Macclesfield will hold its first ever Joy Division Day next month, to celebrate the town’s links to the band.
The lead singer Ian Curtis grew up in the Cheshire town, and after his death in 1980 aged 23 his ashes were buried in Macclesfield cemetery.
The man behind the idea is Trevor Stokes, 57, a Curtis fan who retired from his job in the fashion industry to focus on his side project – leading Joy Division tours around his home town.
He started giving tours part-time after being contacted by an Italian fan via a Joy Division page on Facebook, who asked if Stokes could show him round Macclesfield.
That was about 12 months ago, he said, and after word spread among fans he has since given tours to people from as far afield as Australia and Argentina.
He weaves some of his own personal story into the tours – his memories of Curtis, who lived down the road from Stokes’s grandfather when he was growing up, and their common links such as the church where Stokes and Curtis both married and where their children were baptised.
Stokes said that “up until now, nowhere near enough” had been done to recognise Macclesfield’s musical heritage. He said the town “has never got behind Ian in the right way, and never got behind Joy Division in the right way, and our music heritage and our youth culture in the right way”.
The inaugural Joy Division Day, on 7 September, will feature tours by Stokes, as well as a performance by a Joy Division tribute band, Transmission, at Cinemac cinema on Roe Street.
The three-hour tours, which can each accommodate 25 people, will set off at 10.30am and 2.30pm, and combined tickets for the day cost £10.
There has been huge demand for the tours, which sold out within two days, although tickets to the evening gig are still available.
There are 12 stops on the tour route, including Curtis’s former home, his grave in the cemetery, and a large mural dedicated to the singer in the town centre.
Next year Stokes hopes the event will be even bigger, with plans for activities and a museum. In future it is likely the date will change to one relevant to the band’s history, such as the anniversary of an album release. And he hopes Joy Division Day will endure “for generations”.
“I want the young to embrace Joy Division,” Stokes said. “The old fan will come, because they’re hardcore, but the young fan is the one I really want to embrace Ian’s memory, and his music and his lyrics, and I hope that’s what Joy Division Day will help them to do.”
