On Would possibly 18, 1980, the day earlier than their band Pleasure Department had been because of fly out to america for his or her first American excursion, Ian Curtis and Bernard Summer time had deliberate to head water-skiing in Blackpool with pals from any other band, Phase 25. When Curtis did not display up at their organized assembly spot in Macclesfield on the appointed time, Sumner travelled as much as the Lancashire seashore the town on his personal, mindful that his good friend had long past to peer his estranged spouse Deborah the former night time to speak about their separation.
Sumner recalls having a “sensible day” together with his pals, and was once in top spirits when he returned to their space within the past due afternoon. It was once round 4pm, he recollects, when the telephone rang, and one of the vital Phase 25 guys passed him the receiver, telling him that his supervisor Rob Gretton was once at the line.
“He stated, ‘I have were given somewhat of dangerous information for you. Ian’s dedicated suicide’,” Sumner recalled in a 1994 interview with MOJO mag. “‘You imply he is attempted to kill himself?’ ‘No, he is finished it’… The entire room simply became upside-down.”
Curtis were discovered useless within the kitchen of his marital house by way of his spouse Deborah round mid-day on Would possibly 18. He had died by way of suicide. He was once 23 years previous.
“Deficient Rob, he needed to inform me a few instances earlier than it sank in,” Sumner, now the frontman of New Order, wrote in his 2015 memoir Bankruptcy and Verse. “I slid to the ground in surprise. I didn’t talk, didn’t need to say a phrase to any person. Phase 25 actually taken care of me in the market. Everybody was once just right to me, the fellows from A Positive Ratio too, however I didn’t actually talk till the funeral. Everybody else went to peer Ian in his coffin previously, however I couldn’t face that. I sought after to keep in mind him as he was once when he was once alive.”
Peter Hook, Pleasure Department/New Order bassist, won the inside track of his good friend’s passing round the similar time.
“I used to be the primary of the gang to be informed,” he advised MOJO‘s Jon Savage in July 1994.” I used to be with regards to to take a seat down and feature my dinner and the telephone rang: ‘I am Sgt so and so, and I am sorry to let you know that Ian Curtis dedicated suicide ultimate evening.’ I went again in, sat down and had my dinner. I did not say the rest for roughly an hour. Surprise. It was once any such large factor to deal with. I do not believe you ever actually come to phrases with it.”
Curtis’ bandmates knew that their good friend was once struggling with melancholy within the months earlier than his demise. One month previous, on April 7, he had overdosed after taking a amount of the phenobarbitone tablets that he’d been taking to try to arrange his epilepsy.
“Within the ’70s, there was once a kind of stigma that you just didn’t need to admit that there was once the rest improper with you,” Pleasure Department/New Order drummer Stephen Morris recalled to CNN in 2022. “You could possibly be actually macho … it was once an indication of weak spot to mention there was once one thing improper with you.”
Taking a look again in 1994 in dialog with Jon Savage, Bernard Summer time gave a medical abstract of the standards that, he believes, led his good friend to finish his existence.
“It was once a breakdown of his dating, accentuated by way of the volume of barbiturates he was once taking to subdue his epilepsy,” he mentioned. “Barbiturates make you so you are guffawing one minute, crying the following. He’d had a bodily breakdown, a dating breakdown, which brought about an emotional breakdown.
“I got here to phrases with it instantly, as a result of I may just put my reason why on why I assumed he’d finished it,” he added. “Now I settle for this stuff: if it will occur, it will occur. Additionally I do not actually imagine it ends there.”
