And also this year the Joy Division and the New Order will enter the Hall of Fame next year

The Hall, The Hall Will Tear Us Apart … Again. The new round of artists admitted to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame was made known yesterday. Also this year the New Orders have been discarded. The hall merged them to the Joy Division in one nomination, which means that the voters had the chance to grab two legendary bands in one time. Both groups are hyper -seventened to access the Hall of Fame individually, being among the most influential of the last half century. Yet they can't even enter us together. How is it possible?

It is one of the most serious historical errors made by the Hall of Fame. The pioneers of Art Punk and the Goth Disco have been excluded from the hall for about twenty years, even if they are suitable to enter from the year of birth of Olivia Rodrigo and this despite the huge impact they have had on post punk, synth pop and dance. One of the best songs of the New Order is Confusionone of the most beautiful of the Joy Division is Disorder: two perfect titles for circumstances. As Ian Curtis sang, “Where will it end?”.

The Joy Division/New Order were nominated in 2023 and even then passed the selection. This time the surprise is even bigger since they seemed favored in a rose of candidates not exactly exciting. Certainly this week you will see the cover of Unknown Pleasures On a t-shirt, but it won't happen with Chubby Checker: Sorry.

A bit like the Smiths, the pixies or replacements, we are talking about a fundamental band of the 80s, even more influential and loved today than they were then, testifying to the cultural impact they had. Yet according to the hall they are not at the level of Chubby Checker. For years, the voters have resisted the 80s, in particular to the British New Wave of those years, which has always been one of the genres they love less. In 2019 they sold admitting the care in the hall, which on that day gave us the best exchange ever (question: “Are you electrified as much as me?” Robert Smith: “It seems not”). The following year was the turn of the Depeche Mode, followed by Eurythmics and Duran Duran. The road was open for the New Order. But no: apparently it is too early. But wasn't it really their time?

The New Order were the 80s band par excellence: four asocial boys emerged from the ashes of punk-rock have ventured with the rhythms of electronics and then, by chance, they turned into undisputed innovators of the dancefloor. If they had stopped after the death of Ian Curtis, in 1980, when they were called Joy Division, they would still be remembered for things like Love Will Tear US Apart. If they had melted after the single Tempting from 1982 they would be remembered for the nine minutes of Synth Disco most painfully exciting ever. If they had left in 1986, later Low-life And Brotherhoodthey would be remembered as the most imaginative of all the Goth speaking of the decade. Nothing seems to be able to stop the New Order, still a phenomenal live band today. Indeed, since Peter Hook has gone (we will get there), there are two phenomenal live groups.

The Joy Division came from the industrial area of ​​Manchester, in northern England, and created a dystopian sound to describe the urban desolation that surrounded them. They upset the world (and above all themselves) with the grandiose gloomy of the debut Unknown Pleasures. Ian Curtis was a tormented poet who transformed his nightmares into heartfelt complaints, from Disorder to New Dawn Fades to She's Lost Control. Not to mention the cover that Rolling Stone US He defined the most beautiful ever: the suggestive image of a pulsar, lonely in space, at 978 light years from here.

Their sound, since then, has been very imitated: Bernard Sumner's detached guitar, Stephen Morris' robotic battery and the most important tool for them, the low dynamic of Peter Hook. Love Will Tear US Apart It was their biggest hit in the United Kingdom, even if tragically posthumously. Curtis died suicide in Manchester the night before the first American tour. The group left us classics like Dead Souls, Atmosphere And Transmissionin which Curtis implores “dance, dance, dance, dance, dance to the radio”, as if it were a saving cry.

His companions could have moved everything, and instead they remained united, they renamed New Order, they took Gillian Gilbert, Morris' firing, and they started again from scratch, refusing to play the material of the Joy Division. None of them knew how to sing, Sumner was chosen. Upset by the loss of his friend, they began to fool with rudimentary synthesizers and drum machines. Yet, in some way, their crazy experiments have turned into world club hits such as Blue Monday, True Faith and the eternal filler Bizarre Love Triangle. The bigger they became, the more strange they became, with Sumner who spoke on behalf of entire generations of only guys when he sang that “Tonight I would have had to stay at home playing with my pleasure area”.

Their disasters have also become legend. They founded the Hacienda Club of Manchester, a famous flask of the ACID House period (the hilarious book of Hook that speaks of it is entitled Haçienda: how a club is not managed). In 1983, in collaboration with the stylist Peter Saville, they published Blue Monday On a 12 ”with such a expensive packaging to lose money to each copy sold. But, of course, it became the best -selling 12″ of history, influencing all the dance music to come. I have at least a friend who is in the world because his parents got together on the dance floor of a Miami club when they put Blue Monday. But, in a sense, we are all children of that song.

My favorite disc of the New Order will always be the EP 1981-Factus 8-1982which in half an hour of post punk guitar shocks, synth hiss and pressing battery collects five of their best songs. They reached the maximum with the nine minutes of the original version of Temptingtheir celebration in social anxiety disappearance, with the choir “Up, Down, Turn Around, please don't let me hit the ground!”. At 5:36 am there is a heart -pounding moment in which the Hooky bass rises of an octave for a couple of super exciting pulsations, immediately after Barney screams “I will always try to break the circle that was placed around me”. It is a boot and a moving answer, above all because it comes from two guys who notoriously hated. They are only a couple of seconds, but once you hear them they remain impressed forever.

Their best album is Brotherhoodwith the explosion of sincerity of Weerdo And Broken promise. Then there are Power, Corruption, and Lies (especially the second side), Low-life (especially the first side), Technique (above all All the way), Moovement (above all CHOSEN TIME) And Waiting for the Siren's Call. In the 90s they ridden the wave of the Acid House Post Ibiza clubs, which would not have existed without them. The whole of their career is full of moments worthy of the Hall of Fame. The scratchy guitar break that explodes in half of Age of Consent. The playful harmonica of Love vigilantes. Synth's discharges of Thieves Like Us. The imposing climax of Disorderwhere Curtis shouts “feeling feeling feee -iing” while Morris takes home the result with three immense crashes of dishes.

Ok, the texts. I hoped that you wouldn't take them out, you screwed me. I cannot argue that the New Order should be in the Hall of Fame for poetic phrases such as “I would like to have a place to call the house / talk on the phone”. Sumner sang now terrible and now brilliant verses, often in the same song, yet part of his boyish charm derives from the fact that he could not understand the difference. “I feel very sad, humiliated, sometimes in life we ​​make capitomboli”: if you had happened to sing these words in a microphone, you would not have only deleted the tape, but you would have burned the study and executed all the witnesses. But the New Order wallowed us in things like that. They became part of their legend: is it the factor of “But did you really say it?”. “Every time I see you fall, I deceive me and please” is a brilliant refrain; “Oh, God, Johnny, please don't point me that gun” is horrendous. But apparently nobody of the band cared greatly.

If they were admitted to the Hall of Fame and find all four in the same room, it would explode a drama that would almost have the reach of a war. Hook and the other three haven't been talking about for years. When he left, he formed his band to play the same repertoire: the lights. Sumner and Hook both wrote autobiographies in which they explain in detail why they detext. The first time they were named for the Hall of Fame, Hook thought: “Maybe this is the olive twig we needed.” But something more than an olive twig, probably a divine act may be necessary. Yet we hope we can see it, one day. Maybe they will play No love lost.

The Joy Division/New Order undoubtedly are great absent in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, but they are not the only ones. The jury has an atavistic fear of the 80s, especially when synth, voluminous hairstyles or British accents are at stake. And leave the 90s: most of the great rock stars of that period have never been candidate, as if it were an era that the hall wants to avoid desperately, despite having marked the peak of all time for rock artists in terms of cultural and commercial weight. For the jury of the hall all the rock that came after 1980 is to be avoided. As long as he can, he will continue to rak mediocre artists of the 60s and 70s.

Everyone likes to criticize the Hall of Fame, that's why it exists (Luther Vandross? Never named! But do you say seriously! Fiona Apple? Ditto!). But it is only a matter of time, sooner or later the voters will notice the indisputable legacy of the Joy Division/New Order. The entire history of pop music is enclosed in their evolution. They were born from the scrap of the 70s and ended up inventing the 80s.

Rolling Stone Us.