BLACK MONDAY – The last days of Factory Records
LIBRARY: DIY film shot outside the offices of Factory Records on the day in 1992 when it went into receivership.
Monday November 23rd, 1992.
A film crew receive an early morning phone call to inform them that Factory Records, the seminal Manchester based independent record label established by Tony Wilson and Alan Erasmus in 1978, is about to go bust. Leonard Curtis, a firm of receivers have been appointed by the National Westminster Bank. They have demanded that all operations cease.
The end, for Factory, is truly nigh...
Camped on the pavement outside the palatial Factory offices the film crew - led by the charismatic Tosh Ryan; himself a pivotal character in the Manchester music scene of the time - awaits the arrival of further news. Minor office staff are quizzed as they move in and out of the building. Soon Factory’s major players - Tony Wilson, Rob Gretton, Alan Erasmus - appear and face the camera...
As night falls, the crew move to the Lass ‘O’Gowrie pub and continue to interview various figures from Factory (notably, again, Wilson, who delivers a jocular performance hewn from chinked pride).
In the second part of the film the Factory offices - now decimated by the receivership - provide the territory for a morbidly fascinating tour by Ryan and his crew. Roaming its four floors, they film rubbish strewn everywhere, boxes of records, flyers and poster pouring out over the floor and the infamous £35,000 FAC 331 Temporary Contemporary Table (not long snapped in half by The Happy Mondays) hanging prone by a few steel wires.
Engaging one of the great British music stories of the 20th century, BLACK MONDAY - given its first ever public screening at SPACE - comes as an intimate and raw addition to the already burgeoning mythology that surrounds Factory Records.