Cuttings

Chelsea Space Use Hearing Protection  FAC 1 -50/40 Curated by Jon Savage and Mat Bancroft 13 September - 26 October, 2019 Tuesday - Friday 11am-5pm  Saturdays 10am - 4pm and by appointment Inspired by the Sex Pistols and the Situationist International, Tony Wilson started Factory with Alan Erasmus in Manchester in spring 1978. Factory began as a club night - marked by Peter Saville’s June 1978 poster - FAC 1. It became a record label with the release of A Factory Sample in late January 1979. Featuring music from Joy Division, John Dowie, Durutti Column and Cabaret Voltaire, this double EP set launched Factory as an idea: of independence, new music and high concept design. Debut singles by A Certain Ratio and Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark were followed by the June 1979 release of Joy Division’s Unknown Pleasures - the record that created both their and Factory’s legend. The label gained its first chart su

A LA RECHERCHE DU TEMPS PERDU With 24 Hour Party People, director Michael Winterbottom set out to re-create the Factory myth in celluloid. Yet he hadn't banked on a nightmare of drugs, frayed tempers and madness to equal the real story. By Damon Wise ON FRIDAY 2 March 2001, Tony Wilson arrived at the Hacienda and found the place in chaos. Actually, he was lucky to find it standing; it had, after all, been demolished some six months previously, three years after various cash crises and public-order concerns had conspired to close it for good. He was actually in a warehouse in Ancoats, looking at FAC 451, an extraordinarily detailed re-creation of the Manchester nightclub. The original Hacienda was part of local history, built in a former yacht showroom in 1982 with the profits from Factory Records as a thank-you to the city and rewarded in its early days with almost total ingratitude as the local clientele stayed

Atrocity Exhibition Matthew Norman, from the Manchester Digital Music Archive, unveils an amazing cache of recently discovered Joy Division artefacts. MANCHESTER’S BIGGEST EXPORTS are music and football,” explains Matthew Norman, curator of the Manchester District Music Archive and expert on all things Manc. “You can visit the football grounds, but there’s nothing here for people interested in the city’s musical history. Our long-term ambition is to create a proper museum, though we’re a bit scared of that word because it conjures up images of dusty shelves and glass cabinets.” Matthew and his team have already sourced thousands of rare artefacts - records, posters, flyers, recordings, personal journals - including many predating the rock era.“It’s about everything,” he says, “not just indie kids in the ’80s. We’re just as interested in the Halle Orchestra, one of the first professional orchestras, which was started here in the 1850s. The

 

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 ske

I can't even remember what I contacted the Hacienda about (some story in the NME which said they were giving *something* out!), but in any case I got this letter and the card below in response!

Blue Monday: Factory closes its gates On Monday, November 23, Factory Records finally went into receivership. The last major independent force outside London, an unrivalled home for innovative and blatantly bloody-minded musicians, the last sanctuary of ‘Madchester’- all destroyed at a stroke. So was it the exorbitant cost of the last Mondays album that broke Factory? Or the eagerly anticipated and much-delayed New Order album? And what will Tony Wilson - the mouthiest record company boss of all - do next? The NME news team investigates... New Order, Mondays hold key NEW ORDER hold the key to Factory’s future, as the receivers pore over the company’s accounts to establish just who owns the rights to the band’s new album and their lucrative back catalogue. A spokesman for official receivers Leonard Curtis said the fact that New Order had never signed a contract with the label, opting for a “gentleman’s agreement” to give six months’ notice before leaving, had created a “complex situati

WHEN Factory’s Tony Wilson offered Claude Bessey the job of 'Vee Jay’ at the newly-opened Hacienda, Claude was less than sure “Video?” he asked with the derisive emphasis that only a Frenchman can muster. “I wouldn’t know a video from an ironing board.” Nowadays it’s rumoured he can tell the difference nine times out of ten which, considering the state of most videos, is a reasonable success rate. “I still feel embarrassed about my occupation, especially now — if you say you’re involved in video, people in polite company assume you’re one of those idiots that makes advertising films in Egypt.” Nevertheless, if that most debased of media is to be used for anything more interesting than the videodrone detailed by Dessa Fox, it will be down to people like Claude Bessey. As administrator of Ikon, the video branch of Factory, Claude, although he’d almost certainly baulk at the description, is a prime figure in the small but expanding field of independent video. “Video,” he says wistfull

 

FAC 227 AND THAT’S A FAC(T) Yes, it’s official! FRED FACT has itself now become something for Factory buffs to cherish. For this very chip-wrapping you are holding has been allocated the number FAC 227 in the Factory catalogue and is, therefore, instantly collectable, ranking alongside Factory’s 10th Agnniversary calendar (FAC 240), Factory Sellotape (FAC 136) and the NEW ORDER Manual Video Flickbook (FAC 235) as an item to be desired and far easier to store than either TONY WILSON’S flats (FAC 101) or The Hacienda, Manchester (FAC 51). Hang on to this page. It will shortly acquire a value far exceeding the fee you paid for this edition of the best rock paper in the world and then continue to soar. So don’t ditch it - ever! In case you need further proof here's Tony Wilson’s letter of authorization: A FACTUAL ERROR The FACTORY discography made an amusing read but I’m sure you’re aware by now that you missed out numbers FAC 152-175. Is there any chance of you printing the missing

SIMON TOPPING: Prospect Park  ( Factory Benelux ) Good old Factory Benditoys present Mr Khaki Shorts 1982: Simon “A Concrete Patio" Topping in his solo debut, and most odd it is too. A terribly authentic slab of Latin piano and what one presumes is Si's own trumpet on the A-side - named after part of Exeter, seemingly - while the B-side has Topping announcing in a doomy way that he loves the conga. The conga better watch out.

RENAISSANCE MANC • FACTORY: aloof, elegant, misunderstood Mancunian home of Joy Division, New Order, Happy Mondays, possibly the coolest record label in the world - but there are worries about its health. With lavish retrospective ‘Palatine’ out soon, ANTHONY H WILSON - game show host, clever git, sexy businessman, man who didn’t sign The Smiths - entertains STUART MACONIE with his art of conversation and confirms that, apart from a ‘ripped scrotum’, Factory is alive and well. Factotum in focus: KEVIN CUMMINS Granadaland - 6,000 square miles of multi-storey car parks, great football teams, breathtaking mountain scenery, cooling towers and the best in English beat music. Charlton, Sugden, Curtis, Barlow, Ryder, Formby, Rutherford, Hook, Sidebottom, Fields, Lawton, Lofthouse, Laurel, Hanley, Shelley, Morrissey, Marr, Bragg (Melvyn not Billy) and The Bee Gees. The roll call rings down the ages. And what has London given us ... Chas & Dave. Thanks. I’m on the roof of the