Macclesfield is a quiet town south of Manchester that never asked for the weight of musical sainthood. It’s not the kind of place you stumble into. It’s a place you seek out for the ghost of Ian Curtis.
While once being renowned for its silk industry, today very few visitors arrive here. Except for people with a keen interest in electronic music history. The town was once home to Ian Curtis and Stephen Morris of cult band Joy Division.
Curtis didn’t just sing about despair, he lived it. Felt it in the bones. And when the pressure became unbearable, he ended his life in 1980, only 23 years old. The house where he hanged himself is still there on 77 Barton Street, and his legacy still casts a long twitching shadow over the music industry.
Ian Curtis is buried at Macclesfield cemetery.
I walk uphill past the gloomy dark St Michaels Church, built in 1220 as the center of what was once a medieval village, before arriving at the Macclesfield Cemetery at 87 Prestbury Rd. There I follow the path along the small tombstones, each not larger than a brick, until finding the stone of Ian Curtis. Even though the stone is very small, it’s easy to separate from the rest by its inscription. The epitaph is “Love will tear us apart”, as inevitable as it is heartbreaking.
While standing in front of the stone, I imagine the grey skies of northern England bearing down on a young man drowning in his own mind while the rest of the band is tuning up for a tour that would never happen.
There are also tokens and memorabilia left by visitors, because people still come. Pilgrims of the melancholy. The lost and the curious. A trickle of fans trailing through a modest cemetery, eyes scanning stone and moss for a name that changed their lives.
After his death, Curtis was cremated and a memorial to him is located at the Crematorium close to the grave.
Last home of Ian Curtis in Macclesfield.
His band buddies went on with their lives and founded the band New Order. But Joy Division still plays in the cracks between things, in half-empty bars, headphones on long night flights and cracked vinyl sleeves in dusty basements around the world.
I escape the rain by entering a local pub. With a cold pint in hand, I soaked up the ambience and listened for the whispers of ghosts. Macclesfield remains the same. Brick rows in an old mill town where time shuffles along, indifferent to its tragic icon. No statues, no gift shops, just the silence. And maybe that’s the most fitting tribute of all.
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