'The Factory' The Factory name was first used for a club in May 1978; the first Factory night was on the 26 May 1978. The club became a Manchester legend in its own right, being known variously as the Russell Club, Caribbean Club, PSV (Public Service Vehicles) Club (so titled as it was originally a social club for bus drivers who worked from the nearby depot) and 'The Factory'. The 'Factory' night at The Russell Club was launched by Alan Erasmus, Tony Wilson, and helped by promoter Alan Wise. As well as attracting numerous touring bands to the area and many upcoming
post punk bands, The club was located on the NE corner of the now demolished
Hulme Crescents development, on the corner of Royce Rd and Clayburn St ().
Peter Saville designed advertising for the club, and in September Factory released an EP of music by acts who had played at the club (the Durutti Column, Joy Division, Cabaret Voltaire and comedian
John Dowie) called
A Factory Sample.
1978 and 1979 As a follow-on from the successful 'Factory Nights' held at the Russell Club, Factory Records made their first release,
A Factory Sample, in January 1979. At that time there was a punk label in Manchester called Rabid Records, run by Tosh Ryan and
Martin Hannett. It had several successful acts, including
Slaughter & the Dogs (whose tour manager was
Rob Gretton),
John Cooper Clarke, and
Jilted John. After his seminal TV series
So It Goes, Tony Wilson was interested in the way Rabid Records ran, and was convinced that the real money and power were in album sales. With a lot of discussion, Tony Wilson, Rob Gretton and Alan Erasmus set up Factory Records, with Martin Hannett from Rabid. In 1978, Wilson compered the
new wave afternoon at
Deeply Vale Festival. This was actually the fourth live appearance by the fledgling
Durutti Column and that afternoon Wilson also introduced an appearance (very early in their career) by
the Fall, featuring
Mark E. Smith and
Marc "Lard" Riley on bass guitar. , Manchester. The Factory label set up an office in Erasmus' home on the first floor of 86 Palatine Road (), and the
Factory Sample EP was released on 24 December 1978. Singles followed by
A Certain Ratio (who would stay with the label) and
Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark (who left for
Virgin Records shortly afterwards). The first Factory LP, Joy Division's
Unknown Pleasures, was released in June 1979.
1980s In January 1980,
The Return of the Durutti Column was released, the first in a long series of releases by guitarist
Vini Reilly. In May, Joy Division singer
Ian Curtis committed suicide shortly before a planned tour of the US. The following month saw Joy Division's single "
Love Will Tear Us Apart" reach the UK top twenty, and their second album
Closer was released the following month. In late 1980, the remaining members of Joy Division decided to continue as
New Order. Factory branched out, with Factory Benelux being run as an independent label in conjunction with
Les Disques du Crepuscule, and Factory US organising distribution for the UK label's releases in America.
The Haçienda (FAC 51) opened in May 1982. Although successful in terms of attendance, and attracting a lot of praise for Ben Kelly's interior design, the club lost large amounts of money in its first few years due largely to the low prices charged for entrance and at the bar, which was markedly cheaper than nearby pubs. Adjusting bar prices failed to help matters as crowds were increasingly preferring
ecstasy to alcohol by the mid-1980s. Therefore, the Haçienda ended up costing tens of thousands of pounds every month. However, the label did not make any money from it since the original sleeve, die-cut and designed to look like a floppy disk, was so costly to make that the label lost on every copy they sold. Saville noted that nobody at Factory expected "Blue Monday" to be a commercially successful record at all, so nobody expected the cost to be an issue.
Happy Mondays released their first album in 1985. New Order and Happy Mondays became the most successful bands on the label, bankrolling a host of other projects. Saville's association with Factory was now reduced to simply designing for New Order and their solo projects (the band itself was in suspension, with various members recording as
Electronic,
Revenge and
the Other Two). By 1992, the label's two most successful bands caused the label serious financial trouble. The Happy Mondays were recording their troubled fourth album
Yes Please! in
Barbados, and New Order reportedly spent £400,000 on recording their comeback album
Republic.
London Records were interested in taking over Factory but the deal fell through when it emerged that, due to Factory's early practice of eschewing contracts, New Order rather than the label owned New Order's back catalogue. In October 2009,
Peter Hook published his book on his time as co-owner of the Haçienda,
How Not to Run a Club, and in 2010 he had six bass guitars made using wood from the Haçienda's dancefloor.
2000s and
Ben Kelly. The 2002 film
24 Hour Party People is centred on Factory Records, the Haçienda, and the infamous, often unsubstantiated anecdotes and stories surrounding them. Many of the people associated with Factory, including
Tony Wilson, have minor parts; the central character, based on Wilson, is played by actor and comedian
Steve Coogan. Anthony Wilson, Factory Records' founder, died on 10 August 2007 at age 57, from complications arising from
renal cancer.
Colin Sharp, the Durutti Column singer during 1978 who took part in the
A Factory Sample EP, died on 7 September 2009, after suffering a brain haemorrhage. Although his involvement with Factory was brief, Sharp was an associate for a short while of Martin Hannett and wrote a book called
Who Killed Martin Hannett, which upset Hannett's surviving relatives, who stated the book included numerous untruths and fiction. Only months after Sharp's death,
Larry Cassidy,
Section 25's bassist and singer, died of unknown causes, on 27 February 2010. In early 2010, Peter Hook, in collaboration with the Haçienda's original interior designer Ben Kelly and British audio specialists
Funktion-One, renovated and reopened FAC 251 (the former Factory Records headquarters on Charles Street) as a nightclub.
FAC numbers Musical releases, and essentially anything closely associated with the label, were given a catalogue number in the form of either FAC, or FACT, followed by a number. FACT was reserved for full-length albums, while FAC was used for both single song releases and many other Factory "productions", including: posters (FAC 1 advertised a club night), The Haçienda (FAC 51), a lawsuit filed against Factory Records by Martin Hannett (FAC 61), a hairdressing salon (FAC 98), a broadcast of
Channel 4's
The Tube TV series (FAC 104), customised packing tape (FAC 136), a bucket on a restored watermill (FAC 148), the Haçienda cat (FAC 191), a bet between Wilson and Gretton (FAC 253), a radio advertisement (FAC 294), and a website (FAC 421). Similar numbering was used for compact disc media releases (FACD), CD Video releases (FACDV),
Factory Benelux releases (FAC BN or FBN), Factory US releases (FACTUS), and Gap Records Australia releases (FACOZ), with many available numbers restricted to record releases and other directly artist-related content. Numbers were not allocated in strict chronological order; numbers for Joy Division and New Order releases generally ended in 3, 5, or 0 (with most Joy Division and New Order albums featuring multiples of 25), A Certain Ratio and Happy Mondays in 2, and the Durutti Column in 4. Factory Classical releases were 226, 236 and so on.
Factory Classical In 1989, Factory Classical was launched with five albums by composer
Steve Martland, the
Kreisler String Orchestra, the
Duke String Quartet (which included Durutti Column viola player
John Metcalfe),
oboe player
Robin Williams and
pianist Rolf Hind. Composers included Martland,
Benjamin Britten,
Paul Hindemith,
Francis Poulenc,
Dmitri Shostakovich,
Michael Tippett,
György Ligeti and
Elliott Carter. Releases continued until 1992, including albums by
Graham Fitkin, vocal duo
Red Byrd, a recording of
Erik Satie's
Socrate,
Piers Adams playing
Handel's
Recorder Sonatas,
Walter Hus and further recordings both of Martland's compositions and of the composer playing
Mozart. ==Successor labels==