Brandon Flowers paid tribute to the Ian Curtis on a special charity livestream, Moving Through The Silence: Celebrating the Life & Legacy of Ian Curtis, to honor the 40th anniversary of the late Joy Division singer on Monday night (May 18).
“My journey to Joy Division started at New Order. I distinctly remember being a young man and seeing ‘Bizarre Love Triangle’ on MTV and knowing that this was something I could get behind,” Flowers said in a pre-recorded clip (at 54:10) for the charity special. “As I got older and more invested in music, I traced that New Order lineage back to Ian Curtis and Joy Division. This unparalleled, stark, beautiful, primitive, soulful music: it had a profound impact on me, just like it did many others.”
While some may have hoped that The Killers’ frontman would perform their cover of “Shadowplay,” which appeared in the 2007 Curtis biopic, Control, the special showed the video that the band made for the clip more than 10 years ago.
However, Flowers also recounted how the band, whose name was inspired by New Order’s video for “Crystal,” explained how the band got involved with Control.
“We were lucky enough to have [Corbijn] do the artwork for our second record, and he was just starting to get into the film Control,” he said. “He wanted to show how far Joy Division had reached; four kids from the desert in Las Vegas, 5,000 miles from Manchester. And so he asked us to do ‘Shadowplay’, which was the last thing we did when recording ‘Sam’s Town’. So there’s a little bit of that DNA in the track, and it was a privilege and honor to be a part of it and work on the film.”
Flowers also added that “it’s also become a staple in our live shows, and it’s something I look forward to performing.”
Former bandmates (and current New Order members) Bernard Summer and Stephen Morris along with Elbow, Kodaline, Ian Curtis’s friend Mark Reeder and actress Maxine Peake. Moving Through The Silence raised money for the UK mental health charity Manchester Mind.
You can watch the full special below.
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