Creative Times

Twenty years after it became the Factory Records HQ, the Ben Kelly-designed building is returning as an 850 capacity live venue and club. CHRIS SHARRATT speaks to Peter Hook and Aaron Mellor, the partnership behind the return of Fac 251.

‘I am very good,’ says Peter Hook, ‘at applying nothing that I’ve learned to anything. It makes life very interesting.’

The New Order bassist and author of How Not To Run A Club, a warts and all history of the Haçienda, is joking about managing a nightclub. Not the Haçienda you understand, but a brand new seven-day-a-week operation in the centre of Manchester. Thirteen years after Fac 51 closed its doors and nearly 18 since Factory went bust, the label’s Ben Kelly designed offices are rising again, this time as Fac 251: The Factory, an indie gig venue and nightclub.

Of course there’s nothing new about the building being used as club. The space was reborn as Paradise Factory soon after Factory’s demise and continued to operate on and off as a nightclub up until 2008. What makes this latest chapter in the life of the building so interesting is the Ben Kelly factor. Unlike its 1993 conversion to Paradise Factory, this time Kelly’s distinctive design is being reinstated along with some new touches, thanks to the partnership between Hook and Aaron Mellor, MD of Tokyo Industries.

“Ben Kelly was essential to the project,” explains Mellor, whose company owns venues around the UK including in Newcastle, Bradford and Oldham. “I would have loved to have got Peter Saville involved as well. I trained as an architect and I’m massively influenced by Ben Kelly’s architecture and by Peter Saville’s graphic design.”

When Hook was approached by Mellor about the idea he was similarly determined that Kelly should be involved.

“In the early days I thought Ben was the one to blame for all our problems,” smiles Hook. “That he cost all the money that brought us [The Haçienda] down. But it wasn’t that, it was Rob [Gretton, New Order’s manager] and Tony [Wilson] striving to be unique, hiring creative people and letting them do their thing. When I looked at a picture of the Haçienda when I started my book I thought, ‘Oh my god this is fantastic’. But at the time I took it completely for granted, I was completely divorced from it.”

It was Kelly’s uncompromising and distinctive design for the Haçienda that established his name and it is still the building he is best known for. But with the Haçienda demolished and his other great Manchester design statement, Dry bar, having lost many of its original features, the city has shown little respect for his legacy. The former Factory HQ was also earmarked for demolition after the site was acquired by developers, but an unlikely chain of events has meant that Manchester will once again have an intact Ben Kelly public building.

“The building had been sold to a developer and was going to be redeveloped, basically flattened and started again,” explains Mellor. “But because of the recession the development fell over and I got a call. We then thought, ‘We can’t do this building without Ben’s involvement, but we can’t get Ben because he’s far too busy’. But ironically he was doing an Urban Splash project called The Factory in New Islington and because of recessionary problems it had gone on hold, so he had a gap in his diary.”

Kelly jumped at the chance of being able to revisit his original designs for the building whilst at the same time creating three separate live/club spaces with a combined capacity of 850. Some 20 years after it was originally completed it’s a rare example of a designer having a second go at the same building.

“Ben was devastated when he saw what they’d done to the [Haçienda] building,’ explains Hook, “and he was devastated when he saw what they’d done to Dry. He was really upset when he saw what they’d done here too [at The Factory] – but to be given the opportunity to put it right, it’s like being given the chance to go back and remix a tune that you weren’t happy with. Of course you’re going to do it.”

Anything that revives the Factory legacy in Manchester is always going to be viewed with a healthy dose of skepticism, and there are understandably those who feel that this is an unwelcome exercise in nostalgia that denigrates rather than celebrates the Factory name. Hook and Mellor reject these claims on two counts. Firstly that the venue is going to be very much about putting on new, live music rather than looking to the past; and secondly that they consulted widely with those associated with Factory before deciding on the club’s name.

“We spoke to everyone,” says Mellor. “Stepping into everything that’s related to Factory or New Order is like stepping into a dysfunctional, divorced family and you’ve got people on the outer edges all very much involved and all very passionate, so we consulted everyone from Oliver Wilson [Tony’s son] to Peter Saville to Ben Kelly. There was a pretty much unanimous opinion that if we didn’t call it The Factory we’d be doing a disservice to the memory of this building.”

Of course the one person who would undoubtedly have had a lot to say about the decision is no longer with us. So, Peter Hook, what do you think the late, great Anthony H Wilson would have thought about it all?

“A lot of people ask that,” he says. “Tony was always like a big brother, he was always exasperated with you. I’d like to think that he’d be OK with it, that it would make him smile. And that in turn makes me smile. I mean he’d probably think at you’re age you’re completely mad, but I like that.”

Mad? Time will tell – let’s hope Hook has learnt a thing or two about running a nightclub after all.

IMAGE OF PETER HOOK AND BEN KELLY COURTESY OF KEVIN CUMMINS

The Factory (112-118 Princess Street, Manchester) opens on Friday February 5. www.factorymanchester.com

Article written for CREATIVE Times by Chris Sharratt