On the other hand, Joy Division's popularity was on the rise. "This is the way, step inside," intones Curtis at the start of the group's posthumous sophomore release Closer, an album title whose double meaning imparts almost as much menace as the fact that Curtis already sounds like he's singing from beyond the grave on the sepulchral lead track "Atrocity Exhibition". His marriage was falling apart, his epilesy was worsening, and at their most uplifting, his band's lyrics set new benchmarks for melodrama, paranoia, and depression. It's easy to say, in retrospect, that people should have seen it coming. Sometime early on the morning of May 18, 1980, Ian Curtis, at the age of 23, watched Werner Herzog's Stroszek, played Iggy Pop's The Idiot, and hung himself in the kitchen. Rock history is jammed with messy, stupid, and tragic ends to promising starts- plane crashes, overdoses, gunshots- but Ian Curtis' death is still striking.
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