1992 01 Vox Tony Wilson / New Order Feature

THE FACS OF LIFE

With the new Factory Records compilation, Palatine, providing a lavish retrospective, Martin Townsend speaks to ANTHONY WILSON and NEW ORDER about the label's enduring (if erratic) success

Factory Records' chairman Tony Wilson has an enthusiast's obsession with minute detail. Mention OMD, for instance, and he can take you to the exact bend in the road, just outside Manchester. where his wife first played him the band's demo cassette.

As with most enthusiasts, however. 41-year-old Wilson lets his heart rule his head - the history of Factory Records is a bizarre and often shambolic catalogue of triumphs and misadventures.

The new four-record retrospective, Palatine (named after the road in which the label's first HQ was located), fails to tell even half the story. "Palatine, interestingly, is not a history," says Wilson, lounging in the company's enormous loft-cum-board-room in central Manchester, It's four very good albums full of good tracks. There were about 12 tracks per album and we thought maybe we should have 13 or 14 on each LP. Then we went back, listened to everything again, and realised how much crap we'd put out. Really, Palatine is it..."

Wilson is nothing if not honest and straightforward - at least on the surface. But even when his honesty gives way to diplomacy - as with the subject of whether Factory cashed in on the death of Joy Division singer Ian Curtis, arguably the turning point in the label's history - another voice from the Factory stable will chip in with the straight talk.

"I'd have been happier if they had cashed in on it," laughs New Order's Peter Hook. "I mean, why not? The basic plan with Ian was that he wanted the group to succeed, so if he's up there somewhere now, I don't think he'd give a monkey's about cashing-in as long as Joy Division was heard by as many people as possible.

But the thing is," he adds, "They're too stupid to cash in on things like that.If Shaun Ryder killed himself they couldn't bleedin' cash in on that. I know that. I take that for granted..."

Partly due, perhaps, to that endearing naivety, Tony Wilson and Factory have nurtured an all-for-one and one-for-all relationship with their bands, that has endured against all the odds. On the face of it, at least, the creative health of the band comes first.

Up to 1986 this meant that none of their acts had written contracts with the label - so that they were free to leave at a stipulated six months' notice - and that they split all profits equally with the company.

New Order still operate in this way -  only Bernard Sumner has a contract and that's for his Electronic project with Johnny Marr and Peter Hook believes it's proved crucial in maintaining the band's alternative status.

"A 50:50 deal means you can sell a whole lot less records, and still survive," he explains. "It meant that we were never in a position where we had to sell thousands and thousands of records and compromise ourselves."

But hand in hand with their no contract rule, Factory also decided not to promote or 'plug' their records to radio stations, a principle which preserved their indie dignity, but severely handicapped their bands' chances of getting a chart hit.

Ironically, Tony Wilson had actually opposed this decision as early as 1979, when he felt that the "dance, dance, dance to the radio" refrain of Joy Division's second release, 'Transmission', would make it a firm favourite for day-time airplay.

"I went to London, found the best plugger to Radio One in London, played the record to him and he said ‘Yeah, I'll do it for £2000. I went back to a board meeting with Martin Hannett (producer), Rob Gretton (manager of Joy Division/New Order), Peter Saville (Factory artwork designer) and Alan Erasmus (label co-founder). I wasn't out-voted, but after a long discussion they all said no to a plugger... There was a decision not to promote - and that was the right decision".

New Order's Bernard Sumner, who now believes the principle of non-promotion was "naive", nevertheless admits it fitted the early character of the band.

"For a long time we really didn't care about promoting ourselves," he explains. "I know it sounds mad but we weren't really bothered about how the group did. We just liked making music, and we weren't going to put ourselves out to get in the charts."

But New Order were forced to take a different position, around six years ago, when they were presented with a huge tax bill. All of a sudden chart success was not something they could afford to be churlish about.

"You see, in the early days of New Order, and for the whole of Joy Division, we never even had financial meetings or discussed money," Sumner explains. "We were all working-class lads, and, I know it sounds naive, we were just glad to get a wage out of doing something we loved.

"But then we found that a certain company owed us some money - no names mentioned but never trust a hippy - and that even though we'd never received it, nor were likely to, we'd have to pay tax on it. From that moment on, when we started to find out things like that, we got more interested in money... because the alternative was to go to jail."

For all the financial problems it may have caused them later, Factory's uncompromisingly ‘indie' attitude has worked for New Order. Even with a Number One single under their belt they are still seen as operating outside the rock network. But it did not appear to be working for James, and it was James' - and, to a lesser extent, The Railway Children's - decision to quit Factory and sign to major labels (Sire and Virgin respectively) in the summer of 1986, which forced the label to alter its working philosophy and introduce contracts.

"When James went that was a shock, a real shock,” says Wilson, quietly. ”I remember I was with Rob Gretton, New Order's manager, and we sat with the band for about three hours one rainy night in the back of a van in Rusholme begging them to stay, but it was no use."

Whereas in previous years the philanthropic Wilson had been happy for Factory to act as "a willing nursery for the majors" - the main objective being to get his beloved groups out to a wider audience - he now realised that Factory needed more than one major act in order to survive.

Unfortunately, their policy of non-promotion and financial problems - largely caused by the loss-making Hacienda nightclub (built, at a cost of £1.5 million, in 1981) - meant that they were no longer an attractive label for the ambitious, but naive, James.

"The main thing that prompted us to leave was distribution," says James' manager Martine McDonagh. "The band would be on a major tour and in every city they'd go to there wouldn't be one single in the shops. Maybe Factory had a cashflow problem, maybe they couldn't afford to be consistently pressing up records and having them available."

McDonagh admits that James "jumped out of the frying pan into the fire" by signing to Seymour Stein's Warner Brothers off-shoot, Sire-a fact which must have compounded Wilson's disappointment.

“He gets very personally involved with his bands, and he was very personally involved with James," she says. "I think he was upset and angry.“

According to McDonagh there was no question, after Sire had released the band, of Wilson bringing them back into the Factory fold. "I had a few conversations with Alan Erasmus, but the vibe I got back was that Tony really couldn't bring himself to make a backwards step."

Says Wilson himself "James might have come back, but I couldn't personally imagine going back." Peter Hook, however, tells a different story.

"I think Tony felt that James and The Railway Children were a pain in the arse, really," he says. "I do know at the time that Factory were not bothered about either of them going..."

So is the chairman of Factory records just as capable of duplicity and crocodile tears as any other record industry mogul? How honest is Tony Wilson?

He grew up in working-class Salford, where his mother and father ran a tobacconist's under his mother's former married name of McNulty's. An extremely clever child, he was consistently top of the class at Salford Grammar School from where he passed on to Cambridge and studied English.

His most prophetic talents, though, were an ability to mix with all sorts of disparate groups at school and college - "the druggies, the hippies, the anarchists, whatever" - and the energy he channelled into every pursuit.

A former friend from Cambridge, Paul Sieveking, recalled Wilson as being "very enthusiastic for causes - and a bit naive”, a phrase which neatly encapsulates his Factory career. He edited the University's Shilling Paper and, after graduating, secured one of only two journalism trainee posts available with ITN. "The main thing I did at the interview," claims Wilson, "Was complain about their coverage of Jimi Hendrix's death."

He became "basically a script-writer" for the 5.45 bulletin and News at Ten, worked at World In Action for six months, then, in 1973, returned to Manchester and Granada TV. During 1974 and '75 he began putting music on TV, then instigated a "wacky local arts show", What's On? which, in February 1976, developed into the legendary music series, So It Goes.

With the punk movement all set to erupt above ground in Manchester and every other major city, So It Goes provided virtually the only outlet on TV for new bands.

The series was axed in January, 1978, after Iggy Pop appeared with a horse’s tail sticking out of his
back-side and swore on air. But Wilson had been seduced by the energy of punk and had proven himself more than adept at spotting fresh musical talent. Over the next few months, while still - as he is today - a Granada TV journalist, he came into contact with all his future partners in Factory Records: Alan Erasmus (an ex-actor whom he met through Brideshead Revisited director Charles Sturridge), Rob Gretton, designer Peter Saville and producer Martin Hannett, whose earliest work had been with the Hull Truck Theatre company.

Wilson and Erasmus began managing a band, The Durutti Column, which had emerged from the tatters of a previous outfit, Fast Breeder. Erasmus had already come up with the name Factory (he saw a sign saying ‘Factory Clearance’) and it was first hung over the door of the Russell Club in Hulme where they would present local bands like Durutti, Cabaret Voltaire, Buzzcocks and Slaughter And The Dogs, and then printed on the label of their first release: ‘The Factory Sample’, released in January 1979.

The company was financed by £10,000 bequeathed to Wilson by his mother and, despite their policy of non-promotion, most of the early singles (Joy Division's 'Transmission', OMD's 'Electricity') broker even on costs. But the company went through what Wilson calls “a cold period" of flop singles in the early '80s when they signed funk groups like Kalima, 52nd Street and Marcel King, and attempted to pre-erupt the dance boom.

Meanwhile The Hacienda Club was consistently losing money, "There was an incredible night, around the time of New Order's 'Blue Monday'," laughs Wilson, “when the brewery wouldn't release beer to The Hacienda unless they got a cheque for £40,000 and the plastic factory wouldn't release plastic to the pressing factory that we part-owned, to press 'Blue Monday', unless they got a cheque for the same amount. The whole thing had ground to a halt."

In recent years Factory's finances have been further squeezed by the temporary closure of The Hacienda, due to a drug-related shooting incident, the poor performance of their new classical division, and, most of all, by their policy of paying groups an 18 per cent royalty (the industry norm is between 12 and 15 per cent). The company made five people redundant two months ago - including managing director Eric Longley - and Wilson had suggested selling 15 per cent of the company to raise capital: a move blocked again by the rest of the Factory board.

Still he insists the company's future is not in jeopardy, pointing out that there are new albums from New Order, Happy Mondays and Northside in the new year.

Surprisingly, perhaps, the recent success of New Order spin-off group, Electronic, has not swelled Factory's coffers significantly.

“We only handle them in England,” Wilson says, “And it’s not a big thing really. Considering the marketing budget we put into it, it’s not been a cash leader for Factory at all.”

In The Happy Mondays, Factory have finally secured their much needed second big-selling act. But, typically, Wilson claims it’s their musical significance rather than their commercial prowess which impresses him.

“Shaun actually said to me a couple of years ago, ‘Bet you wish you had The Stone Roses and not us, don’t you? You’d make more money.’ I said, ‘Shaun, my own ego is: I want the most important group, not the most successful. If I had the Roses and not you, I’d be profoundly upset’.”

Wilson relates this anecdote with the same super-smooth conviction he still brings to Granada Reports, and even to the gameshow Remote Control. Is he telling the truth, or is the man who could slip from social group to social group at school and college “and never have my loyalty questioned” simply turning on the charm?

Ultimately, perhaps, it doesn’t matter. In Factory Records, Wilson has created a framework within which bands can do as they like without needing to question their chairman’s sincerity. Peter Hook of New Order laughs when you ask him the biggest lesson he’s learned at Factory over the years.

“Never believe anything they say... and if you want something doing, do it yourself.”