Legendary Manchester rehearsal studios marked with plaque | Manchester News

The site of a former recording and rehearsal studio where Joy Division shot the video for Love Will Tear Us Apart has been marked with a commemorative plaque.

The band worked out of the now-demolished converted mill building which housed TJM Studios in central Manchester between 1977 and 1981.

The studios were also used by The Fall, The Buzzcocks, every member of The Smiths before they got together, and Mick Hucknall.

Owner Tony “TJ” Davidson said the studio and its associated record label helped ignite the “explosion of music” happening in Manchester at that time, as it provided an affordable place for up-and-coming bands to hone their skills and record.

He said: “[The building] was a vehicle – a lot of the bands were… caught up with the excitement of making records.

“You could make a record, bring it out, and all that’s changed now.

“There was a time where there was an innocence about the music business.”

He said the area where the studio used to stand was now “unrecognisable” compared with the 1970s and 1980s.

“Now you look across at the building, it’s luxury flats surrounded by luxury flats,” he said.

“But back in ’77 when I bought the building, it was very depressed – it was an old mill from the 17th Century.”

Mr Davidson said a number of the bands who worked there, including Joy Division, went on to say that the building’s atmosphere influenced their sound.

He said: “When I bought the building, I painted most of the rooms mucky – I bought some very cheap glossy horrible brown paint. But it gave the atmosphere.

“I always wonder if I’d painted it bright white, would the Joy Division sound [be different]?”

Joy Division shot the video for their huge 1980 hit Love Will Tear Us Apart in the building, just weeks before frontman Ian Curtis took his own life.

Mr Davidson said the plaque, erected by Manchester City Council on the building which is now on the site of the old studios, was a “really great honour”.

“It’s for all the bands in Manchester – it [commemorates] something that happened and will never happen again.”