There really is no other record label in history quite like Factory Records. Formed in Manchester in 1978 by local promoter and television personality Tony Wilson and actor Alan Erasmus to try to promote the fertile local punk scene, Factory succeeded as a label despite being staffed by a colourful cast of impresarios, chancers, eccentrics and outright criminals, refusing to sign their artists to contracts, using a bizarrely specific catalogue system and famously spending such absurd amounts of money on the packaging of New Order’s Blue Monday single that they actually lost money for every copy sold.
Whilst the label cataloged, not just records, but club nights, NME ads, ear plugs, breathing masks, cardboard model kits, computer software, films and even Wilson’s coffin as part of the Factory roster, they still found time to release some of the most important and innovative music that Britain ever produced; from the birth of post-punk in the late '70s through to the acid house boom a decade down the line, before imploding in typically outrageous fashion.
Tony Wilson once famously remarked “When forced to pick between truth and legend, print the legend”: here, told via five essential releases, is the legend of Factory.
