Independence Days

by Alex; Ogg

  Of course, the other important precedent was New Hormones, which had been revived in 1979 when, with Buzzcocks established as chart regulars, Richard Boon found himself with a little more time on his hands. It reactivated with releases by the Tiller Boys (an ad hoc ensemble sometimes featuring Pete Shelley, but pivoting around Eric Random and Francis Cookson) and Linder’s Ludus, released simultaneously in March 1980. Boon was joined at various points in the enterprise by Peter Wight, the manager of Dislocation Dance, and Liz Naylor and Cath Carroll, who ran City Fun, fanzine, after Boon offered them free rent and phone use. Promoters Alan Wise and Nigel Baguely, of Wise Moves, ran a promotion agency next door and shared the rent, at least occasionally.

  “At City Fun, we used to promote gigs, variously at the Mayflower, Band on The Wall and The Gallery,” recalls Carroll, “and produced our own posters.” That saw them join the precarious milieu of flyposters who remained the underbelly of Manchester’s rock ‘n’ roll tradition. “We always dreaded flyposting, not because of the police, but because we’d heard about this flyposting mafia. We understood Salford and possibly Wythenshawe were involved, which is another way of saying broken legs. So we’d walk to New Cross at two in the morning. Liz would have the glue bucket in a Marks & Sparks plastic bag, and I would wear my GPO uniform and hide the posters in my postbag. We’d spend ages looking for a spot that wasn’t in active use, but yet was in an acceptable place. Obviously you don’t want to be papering over the front of Lewis’s. We just dreaded being spotted so I’d pretend to be checking an address, while Liz threw up the poster. Like the Royal Mail delivers to abandoned shops in Shudehill at three in the morning! We had never knowingly seen Vinni Faal and were never really sure what he did, but we were always very clear on never wanting to meet him. Alan Wise and Nigel Baguely brought up his name a lot; there was much lugubriously dark hinting and we’d ask Alan what he meant and he’d go, ‘never you mind, darlings,’ in his best theatrical uncle voice.”

  There were many other semi-regulars at their 50 Newton Road headquarters, on the top floor of an old merchant’s warehouse bang in the city centre, including many of the roster enjoying the ‘open house’ conviviality. Frequent guests included Nico and a star-struck (with Linder) Stephen Patrick Morrissey. “As you know,” Morrissey would later tease Boon when the latter interviewed him for The Catalogue and asked him about his prior knowledge of independent labels, “I was not an unfamiliar face on the stairs of the New Hormones offices as a limbless teenager. It was then, very much, real independent art versus real major money and independent people were just much more my type. They watched BBC 2, for instance. They knew Emma Cannon.” When funds allowed it, the office was stocked with cheap alcohol and speed. All visitors, however, would have to negotiate the short-tempered, one-armed ex-Irish soldier Tommy who manned the dilapidated lift. But at this stage New Hormones was very much considered the equal of Factory.

  “Richard Boon took me to see the New Hormones office once,” confirms Kevin Hewick. “I was impressed that it actually looked like an office. Everything Factory was, was on the floor in Alan Erasmus’s flat or (after his break up with Lindsay Reade) in boxes in Tony’s vast, empty, minimalist house he lived alone in, on Old Broadway. Truth be told, I got to develop a hankering to defect to Boon and New Hormones; it seemed more like a ‘record company’ should be.” The rivalry between New Hormones and Factory was keen, but not without a shared spirit. “There was rivalry everywhere then,” admits Linder, “between the north and south, between Factory and New Hormones, between every band. Like trying to put your finger on mercury, the post-punk period endlessly divides and sub divides, escaping easy classification and display. Even whilst singing, I still made mono prints, took photographs and was being photographed. Those were unique years within culture and arguably, we were participating in the last of the days of a British underground before the late eighties malaise.”

  While Factory became synonymous with Martin Hannett’s production, New Hormones would use Stuart James, who had previously worked with OMD, Joy Division and an earlier incarnation of Ludus. Money was much tighter at New Hormones than at Factory (whom the label would eventually come to refer to as ‘Fat Tory Records’ in mocking tribute to Wilson’s grandiose scheming). James didn’t have the resources (nor Hannett’s famously demanding nature) to indulge bands in the studio, yet still produced occasionally spectacular results. Similarly, though there was some cogent design in terms of the label’s artwork, they didn’t have the defining unanimity Peter Saville brought to Factory. They simply never had the budget.

  But they did build a roster studded with literate art-pop. The Biting Tongues, originally formed to accompany leader Howard Walmsley’s film of the same title, were eventually taken up by Peter Kent at Beggars’ Situation 2 label. Dislocation Dance were formed out of the Manchester Musician’s Collective and released their first single as a joint venture with New Hormones and their own imprint, Delicate Issues, but thereafter became the label’s great white hopes. The Diagram Brothers had the kind of principled political viewpoints – critics would argue dogma – typical of a certain cadre of Manchester musicians. Divertingly, they tailored their lyrics to unarguable statements of fact. Hence tracks like ‘Bricks’ (‘very useful objects, not expensive at all’), their first single for New Hormones. Other mavericks included the irascible God’s Gift (whose belligerent ‘Discipline’ is a lost lo-fi classic), Eric Random and a single produced by Martin Rushent for The Decorators.

  But despite some European success for Ludus and Dislocation Dance and the omnipresent support of John Peel, the label was feeling the pinch by 1982. Wright took up the offer of regular paid employment while on tour with Dislocation Dance in America, and shortly thereafter the Diagram Brothers broke up just as they began to make headway. The label closed with an attempted fund-raiser for CND organised by CP Lee of Albert y Lost Trios Paranoias, ‘Cruisin’ For Santa’.

  New Hormones has historically been dwarfed by the success of Factory. The difference in their fortunes has been ascribed by some to the unprecedented access to the media Wilson enjoyed, as well as financial resources beyond New Hormones’ reach. Despite the occasional sniping in City Fun, or attempts to wind up Factory’s head honcho by Linder and others, relations between New Hormones and Wilson were cordial, almost fraternal. Wilson would repeatedly take the time to point out the importance of Boon in shaping the Manchester music scene, while Boon considered Wilson both a close friend and ally.

  “I knew Richard much better than I ever knew Tony,” says Carroll. “Richard had a very dry, campy sense of humour, and always seemed to be in a state of private amusement, though he could still express disapproval quite clearly, if so inclined. He was always respectfully circumspect when talking about Tony, as if trying to describe the indescribable with as much precision as possible. I think it was perhaps his affection for the man he was trying to describe. He never said anything negative about him. With Tony, if he told you to get to the next level, it was because he thought you’d achieved something important, so he was always making comments about what Richard should do next. Tony’s advice was always something like, get Eric Random to take it to Vegas, launch Linder from a rocket from the top of Kendal Milne, get out of Didsbury. They had some complex drama in common such as Morrissey, the whole who did and did not sign him, and why – who wants to untangle that one? It was Richard who eventually took him to Rough Trade. Then there was the Linder connection; they had both worked with her. Liz and I never really pried too much into Linder’s feelings about Factory. Richard just thought she was marvellous – as did we – and whatever she needed to do, she got to do it. He never pushed her to Vegas.”

  Some New Hormones alumni argue, to this day, that Boon was the true innovator, but Wilson the man ‘who could make things work’. That is perhaps true. But listening to New Hormones’ output afresh, Dislocation Dance aside, it is difficult to locate a track with the potential to light up the charts or seize the zeitgeist as J
oy Division/New Order or Happy Mondays would. “There were always great financial constraints,” admits Boon. “I’m sure that did stymie things.” Does he feel there are any records that could, perhaps, have done better? “Yes, I think Linder’s could have done a lot more. And Dislocation Dance probably.” In fact, in the event, Dislocation Dance’s album Midnight Shift would emerge on Rough Trade where, in the absence of better prospects, and stony-broke, Boon had found a bolthole.

  Factory had been founded in January 1978 by Granada TV reporter Tony Wilson and unemployed actor and band manager Alan ‘Razzer’ Erasmus. Formerly a member of the Coronation Street cast, and according to Wilson ‘the only black kid in Wythenshawe’, Erasmus’s clients included The Durutti Column (featuring former Nosebleeds guitarist Vini Reilly). Wilson was a Cambridge graduate, making his way as a news reporter, often to comical effect (notably on ‘Kamikaze’ segments of the regional news stream, Granada Reports, which included water-skiing and, most famously, a misguided attempt at hang-gliding). Alongside a creeping fear of imminent death from his next stunt, Wilson not only nursed injuries, but also the idea of an ITV franchise show to rival the BBC’s Top Of The Pops, only with typically loftier ambitions.

  So It Goes ran for two seasons, comprising 19 separate editions, though it was never shown nationally. Wilson’s own immersion in the new music was partly driven by its audience – one of whom, Stephen Morrissey, had sent in the cover of a New York Dolls album. A further parcel contained a tape of The Sex Pistols from Buzzcocks’ singer Howard Devoto, then still Howard Trafford, along with an invitation to see them play support to the Pistols at a forthcoming Lesser Free Trade Hall show. Although Buzzcocks pulled out of the Lesser Free Trade Hall gig, unable to find a bass player, Wilson, and Erasmus, did keep the engagement – at one of the most mythologised gigs ever. The sheer number of attendees who would subsequently form their own bands, or claim membership of that select audience of 42 would be the subject of David Nolan’s book I Swear I Was There. But, in brief, they would include Hook and Sumner of New Order, Devoto and Buzzcocks, Mick Hucknall, Morrissey and Martin Hannett. Wilson spent the next day at Granada Studios convincing them to allow him to put the Pistols on TV. There is some conjecture as to whether Wilson was confusing two separate Pistols shows at the venue, and if he really took his demands all the way to the top – Granada chairman Lord Bernstein. Confusion caused, not least, to Wilson’s winning habit of obfuscation – naturally related in the third person – in his ‘autobiography’ 24 Hour Party People. Not a dissimilar figure to Wilson in that he saw no contradiction in conflating showmanship with socialist principles, Bernstein – or at least one of the Granada hierarchy, gave him his head.

  The first season thus closed with the debut TV appearance by The Sex Pistols (who predictably horrified Wilson’s superiors). Yet it was principally with the opening of the second series, running from October 1977, that Wilson was allowed, or able, to explore the new tide of punk and related music (the opening show featured John Cooper Clarke, Buzzcocks and Elvis Costello). But it all ran aground when Iggy Pop appeared on the second run of So It Goes in October 1977, during which an expletive was inadvertently broadcast, despite it being a pre-record, Wilson carried the can and the strand was culled at season’s close. Erasmus, meanwhile, had been looking after bands and after a few false starts, encouraged Wilson to get involved with what would become Durutti Column. Wilson – a soft, if willing touch – immediately paid for rehearsal space in a scout hut in the south of the city, and gave them their impossibly pretentious name after the comic strip panel erected during a student takeover of Strasbourg University.

  The name Factory (Wilson would deny any suggestion of Andy Warhol’s New York milieu being an influence, stating instead that he’d taken it from a ‘Factory Closing’ sign) was invoked initially as the billing for a club night they organised. The Russell Club in Hulme hosted Durutti Column, Sheffield’s Cabaret Voltaire and Joy Division in May 1978. Manchester Polytechnic typography student Peter Saville designed the posters after introducing himself to Wilson at a Patti Smith show. Not that he got them finished in time to put any up, because he couldn’t find the correct yellow pigment, in a mildly unsettling portent of deadline-aversion to come.

  And yet it is highly indicative of the ethos emerging around Factory that there was no outcry from the artists at Saville’s somewhat surreal sense of proportion and priority.

  “It seems funny to me even now,” reckons the Durutti Column’s Vini Reilly. “At the time it felt right. I’d met Peter a few times and he’s a highly intelligent and sophisticated man. I have enormous respect for him, always have had. But he’s an artist – the real thing. And to me, if the things were late, it didn’t matter, because when it arrived it would be something special. So to me to rush a piece of art to meet a deadline, it runs against my ideals anyway.”

  By September Wilson, Erasmus and Saville had decided to record an EP as a vinyl document of the club, after initial discussions with Roger Eagle of Eric’s over a collaborative Liverpool/Manchester venture fizzled out. The label proper was formed as a partnership between Wilson, Erasmus, Saville and producer Martin Hannett, with offices in Erasmus’s home in Palatine Road. While Rabid was an acknowledged influence, instead of following the template of pushing out singles and then licensing their artists to majors, their intention was to concentrate on albums. Wilson had certainly learned the lessons of the immediate punk era. “The thing I remember specifically about starting Factory,” he would tell Q, “is that independents are set up to get bands signed to majors. Everyone thinks that punk was all about some anti-capitalist response to the majors, but the Pistols signed to anyone; the Clash’s first single came out on CBS, and Buzzcocks signed to United Artists the night Elvis Presley died. It was all major label stuff until this wonderful distribution network called Rough Trade started, and also Pinnacle, who used to supply dust bags.”

  The label’s ‘debut’ release announced the conceptually mischievous nature of their catalogue – FAC1 was actually a yellow and black Saville poster for gigs at the Factory venue through May and June 1978. FAC2, ‘A Factory Sampler’ EP, the label’s first release proper, featured acts who had appeared at the club (the aforementioned Durutti Column, Cabaret Voltaire and Joy Division, joined by John Dowie). Released in December 1978, but not widely distributed or reviewed until the following March, it sold out of its 5,000 pressing within just a few months, funded by the £12,000 Wilson had inherited in 1975 following his mother’s death.

  The bulk of the songs (with the exception of Cabaret Voltaire’s, whose demo had been passed to Wilson by Richard Boon during New Hormones’ hiatus) were cut at Cargo Studios – in a link forged via Wilson’s television career. “Tony and I would talk superficially about TV shows and recordings but I’m afraid he left me standing when the conversation got any deeper,” remembers Cargo’s John Brierley, a former Granada cameraman. “He was a very eloquent and intelligent man and was good to listen to; he had almost boundless enthusiasm for TV and bands. Unfortunately we didn’t speak about Factory or Joy Division until after I had set up the studio. In actual fact we really had little time to talk; invariably he would arrive in the news studio only minutes before transmission for frantic rehearsals – not the best time to talk about bands. I think I was converted though, and hence my enthusiasm grew when I set the studio up.”

  Saville’s artwork, thematically inspired by Kraftwerk’s Autobahn, utilised the industrial warning sign he had employed for the earlier poster. Stolen from a college door, it was both utilitarian and somehow foreboding in its functionality, and a deliberate break from punk’s tradition of exclamation-mark design. Two further Saville concert posters followed before the first single artist release on the label, A Certain Ratio’s ‘All Night Party’. Released in May 1979, it was a notable early Hannett production, extensively using drum machines, with artwork featuring the corpse of comedian Lenny Bruce and Norman ‘Psycho’ Bates on the reverse of the sleeve. Merseys
iders Orchestral Manouevres In The Dark came and went, but would retain Saville’s services. As OMD’s Paul Humphreys told Sean O’Neal, “When we first joined up with Factory, Tony Wilson said to us, ‘Look, you just use me as a vehicle to go on somewhere else. I think you’re going to be a successful pop band, and I don’t think you can be that at the moment on Factory. So when we generate enough interest, I think you should move on.’ And of course we said, ‘No, no! We want to stay on Factory,’ but when Virgin offered a lot of money to have us, Tony was happy to get rid of us, and we were happy to go.”

  Similarly, there were no objections to Cabaret Voltaire moving off to Rough Trade. “At that time, we would have quite happily gone and recorded more stuff for Factory,” Richard H Kirk would recall to Denzil Watson, “because they were northerners and we had a bit more in common with them than Rough Trade. But Rough trade actually came up with the money to buy a four-track EP; so we went with them. It was almost mercenary… I think the only problem that would have arisen was that Factory had their own in-house art director, Peter Saville, whose work I love but I don’t think it would have worked with Cabaret Voltaire.”

  Some of the further ‘odd’ additions to the catalogue, meanwhile, included headed notepaper, industrial earplugs as per the FAC 1 design, and most legendarily of all, Linder’s ‘menstrual egg timer’. Linder had been asked to record for Factory, but turned them down due to an earlier commitment to New Hormones. However, she did offer them the egg timer, FAC 8, as compensation: “I made sketches and small bloody beads that would be used to show menstruation – I have them still; ironically they look like medieval relics. I showed my designs to Tony Wilson who loved the whole idea. I have a sketch of the original, it’s interesting – on one side of the paper are Tony’s budgets for the next Factory single and then on the other is a drawing of the egg timer, except that that title is crossed out and Tony has written ‘The Factory Egg Timer’. It was never made.”