Publications > Scream City > Scream City Issue #1 > Nuts 'n' Whores with Anthony Wilson and Matt Carroll by John Cooper

Nuts 'n' Whores
by John Cooper
Lyon, France
Nuits Sonores Festival, 2005

Anthony Wilson (with occasional contributions from Matt Carroll) talks to John Cooper about selected items from the Factory Records catalogue.

AHW: I like this one because not only is it the invite from Britain's first ever designer bar and last week I was in Los Angeles and I went to the Chai Brasserie which I realised was the place that gave us the idea we wanted, we'd seen all those clubs in New York like Hurrah's and Danceteria and built the Haçienda but for me it was Chai Brasserie on Robertson and Wilshire that made me think "they have fancy bars in LA and we should have one in Manchester, so we had this one. And the most terrible thing is this represents some of the design patterns and this is a particular, special beer sort of thing and basically we discovered about a year in that all the beer that was in the pipe there and the end here in the swan's neck, every time you served a pint of beer, a quarter of a pint was wasted. So, it's very nice that this utter stupidity was presented in what was a very delightful little poster.

AHW: Of all the Christmas presents, my favourite is 245, which was the year of Madchester, and no-one gives proper credit – Madchester actually, the credit goes to Phil and Keith, Phil Shott and Keith Jobling, two Geordies who were working at the time trying to make movies and did all the Happy Mondays videos. But one night we went round to their workplace and they came up with two ideas for t-shirts and one was "Just Say No To London" (modelled on the Katherine Hamnett t-shirt).

JC: Did that ever get made?

AHW: That got a model of it made; there is, Trevor Johnson did a sketch of "Just Say No To London" in the Katherine Hamnett drugs style.

But, their second idea, more importantly, was to replace n's with d's, and the prime t-shirt, the big one, was "Nigel Madsell From The Isle Of Madd" and the second one was "Madchester". So, we laughed a bit and had a good laugh about it, and then about ten minutes later the Madchester word reverberated and I said "I'd like to use that, can I borrow that? Can we use that for the Mondays, this new E.P. which has got various tracks on it but it hasn't got a title, Hallelujah and whatever else on the four tracks and they said "fine".

So I tootled over to the Dry bar, found the Mondays there and said can we use the phrase "Madchester" for your E.P. and they said "Yeah".

And then, sure enough, two days later, cos it wasn't their idea, it was a bit crap, they ring up and say "we're really sorry Tony, we've got our own idea, and y'know, it's much better" and I said "Terribly sorry guys! Shit!! It's gone to print", and of course it hadn't done and I had to tell him (Matt Carroll) to lie. He actually did it. And that was Madchester.

Anyway, it got to that Christmas, and I thought, to have some fun, let's use Madchester, and I thought about it mostly looking at the street signs. So actually, I got Vini Reilly, at the time, to go out and take a photo of a street sign, the Town Hall, the station, and whatever else and then took it to a photo treatment place in Manchester, it cost about 150 quid to have the n's changed. So, I'm very fond of those images, particularly as Vini took the shots.

AHW: This is good. This is wonderful. If you're gonna take cocaine it's the only way to take it.

Matt Carroll: We stopped taking cocaine after you told us it's not creative!

AHW: Well, it's not. But why should it stop you?

Matt Carroll: Well, it didn't, but...

AHW: ... you thought you should do!

So, the problem was that we thought the club had to have a membership in 1982 when we were opening it. And with three months to go we got this designed and then we paid for them and we had 10,000 made and they cost about £12,000 for 10,000 cards and, with a week to go to opening we discovered... we didn't need membership so [laughs] we didn't know what to do with them! So, we gave a few hundred away to people, which was fun, but then, later, Fiona (Allen), who was our doorgirl and is now a famous English comedian, she opened a shop to sell the stuff (FAC 281) and she had a reproduction of the outers to put with the original cards. The credit card, you will see, also has a Haçienda sticker on the back, it was just unbelievable. And I've still got mine [gets out wallet] in here and the fact that it's got stuff on it is just irrelevant.

Matt Carroll: I lost mine in the taxi.

AHW: I've got boxes full of them.

JC note 2019: He did indeed have boxes of them - see photo of a box of membership cards in the AHW Archive at the Science and Industry Museum in Manchester

That was a nice Christmas card. That was the year that CDs arrived so we thought we'd do a CD sleeve just to make the point and then Peter (Saville) thought he'd do "snow". I think that's the chemical arrangement of snow.

That was Barney's idea. Barney called the bar "Dry" which is a very good name for a bar isn't it... The fact that Barney's a twat is irrelevant...

AHW: There were these wonderful occasions that would happen about once every year or once every two years, when suddenly everyone would be in town at the same time. And I think this was in England and our American partners and our Belgian partners and our Australian partners were all in town – "oh, let's have a get-together". And my favourite get-together was actually in the Four Seasons Hotel, Newport Beach in '89 or something. And, it's a long story but I won't bore you with it.

AHW: Halcyon Daze was good. But it wasn't as good as Freaky Dancin'. Freaky Dancin' is the great magazine. It's the most fantastic piece of culture.

AHW: Staff Party Pass!?

Matt Carroll: I don't remember that.

AHW: I don't remember it either.

JC: It was the party at the Green Room and Laserquest.

AHW: Oh no, it was my fortieth birthday party! It was my fortieth birthday. 19 February 1990. Northside played and that night I did eleven different drugs. And it took me quite an effort to do eleven different drugs that night. [To Matt] Partly I was with your mate Shaun, so that didn't help. That includes alcohol, speed, E, and several other things. But, it was my birthday. Bloody hell, I'd forgotten about that completely! So, there you go, it's just all history!

Matt Carroll: Remember one thing. Tony's from Salford and I'm from Salford and Salford is a separate city from Manchester.

AHW: It is.

JC [2019 note]: I subsequently adopted the AHW model for my own 40th birthday party which was cunningly disguised as the Cerysmatic Factory 10th Birthday Party.

.. and then there's centralstationdesign.com