The Story Of Factory Records, Retold From The Women Who Helped Shape It

For 1980s and 1990s post-punk fans, the story of the legendary Manchester, England-based indie music label Factory Records has been told numerous times in books, articles, documentaries and dramatized movies — most notably 2002’s 24 Hour Party People. In those retellings, the narrative has mostly centered on Factory’s co-founders — the late Tony Wilson, Alan Erasmus and Peter Saville — and male-dominated bands such as Joy Division, New Order and Happy Mondays.

But what has not been generally publicized about the history of Factory Records and the Haçienda — the nightclub co-owned by Factory and New Order — is that women played a hugely important part in their successes. During the period between the ‘80s and ‘90s when Factory and the Haçienda were active, women were vital in the business and creative sides of those endeavors from music and film to visual design and DJ-ing (One female staffer went so far as to climb the roof of the Haçienda to fix a leak). In response, New York-based author Audrey Golden’s book I Thought I Heard You Speak: Women at Factory Records, published in the U.S. earlier this year, corrects that oversight. This extensive oral history features numerous interviews with many of the women who were there during Factory and the Haçienda’s rise and fall.

“Factory was really inclusive,” Golden says. “It offered a lot of creative opportunities to women in the north. It gave so many women ways to express their own creativity and to take a meaningful part in what they were doing…They felt like this was a place where they could flourish creatively. It makes the Factory story so much more.”

The origin of the I Thought I Heard You Speak came after visual designer Chris Mathan introduced Golden to Tracy Donnelly – who started as a receptionist at the Swing hair salon in the basement of the Haçienda and later became a Factory employee. In turn, Donnelly put Golden in touch with some of the key players mentioned in the book. “It was a way to enliven the Factory story by completing it with all of these stories that had otherwise been untold to date,” Golden says.

“Over the years, so many of the things written or made about Factory were described as definitive,” she later adds. “You hear, ‘Oh, that’s the definitive book on Factory Records. And you think, “Okay, that’s the complete thing. That’s all I need to know.’ It led some women at first to say to me, ‘I don’t think my story is important because it’s not included in so-and-so’s book.’ So I’d have to come back and give my spiel on the problem of the definitive history and how it suggests nothing is missing. When in fact, there’s no way to ever tell a definitive history.”

Perhaps the most recognizable and popular female face of Factory Records is New Order multi-instrumentalist Gillian Gilbert, who was interviewed for Golden’s book. The author describes Gilbert as crucial to the band for “the way she came in and really made New Order what it is because, otherwise, you have Joy Division absent one,” referencing New Order’s previous incarnation with the late Ian Curtis. “And her sensibility coming in being really interested in electronic music…and working so hard to learn how to use synths and to program them. When she was talking to me about figuring out the bass lines for a couple of New Order songs, it made the whole thing. I thought, ‘Wow, we wouldn’t have had some of these songs on Power, Corruption & Lies [New Order’s 1983 album] without Gillian. And I think they’re some of New Order’s best songs.”

Another person who shared her memories in I Thought I Heard You Speak is Lindsay Reade, the first wife of Tony Wilson who played a significant part in the creation of Factory Records. ”She provided the money and did a lot of work with Tony in the early days to get everything off the ground,” says Golden. “I loved Lindsay talking about the creation of Factory as hers and Tony’s baby. It was this rethinking what women’s roles are and this idea of what motherhood is in this interesting, powerful way — motherhood as creating this incredible record label and doing all this work to make it happen.”

Golden credits Lesley Gilbert, the wife of the late Joy Division/New Order manager Rob Gretton who handled the operations side of things at Factory, for playing a role in the success of New Order’s iconic song “Blue Monday.” “That single would never have made it to all the record stores that it did and never would have reached all the tops of the charts,” Golden says, “and essentially made New Order famous and allowed Factory to have the money to keep running if Lesley Gilbert hadn’t been working in that office and managing everything.

“When I talked to her about “Blue Monday” in particular, she talked about all of the intricacies of making sure that got out to where it needed to be and dealt with all of these major hiccups that could have prevented the record from ultimately reaching all of the fans it did at that point in time. And when it did, it blew up. It totally changed the entire nature of Factory and New Order because they had this gigantic influx of cash. And I think Lesley is to thank for that.”

Other women held executive roles at Factory, including Tina Simmons, which was unheard of in the traditionally male-dominated music industry then and still is now. “Tina is one of the people for me who I’m just like truly shocked isn’t mentioned in the existing Factory stories,” Golden says “She was so involved in the financial running of that label. She had a mathematical mind that they needed to keep the label running. She basically came up with an explanation and information about how the label was going to go bust if they didn’t do like X, Y and Z things. And she laid it out for them and they didn’t want to do it. And she ended up being completely right and the label went bust.”

Ang Matthews, who oversaw the Haçienda nightclub during that exciting and crazed period of the early 1990s ‘Madchester’ scene, is featured in the book. Says Golden: “Ang’s story is so incredible because she was at the Haçienda in the early days doing bar work and ended up coming back to become the licensee and manager of the club. She had to manage so much madness there. The thing that’s important to note is that she hired so many women to work at the Haçienda, and all of the people in the Haçienda really respected her.”

One of Golden’s favorite stories in I Thought I Heard You Speak is the late Yasmine Lakhaney, the Haçienda’s first female ‘doorman’ (a.k.a., bouncer). “Yasmine’s story [is] of a woman who started out as a psychiatric nurse and thinking about all of the complexities of the human condition. Then [she] becomes a martial arts black belt and goes to a club to work as a bouncer amidst this laddish environment. [She] not only stands her ground that way but changes the nature of what the door ‘manning’ business is like, and how you can do things with compassion while still remaining like a powerful force.”

As for what readers’ takeaway from her book should be, Golden says that they recognize these women’s contributions to Factory Records and the Haçienda. “Importantly, I hope this book shows how there is no such thing as a definitive history,” she says. “I hope people come away from this thinking, ‘Oh, wow, I read X book on X thing. And I wondered about whether anything was missing. I’d be interested to explore the missing aspect of whatever on my own.’

“I really hope people realize in reading this book that there’s never just one way to tell a story, and there are always going to be things that are missing. It’s up to people who are interested in those stories to seek them out, excavate them, and highlight them in ways that are accessible to us.”