James Nice - Shadowplayers: The Rise and Fall of Factory Records

is dedicated to the memory of

Larry Cassidy, 19532010

the field is empty

The author wishes to thank, without whom Fiona Allen, Anthony Ashworth, Paul Barnes, Nicholas Blincoe, Chris Bohn, Richard Boon, Rebecca Boulton, Ralph Bowe, John Brierley, Frank Brinkhuis, James Brook, Mark Bursa, Cath Carroll, Larry Cassidy, Vin Cassidy, David Clarkson, Paul Cons, John Cooper, Frederic Cotton, Jeff Crowe, Kevin Cummins, Warren Dermody, Howard Devoto, Christina Di Prima, Tim Difford, Anna Domino, John Dowie, Martin Dunlop, Michel Duval, Michael Eastwood, Alan Erasmus, Mark Farrow, Colin Faver, Chris Frantz, Sheryl Garratt, Malcolm Garrett, Malcolm Gerrie, Gillian Gilbert, Lesley Gilbert, Paul Haig, Matthew Hamilton, Mark Handsley, Wendy Hannett, Lydia Harley, Sam Harrison, Alan Hempsall, Tony Henry, Kevin Hewick, Shan Hira, Mark Holt, Annik Honor, Peter Hook, Steve Hopkins, Andrew James, Richard Jobson, Donald Johnson, Trevor Johnson, Michael Keane, Jamie Keenan, Ben Kelly, Brenda Kelly, Jeremy Kerr, John Kirkham, Michel Lambot, Bruce Licher, Andy McCluskey, Alex MacPherson, Martine McDonagh, Gerard McInulty, Stephen Mallinder, Chris Manecke, Paul Mason, Graham Massey, Tony Michaelides, Wally Van Middendorp, Mick Middles, Ted Milton, Bruce Mitchell, Lieve Monnens, Paul Morley, Stephen Morris, Martin Moscrop, Chris Nagle, The Names, Liz Naylor, Sarah Osborn, Graeme Park, Phillip Pennington, Barbara Phelan, Mike Pickering, Stuart Pickering, Ann Quigley, Eric Ramsden (Random), Lindsay Reade, Mark Reeder, Vini Reilly, Dennis Remmer, Simon Reynolds, Hillegonda Rietveld, John Robb, Matthew Robertson, Dave Rofe, Martin Rushent, Charles Salem, Jon Savage, Peter Saville, Phil Saxe, Michael Shamberg, Tina Simmons, Iain and Bunny Smedley, Michel Sordinia, Andy Spinoza, Miranda Stanton, Linder Sterling, Nick Stewart, Stephen Street, David Sultan, Peter Terrell, Howard Thompson, Martha Tilson, Simon Topping, Fred Vermorel, Johnny Waller, Karl Walsh, Peter Walsh, Chris Watson, Tina Weymouth, Ian White, Anthony H. Wilson, Carol Wilson, Alan Wise and Richard Witts.

The shadow that stood at the side of the road

Always reminds me of you

Ian Curtis for Joy Division: Komakino (1980)

The story of Factory Records has become so encrusted in myth that this book stands a necessary corrective. Without any particular axe to grind, James Nice tracks the rise and fall of an extraordinary company with a forensic eye. The details pile up into a fascinating story of delusion, hubris and betrayal.

Nobody could have thought, in late 1978 and early 1979, that Factory Records then a hand-made business would become the subject of three feature films and a dedicated global cult. Not even Tony Wilson in his most hyperventilated moments. But the main participants had an eye and an ear, and they had the band.

This is where it all starts, with Joy Division. Where it ended, fourteen or so years later, was a completely different world. There were three main Factory phases: the early post-punk period; the mid-1980s electro and indie oscillation, and the final denouement in the death throes of Madchester.

As a friend and early participant and a late witness, watching the downfall as I was editing The Haienda Must Be Built in early 1992 I did not much like that last phase. I couldnt see how There had got to Here. The Happy Mondays influence was baleful and there was more than a miasma of violence surrounding Factory and The Haienda.

The company, for that is what it was by then, had taken a wrong turn. But people have to do what they do, and Shadowplayers performs a great service by taking the personal and over-emotional element out of the equation and by simply presenting the facts, which are sometimes obscure. This is particularly devastating at the books coda, where the full picture of mismanagement becomes clear.

Factorys legacy will always be tied to Joy Division. But it also began as an idealistic experiment that encompassed artistic and business practice, and that like Andy Warhols famous studio created an environment where things happened and people realized their potential. Remember the shadow players this way.

Jon Savage

For me personally it is an experiment in art. It has to do with art theory. For Rob Gretton, its to give people alternatives. For Alan Erasmus, its to keep from getting bored. We all have our motives

Anthony H. Wilson

The only alternative to the spectacle becomes the spectacle of the alternative. Discuss

Factory Newsletter #1

All the trappings of so-called intellectualism, which more often than not is a combination of highbrow flapdoodle and free fornication

J. F. C. Fuller (Decisive Battles: Spain)

Improvement makes straight roads; but the crooked roads without improvement are roads of genius

William Blake

In late 2006, Anthony Howard Wilson, flamboyant media personality and principal founder of Factory Records, was diagnosed with renal cancer. Prompt surgical intervention saw the removal of a kidney in January 2007, yet his cancer progressed. Sutent, a new inhibitor wonder drug, offered a lifeline, promising to double life expectancy for patients fortunate enough to receive it but there was a catch, since Sutent cost 3,500 a month. Asked to confirm his prognosis without the drug, Wilson was distressingly honest: I think its called death.

Despite selling millions of albums by Joy Division, New Order and Happy Mondays through Factory, Tony Wilson had made little if any money from the music industry. Indeed he owned no substantial assets beyond a chic loft apartment on Little Peter Street in Manchester, situated two corners from the site of the iconic Haienda nightclub, opened by Factory in 1982, and a factor in the collapse of the company a decade later. Unfortunately, the M15 postcode cast Wilson into a cruel and arbitrary lottery. While patients undergoing treatment alongside him at the Christie Hospital and living just a few miles away in Cheshire received the drug free of charge, Wilson found himself denied NHS funding for Sutent. This is my only real option, he told the BBC in July. It is not a cure but can hold the cancer back, so I will probably be on it until I die. When they said I would have to pay 3,500 for the drugs each month, I thought where am I going to find the money? Im the one person in this industry who famously has never made any money. I used to say some people make money and some make history which is very funny until you find you cant afford to keep yourself alive.

The friends and colleagues who rallied round to meet the cost of treating Wilson included New Order, Happy Mondays singer Shaun Ryder, sometime Mondays managers Nathan McGough and Elliot Rashman, Factory Benelux director Michel Duval, lawyer Stephen Lea, and fellow broadcasters Richard Madeley and Judy Finnegan. Wilson managed a final trip to New York in June, but gave up presenting on The Politics Show for BBC1 the following month and entered hospital shortly thereafter. The throng of visitors at the Little Peter Street loft and at the Christie over the next few weeks included Factory art director Peter Saville, musicians such as Vini Reilly, Stephen Morris, Gillian Gilbert and Bruce Mitchell, and his children Oliver and Isabel. Yvette Livesey, his partner of seventeen years, seldom left his side. All were painfully aware that Wilson was unlikely to survive, itself a mortal reminder of the appalling fact that he would be the third of the five founding Factory directors to die far too young. Visionary record producer Martin Hannett had passed away in 1991, followed eight years later by Rob Gretton, charismatic manager of Joy Division and New Order. Both had suffered heart attacks aged just forty-two and forty-six.