Publications > Scream City > Scream City Issue #3 > A Field Trip to the Factory Archives by Andrew James

A Field Trip to the Factory Archives
by Andrew James

Thanks to a tip from moist on the ever-reliable Cerysmatic Factory website, I recently took a trip to the bowels of Manchester's Science and Industry Museum to peruse the Factory Records archives.

Yes, that's right. Archives. It's hard to believe that a company run in such a haphazard fashion by people with so little regard for established business practices should have left behind anything as recherché as a paper trail.

Personally, I was under the impression that everything had been looted from the Factory vaults by Shaun Ryder's mates when it all went tits-up in such spectacular fashion back in 1992. But, despite their best efforts, Wilson, Erasmus, Gretton et al did leave a collection of artefacts for future scholars to pore over. Well, up to a point anyway.

These aforementioned scholars will quickly realise that the Factory story, as told by the archive, is missing large chunks, and that the remaining documentation is far from a complete record of the label's activity. (An aside: I was slightly surprised to be allowed to handle the material without the aid of cotton gloves, which is standard practice in many archives.)

Much of the archived material covers the latter period of Factory, from 1988 onwards, and is a testament to the sound business mind of Paul Cons, who ran Dry.

In fact, any university student who wanted to write a thesis about FAC 201 would find a wealth of material at the Museum, from the first plans drawn up by Ben Kelly in 1987 (initially it was going to be named Bar One) and the £1 share certificates made out to Alan Erasmus and Peter Hook, to minutes of meetings held once Dry was up and running (my heart goes out to Ann D-----, who, according to an agenda item at one staff meeting was sacked for not being "up to standard"; I mean, when you can't even meet Factory's low standards, what hope is there?).

There's an invoice by designer Jasper Morrison for the furniture in Dry (£19,130 ex. VAT). There are references to proposed album launches at the bar by Simply Red and Intastella.

There's even an entire box of wage slips from the Haçienda and Dry, should you wish to go through them, but time considerations precluded such investigation during my visit. Next time, eh?

Among the mundane paperwork relating to the bar, there are a few gems. One is a letter on FAC 51- headed notepaper in response to a piece by local journalist Mick Middles. It reads:

Newspaper against the Haçienda for non-payment of advertising fees in 1983.

Information relating to the Haçienda itself is scarce, though you can see (on notepaper headed with Factory's first logo), the precise cost of the furniture used to kit out the club in 1982 (90 Aalto stools at £20 each supplied by Coexistence in London, 195 chairs at £25.50 each supplied by Pieff Contract and 35 and 57 round and square tables at £45.70 and £49.70 respectively, in case you were wondering).

Most interesting are the plans drawn up at various times throughout the club's existence for its refurbishment. One proposal, by Neil Pike Associates of Bolton, would have involved cutting away a large section of the club's balcony.

More radical still was a proposal from the early nineties by John Buttress of Nottingham to refurbish the Gay Traitor cocktail bar in a "baroque" style using sculptural metal furniture by Mark Brazier- Jones and distressed painted plaster: Buttress had completed a similar project at a bar in Nottingham called Eden.

Thankfully, neither of these proposals got past the initial stages.

The archives contain one sole remaining copy of the Haçienda members' newsletter (no. 4), which, among other items, apologises for the cancellation of concerts by The Associates and Scritti Politti.

There are also numerous archived testaments to the label's lack of financial probity and consequent legal troubles. Factory kept numerous firms of lawyers in work (including JP Kennedy, Russells Solicitors, and Mitchell, Silverberg & Knupp), usually in reference to monies owed by the label. Steve Osbourne and Paul Oakenfold, for example were still chasing payment for their production job on the Happy Mondays' Pills 'n' Thrills and Bellyaches as late as April 1992. Similarly, MCA were suing Factory in the same year for payments relating to New Order's World in Motion single.

Lest you think that the label's financial ineptitude was confined to its latter years, there are also references to small claims court proceedings brought by the university's Student Eye.

Of greatest historical interest, possibly, are the handwritten incident reports for the Haçienda kept by Paul Mason and others from 1988 onwards. Recording security issues, ejections, police presence, emergencies, incidences of violence and (I quote) "observations of cannabis use", the diary makes occasionally unnerving reading, and provides some eye-witness context for the security issues that plagued the club in the late eighties and early nineties, as it became a victim of its own success.

One item that caught my eye among the Haçienda paperwork was an outstanding invoice to one Bruce Mitchell of Bruce Mitchell Productions of Central Rd., M20, for "continuing hire of [the Haçienda's] Steeldeck @ The Academy up until Thurs 13/12/90". Presumably, Bruce's duties behind the skins for The Durutti Column precluded his returning said item to the Haç.

Much of the interest around Factory, of course, is due to its visual presentation, and there are are plenty of interesting design items in the archive to satisfy aficionados.

For example, there are numerous transparencies of sleeves by Central Station Design and others, original posters and artwork, designs for badges and matchboxes, and more.

However, in the short time I had, I saw little that hadn't appeared in Matthew Robertson's monograph on the label (FAC 461 Factory Records – The Complete Graphic Album).

The large collection of videos and audio tapes contained in the archive looked intriguing; alongside the usual suspects on VHS, Betamax, U-Matic and 1" master (e.g. Kalima, To Hell With Burgundy) were some non-Fac oddities, such as 'Skanking Queen' and 'Slip Slide' by The Bodines (a Haçienda performance, possibly?), a tape of Howard Devoto at the G- Mex from 6-8-86, the curiously titled "Aids" from 17-1-1987 (a benefit gig?) and a track by Laugh (?) called "Outta Ma Face" (?). I would have watched some of these to find out more, but unfortunately the Museum only has the facility to play VHS tapes.

I did watch the Wired feature on Joy Division from 1988, for old time's sake. This wasn't a master tape from the production company concerned, complete with early rushes and outtakes, as I hoped it might be; instead in typical Factory style it was simply a blank VHS on which someone had taped the episode of Wired from Channel 4.

All too soon, my time was up, though I didn't get the impression I'd missed a huge box of unreleased Happy Mondays tracks due to lack of time. On the contrary, I'd had a pretty good overview of the contents of the archive in my three hours and seen some interesting snippets of information that helped to round out my appreciation of the label I'd grown up with.

However, neither had I seen any mind-blowing exclusives or rarities. No rolled up copies of FAC 1. No menstrual egg timers. No copies of Rob Gretton's dental records.

As I said, there are whole parts of the Factory jigsaw missing from the archive. Sure you can see something of the legal deliberation over Northside's contract with Geffen, say, or tour itineraries for the Haçienda's later jaunts overseas (and seeing the differing payments secured for Sasha's, Graeme Park's and Mike Pickering's services makes interesting reading), but there's scant record of anything related to Joy Division.

Or New Order for that matter. Or ACR.

Or the Durutti Column.

Presumably, this lack of hard evidence is a consequence of Factory's early policy of handshake deals.

Perhaps, too, these bands were able to spirit away their own archive material, as they got wind of the fact that the label was going to the wall.

Perhaps London Records, Factory's potential white knight, carted away anything of particular historical importance when they finally stripped the bankrupted label of its musical assets.

Whatever the reason, though, the archive is only a partial record of the history of Factory. Certainly essential for scholars, completists and anyone that wants to pore over the correspondence between designer Trevor Johnson and the company that made the enamel badges for Dry. Good for the details, and but not for the big picture.

The Factory archive, such as it is tells a small part of the story. But not the whole story. That still remains to be written...

Thanks to Jan Hargreaves at the Museum for her help. Learn more about the visiting the Museum's archives at:

or, more conveneniently, read the Jan's 'Unknown Pleasures' article on page 26 of this very fanzine.

--

MSIM became MoSI and is now the Science and Industry Museum. The current website is scienceandindustrymuseum.org.uk