Source: Rob Gretton's notebooks and the
final tour itinerary. This was to be officially the first
venue on the tour.
Support acts:
Wed 21 The Mutants
Thu 22 Crash Course in Science
Fri 23 Bongos
Support act info from the "Goings On
About Town" section of the New Yorker dated 26 May 1980
Scan
thanks to Farmer in the City
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On one of these nights the dB's filled in for Joy Division -
as this extract from their web
site shows:
Badge image + text
courtesy of the dB's
web site |
The dB’s
almost certainly played Hurrah more than any other
band. This "rock disco" on W. 62nd Street had a
short life as a trendy place to see and be seen. The
New York debuts of The Cure and The Psychedelic Furs
were at Hurrah; The dB’s opened there for the Only
Ones, the Records, and Wreckless Eric. For reasons
unknown to the band, the late Ruth Polsky, who
booked the club, took a shine to The dB’s and they
played there frequently, even reluctantly filling in
at the last minute for Joy Division, whose Ian
Curtis committed suicide days before their scheduled
show (not that their fans came expecting to see
them; it was a rather joyless occasion, no pun
intended). |
Merrill Aldighieri tells us her film
"LOVE AMONG THE MUTANTS" was intended to be the "opening act"
for Joy Division on one of the nights:.
I made an underground science fiction comedy titled "LOVE
AMONG THE MUTANTS". I showed up that night wearing a hand
made paper machet eyeball. As I nervously sipped beer
through a straw inserted in my iris I wondered why the club
was still empty. Then around 11:00 2 club-goers arrived (Pat
Ivers & Emily Armstrong) to tearfully tell us the
horrible news about the death of Ian Curtis.
The staff decided to show my movie anyway. I was in a
depressed and frantic stupour with serious tunnel vision
under the cyclops outfit. I wore this the whole evening,
trying to hide. By the time my film played I was a basket
case. The club asked me to come back and become their
multi-media artist in residence, and not long afterwards New
Order made their debut. I videotaped that show, as well as
100 others.
New Order finally played there 26th September 1980.
According to Steve who was at that New Order concert "A
Certain Ratio were on the bill that night. New Order took to
the stage in complete darkness with a single purple spotlight
on an empty mike stand and opened with 'In A Lonely Place'. It
was chilling"
24th May 1980 Joy Division travel to
Toronto
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25th May 1980: The Edge nightclub,
Toronto
The Edge nightclub, at the corner of Church & Gerrard in
Toronto was run by the two Garys: who brought Blondie, The
Ramones, Talking Heads, New Order, The Police, The Smiths, and
most of the cutting edge acts from 1977 thru the 1980's.
Tickets were on sale at the time, Ian died one week to the day
before he would play here.
Here's what Gary Topp (one of the two
Garys) told our invetigator Paul Boyd: "I
can't tell you the exact date.... but they were scheduled
to play on a Sunday nite, tix were on sale. they cancelled
their tour due to his death a week prior".
This puts the date firmly at 25th May,
which is confirmed by the final tour itinerary, the ticket,
and the advert in the Toronto Star Saturday May 18th 1980,
see right..
(C)
Copyright control - image used here with permission
Peter Howell writes:
"The tiny ad in the Toronto Star of
Saturday, May 17, 1980 promoted the first local appearance
the following weekend of a band "from England": Joy
Division.
The price was $5.50 a ticket, at a now-defunct venue called
The Edge at Church and Gerrard Sts. where all the hot punk
and New Wave acts played. The May 25 show was to start at
the very uncool time of 7:30 p.m., but it was a Sunday,
after all.
All 250 tickets sold out, promoter Gary Topp recalled in an
interview, and the band members would have been paid a total
of $1,000 (US) for their labours. But hours after the Star
ad appeared, the band's frontman Ian Curtis was dead.
Toronto would have been the second stop on the band's first
North American tour. For promoter Topp, who was working in a
company called The Garys, it was the second major show in
just over a year scuppered by sudden death.
The Garys had also booked Sid Vicious to perform, shortly
before the ex-Sex Pistols bassist was found dead from a
heroin overdose. But everybody knew Vicious was on the way
down, as in six feet under. Joy Division was on the way up,
and already had mystique, Topp said.
"Musically they were unique for the times, rooted in punk
with a tortured Jim Morrison-ish style. They were a breath
of fresh air, experimental, problematic. We liked that."
(C) Peter Howell http://www.thestar.com/article/254562
Reporduced here with permission
26th May 1980: Bookies, Detroit
According to Rob Gretton's notes at the time there was a
possibility this gig would be cancelled - in which case Joy
Division would play Madison on the 28th May. This is clearly
what happened as this was a day off on the final tour
itinerary.
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Copyright Control
Used with permission
Image courtesy of
The Toronto Star
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27th May 1980: Tuts, W. Belmont, Chicago
The promoter, or rather one of the co-promotors, Wax Trax,
was a Chicago record shop that specialised in Factory records
imports. They even had a specially made Joy Division neon sign
behind the counter. They had tickets printed in a variety of
colours.
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| Support band ‘Stations’ got a call
three days before the gig: the whole tour was cancelled because
Ian Curtis had committed suicide. Info |
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Thanks to Nick Blakey for his
tireless research which has helped populate this page
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Thanks to Steve for the green ticket scans |
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28th May 1980: Merlyn's Madison,
Wisconsin
At one stage this date was a
contingency if Detroit (26th May) was cancelled. However one
Merlyn's regular remembers the gig being cancelled on this forum. Merlyn's
was the pre-eminent punk club of the time and was made up to
look like a cave with brown stucco, stalactites hanging from
the ceiling.
29th May 1980: Duffy's, Minneapolis
With Husker Du and Fine Art - according to Rob Gretton's
notes and the venue's flyer respectively
Duffy's image Creative
Commons Licence
There were multiple venues named "Duffy's at the time.
This one was at 26th & 26th in South Minneapolis; both
buildings pictured were razed in the early 1990s.
Tabletop schedule tent card
courtesy Daniel Grobani and reproduced here with permission
While the flyer notes Fine Art as the opener, Kim Moline an
employee of Duffy's at the time, says that Husker Du were also
scheduled to play:
"They were suppose to
play at Duffy's 29 May, 1980 with Husker Du ...
tour dates were cancelled due to Ian Curtis's
suicide on the 18th of May. Curtis, suffered from
epilepsy and depression, committed suicide on the
eve of Joy Division's first North American tour,
resulting in the band's dissolution and the
subsequent formation of New Order. Duffy's was
suppose to be the 8th date on the tour."
Thanks to Mark
Dignam and Duffy's Rock & Roll Alternative on
Facebook
30th - 31st May 1980: Days off
including travel
30th or 31st May
1980: The Underground, Boston
With Mission Of Burma
New Order finally played here 30th September 1980.
Rob Gretton's notes indicate the possibility of a Joy
Division gig in Boston on May 30-31, 1980 and local memories
suggest that it was to be The Underground with Mission of
Burma supporting, but listings taken from local paper The
Boston Phoenix and no further mention in Rob's notes show that
the gig was never finalised.
Incidentally: Joy Division's tour mates OMD played The
Underground on June 1st 1980
Thanks to Mike Miliard of The Boston Phoenix newspaper for
supplying us with information about Underground gigs at that
time
31st May 1980: 9:30 Club, Washington DC
Image: John
McWilliams [Public domain]
via Wikimedia Commons 1990
According to 'Dance Of Days: Two decades of Punk in the
Nation's Capital' by Mark Andersen & Mark Jenkins (pages
59/60) Joy Division were supposed to inaugurate 9:30 Club
which had previously been known as "The Atlantis". However
this date had been dropped by the time the final tour
itinerary was published.
Instead 9:30 Club opened with New York jazz combo the Lounge
Lizards, supported by Tiny Desk Unit on 31st May.
1st June 1980: Pop Front /
Machinist's Hall, New York (cancelled, Pop Front
moved the venue to Tier 3 see below)
According to contemporary music papers a Joy Division gig
slated for the Machinist's Hall, NYC on this date was
cancelled, despite being confirmed by the final tour
itinerary. It appears that Non-profit NY promoters "Pop Front"
had already run a month of Sunday night gigs there when an
attack by vandals forced the owners to cancel all upcoming
dates so the concert was moved to Tier 3.
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1st June 1980: Pop Front / Tier 3 (aka
TR3), New York
This date confirmed as "Pop Front", the promoter, by the
final tour itinerary and by Hilary Jaeger who booked Tier 3
(aka TR3).
Peter Hook's "Unknown Pleasures ..." book page 275 features a
photo of a schedule (but unlikely to be the final version)
showing Pop Front, New York.
New Order finally played here 27th September 1980 with A
Certain Ratio.
2nd June 1980: Joy Division fly to San
Francisco
3rd - 4th June 1980: Days off
3rd and 4th June
1980: American Indian Centre, San Francisco
Rob Gretton's notes refer to a possible
gig in San Francisco on one of these days. However these had
been changed to a single gig on 7th June by the time the
final itinerary was published and Joy Division were to have
two days off.
Jim Manniello in SF stated he clearly
remembers the gig was to have been at the American Indian
Center, although he was unclear on the date.
Jello Biafra states this was to be two
dates - (most likely 3rd and 4th June) with Dead Kennedys
opening one show and The Mutants opening the other.
Peter Hook's "Unknown Pleasures ..."
book page 275 features a photo of a schedule (but unlikely
to be the final version) showing the dates as 6th and 7th
June
5th June 1980: Joy Division travel to
LA
According to Rob Gretton's notes they were
either to travel to LA - or play Madame Wong's on this date.
As Madame Wong's is planned for the 7th June we assume this
was to be a travel day.
6th June 1980: Day off
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Thanks to Philip Kret for the scan |
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7th June 1980:
American Indian Centre, San Francisco
The date had taken some firming up -
see 3rd 4th June listing above and this was the final agreed
date on the itinerary.
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7th June 1980:
Madame Wong's, Los Angeles
Rob Gretton's notebooks list this
as a venue but it had been dropped by the time the final
itinerary was published.
Image (C)
copyright Theresa K / Punk truns30.com
and reproduced here with permission
8th June 1980
Flipper's Roller Boogie Palace, Los Angeles
Peter Hook's "Unknown Pleasures ..."
book page 275 features a photo of a schedule (but unlikely
to be the final version) showing this unlikely venue - and
it's confirmed by the final tour schedule.
Circa 1980
image courtesy Water and Power
Associates
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09h June 1980: Day off
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9th June 1980: The Starwood, Northwest
corner of Santa Monica Blvd. and Crescent Heights Ave , Los
Angeles
Image thanks to Steve Eastwood
Clearly a solid enough booking to advertise the gig, see
right, this concert had been dropped by the time the final
itinerary was published.
No tickets exist as people had to return them to get refunds
B People were to open for Joy
Division. Later, in 1981, they
opened for New Order at Perkins Palace in Pasadena,
California.
For the poster for that event click
here.
The Starwood closed in 1982 see Starwood
for details
10th June 1980: Return to the UK
Unknown dates:
The following gigs also seem to have
been planned for unspecified dates at some point but do not
appear in Rob Gretton's notes or the final tour itinerary:
Robson Square Theatre, Vancouver
Grant McDonagh, from ZULU RECORDS tells us: "I worked at an
indie record store at that time (Quintessence Records). I
recall being in it's back room and me and fellow staff members
discussing that we heard Joy Division were going to be coming
to town soon, and were going to be playing the Robson Square
Theatre. This was an approx. 200 seat venue on the bottom
floor of a Provincial government set of buildings, near the
centre of downtown Vancouver (the buildings are still there).
I recall seeing Pere Ubu play at the Robson Square Theatre in
the summer of 1979, a good gig!
The theatre really wasn't a cutting-edge venue, more like a
lecture hall that wasn't used for concerts too often. Joy
Division would have been the only other contemporary band
booked there since the Pere Ubu gig a few months earlier.
The concert promoter was Perryscope Concerts, they did most of
the up and coming touring gigs in Vancouver at the time.
Then one day I went to work, and a co-worker told me he heard
that Joy Division's singer had committed suicide a day or two
earlier. We talked about it of course, and I remember us
talking about how their Vancouver promoter, Perryscope, had
just called just a few days earlier, saying they'd be dropping
tickets to sell off in a few days.
But that was that."
North Park Lions Club Hall, San Diego
Joy Division was booked to play in San Diego by Renee
Edgington of Shark Productions, probably at the North Park
Lions Club Hall. In the movie, Control, you can see San Diego
in the itinerary. Would have had to have been at the time of
the LA gigs.
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Image thanks to Pat Fear
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