Love Will Tear Us Apart

The Kingston Coffeehouse: Katie Cruel

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Originally broadcast September 9, 2025, on WRIU 90.3 FM.


By Michael Stevenson, host The Kingston Coffeehouse

PLAYLIST
“Katie Cruel” (traditional) – Karen Dalton
“Bashed Out” (K. Stables) – This Is the Kit , 2015 Bashed Out
“God Loves a Drunk” (R Thompson) – Norma Waterson, 1996 

“I’m Waiting For You to Smile” – Katell Keineg, 1994 O Seasons O Castles 
“Love Will Tear Us Apart” (Ian Curtis) June Tabor & Oysterband, 2011 Ragged Kingdom
“People’s Faces” – Kae Tempest, 2019 The Book of Traps and Lessons
“Train Song” – Vashti Bunyan, r. 1966, Some Things Just Stick in Your Mind
“Anachie Gordon” (traditional) The Unthanks, 2010 Here’s the Tender Coming
“Henry Lee” (traditional) Nick Cave & PJ Harvey, 2011 Murder Ballads
“The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face” (Ewan MacColl) – Offa Rex, 2017 The Queen of Hearts
“She Moved through the Fair” (traditional) – Anne Briggs, 1963 Edinburgh Folk Festival Vol. 1
“Banjo Player of Aleph One” – Gwenifer Raymond 2025 Last Night I Heard the Dog Star Bark
“Wheely Down” (R. Thompson) – Ivor Cutler, 1993 The World is a Wonderful Place
“Roundabout” – Ryley Walker, 2017 Golden Sings That Have Been Sung
“Brighter than the Blues” – Joan Shelly, 2016 Over and Even
“Three Ravens” (traditional) – Jake Xerxes Fussell, 2019 Out of Sight
“Lullaby” (from the film Wicker Man) – Magnet (Paul Giovanni) 1972
“Rivers Run Red” (Ella Oona Russell) – The New Eves, 2025 The New Eve is Rising
“Witches Reel” (traditional) – Starheid Gossip, 2015 Step Sisters
“Entertaining of a Shy Girl” – Donovan 1968 Hurdy Gurdy Man
“The Hedgehog Song”(Heron/Williamson) – Incredible String Band, 1966 The 5000 Spirits or Layers of an Onion
“Lay it Down” (G. Thomas) – Bonny Prince Billy with The Trembling Bells, 2014 New Trip On Old Wine
“Conch Shell” Katell Keineg, 1994 O Seasons O Castle
“Into My Arms” – Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, 1997 Boatman’s Call
“Place to Be” – Nick Drake, Pink Moon
“How Wild the Wind Blows” – Molly Lee, 2018 The Tides Magnificence
“The Sweetest Decline” – Beth Orton Central Reservation
“The Wagoner’s Lad” (Traditional) – Bert Jansch, 1966 Jack Orion
“Nottamun Town” (traditional)- Fairport Convention, 1969 What We Did on Our Holidays
“Masters of War” – Bob Dylan, 1963 The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan
“Needle of Death” – Bert Jansch, 1965 Bert Jansch
“Golden Brown” – The Stranglers 1982
“Meet On the Ledge” (R.Thompson) – Fairport Convention, 1969 What We Did on Our Holidays
“Anji” – Davy Graham
“Green Are Your Eyes” (b.Jansch) – Marianne Faithul, 1966 North Country Maid
“The Water” – Johnny Flynn & Laura Marling, 2010 Been Listening
“The Parting Glass” (traditional) – James Elkington 2017 Wintres Woma
“Katie Cruel” (traditional) – Agnes Obel
“Blues Run the Game” – Jackson C. Frank, 1965 Jackson C. Frank
“Home Sweet Home” (Bishop /Payne)- The King’s Singers 1993 Folk Songs of the British Isles
“A Heart Needs a Home” – Linda & Richard Thompson, 1975 Hokey Pokey
“Goodnight World” – Lisa O’Neil, 2023 All This Is Chance

Joy Division’s “Love Will Tear Us Apart” At 40: Inside Ian Curtis’ Dispatch From The Brink 

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Joy Division’s “Love Will Tear Us Apart” may rightfully be seen as a forlorn goodbye to a too-young singer and his band, but ultimately it pulses with love.

Ian Curtis was exuberant. His band Joy Division had the wind at their backs and were days away from their first North American tour. On the evening of May 16, 1980, they had a superb rehearsal and crammed into bassist Peter Hook’s car to drop off Curtis at his parents’ house in Failsworth, England. As Hook remembered 32 years later, the boys were on top of the world — especially their legendarily scowly lead singer.

“We were laughing and joking… one of us would go, ‘I can’t believe we’re fucking going to America!’ We were screaming in the car, jumping up and down on the seats, properly shouting, whooping, hollering: ‘Yeah! America!’” Hook wrote in his 2012 memoir Unknown Pleasures: Inside Joy Division. “I drove [Ian] home that Friday night and he was cock-a-hoop, full of it.” Curtis exited the vehicle outside his house a quarter of a mile from Hook’s. It was the last time Hook ever saw his bandmate and friend.

Joy Division ‎– Love Will Tear Us Apart cover

Joy Division ‎– Love Will Tear Us Apart (1980)

On Saturday morning, things took a despondent turn. As Hook wrote, Curtis received a letter about his impending divorce proceedings from his wife Deborah. Curtis canceled a water-skiing trip with guitarist Bernard Sumner, and that night, Deborah dropped by Ian’s house to find him drinking whiskey and coffee after watching Stroszek, Werner Herzog’s film about a European émigré to America who kills himself rather than choose between two women.

Deborah offered to stay the night, worried that Curtis, an epilepsy sufferer, would have a fit, but he asked her to leave instead. After listening to Iggy Pop’s The Idiot on repeat, he hanged himself to death on a kitchen clothes rack in the early hours of Sunday morning. He was two months shy of his 24th birthday.

Accounts from those close to Curtis vary on his state of mind in the last few weeks of his life. “The week before, we went and bought all these new clothes; he was really happy,” Factory Records co-owner Touching From a Distance: Ian Curtis and Joy Division. On the other hand, Curtis reportedly told Psychic TV’s Genesis P-Orridge that he’d “rather die” than go on tour. (“Maybe he did say that, but not to us he didn’t,” Hook explained in his book. “No way. With us, Ian was bang into the idea.”)

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