Factory Record did things differently.
Which was their downfall.
Then again, they prioritised the aesthetic over business acumen and didn’t see success in the conventional manner.
It’s not always easy to locate their truth.
As quoted in the film of the label, 24 Hour Party People:
Tony Wilson is the name readily associated with the label.
But there were five directors, all of whom had a significant impact.
Wilson was well known from his presenting duties on and courted publicity so became the public face of the label.
Alan Erasmus’ background was as an actor. He paired with Wilson in managing Durutti Column and promoting live shows together. He came up with the label name and provided its office from his home.
Peter Saville was a final year graphic design student, commissioned to produce a poster for those live shows. After which he assumed responsibility for Factory’s design aesthetic.
Martin Hannett was the production genius, already known for his work in the Manchester punk scene.
Rob Gretton, as manager of Joy Division, became the 5th partner.
Factory’s cataloguing system reflects the creative approach. Both in the fact they didn’t restrict themselves to numbering records and didn’t always progress in chronological order.
FAC1: The Factory Poster
Start as you mean to go on. Rather than a record, it’s the Peter Saville poster designed to advertise shows in May/June 1978, featuring Joy Division, The Durutti Column and Cabaret Voltaire.
It was very different from the DIY aesthetic of punk.
A distinctive yellow and black colour scheme with an industrial feel. Its design set the tone for the future.
As did the fact Saville took so long over it, that it was delivered after the events it was to advertise.
FAC8: The Factory Egg Timer
The work of Linder Sterling, singer with Ludus. It never got further than a drawing. But that was enough to record it for posterity. As per the Factory Newsletter:
‘Factory egg timer; menstrual art, designed by Linder (secret public, Ludus, Orgasm Addict montage) Still on drawing board; A four bar Abacus; 7 beads to the row final five, blood soaked lint; looking for a manuFACTORer. Perhaps on sale in inaccessible places by Christmas.’
FACT10: Joy Division – Unknown Pleasures
Joy Division ‘signed’ to Factory with the generous offer of a 50/50 split of profits.
The ‘contract’, written in Wilson’s blood stated; ‘The musicians own everything, the company owns nothing. All our bands have the freedom to f*ck off.’
When you’re writing a contract in blood, it pays to keep it brief.
Unknown Pleasures was produced by Martin Hannett.
Whatever the band’s idea of how their debut album should sound was of no consequence to Hannett. The air con in the mixing booth was kept to an Arctic setting to keep the band away, with verbal intimidation an added extra.
“If we said anything like, ‘I think the guitars are a bit quiet, Martin? He’d scream, ‘Oh my god! Why don’t you just f*ck off!’”
He recorded drums one by one, rather than as a full kit. Used sound effects of smashing bottles, eating crisps, backwards guitar, vocals down a phone line, and the studio lift.
Hannett knew what he wanted even if the band didn’t. As evidenced by a request for another take that was, “Slower, but faster.”
The finished record was far from their live aggressive sound.
Ian Curtis was reportedly happy, but it took time for the others to accept he had been right.
The iconic sleeve also saw the band’s request go awry.
The image is a ridgeline plot of radio emissions from CP1919, the first pulsar discovered.
Having found it in a book, they brought it to Peter Saville who reversed the image to white on black -against their wishes – as, “it was just sexier in black”. They probably weren’t expecting the cover to omit their name, either.
FAC14: Durutti Column – The Return Of The Durutti Column
Taking cover art further into the obtuse.
The first 2,000 copies were packaged in a blank sandpaper sleeve. All the better for destroying the capitalist output of major labels.
FAC51: The Hacienda
In the words of Situationist International theorist; Ivan Chtcheglov, from where they took the name; ‘The Hacienda must be built’.
(Words that Martin Hannett did not agree with – but that’s for FAC61.)
It was Rob Gretton’s idea. And thanks to him that New Order became co-owners. Which was lucky for Factory but unlucky for the band as their burgeoning success provided the funds to keep it open.
The decor was designed to reflect and build on the industrial history of the city and the label name, featuring bollards, cats eyes and yellow and black striped hazard warnings on steel columns.
It came to prominence from 1986 onwards, providing a house, and then acid-house soundtrack. Regardless of its popularity, it was a financial black hole. Reasons for this being: that as a beacon for the city they kept door charges low.
And as ecstasy, rather than alcohol, fueled the hedonism, the bar takings suffered.
There was further trouble as violence ensued inside and outside the club between rival drug dealing factions. It temporarily closed for three months in January 1991 as a result. But this, and being superceded by the emergence of new clubs, saw it close for good in 1997.
FAC61: FCL vs Martin Hannett
Martin Hannett’s involvement came to an end as a result of legal proceedings he instigated to have the label wound up.
The lawsuit alleged that Rob Gretton’s position as manager of New Order and A Certain Ratio meant these bands received favourable treatment. That since August 1981 he had been prevented from producing the label’s acts.
Then there was The Hacienda. Which he said the others initiated without his knowledge, knowing he wouldn’t approve.
His animosity towards the club was because he felt the vast expense allocated to it should have been spent on a state of the art recording studio.
It was settled out of court with Hannett leaving the label. He subsequently went through heroin and alcohol addiction that led to his death from heart failure in 1991, at just 41.
FAC73: New Order – Blue Monday
Having initially stayed close to the sound of Joy Division, New Order discovered new electro influences.
Culminating in the biggest selling 12″ ever.
This was despite the artwork once again, making no reference to band or song title. It did have a colour coded bar which could be deciphered using information on the back of the Power, Corruption and Lies album sleeve – released several months later, of course.
The cost of making the sleeve; die cut to resemble a floppy disk meant they lost money:
5p on every copy sold, according to Wilson. Though Peter Saville downplayed this, saying the printers quickly adjusted to a cheaper production method. Even Factory weren’t naive enough to sell a million loss making copies.
FAC126: Alan Erasmus Goes to Moscow
Wanting to branch out into classical music, they decided the obvious route was to find young Russian talent behind the Iron Curtain.
Until:
Their two main contacts in organising all of this were expelled from Britain for supposedly being KGB.
That was the end of that.
FAC191: Feline Groovy
A cat. Real name; Fred. Possibly.
What is known is that it was a stray that took up residence in The Hacienda basement sometime in the early 80s.
As ever, the details are hazy.
FAC221: Factory Goes To Hollywood.
The Bailey Brothers made music videos for the label.
They weren’t called Bailey and they weren’t brothers – of course.
They pitched what is described as a “comedy action thriller involving car theft.” Working title; The Mad F**kers. Tony Wilson went to Hollywood to drum up finance for the $2.5m budget. But they couldn’t get it off the ground. Cinema’s loss, and all that.
FAC233: Substantial Matters: New Order’s Accounts
Given their importance to the ongoing existence of the venture its not surprising these were given prominence.
FAC253: The Chairman Resigns
Under the terms of a bet between Tony Wilson and Rob Gretton, Wilson was to resign if New Order single, “Round And Round,” didn’t go top 5.
It peaked at #21. Wilson didn’t resign. Or he might have done but they let him have his role back.
FAC331: The Temporary Contemporary
Having finally moved into a custom built office (FAC251) in 1990, it needed furnishing.
The Temporary Contemporary was the boardroom table.
The original intention was to buy Ikea tables but instead Wilson contracted Andy Woodcock to make a table. The brief was that there was a £2k budget, it must be ready in two weeks.
According to Andy; “Tony thought the whole meeting culture idea was just painful, so he wanted a table which would be a nightmare to sit at. So that any meetings wouldn’t endlessly drag on and on.”
It’s the Factory way.
The finished table was suspended from the ceiling on thin steel cables to look like it was floating. The cables could even be tuned and played.
Its been portrayed as an example of Wilson’s hubris. This was only a year before Factory went bust, and popular myth has it that the table cost £30k. According to Woodcock, it was Wilson himself who spread the rumour of the inflated costing.
FAC372: Happy Mondays – Sunshine & Love
The final record.
Released November,1992.
Their 1990 Pills ‘n’ Thrills And Bellyaches album went Platinum and produced two #5 singles. Behind the scenes, frontman Shaun Ryder, his brother, and bass player Paul had long had a penchant for drugs. But in the wake of this success they got heavily into heroin.
With Factory in financial trouble a follow up was needed. A recording budget of £150k was set and the band sent to Barbados to record. Which doesn’t sound like a cost efficient location – but it had the big positive of apparently being heroin-free.
Things went bad quickly. Shaun was in no state to contribute.
It turned out that regardless of the availability of heroin, there was a plentiful supply of crack. So they moved onto that. Bez broke his arm three times; in a car crash, boat accident and his girlfriend sat on it. As dancer / band mascot with no musical input, this was of no detriment to recording. But it evidenced the chaos ensuing.
Even with the bargain price of crack, Shaun ran out of money and resorted to selling his clothes.
Shaun and Paul lived at the studio so they could be monitored – which didn’t work too well, as it was reported they sold the studio sofa for crack money. Shaun set the record straight that it was actually a sunlounger.
After two months, they returned home with one finished track and a lack of lyrics, let alone vocals. Shaun was sent to rehab (FAC342) before he could complete his parts.
The budget spiraled to £380k. Which on its own might have been survivable. But the album; Yes Please! sold a fraction of its predecessor.
Lead single “Stinkin’ Thinkin’” only reached #31. And this final shot,; “Sunshine & Love” limped to #62.
Meanwhile, the recording of New Order’s Republic wasn’t going well.
This was down to good old personality clashes, which the pressure applied to produce a new album to save Factory exacerbated.
FAC323 was assigned to the lead single but recording was so drawn out it would be five months after Factory went under before that single, “Regret,” was released on London Records.
Which is where that contract drawn up in blood comes back in. In negotiating to buy out Factory, London Records discovered that New Order and others essentially had no contract – and owned their own music.
No need to buy the label, they could just sign the bands they wanted.
Factory Records was no more.
But even after its demise, catalogue numbers were still assigned to notable events:
FAC511: Rob Gretton Memorial Event
Rob died of a heart attack in 1999 at the age of 46. This marked both his memorial event and a poster announcing it.
FAC501: Tony Wilson’s Coffin
Tony died of cancer in 2007 at the age of 57. FAC501 was the final number allocated, appearing on a plaque on the coffin.
Although the way the label ended suggests failure, its not clear that those running it saw it that way.
In a 1989 interview Tony Wilson said”;”
“An awful lot to do with the music industry for me is the intellectual and artistic theory of it.
“I see my involvement with Factory somewhat as a laboratory experiment in popular art.”
Tony Wilson – “The Music Week Factorial,” 1989
For much of its existence they did little to promote their acts, from not advertising releases to some of its most famous record sleeves not even having the band name on them.
They provided advice to their acts but ceded control on decisions of what to release and whether to tour to the acts.
Speaking about the release of New Order’s Technique (FACT275), Wilson said: “We didn’t do any press advertising in the end, because we find it boring”.
Boring was definitely not the Factory way.
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There are plenty more oddities in the Factory catalogue. This link does a good job of curating them, if you scroll down the full list is there and you can select each one for more detail.
https://factoryrecords.org/factory-records.php
The photo of the Temporary Contemporary mt has found with The Happy Mondays sat on it comes from the last days of the label. They knew they were going under so people came along to ransack the office of memorabilia. The Happy Mondays opted for destroying the table.
Fascinating stuff! To an uneducated outsider, Factory looks like it was dripping with incredible amounts of cool and impending disaster right from the start. It certainly would be shortsighted to call its ending a failure, as it ended pretty much the way its founders intended, based on that blood contract.
“The Hacienda must be built”, possibly Fred the cat, and temporary contemporary are etched in my brain.
It could be viewed that the fact they survived so long marks it out as a success. Plus the fame / notoriety it achieved and that for all its failings as a business its still talked about now puts it in the success camp. Then there’s the fact it had a film (and a good one at that) made about it. The life and times of a record label wouldn’t normally be fertile cinematic material.
They did get more professional towards the end and by the late 80s were signing bands to traditional contracts. I would say maybe that’s where they went wrong but when you’ve got Happy Mondays blowing a hole in your finances it probably didn’t matter how professional / unprofessional they were as a label.
Great write-up, JJ.
There must be some extent to which these guys were influenced by the management-as-concept-art practices of Malcolm McLaren. But it’s so refreshing that they tried their absolute best not to be the predator capitalist that he alway was. They managed to embody the spirits of Dada and Situationism as fully as they could while still being some sort of legitimate business. Which of course was never going to last, but it’s surprising how much they managed to do despite all that.
I got the Factory Dance comp when it came out around 2011, and that turned me onto a bunch of artists from the label that I previously had not known. My favorite find was Blurt, clearly indebted to James Chance (and maybe Lester Bangs, given the band name) and yet a lot more fun:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N5HU2-NcprM
They were definitely influenced by seeing Sex Pistols and Wilson / McLaren were both shameless self publicists. In terms of being influenced by McLaren I’d imagine that Factory were in seeing what was possible when you worked outside the system. McLaren was a lot more in your face in creating notoriety and making Sex Pistols the centre of attention. Whereas Factory seemed to revel in forgoing attention for their acts and not publicising them. Its like an experiment in allowing them to organically find their space with this anti-promotion ethos increasing the status of the label.
Wow, I just learned a lot. I covered some of these acts in the Punk Side Of Town series but the stuff you’ve detailed goes far beyond that. Nice job!
I love the idea of Durutti Column’s sandpaper cover, though I probably wouldn’t like having it in my collection. I had enough trouble with the zipper on The Rolling Stones’ “Sticky Fingers.”
I’ve heard that “Unknown Pleasures” sold more t-shirts than albums. Any idea if that’s true?
Picking apart Unknown Pleasures sales figures is tricky. It sold 15,000 copies in its first year but sometime in the 80s it had gone Gold – 100k sales and as of 2022 it was certified Platinum – meaning 300k sales but that may now include streaming.
It definitely inspired a lot of tshirts and posters though, which seem even more prominent now than ever.
In summary, no idea but its definitely had a way bigger long term impact than they’d have anticipated on the initial run of 10,000 copies.
But what happened to Fred the Cat? Was he taken into someone’s home? A shelter? Put back out on the street? Please tell me he was alright.
Also, TIL the meaning of bollards and cats’ eyes in relation to roads.
The fate of Fred is unknown. The Hacienda stayed open til 1997 so it’s possible that Fred lived out its natural life there before they tore it down. Apparently there were lots of mice in the Hacienda basement so he had a plentiful food supply.
It did cross my mind after I submitted this that cats eyes may be lost in translation. I can’t say I was paying enough attention to the construction of the roads the times I’ve been to the US to know if you have them but by a different name.
To clarify; cats eyes are basically glass marbles set into the road marking out the lanes or the centre of the road. They reflect off car headlights at night to aid motorists in areas where there’s no lighting.
Thanks, I was wondering. I think we just call them reflectors.
As you’d expect with any government driven initiative,the nomenclature is confusing.
Occasionally, in the passage of daily life, you encounter a nugget of wisdom worth hanging onto.
When you’re writing a contract in blood, it pays to keep it brief.
Educational and entertaining is what I strive for.