Joy Division

27th August 1979: Leigh Open Air Festival, Plank Lane, Leigh
also known as "Zoo Meets Factory Half Way" Two different tapes of this concert exist Two different tapes of this concert exist

 

Film (?):

There has been a persistent rumour that the Leigh Festival performance was filmed but nothing to back it until early in 2007 when Chris Hewitt, who was heavily involved with the festival, informed us that one of the crew from the festival had handed some film over to him. He told us footage includes the entire Joy Division set along with backstage footgage of Ian in particular. he said it is on film, not video, with sound, and the quality is pretty good. To date neither this footage or any screenshots have been released and no unofficial copies have leaked out.

Audio:

There are two different audio recordings of this concert - one audience and one "soundboard" - see below
   


Thanks to Pat Teasdale for the flyer scan
Flyers were 21cm x 10cm

 Click for larger image

Thanks to Kevin Cummins for the poster scan
300 of these posters were made

 
Audience recording:
01. Disorder
02. Leaders Of Men
03. Colony
04. Insight
05. Digital
06. Dead Souls
07. Shadowplay
08. She's Lost Control
09. Transmission
10. Interzone (cut) *		 "Soundboard" recording:
01. Disorder
02. Leaders Of Men
03. Colony
04. Insight
05. Digital
06. Dead Souls
07. Shadowplay
08. She's Lost Control **
09. The Sound Of Music (cut) +
   
Audience recording:
Appx. duration: 35 mins. Sound quality: 6/9
* The first few seconds of Interzone are missing on this tape

"Soundboard" recording:
(this is actually a better audience recording):
Appx. duration: 29:01 mins. Sound quality: 8/9
This one does not include Transmission or Interzone
+ The Sound Of Music is cut short after 23 seconds
** Earlier versions of this tape (pre 2004) cut before the end of She's Lost Control

This concert appears on the following bootlegs:
Live At Leigh Rock Festival
The Grey Assembly (8 tracks)
Further Transmissions (8 tracks)		  
   
Leigh Youth Club had the original idea for this festival - and Factory got involved and made it happen as FAC 15.

Chris Hewitt was heavily involved with the festival and its organisation - here's what he had to tell us about it:

The Leigh Youth Festival - August 25th 26th 27th 1979 [Sat Sun Mon Bank Holiday weekend]

Details:
Leigh Open Dooor Resource Centre youth worker (Joan Miller) and finance provided by Lewis Knight (of Lewis Knight Three Piece Suite and Furniture Stores, Leigh).
Stage, PA, Lights and festival electrics provided by Tractor Music/Festival Services.

Tickets:
3 day ticket £5 Daily ticket £2

The Site:
Behind the former pub The Last Shift, off Plank Lane, Leigh [a former miners pub owned by Lewis Knight] on Lewis Knight's back garden and fields - it is all ex coal board wasteland/grassland and only half a mile in a straight line across the fields from the site of the 1972 Bickershaw Festival which 40,000 people attended. This area of festival sites near Wigan/ Leigh is nicknamed the Vale of notAvalot.

Bands:
Saturday: Hot Ice, Armageddon, Gog, Visual Arts, Steroid Kiddies, Exodus.

Sunday: Inertia,The Risk, Sister Ray, Cool Hand, Karma Sutra, Supercharge.

Monday: The Distractions, Echo and The Bunnymen, OMD, A Certain Ratio, Teardrop Explodes, Joy Division, Lori and The Chameleons, Eltifits, Beechwood

- plus bass solo/solo set by Whisper from the Drones (though can't work out which day).

This was Tony Wilson's supposed last weekend in the north west as he was going to take a new job at the BBC in London on the Tuesday, but at the last minute he stayed at Granada.

It was a three day pop festival organised by people in Leigh and I don't ever remember seeing any Peter Saville posters anywhere. The only publicity I remember is Lewis Knight had some small box trailers like you tow behind a car that he would leave parked around Leigh as free advertising. They normally said "Lewis Knight's Discount Three Piece Suite Centre" on the side so he changed the poster signs to big sheets of paper saying "Pop Festival". He also hired some goons with walkie-talkies to stop a Woodstock-type breach of the non-existent fence - obviously they just walked up and down the boundaries of the industrial waste grassland and challenged probably one person trying to get in over 72 hours!!!!

The Factory poster only lists the Monday as it wasn't really a Factory or Zoo Event. The Fac 15 thing to me is the typical Wilson scenario. Factory meets Zoo was one third of a three day event organised by local Leigh people, and myself providing stage pa lights wiring mixing tower etc. Look at the picture of OMD playing and there are just over two people in the crowd - I don't reckon there was ever more than about thirty or forty there and Mick Middles and Jon Savage had hyped it up in the press!!!! There was a joke amongst the bands that "its your turn to be the audience now whilst we play".

The information above copyright Chris Hewitt/Deeply Vale Festivals/Ozit Morpheus/Tractor and reproduced here with permission


Was it filmed?


Yes. Film footage surfaced in 2007. Click here for more info.
   
   
   
At the time Jon Savage wrote: "Zoo met Factory half way (between Liverpool and Manchester) and very few came. Blame it on the site - hastily prepared fields a mile outside Leigh ... Inaccessibility and uncertain weather,  plus inadequate promotion / media coverage, resulted in a turn-out (200) a tenth of the original estimate". He also describes poor sound due, in part, to a lack of preparation time.