Factory Records 1979 - 1980 by Daniel Meadows

As 1979 turned into 1980 I found myself working at Granada TV in Manchester as a programme researcher and occasional presenter for the regional arts review programme Celebration. I was also trying to keep alive my photographic practice.

One of my TV colleagues was Granada Reports presenter Tony Wilson (p.18) who at that time was busy setting up Factory Records with Alan Erasmus. Previously, while working for What’s On — Celebration’s predecessor in the arts slot — I had photographed a Factory Night at the Russell Club in Hulme, hosted by Tony Wilson and promoter Alan Wise (p.29), which featured Buzzcocks (p.16) and John Cooper Clarke (cover). Tony liked what I’d done and began inviting me along to gigs and recording sessions to take more photographs of his artists and bands: Ian Curtis (p.9) and Bernard Sumner (p.8) of Joy Division, Vini Reilly of The Durutti Column (p.3), and A Certain Ratio too (pp.4,15).

The handwritten page reproduced here (p.30), is from a spiral-bound notebook I kept on my desk at the time. It records Tony’s request (written in red felt tip) that I photograph Joy Division’s recording session with producer Martin Hannett (pp.6,12) at Pennine Sound Studio in Oldham on Tuesday 8 January 1980. Although it seems not to have been the most absorbing of nights for drummer Stephen Morris (p.10), they would record Love Will Tear Us Apart (a version later used on the B-side of the 7” single FAC 23).

I also photographed Joy Division on stage (pp.20-27), at the New Osbourne Club in Miles Platting, a gig where Jon Savage (p.14) — now famous for his writing, broadcasting and music journalism, in particular his 1991 book England’s Dreaming, Sex Pistols and Punk Rock — was DJing.

Four decades on, Jon has been instrumental in curating the Factory exhibition Use Hearing Protection, a show which includes some of my photographs and runs at Manchester’s Science and Industry Museum from 19 June 2021 – 3 January 2022.

Daniel Meadows

The Daniel Meadows Archive is in the Bodleian Library at Oxford University.

Ref. Bodleian Libraries | Archive of Daniel Meadows, photographer and social documentarist | Television work, 1973–1984 | Shelfmarks MSS. Meadows 196-200.

32 pages
printed in the UK
staple bound
14cm x 20cm

140 mm200 mm5 mm

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