Edifices > The Factory

The Factory was a club night before Factory Records was born. It ran on selected nights at The Russell Club in Royce Road, Hulme, Manchester.

The following extract from Mick Middles's book 'From Joy Division to New Order' describes The Factory: The Russell Club, and indeed its Friday night transformation, had many problems. From the city centre, it was difficult - and, in a drunken stupor, impossible - to locate. Rather like the Electric Circus, it stood temptingly at the end of a somewhat dangerous trudge or even more dangerous bus ride from the city centre. It was, however, quite perfectly within staggering distance of the largest student campus in western Europe. This was a fact that didn't escape the attention of Tony Wilson. If they could capture the imagination of the students in the Oxford Road halls of residence, and in Hulme, Whalley Range, Didsbury, Chorlton and Withington, then this strangely situated club, with its sadly and most undeserved notorious neighbourhood, could surely become the catalyst for a new and powerful scene. But there were so many problems. Pickpockets flitted, like ghostly shadows, around the downstairs area, preying on wealthy students. The aforementioned drug peddlers remained pushy, irritating, intimidating and at times, deeply threatening. Few nights at the Factory proved free from some kind of hassle. Upstairs, on the rickety balcony cafe, inedible goat curries would swiftly and infamously become the speciality. Joy Division wold debut there on 20 October 1978 although in truth the scene would have begun to settle before their arrival. However, for all its obvious shortcomings, and quite possibly because of them, there was something curiously warm about the Factory. Essentially. with a capacity of around 800, it was quite the perfect size for a small scene to develop. It was dark enough and intimate enough for a smallish crowd to be able to create a lively atmosphere, while on later bulging, ecstatic nights - who could forget Iggy Pop, the Undertones, UB40? - the entire club would seem to swell and bounce.

'Come down, come down, come down,' pleaded the disembodied voice of Tony Wilson. 'This is the place where it will happen. where everything will happen. This is the perfect venue.'

It was, more than the [Electric] Circus really, most definitely the place to be seen. Hiding in the darkened corners on any given evening during those early nights, would be the various members of Joy Division, having fun with Echo And The Bunnymen, the Teardrop Explodes - odd escapees from The Fall, and Linder, whose band Ludus, formed by the inimitable Arthur Kadmon, one of Manchester's greatest under-achievers, would debut there. One recalls, in the early days, an eight-piece Durutti Column, complete with [Vini] Reilly's surging solos, thrashing through a pub rock set, with Alan Erasmus flitting around the crowd, offering free smokes to anyone who looked as though they might be from the music press. And backstage, afterwards, with Erasmus and Wilson injecting the unbecoming fit of giggles, puffing on various cigarettes, and generally screaming about the exagerrated genius of that particular, short-lived version of Durutti Column and claiming that this would be the birth, the true birth, of Factory. Whether they meant the club or the forthcoming label, it was impossible to tell.