Thirty years ago today, much like I am back doing again today, I was juggling two lives, one is freight forwarding at Heathrow for the money and one involved with music, for the passion. I can recall that it was a Sunday and I was due to leave for an evening band meeting at the NFT with the band that I then managed Repetition. A friend called to me to say that he had heard from Rob Gretton that Ian Curtis had died.

Now at this point one might assume that the sky became dark and there was countrywide grief. Having lived through times, whilst incredibly sad, the importance of the contribution of Ian & Joy Division took longer to sink in to most people (other than those close friends and insightful writers like Paul Morley). It is perhaps only in retrospect that Ian & Joy Division became so important to so many; even important to those who perhaps had never heard of Joy Division prior to Ian’s death.

Ian was born two months after me and whilst I was brought up in the namby pamby South, Ian’s life and subsequent lyrics were inextricably linked to what is now fast becoming my spiritual home, the North West.

Two months after Ian’s demise, I remember sitting in a studio in Saffron Waldon with Rob Gretton as he produced a single for Repetition. Perhaps with some trepidation raising the issue of Ian’s death and in typical Rob fashion he said that Ian was a ‘selfish w*nker, he screwed up all my plans’. But even through Rob’s usual confrontational non nonsense approach, you could tell that he knew that even in those two months, Ian had already become an immovable reference to a generation.

It was my passion for Joy Division that subsequently led me to admire the Factory Records ethos so much, work closely with Annik at Factory Belgium and, many years later, start up a record label which in its own small way tries to adhere to that orginal Factory ethos. It is indeed strange that in 1980, we were then one year into Thatcher’s Britain with all the turmoil that this brought to the poorer parts of our country. Today, 30 years later, we are one week into what could be another austere Tory parliament. I just wonder what a 54 year old Ian would have made of it.