Factory Records didn't just release music. It catalogued everything it touched: singles, posters, stationery, a haircut, a lawsuit, a cat, and eventually its founder's coffin. That should tell you everything you need to know about the label, and about the man who ran it.
Tony Wilson was a television presenter for Granada Reports in Manchester, a regional news anchor who happened to be obsessed with music. In June 1976, he attended a Sex Pistols gig at the Lesser Free Trade Hall with fewer than fifty other people. Among them were Bernard Sumner and Peter Hook, who would go on to form Joy Division. Also in the audience: Morrissey. When the Pistols returned three weeks later, Ian Curtis was in the crowd too. Between those two gigs, arguably the most consequential in British music history, almost every key figure in Manchester's next decade walked through the same door.
Wilson founded Factory Records in 1978 with Alan Erasmus, launching it as a club night at the Russell Club in Hulme before it became a label. The name, reportedly inspired by a sign Wilson spotted while driving past a Manchester factory, set the tone. Industrial, working-class, deliberately un-glamorous. The first catalogue entry, FAC 1, was a poster designed by Peter Saville for that first club night. Saville, who would become one of the most important graphic designers in music history, delivered it late. The gig had already started. It was, in hindsight, extremely on-brand.
The Contract Written in Blood
The story of Factory's first signing is one of music's great origin myths. Joy Division's manager Rob Gretton, a straight-talking Mancunian who used the word "cockney" with more contempt than anyone alive, calculated that Factory's 50/50 profit split would earn the band as much as a major label deal. No need to get the train to London every week to talk to people he didn't respect.
Wilson signed them. The contract, reportedly signed in Wilson's own blood (he later clarified it was signed, not written, in blood — an important distinction to him if nobody else), stated: the musicians own everything, the company owns nothing, and all artists have the freedom to leave whenever they want.
This was radical in 1978. It remains radical now. It was also, as it turned out, the decision that would eventually destroy the label. But we'll get to that.
The musicians own everything, the company owns nothing, and all artists have the freedom to leave whenever they want.
Martin Hannett and the Sound of Factory
If Wilson was Factory's heart and Saville its eyes, producer Martin Hannett was its ears. A former lab chemist turned soundman with a fondness for substances and a genius for spatial recording, Hannett became Factory's in-house producer and a founding partner of the label.
Hannett's methods were unconventional, to put it mildly. During the recording of Joy Division's Unknown Pleasures at Strawberry Studios in Stockport, he insisted that drummer Stephen Morris play each drum separately for the length of entire songs, ghosting the other hits on his knees and thighs, so he could isolate and treat each sound individually. Morris's legs were reportedly raw by the end of the sessions. On "Insight", Hannett recorded Ian Curtis's vocals down a telephone line to get that forbidding, distant opening. The smashing glass you hear on "I Remember Nothing"? That's Joy Division's manager Rob Gretton, breaking milk bottles with a replica gun.
The band hated the result. Peter Hook said it sounded like Pink Floyd. But Curtis loved it, Wilson loved it, the press loved it, and the public loved it. As Hook later reflected, they were just the musicians who wrote it. Hannett coloured it in. The album's cover, a data plot of radio pulsar signals designed by Peter Saville in stark white on black, became one of the most recognisable and most bootlegged images in music history.
Closer, Joy Division's second album, took Hannett's approach further still. He used a half-completed construction project as an echo chamber, its bare plaster walls creating a cavernous, haunting reverb. The recording took thirteen days and thirteen nights. Curtis was unwell throughout. The album was released in July 1980, two months after Curtis took his own life. He was twenty-three.
Everything Gets a Number
Factory's catalogue numbering system started as a practical necessity (you can't manufacture records without matrix numbers) but quickly became something between an art project and an inside joke. Singles got FAC numbers. Albums got FACT. But so did everything else.
FAC 51 was the Haçienda nightclub. FAC 61 was producer Martin Hannett's lawsuit against the label for unpaid royalties. FAC 99 was manager Rob Gretton's dental reconstruction, after members of A Certain Ratio (another Factory band) knocked his front teeth out. FAC 191 was a stray cat that wandered into the Haçienda. The video for New Order's "The Perfect Kiss" (FAC 123) was assigned FAC 321, the number reversed.
The final catalogue number was FAC 501: Tony Wilson's coffin.
New Order and the Sleeve That Lost Money
After Curtis's death, the remaining members of Joy Division (Sumner, Hook, Morris, joined by keyboardist Gillian Gilbert) reformed as New Order. Their debut album Movement sounded like Joy Division without Curtis, because that's essentially what it was. But their second album, Power, Corruption & Lies, was a different band entirely. The first real New Order album, fusing post-punk guitars with synthesisers and sequencers in a way nobody had done before.
And then came "Blue Monday".
Peter Saville had visited New Order's rehearsal studio and spotted a floppy disk on the table. He'd never seen one before. He asked if he could take it, drove back to London listening to a cassette of the new single, and by the time he reached the end of the motorway, he knew the sleeve would be a 12-inch replica of a 5¼-inch floppy disk, die-cut with holes in the same places as the original, with a silver inner sleeve visible through them. The title wasn't printed anywhere on the cover. Instead, Saville encoded it in coloured blocks, using a cipher whose key was hidden on the back of the Power, Corruption & Lies sleeve.
It looked extraordinary. It also cost a fortune. The die-cutting required three separate cuts, making the production costs higher than the retail price. Factory lost money on every copy sold. According to Peter Hook, the label lost roughly 10p per unit. Tony Wilson had brass awards made to celebrate hitting 500,000 sales. As Hook later pointed out, what they were actually celebrating was a loss of £50,000.
"Blue Monday" went on to become the best-selling 12-inch single of all time. Factory eventually switched to a cheaper sleeve without the die-cuts, but not before the damage was done. That could only happen at Factory.
The Haçienda: FAC 51
Flush with the profits from Joy Division and early New Order releases, Wilson convinced his partners to open a nightclub. The Haçienda opened in May 1982 in a converted yacht showroom near Manchester city centre, designed by architect Ben Kelly. It was vast, industrial, and beautiful. It was also a financial catastrophe.
The door prices were too low. The drinks were cheaper than the pub down the road. And as the 1980s progressed and ecstasy replaced alcohol as the drug of choice, customers stopped buying drinks altogether. The Haçienda lost over £10,000 a month for most of its existence, subsidised almost entirely by New Order's record sales.
But it changed British culture. The Haçienda was the first UK venue to champion American house music from Chicago and Detroit. It was the birthplace of acid house in Britain, the crucible of the Madchester scene, and the reason Manchester became synonymous with club culture. Mike Pickering, one of the resident DJs, handed Wilson a demo tape from a Salford band one night. That band was the Happy Mondays.
The Happy Mondays and Madchester
If Joy Division and New Order represented Factory's cerebral, art-school side, the Happy Mondays were the other Manchester. Chaotic, hedonistic, and completely ungovernable. Fronted by Shaun Ryder, whose lyrical talent was matched only by his capacity for chemical intake, the Mondays brought indie rock crashing into dance music.
Bummed, produced by Martin Hannett, was the first statement of intent. But it was Pills 'n' Thrills and Bellyaches, produced by Paul Oakenfold, that became the definitive Madchester album. A glorious, shambling collision of funk, house, and rock that peaked at number four on the UK album chart. For a brief, euphoric moment in 1989-90, Manchester felt like the centre of the universe.
It didn't last. The Mondays' next album was recorded in Barbados, supposedly to keep Ryder away from drugs. It didn't work (Barbados, it turned out, also had drugs), and the sessions spiralled catastrophically over budget. Meanwhile, New Order were reportedly spending £400,000 recording their comeback album Republic. Factory, which had never been interested in profit at the best of times, couldn't sustain both.
The Fall
In November 1992, Factory Communications Ltd declared bankruptcy. London Records had been interested in acquiring the label, but when they examined the books, they discovered something extraordinary. Because of that original contract (the musicians own everything, the company owns nothing), Factory didn't actually own any of its artists' back catalogues. There was nothing to buy.
The Haçienda staggered on until 1997 before closing. It was demolished and replaced with luxury flats, which, in a final twist of Manchester irony, were also called The Haçienda.
The Albums
Factory's catalogue runs deep, but these are the records that defined the label and that remain essential on vinyl today.
Joy Division — Unknown Pleasures (1979)
FACT 10. The album that started everything. Hannett's production, all cavernous reverb, isolated drums, and digital delay, turned a Manchester punk band into something entirely new. The current 180g reissue on Rhino sounds excellent and is widely available for around £20. The original Factory pressing on dark red translucent vinyl is a genuine collector's item.
Joy Division — Closer (1980)
Darker, more experimental, and recorded with the knowledge that Curtis was deteriorating. Bernard Pierre Wolff's photograph of an Italian tomb on the cover became tragically apt. The vinyl reissue pairs well with Unknown Pleasures. Together they represent one of the most astonishing two-album runs in British music. (FACT 25.)
The Durutti Column — The Return of the Durutti Column (1980)
Vini Reilly's delicate, atmospheric guitar playing, produced by Hannett, sounds like nothing else from the period. Or since. The original pressing came in a sandpaper sleeve — FACT 14 in the catalogue — a Situationist joke designed to destroy the records stored next to it on the shelf. Members of Joy Division assembled the first 2,000 sleeves by hand. A newly remastered edition was released in late 2025.
New Order — Power, Corruption & Lies (1983)
FACT 75. The album where New Order became New Order. Henri Fantin-Latour's 1890 painting of roses on the cover, with Saville's colour-code strip down the side, is one of the most elegant sleeves in pop music. The 180g reissue sounds warm and full. If you're new to the label, start here.
New Order — Low-Life (1985)
Often overlooked between the breakthrough of Power, Corruption & Lies and the polish of Technique, this is arguably New Order's most complete album. Catalogue number FACT 100, and it earns every digit. The balance between their post-punk roots and electronic ambitions at its most perfectly judged.
New Order — Technique (1989)
FACT 275. Recorded in Ibiza during the first summer of acid house, and it shows. Sun-drenched, confident, and irresistibly danceable. The sleeve is bright, colourful, optimistic — the polar opposite of Unknown Pleasures. It represents a band, and a label, at the peak of their powers before the fall.
Happy Mondays — Bummed (1988)
Martin Hannett's last great production. Loose, funky, and slightly unhinged, much like the band themselves. The title is a pun, obviously. If Pills 'n' Thrills is the party, Bummed is the walk home at 4am, somehow just as enjoyable. (FACT 220.)
Happy Mondays — Pills 'n' Thrills and Bellyaches (1990)
FACT 320. The peak of Madchester on one disc. Produced by Paul Oakenfold (the DJ behind the Haçienda's most legendary nights) and Steve Osborne, it fused the Mondays' shambolic charm with proper dance production. "Step On" and "Kinky Afro" remain anthems. The 180g reissue is well worth owning.
What to Look For When Buying
Original Factory pressings are increasingly collectible, but the good news is that most of the key albums are available as quality reissues, typically on 180g vinyl through Rhino or Warner. The Joy Division and New Order reissues in particular sound excellent and are easy to find for £20–25.
If you want to hunt originals, look for the FACT catalogue number on the label and the Garrod and Lofthouse (G+L) printing credit on the sleeve. That's the printer Factory used for many of their iconic early releases. Original pressings of Unknown Pleasures on the textured sleeve, and any Durutti Column sandpaper sleeve copies, command serious prices.
The Legacy
Factory Records lasted fourteen years, released around 50 albums and over 100 singles, ran a nightclub that changed British culture, and went bankrupt owing roughly £2 million. Tony Wilson died of cancer in 2007 at the age of 57. His coffin bore the catalogue number FAC 501.
Wilson once said of the label: "We made history, not money." It's hard to argue with either half of that sentence. Factory proved that a record label could be a genuine cultural force, that art, design, music, and nightlife could be part of the same project, and that Manchester didn't need London's permission to matter.
The 2002 film 24 Hour Party People, starring Steve Coogan as Wilson, captured the spirit of the label with a line that could serve as Factory's epitaph: print the legend. Wilson would have approved. He always preferred a good story to the boring truth — which is probably why so many of the stories about Factory Records are both completely unbelievable and almost certainly true.
If you want to explore the label's catalogue, start with Unknown Pleasures and Power, Corruption & Lies. Between them, they contain everything Factory was about: the darkness and the light, the art and the chaos, the genius and the spectacular financial incompetence. Both sound superb on vinyl. Both cost about fifteen quid. That's a bargain by any standard. Even Factory's.