Joy Division

Warsaw renamed themselves Joy Division in late 1977 in order to avoid confusion with the London punk band Warsaw Pakt, borrowing their new name from the prostitution wing of a concentration camp from the 1955 book The House of Dolls. "No Love Lost," an early Joy Division/Warsaw track, contains a lyrical reference to Yehiel De-Nur's book:

"...Through the wire screen, the eyes of those standing outside looked in at her as into the cage of some rare creature in a zoo.
In the hand of one of the assistants she saw the same instrument which they had that morning inserted deep into her body.
She shuddered instinctively.
No life at all in the house of dolls.
No love lost..."

The band's signature style began to take shape in late 1977. Sessions recorded in December 1977 were a departure from the sound of The Warsaw Demo. The group played their first gig as Joy Division on January 25, 1978. Regular gigs in the north of England throughout early 1978 provided the band with enough material and experience to record a debut album. However, after the producer added synthesizers to several tracks, the band scrapped the record. The album leaked as a bootleg recording called Warsaw in 1982 and has been re-pressed and re-released several times[3] since then. Rob Gretton became the band's manager in May 1978. Over the next twenty years, he contributed much to Joy Division and to New Order.

In the summer of 1978, the band debuted on vinyl with one Warsaw track on a compilation album entitled Short Circuit - Live At The Electric Circus which was recorded live on October 2, 1977. The song was preceded by Bernard Sumner (not Curtis, contrary to some references) shouting "You all forget Rudolf Hess." In June 1978, Joy Division released their December 1977 sessions as a 7" EP under the title An Ideal for Living. They remastered and re-released An Ideal for Living as a 12" in late 1978. On September 20, 1978, they performed on the local TV news show Granada Reports; then in December 1978, they appeared on the compilation double 7" EP A Factory Sample, contributing two tracks recorded a few months earlier. This EP sold out within a couple of months and was the first release to document the haunting and atmospheric sound they had been developing since that past summer. Early 1979 saw the band gain more publicity. Curtis appeared on the front cover of the New Musical Express and they recorded a radio session in January (aired on BBC Radio 1 on February 14 by John Peel). On March 4, they supported The Cure at the Marquee Club, a major venue in London.