1996 08 17 Middles From Joy Division to New Order NME review

FROM JOY DIVISION TO NEW ORDER - THE FACTORY STORY

Mick Middles (Virgin, £12.99)

DESPITE BEING packaged with the icy design precision of a genuine Factory product, this ambitious volume is not so much the story of a fabled label as a musical portrait of the city which spawned it. Local boy Middles specialises in poetic, highly atmospheric studies of Manchester's numerous districts and the bands each one has produced. He also provides great first-hand memories of the faces, places and scenes feeding into the city's punk and post-punk movements.

Despite occasional jarring lapses - memories of Ian Drury (sic) and Martyn Fry (sic) among them - the author's gushing enthusiasm carries him comfortably to his story's halfway point. Most entertaining of all are his accounts of hanging out with New Order with all the attendant tantrums, spats, stunningly banal comments and magical pop moments.

With the arrival of acid house and Happy Mondays, however, Middles becomes more sketchy and his momentum flags. After promising to break new ground with a teasing chapter on the famously convoluted backstage bedhopping at Factory - described by Anthony Wilson as "a bunch of sexually overactive, lunatic Marxists" - he seems to bottle out, not even airing some of the best-known colourful couplings from the label's heyday. Shame.

Although generally entertaining, From Joy Division To New Order never really gets to the heart of a label steeped in potent myth and staggering incompetence; maverick idealists who virtually dictated British youth culture for 15 years, but missed out on signing The Stone Roses, Pulp and Oasis. Rather like Factory itself, this book peters out on an unsatisfying note, leaving a sense of lost opportunity and unfinished business in its wake.

Stephen Dalton