A grotesque, unsettling musical picture of chaos, massacre and lunacy. There were some years since it was released (1980) where I couldn’t listen to it at all.
It's maybe the most unlikely opening track of an album I've ever heard (despite Ian Curtis' repeated chorus: "This is the way, step inside"). It's based upon a 1970 J.G. Ballard collection of short stories of the same name, which imagines a name-changing protagonist who creates surrealistic fantasies about celebrities such as Marilyn Monroe and President Ronald Reagan.
One of the first times in recorded music (long before bands like R.E.M. made a regular practice of this) where I can recall band members swapping instruments; guitarist Bernard Sumner plays bass on the track, bassist Peter Hook "plays" guitar (it's basically one long, wobbly noise scribble).
Super disturbing. I'm always amazed that the band could even pull off a live performance of it. Impossibly influential; you can hear the outline of the Cure's "Pornography," the Swans' catalogue, and much of whatever became to be called "tribal" in the DNA of this track.
