Tag Archives: apart

#777: Joy Division – Love Will Tear Us Apart

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Surely, this is a song that everyone knows. I was tempted to just write ‘classic’ on this post and call it a day, leaving some sort of poignant message by doing so. Then I realised that would be a bit lame. A bit pretentious too. This’ll probably be a short one, though. As much as I like ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’, it is a fantastic song and gone through the ages as one of the best of all time, I don’t think it’s had the greatest effect on me personally than it probably has for millions of people out there. I do appreciate it a lot, though. There’s a lot of greatness in its subtlety and weariness.

The track was released as a single in June 1980, a month after Joy Division’s frontman Ian Curtis committed suicide. The music video is the only official one they did, and was filmed just a few weeks before the tragic event. This song is the first of the band’s I’d ever heard; its music video played on a channel somewhere (maybe Q TV, most likely MTV2), and for a while was the only one I listened to. Maybe it was because Curtis looked so despondent on the microphone. I also didn’t know that Joy Division were held in such high regard. I was a young boy at that time.

I think the only major point in my enjoyment of the track is that the ‘Permanent Mix’ that was released on a compilation in 1995 is my go-to version. That’s just the one I’ve been accustomed to for all this time. It’s the version that’s played in the video above. A lot of people prefer the original 1980 release. That’s fine. The main difference between the two is that the mix is a lot fuller in the ’90s reissue. There’s also a nice acoustic guitar outro added in there too. It’s the same song at the end of the day.

#760: Small Faces – Long Agos and Worlds Apart

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‘Long Agos and Worlds Apart’ is the third track from Small Faces’ 1968 album Ogdens’ Nut Gone Flake. For anyone who’s a fan of that album and regularly visits it, this track may not seem as important or substantial as the other tracks that appear alongside it on the record’s first half. Maybe seen as merely a link between predecessor ‘Afterglow of Your Love’ and following track ‘Rene’. It’s always stuck out to me as a highlight though. The track has a swinging rhythm, I get nothing but good feelings when it comes on, and it was written by keyboardist Ian McLagan who, on top of singing, also plays rhythm guitar and bass guitar here.

‘Long Agos’ is a track to do with time and relationships. McLagan sings that he doesn’t want to know about the distant past where this person wasn’t in his life, but if he had all the time in the world then he wouldn’t want to spend it with anyone else. It seems to me like a very earnest and sincere track, very optimistic from its perspective. In the final verse, McLagan then looks to the future where he’s certain that this person will still be in his life and they’ll be able to reminisce about the good old days when they were younger. And on that note, the drums come in and the band members join in with a chant of ‘hip-hip’ and ‘doowaddy-waddy’. There’s a lengthy fade-out to the track followed by a gradual surprise fade-in – which seemed to be a standard production trick in the 60s – where Steve Marriott closes out the track with a guitar solo and McLagan keeps things rolling with a chugging bassline. Sure, the main vocals in the track are finished about halfway through the track but a long instrumental outro is always good to have once in a while.

Unfortunately, this will be the last time I write about Small Faces on here. I have no other songs after this one to write about. If the times were aligned correctly, there would have been two more posts about ‘Afterglow’ and ‘The Hungry Intruder’. Do listen to the group though, they were one of the best of their kind in the 60s. Sadly, three of the members of their classic lineup have passed away. But their music goes on.