Product Description

''The musicians own everything. The company owns nothing. All our bands have the freedom to f**k off''

Written in blood, The Factory non-contract set out the manifesto for one of the most influential and progressive record labels of our time...

Manchester, 1976: Anthony Wilson, Granada TV presenter, is at an early Sex Pistols gig. Inspired by this pivotal moment in music history, he and his friends set up Factory Records. They go on to conquer the world with Joy Division (who become New Order) then again with the Happy Mondays.

Riding high on their success and just about keeping the business afloat, the Factory directors decide to give something back to their city, to open a club - The Hacienda. Packed on opening night but losing money hand over fist for the first five years, The Hacienda and the Happy Mondays take their unique brand of hedonism to breaking point.

From the dawn of punk to the death of acid house, Anthony Wilson was at the centre of it all. Love him or hate him, you can't possibly ignore him.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #9642 in Books
• Published on: 2002-03-08
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 256 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Tony Wilson's 24 Hour Party People: What the Sleeve Notes Never Tell You is a curious book. It's a novelisation, by Wilson, of Frank Cottrell Bryce's screenplay of a film ostensibly about Wilson's years at the heart of Manchester's music scene--a kind of post-post-modern reversal of the trend to convert books into films.

Wilson, a former Granada and (briefly) World in Action television reporter became embroiled in the pop business after attending a (now legendary) Sex Pistols gig at Manchester's Lesser Free Trade Hall. Only 42 people were in the audience but most of them, including its organisers Howard Devoto and Pete Shelley, formed punk groups of their own. Wilson booked the Pistols for So It Goes, Granada's answer to Top of the Pops, and then proceeded to delight (and disgust) viewers in the North Western region by beaming Elvis Costello, Buzzcocks and (a foul mouthed) Iggy Pop into their homes. (The show was axed shortly after Iggy's performance). Undeterred Wilson and friend Alan Erasmus started managing a band, The Duratti Column, and opened a New Wave club, The Factory. Aided and abetted by the DJ and musical impresario Rob Gretton; the designer Peter Saville and the drug-addled knob-twiddling genius Martin Hannett it evolved into Factory Records--home of Joy Division, latterly New Order, A Certain Ratio and the Happy Mondays. Not content with releasing exquisitely produced and (usually) money haemorrhaging records--even New Order's Blue Monday, the biggest selling 12-inch single in history, was so sumptuously packaged that Factory "lost three and half pence on every copy sold"--they started an ambitious Studio 54-style club, The Haçienda. It became the centre of the rave scene while its scally offspring, the Happy Mondays, stormed the charts.

As Wilson, in his own inimitable (that is to say wayward and spuriously fictionalised) style, reveals drugs, guns, ill-timed property deals and the Mondays decision to record an album in "crack central" Barbados eventually called time on Factory Records and The Hacienda. There are better accounts of the whole "Madchester" phenomenon--Dave Haslam's Manchester, England for one--but Wilson's novelisation has an insidiously entertaining spark about it. It's probably best approached as the literary version of one of those additional footage DVDs; not essential to your enjoyment of the original film but none the less full of rather addictive, extra snippets. --Travis Elborough

About the Author
Tony Wilson is the legendary founder of Factory Records and erstwhile owner of the Hacienda. He began his extraordinary career as a Granada TV weatherman and continues to work in journalism, television and the media industry.

Excerpted from 24-hour Party People by Tony Wilson. Copyright © 2002. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
15
‘Martin, are you recording the wind?’

Wilson had parked the Peugeot in the lay-by and walked up the sheep track to near a moorland ridge. Hannett, thickly wrapped against the autumn winds, was on top of the ridge holding a mike stick and microphone out at just above waist level.

‘Not now I’m not. I’m recording Tony Wilson talking into the wind.’ An annoyed young man.

‘Sorry. I just wanted to see about you producing a record for us.’

‘Who’s us?’

‘Factory, Factory Records.’

‘What’s my royalty rate?’

‘No royalties, profits. We make you an equal partner. There’s me and Erasmus and Saville, the kid who designed the Factory poster. And then there’d be you.’

‘I only mix on 24-track; that’s £50 an hour.’

Wilson paused long enough to work out four tracks, two hours each, £400, just doable: ‘OK.’

‘OK, see yer.’ And he pointed his face and his microphone to the heavens.

STUDIO
‘Stop, stop that horrible, horrible drumming.’

Martin sits in the centre of his world. The chair at the centre of the great Strawberry studio mixing desk. Thirty-six tracks, the dog’s bollocks. If there is a power chair in life it is the producer’s seat when art is happening behind the thick glass screen. The musicians stand and sprawl and play. The Man is at the controls.

Playing at the moment is Steve Morris, drummer for Joy Division.

‘What’s wrong with my drumming?’

‘It’s not your drumming as such, it’s the nature and history of percussion. People have been drumming for twenty thousand years and they’re not getting any better at it. Let’s stop, let’s reinvent the whole notion of drums.’

Steve hits the kit a few more times. It’s like being at school.

Hannett hits the studio talkback button again.

‘There’s a rattle…’

Hooky, not only nascent Viking bass god but also a great guy to have around if your car breaks down, offers some help.

‘Maybe we could…’

‘What? What do you know? What do you want?’ This was Martin’s ship. Does a deckhand discuss navigational issues?

‘I was thinking. You know the high-hat…’

‘There’s a rattle. You’ll have to disassemble the entire kit. Every screw, every strut, every spring. Take it all apart and then reassemble it.’

It is a measure of the Merlin-like mantle that Hannett had already at this early stage created for himself that the poor sods started doing it. And continued doing it.

Wilson is at the back of the studio, having just brought Gretton a cup of tea. And a sandwich. White bread and no green stuff.

‘Er, will this take a long time, Martin?’

Hannett swivels to face Wilson. Stares. Silence.

‘Is it still £50 an hour?’ Wilson enquired, as the group got to work with screwdrivers and pliers.

‘We’re working, aren’t we,’ dismissed Hannett.

Another bit of withering. Reply enough. Wilson goes back out to the pool room. What the hell is happening? Fifty pounds an hour. Jeeeeeesus.

And the reader is probably also asking the funding question at this point. Particularly as Steve’s drum kit was not fully reassembled until 4.30pm the next day. Well, it’s like this.

Wilson’s beloved mother had died mercifully suddenly in 1975, leaving her beloved son £12,000 in Nat West Unit Trusts. He had figured £5,000 would get this record company thing up and going. Martin, however, was up and going for the £12,000 and by the time the art was captured, the Nat West Unit Trust scheme had lost one petty gambler.

And things got weirder that second night, with Steve Morris back in the drum booth.

Martin was fussing with a bunch of DI wires. He was busy installing a little black box on the side of the mixing desk.

‘What’s that gizmo, Martin?’ asked Hooky.

‘It’s called Digital. It’s heaven-sent.’

Yes, the two techies had done their magic; this was it, the first binary echo machine in the known world. A Digital Delay.

And the engineer was busy in the loo. A small cubicle toilet in the Strawberry basement had been commandeered. An Aurafone speaker set up on the lavatory seat, and a stand mike about 18 inches away pointing at said Aurafone. Upstairs the feed from the drum booth was rooted to the toilet and then the input from the mike was put back in through the cool new piece of AMS outboard. Martin was removing all the nuances of sound that a real room could create in the human ear, and then adding the reverb and delay of his own imaginary room, his special world of sound that would change the ways drums sound for ever.

Boom. Boom. Steal me.

Customer Reviews

Pretentious, but fun too
As a Little Hultoner (home of the Happy Mondays), whose mother now uses one of the Hacienda's Alvar Aaalto stools when she does her decorating (see chapter 34), this 'novelisation' has a particular resonance for me and I suspect many others in the 30-45 age group. I found it unputdownable and frequently hilarious. Each chapter is brief so you can rattle through it at a fair old pace. Even though Wilson says its very much an unreliable memoir what does come through is a curious kind of integrity. I say curious because everyone I've met who's worked with Wilson says he's a slippery SOB - but, as the book often illustrates, part of that could be typical Manc deprecation. Anyhow, in spite of all that, well done Wilson, Erasmus, Gretton, New Order et al for doing something for your own city and defying London and the barbarous forces of capitalism. Unfortunately, capitalism caught up with them in the end, as it usually does.

It's Manchester (Enough Said)
As a wannabee Manc, New Order fan, I've read almost everything I can get my hands on about Joy Division, New Order, or Factory (Ideal for Living, Unknown Pleasures & Wayward Distractions, Touching from a Distance), but this book goes down as one of the best ever written about the subject. Though the book is presented as a novelisation of the movie of the same name (and features little outtakes where Wilson sets the record straight in scenes), it becomes apparent late on in the book that probably most of what is written happened in some shape or form. The book is written almost as a series of anecdotes, and that's fine because each anecdote is not easily forgotten: Peter Saville's inability to do any project on time; Rob Gretton meeting Mike Pickering as they hide from Manchester United supporters; Rob Gretton trying to beat the pulp out of Wilson for his financial excesses; Shaun Ryder stealing everything in Eddy Grant's Barbados studio to buy crack...

But this book is more about just Factory or its bands. It's about the regeneration of Manchester. In this way, it's a perfect compliment to Dave Haslam's "Manchester: Story of a Pop Cult City." Somehow, through all the bad business acumen, Wilson, Gretton, New Order, and others somehow had enough artistic and aesthetic sense to kick start a complete change in attitude in the city and its people. Though the Hacienda is now gone, like the Big Bang, the cosmic radiation it set off is still there to be felt.

Fantastic history of Factory from Tony Wilson. At last!
I've been dying to read this, and I wasn't disappointed - it's a very funny, infuriating, one-sided, confusing, semi-autobiography. Tony Wilson ran Factory Records and the Hacienda, and seems to spend most of his time popping up on TV annoying people these days. He was a pivotal figure in the Manchester music scene, launching Joy Division, New Order and the Happy Mondays.
24-Hour Party People is partly based on the film of the same name, and it's hard to tell what's fact and what's fiction (but I like that). Wilson's style is very idiosyncratic, but he's always amusing and has some great stories. Amazingly, he's never written his autobiography, and this book is as much about what he calls the real heroes of the story - Ian Curtis, Martin Hannett, Shaun Ryder etc as it is about him. It's a unique insight into music history, and made me wonder just how much he's deliberately left unsaid.
Some beautiful pictures too - nice to see the iconic Factory posters and Kevin Cummins photography again.
An absolute classic.