I bought this book just before Christmas and read it through January, a new edition of Shadowplayers: The Rise And Fall of Factory Records by James Nice, originally published in 2010. It's a really good read, an in depth and thoroughly research history of the label with a wide cast of players present, both via interviews by Nice and already existing ones. There are contributions from all four members of New Order, Martin Moscrop of ACR, Alan Erasmus, Vini Reilly, Mike Pickering, Peter Saville, Lindsay Reade, Liz Naylor, Dermo, Larry Cassidy, Gary Newby, Bez and Shaun Ryder, Leroy Richardson, Paul Mason, Paul Morley and Jon Savage who in different ways all offer insight and explanation. Those who have gone- Ian Curtis, Martin Hannett, Tony Wilson, Rob Gretton, Vincent Cassidy, Annik Honore- are all well represented by archive interviews.
James Nice is a fan of Factory. In the mid- 80s he founded his own label, LTM, inspired by his love of Factory and re- issued some out of print Factory records. More recently he began managing of the Factory adjacent labels Le Disques Du Crepuscule and Factory Benelux and has worked on re- releases records by the Durutti Column, Section 25, The Wake, Quando Quango, ACR and others. He's invested in the label and loves the art it created. Shadowplayers isn't a fan account though and in some ways is a very necessary corrective to some of the less reliable, if more entertaining accounts that have grown since the labels demise, the 24 Hour Party People film and book among others (enjoyable though both were to a certain extent). Nice's history goes some way towards puncturing some of the myths and at times questions the received versions. One of Tony Wilson's most celebrated quotes is the old, 'When forced to pick between the truth and legend, print the legend'. Nice most definitely leans towards truth over legend.
He traces the label's origins and tells the story chronologically from 1978 to 1992, roughly in three parts: the early days and the Joy Division story; the early- to- mid 80s (a mix of groundbreaking records, sleeves and productions coupled with some questionable A&R decisions and a largely empty nightclub); and the later years, when Happy Mondays gave Factory their much longed after second big selling act and their drug consumption/ lifestyle began to influence the label and the way it was run (and Wilson particularly), a nightclub suddenly at the epicentre of a youth culture explosion and the financial mismanagement that brought about Factory's collapse in 1992, a process that sped up when a potentially lucrative deal with London Records (oh, the irony) was scuppered by Wilson's own admission and producing of a piece of paper from 1978 that read, 'the musicians own everything, the label owns nothing'. Factory had almost literally nothing to sell and had huge debts run up by the acquisition/ development of three properties (one of which, the offices on Charles Street, would generate no income).
It's as much about the other bands as it is about the big two Joy Division/ New Order and Happy Mondays- those records and artists that span the Factory catalogue numbering system, from the ever- present Durutti Column and A Certain Ratio to James, The Railway Children, Section 25, Stockholm Monsters, The Wake, Kalima, Cath Carroll, Crispy Ambulance, Kevin Hewick and Northside.
Wilson is quoted as saying that Gretton was far better at A&R than he was and Wilson's track record supports him. In the late 80s, at a crossroads in the label's history with debts and crises mounting (gang violence inside the Hacienda, drugs, police and council attention) Tony Wilson signs The Adventure Babies and The Wendys. He also spends £250, 000 on a Cath Carroll solo album- a lovely album for sure but never likely to recoup that money. The chaos that the Mondays brought to the label, the lifestyle and shift in sound, turned Factory upside down,. The Mondays were a generational band on the one hand, capable of creating incredible records- Bummed, Pills 'n' Thrills- but also one that Tony Wilson bought into so deeply that the lifestyle and promotion of it, that it threw the label off and unbalanced them.
Delightful **
It's also a reminder of how cutting and brutal the music press could be in the 80s. Nice presents umpteen critical accounts and reviews of Factory nights, gigs and records from the contemporary press, showing how Factory rarely had across the board approval during its lifetime. Manchester's own press- City Fun et al- were often hyper- critical. The four national music papers too. From their end Factory refused to promote or plug, refused to advertise the records ('if they're good enough, people will find them', was Wilson's belief). New Order refused to talk to the press and gave one interview a year in the mid- 80s, willful sabotage of their own sales due to a mistrust of the press. Some Manchester bands avoided the label, keen not to sign for Factory. Factory was divisive as well as cool- something that has been forgotten in the time since the collapse.
The contemporary view of Tony Wilson, in Manchester and beyond, is that he built the modern city and was a universally loved figure. The book calmly outlines events and people, showing rather than telling. You gather that by 1989, Wilson's ego could run out of control, as seen on the Hacienda trip to the USA titled Wake Up America You're Dead!, where they offended a panel of American house/ techno pioneers (which included Keith Allen posing as a pharmaceutical expert), Wilson reveling in the image he was creating, portraying the Mondays as musicians and drug dealers. I say this as a fan of Tony Wilson by the way- but a more realistic portrait of him and popular views of him at the time is drawn by Nice here than in some accounts of the Factory story.
All the stuff of the legend is there too, some of it debunked- Saville's groundbreaking and beautiful art and inability to meet deadlines, Blue Monday and the cost of its sleeves and groundbreaking sound, Strawberry Studios, Unknown Pleasures, Martin Hannett's production, drug consumption and fall out with Factory, the Russell Club, The Hacienda, Dry, the Charles Street offices with the floating Ben Kelly table, the Festival of the 10th Summer, the guns and gangs and violence that overwhelmed the club and the label in the late 80s/ early 90s, the tensions that rose in New Order that led to their split, all of this and some very necessary and important minor stories too. It's a thorough and very readable account.
We see Factory now through the lens of coffee table books of sleeve art, exhibitions, box sets, posters, films and documentaries, merchandise and re- issues. I'm as guilty of this as anyone in my own way. I too buy the merch and re- issues, go to the exhibitions, write about the records and contribute to the Factory nostalgia industry. In contrast, while adding to the pile of Factory books James Nice gives us a richly detailed, clear eyed and largely un- nostalgic account.
In one part towards the end of the 80s Bernard Sumner recounts how New Order were praised for doing things 'the Factory way' or 'the New Order way', deliberately choosing the more difficult, more obtuse, less commercial route. Sumner says that he and the band realised that doing things 'the Factory/ New Order way' had cost them a massive amount of money and made life difficult for them when it didn't have to be. He wanted them to become a less truculent, less arty band, more commercial and more conventional, playing the bigger gigs, for more money. At that point, I thought while reading it, 'the experiment in art by a bunch of Manchester Marxists' (to quote Wilson) started to come to an end and was eventually replaced, after 1992 when Factory finally collapsed with a bunch of creditors that included friends and family, by something less interesting but more beneficial to the musicians.
Shadowplay ****
* Dirty Disco is a slice of mutant post- punk grind by Section 25, the Blackpool band who singed with Factory and released their debut album in 1981, produced by Martin Hannett at Pink Floyd's Britannia Row studio in London and clad in an absurdly beautiful and lavish Peter Saville sleeve.
** In 1985 Factory released this Happy Mondays single, Delightful, produced by Mike Pickering, a song that gives a hint of what lies ahead although clearly the band are still finding out where they are going.
*** Hymn From A Village was by James, the lead song on their James II single in 1985. James were still a four piece at the time, a unique and visionary band who left for a major label and who I don't think ever sounded better than on this song.
**** Shadowplay is from Joy Division's Unknown Pleasures, as I'm sure you know, the album that made the reputation of band, producer, sleeve designer and record label.