Shadowplayers by James Nice

Author:James Nice
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781845137250
Publisher: MBI
Published: 2011-04-26T16:00:00+00:00

1985

Perestroika

Peter Saville’s designs are always interesting. It’s like poetry for the very young

Peter York

We haven’t got a lousy reputation, except with journalists – and they don’t count

Rob Gretton

It amazes me that James thought we were a record company

Tony Wilson

In February 1985, Rough Trade enjoyed an historic Number One album with Meat Is Murder, the second long-player by The Smiths. The following month Mikhail Gorbachev was elected General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, setting in motion a series of political reforms which would ultimately lead to the collapse of the USSR. Two years earlier Factory had allowed The Smiths to slip through their fingers, and were determined not to see history repeated with James, whose superb second single, Hymn From A Village, was now set for release. After five years of anarchic gestures and political grandstanding, the Factory board now came to accept that mailing out review copies to a select few writers was simply not enough. ‘We had come to terms with the fact that we were dinosaurs,’ admitted Wilson. ‘That not promoting was absolutely insane. It was like, let’s throw all that out the window, let’s start promoting, let’s find someone. We need a promo team and we need press officers. It was our perestroika.’

Ironically, James continued to pursue a Stalinist hard line. Having finally accepted the wisdom of releasing their strongest songs to the public, the band turned down the cover of NME’s New Year issue. Sensing danger in hype, the quixotic quartet preferred to wait for the release of Fac 119, so as to ‘introduce the band by music, not by words’.

Factory’s promotional reforms rolled out slowly. Rather than hire hardened industry riggers, the label settled on Pro-Motion, set up by Rough Trade staffer Brenda Kelly as an in-house promotions service for members of indie distribution network The Cartel, and operating from the Rough Trade warehouse in Kings Cross, from which Scott Piering also plugged Factory to radio. Keen to maintain an all-female concern, Kelly took on City Fun radical Liz Naylor, now freelancing for Melody Maker as Liz Neer, and also Martine McDonagh, previously an area manager for Our Price. Factory was a priority target for Kelly, as McDonagh explains. ‘We went up to Manchester to see James at The Haçienda on February 13th, and then had a meeting with Tony, Alan and Rob the next day. It was quite well timed. James had played with The Smiths in Ireland, they were gearing up for the Meat Is Murder tour in March and April, and they were already getting a lot of good press. The Smiths were huge anyway. Brenda simply argued that Factory needed to promote their records, starting with Hymn From A Village by James.’

Other groups too had grown older and wiser, with A Certain Ratio and Quando Quango in particular pressing for better marketing and profile. ‘We put everything into our music,’ complained Ratio Jez Kerr, ‘but they don’t seem to put so much into selling records.’ Better established, and now backed by Qwest in America, New Order could afford to be more philosophical.

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