The video was shot by the band themselves on 25 April 1980 as they rehearsed the song at T. J. Davidson’s studio, in Knott Mill, Manchester city centre, where the band had previously rehearsed during the early days of their career. At the start of the video, the door that opens and shuts is carved with Ian Curtis’ name; reportedly this was the beginning of an abusive message (the rest later erased) carved into the door.
Due to poor production, the video’s colour is ‘browned out’ at some points. Also, as the track recorded during the recording of the video was poor, it was replaced with the single-edit recording of the song by the band’s record company in Australia, leading to problems with the synchronisation of music and video. This edited version of the music video would later become the official version due to the improvement of sound quality. The audio issue would be fixed in the 1995 remaster.
This was the only promotional video the band ever produced as Ian Curtis hanged himself three weeks after the video was recorded.
