How Soon is Now?: The Madmen and Mavericks who made Independent Music 1975-2005 by Richard King Page A
Authors: Richard King
Ads: Link
Eagle, friends since Wilson’s posting on the Liverpool Echo , had been mutually supportive as punk spread across the north, Wilson making sure Eric’s received its fair share of listings in the Manchester media. ‘I prepared for the What’s On show that week. What’s Not On is the Sex Pistols, and I then got a memo saying, “There will be no mention of the Sex Pistols in this programme,” and I walked out. Same day my accountant is saying to me, “You don’t make any fucking money at Granada, do you?” And my daughter says, “You put groups on television and three months later they’re big stars, is this true?” Yeah. “Well there’s a lot of money in that.”’
Wilson decided to develop his interest in punk further, and he and his friend Alan Erasmus, whom Wilson had met through a lifelong love of marijuana, launched The Factory Club, a regular live music night at the Russell Club in Manchester’s Hulme estate.
*
‘I didn’t know Tony, but by virtue of his regular, almost daily, television appearance, I felt that I did,’ says Peter Saville. ‘Everybody in Manchester, and most of the north-west, felt that they knew Tony Wilson and he was accessible and I would imagine that to a certain extent he got a certain ego thrill out of that. The downside is that people also can be quite rude or critical as well.’
Saville was a student at Manchester Polytechnic where he was studying graphic design. A school friend, Malcolm Garrett, was on the same course; the pair of them had grown up with a hunger to be involved in the seductive process of record sleeve design, a process Garrett was now engaged in through his work with Buzzcocks, whose United Artists sleeve he was designing.
‘I was not that connected to the scene,’ says Saville. ‘I didn’t live in the city, I lived in the kind of greenbelt stockbroker area outside, in Cheshire. I was a dreamer out in the semi-rural belt around those industrial cities, where the whole notion of the city and of industry has a kind of romantic dimension to it.’
Saville’s dreaminess would combine perfectly with an elegant and detached aesthetic that would define the Factory style. His inspiration also came from the discourse and photography he was discovering in upmarket magazines which enabled him to go on flights of fancy that were something of a contrast to the realities of inner-city Manchester.
‘At art college I started reading Peter York’s essays in Harpers ,’ he says, ‘which were really, really, influential, and I eventually discovered Helmut Newton and Guy Bourdain in Paris Vogue , but that was not an easy thing to discover in Manchester in 1976, ’77. You had to have a bit of a mission to start seeking out Paris Vogue : the only tangible reality in your existence that expressed alternative visual culture that was there for you was the record cover.’
Saville met Richard Boon through Garrett’s work with Buzzcocks . While Boon was unable to offer Saville any sleeve design work, he suggested he contact Wilson about the broadcaster’s plans for opening a club. ‘I had a friend who knew him,’ says Saville, ‘and somehow it was arranged that I would go to Granada television one afternoon and meet Mr Wilson in the lobby.’
Although he didn’t yet have a portfolio Saville had a head full of ideas that he was keen to explain to Wilson; he was particularly interested in typography and the possibility of exploring new avenues for the uses of lettering in graphic design.
‘I knew what I wanted,’ he says, ‘which was to go somewhere much harder. In the work of Jan Tschichold I discovered a manifesto that he’d done in 1919 called Die Neue Typographie and that was brutal – it was very refined, but it was brutal, and Malcolm hadn’t been there, Barney Bubbles hadn’t been there, none of the people who were doing the groovy new work had gone anywhere as cold as Tschichold.’
Wilson was impressed with the young designer’s creativity
Wilson decided to develop his interest in punk further, and he and his friend Alan Erasmus, whom Wilson had met through a lifelong love of marijuana, launched The Factory Club, a regular live music night at the Russell Club in Manchester’s Hulme estate.
*
‘I didn’t know Tony, but by virtue of his regular, almost daily, television appearance, I felt that I did,’ says Peter Saville. ‘Everybody in Manchester, and most of the north-west, felt that they knew Tony Wilson and he was accessible and I would imagine that to a certain extent he got a certain ego thrill out of that. The downside is that people also can be quite rude or critical as well.’
Saville was a student at Manchester Polytechnic where he was studying graphic design. A school friend, Malcolm Garrett, was on the same course; the pair of them had grown up with a hunger to be involved in the seductive process of record sleeve design, a process Garrett was now engaged in through his work with Buzzcocks, whose United Artists sleeve he was designing.
‘I was not that connected to the scene,’ says Saville. ‘I didn’t live in the city, I lived in the kind of greenbelt stockbroker area outside, in Cheshire. I was a dreamer out in the semi-rural belt around those industrial cities, where the whole notion of the city and of industry has a kind of romantic dimension to it.’
Saville’s dreaminess would combine perfectly with an elegant and detached aesthetic that would define the Factory style. His inspiration also came from the discourse and photography he was discovering in upmarket magazines which enabled him to go on flights of fancy that were something of a contrast to the realities of inner-city Manchester.
‘At art college I started reading Peter York’s essays in Harpers ,’ he says, ‘which were really, really, influential, and I eventually discovered Helmut Newton and Guy Bourdain in Paris Vogue , but that was not an easy thing to discover in Manchester in 1976, ’77. You had to have a bit of a mission to start seeking out Paris Vogue : the only tangible reality in your existence that expressed alternative visual culture that was there for you was the record cover.’
Saville met Richard Boon through Garrett’s work with Buzzcocks . While Boon was unable to offer Saville any sleeve design work, he suggested he contact Wilson about the broadcaster’s plans for opening a club. ‘I had a friend who knew him,’ says Saville, ‘and somehow it was arranged that I would go to Granada television one afternoon and meet Mr Wilson in the lobby.’
Although he didn’t yet have a portfolio Saville had a head full of ideas that he was keen to explain to Wilson; he was particularly interested in typography and the possibility of exploring new avenues for the uses of lettering in graphic design.
‘I knew what I wanted,’ he says, ‘which was to go somewhere much harder. In the work of Jan Tschichold I discovered a manifesto that he’d done in 1919 called Die Neue Typographie and that was brutal – it was very refined, but it was brutal, and Malcolm hadn’t been there, Barney Bubbles hadn’t been there, none of the people who were doing the groovy new work had gone anywhere as cold as Tschichold.’
Wilson was impressed with the young designer’s creativity
Similar Books
