Ian Curtis with his daughter, days before he hung himself in 1980
Ian Curtis spent his entire life trying to settle himself within real life. He married at 19, young for anyone, but when he became a star of the English music scene at the age of 22 he became even more unmoored in his own life. It’s horrible when someone takes their own life, but the saddest part of this Curtis’ daughter never really knew her father.
Curtis’ widow, Deborah, wrote in 1995 that she understood why he was depressed because she was too. However, at the time she was trying to keep their family together while he was on the road. She wrote:
Our existence had become boring and the fact that we both hated our jobs didn’t help. I became very depressed. Sometimes I was unable to stifle the tears on the long bus journey home. We had mistakenly saddled ourselves with a mortgage and a stability we weren’t ready for.
Ian Curtis left us on May 18, 1980, but the music of Joy Division will be with us forever.
