Joy Division's Manchester: Annual Ian Curtis Memorial Tour

Tour begins at 3pm, Sunday the 18th of May 2025, outside the Mercure Hotel on Portland Street.

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We honour Ian Curtis on the day he died: 18 May.

Curtis, a tortured soul, a visceral, troubled mind with a voice that echoed Jim Morrison, Iggy Pop and Matt Monro, briefly led Joy Division, the finest flower of the early days of Manchester’s Factory Records, shaking sensibilities and sending shivers down the spine on an all too brief catalogue of classic works, epitomised by the epic “Dead Souls” and the harrowing “Shadowplay”, in which he prefigured his own sad suicide.

This is a tour of Ian Curtis’s Manchester haunts – Rafter’s, Pip’s, the Afrique Club, Rare Records, the Briton’s Protection, the Beach Club...a forgotten, almost pre-historic Manchester.