• Amazing Package: The iconic image from the cover of the Unknown Pleasures album will be printed in white directly onto the book's case, true to the design of the original record sleeve. A bellyband will be wrapped around the case with the book's title and descriptive copy. Finally the book will include stained black deckled edge paper and black endpapers. Please see the Extras tab for additional product shots.

• While several books have been written about Joy Division, Ian Curtis, and Factory Records, this is the only account of the inner workings of the band by one of the three surviving members.

• Joy Division’s influence and appeal has never waned. The groundbreaking nature of their sound combined with Ian Curtis’s tragic suicide made for an “instant myth,” in the words of music critic Simon Reynolds—and one that has profound resonance to this day. Forty years on they maintain a devout fan base and artists ranging from Bono to Morrissey to Moby to Red Hot Chili Peppers guitarist John Frusciante have gone on record about their love for Joy Division’s music and the influence the band has had on their own material. Readers will be eager to read the real story behind the band’s formation, the development of their unique musical style and powerful aesthetic, and their sudden and tragic dissolution. 

Joy Division changed the face of music. Godfathers of alternative rock, they reinvented music in the post-punk era, creating a new sound—dark, hypnotic, and intense—that would influence U2, Morrissey, R.E.M., Radiohead, and numerous others. The story is now legendary: in 1980, on the heels of their groundbreaking debut, Unknown Pleasures, and on the eve of their first U.S. tour, the band was sent asunder by the tragic death of their enigmatic lead singer, Ian Curtis. Yet in the mere three years they were together, Joy Division produced two landmark albums and a handful of singles—including the iconic anthem “Love Will Tear Us Apart”—that continue to have a powerful resonance to this day.

Now for the first time their story is told by one of their own. In Unknown Pleasures, founding member and bass player Peter Hook recounts how four young men from Manchester and Salisbury, with ad hoc instruments and a beat up old van, rose from the punk scene to create a haunting atmospheric music that would define a generation. Peter talks with eye-opening candor and reflection about the suicide of Ian Curtis; covers the band’s friendships and fall-outs; the evolution of their sound and image; and the larger-than-life characters who formed a vital part of the Joy Division legend including Factory Records founder Tony Wilson, and producer Martin Hannett. Told with surprising humor and vivid detail, Unknown Pleasures is the book Joy Division fans have waited decades for.