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The Hacienda

Hacienda Interior

In 1981 Factory Records made the decision to open a nightclub.  The reasoning behind it was to showcase the bands the label had signed and recorded and to use one to back up the other.  For a time it was one of the most famous nightclubs in the UK.  It was something of a mark of honour to have visited the club, especially in the early 1980′s and during the early years of the house music revolution.  Unfortunately it lost huge amounts of money, to begin with because of it’s cheap alcohol but later on as the patrons preferred Ecstasy to anything they could buy in the club.  The huge amount of drugs involved also led to involvement in the Manchester underworld and the club was the scene of gunshots on more than one occasion.  The Hacienda, struggling under the weight of losing some £10,000 per month, eventually closed in 1997.

Unfortunately the record label did not even make it this far.  The two biggest selling artists, already mentioned in Part One, were New Order and Happy Mondays.  In the early 1990′s both bands had started to record new albums, Happy Mondays’ “Yes Please” and New Order’s “Republic”.  Both incurred enormous costs, especially the Mondays who went to Barbados to record theirs.  This put the label under immense financial strain and the owners turned to London Records, a much bigger label with a takeover proposal.

Negotiations were going well until it became clear that Factory Records had a policy of allowing the bands to own their own back catalogue and dispensing with proper contracts.  Effectively this meant there was no value in Factory Records.  In 1992 Factory Communications Ltd declared bankruptcy.

Tony Wilson continued to be involved in the record industry for some time, continuing to

Tony Wilson

push the Factory name with London records and starting new ventures, Factory Once and Factory Two, but ended work prematurely when he was diagnosed with cancer and died of a related heart attack in 2007.

If you’ve watched the 2002 movie 24 Hour Party People, you’ll already have a good idea of the chaotic rise and tumult surrounding this famous Manchester record label.

Factory Records

Started in 1978 by Anthony Wilson and Alan Erasmus, Factory Records eventually came to be a driving force behind what became known as the Manchester sound of the early 1990′s.  The name Factory Records grew from the club of the same name where Wilson had been compering.  The club showcased local, upcoming bands, a couple of the most famous to emerge from that period being Joy Division and Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark.

Wilson began to explore the possibilities of recording the more successful bands and hooked up with friends he already knew at Manchester based label Rabid Records.  Joy Divisions’s Love Will Tear Us Apart was Factory Record’s breakthrough single, making it into the UK top twenty.  Tragedy struck in 1980 when lead singer Ian Curtis comitted suicide and not long after, Joy Division became New Order.  They would become one of th most successful British bands of that era.

In 1981 the decision was made to open  a nightclub backed up by the record label and this was the famous Hacienda.   You can read further details about The Hacienda in Part Two.

While the Hacienda was undoubtedly popular, it also cost an extraordinary amount to run and consistently made losses.  Fortunately the record label was still successful and subsidising the club to some extent.  In 1983 New Order had a global hit with Blue Monday and two years later The Happy Mondays entered the scene.  They had been taking part at a Battle of the Bands competition at the Hacienda and were spotted by Tony Wilson.  In 1987 they recorded their first album – Squirrel & G-Man Twenty Four Hour Party People Plastic Face Carnt Smile (White Out) before moving on to bigger labels and studios for subsequent albums.  Factory records had now become the driving force behind the “Madchester” music scene of the late 1980′s.

The Happy Mondays – Step On

Part Two follows…..