factory records

Black Monday (The Last Days Of Factory)

*Amazing DVD documenting the last days of Factory Records* In 1992 a part of Manchester's most important industry died. After 12 years of financial mismanagement and hubris Factory Records was taken into receivership, bringing to an end what had been one of the most influential and inspirational labels in the world. Luckily for us morbid bastards, on 23rd November, 1992 Tony "Tosh" Ryan got a tip-off from a friend that the end was nigh for Factory and he legged it across the road with his video camera to document the whole thing unfolding. Standing outside the Lass 'O Gowrie, across the road from 1 Charles street aka Fac251, armed with some cheeky banter and a barely masked sense of schadenfreude (he was bitter that Tony Wilson had poached his former engineer at Rabid Records, one Martin Hannett) he catches the likes of Wilson, Alan Erasmus, Rob Gretton, and Factory's accountant arriving and departing the building, all of whom initially deny what's happening inside the offices. But by the days end, Wilson makes an announcement at the pub and all is confirmed: it's over. In the next chapter Tosh takes us around the gutted building, touring its bespoke art-deco offices, walking past mounds of paperwork, record mailers addressed to "Tony Wilson, Factory Records, Up't North" and the infamous £35,000 Temporary Contemporary Table (FAC 331) suspended from steel wires in the eaves. It's enough to leave a lump in the throat of anyone who loved that period, a matter compounded by the next chapter featuring Peter Hook walking us through the building in 2010, as a refurbished FAC251 nightclub. Ultimately, in light of the fictionalised version - Michael Winterbottom's '24 Hour Party People' - and Chris Rodley's BBC film 'Factory: Manchester from Joy Division to Happy Mondays', this film stands up as the most honest, unarguable account of Factory's final days, and is now out there for you to make of it what you will.