*Track 22
The Winner Takes It All - 10th April 2019
Despite a recent purge Stuart still had 11,527 songs in his iTunes library, which, it informed him, equated to 31.6 days of music. Over a month’s worth of listening pleasure, even if you never slept.
Sitting proudly, alphabetically, at the top of the pile, as it had for ages now, and unassailably so (unless he performed a flip-flop on Aaliyah’s hip-hop), was Stuart’s only ABBA song ‘The Winner Takes It All’.
Indisputable pop legends, ABBA famously constructed their name using an amalgam of the first letter from each band member’s Christian name, but their permanent iPod pre-eminence had prompted Stuart, over the years, to speculate on his own alternative nomenclatural theory.
He imagined their manager Stig Larson (often dubbed the Sverige Svengali) choosing the band’s name, back when they still needed to worry about bookings, in order to ensure his charges always headed up any local listings. If you consulted Stockholm’s equivalent of the Yellow Pages back in a pre-internet 1973, Stuart conjectured, you would have found ABBA topping its ‘wedding bands’ section, the musical counterparts of Aaron’s Hairdressers or Aardvark Taxis.
Having latterly checked out this theory, Stuart had sadly, if predictably, found nothing on Wikipedia to support it. Coincidentally though, ABBA’s entry had revealed a different, pre-Eurovision, naming dispute. While Larson insisted his ‘abbreviation’ approach would work well internationally (with history certainly exonerating him), the more parochially minded band members expressed concerns it might see them confused with Abba Seafood, Sweden’s biggest producer of pickled herrings.
The band’s rapid rise to fame, quickly becoming Sweden’s second largest export (only outsold by Volvo), must have slammed the lid shut on that kettle of fish!
Whiffy etymology apart, for any music fan of a certain age, however refined or mature they may believe their tastes had since become, it was impossible to deny a sneaky admiration for ABBA. Very much of that vintage himself, Stuart still held a hazy memory of watching the 1974 Eurovision song contest (live from Brighton) with his Mum and brother, with his Dad absent for his weekly pub appointment.
The UK, Stuart seemed to recall, had been asked to step in (at short notice) to stage the competition after the financial burden of hosting it twice in succession, after two unexpected victories, had proven too much for Luxembourg’s tiny state broadcaster.
Still safely pre-Wogan, Eurovision ‘74 was hosted by the non-sarcastic, multilingual Katie Boyle, the daughter of an Italian fascist, principally famous for being the TV Times’ agony aunt and for promoting Camay soap. Stuart could have sworn she also advertised Oxo Cubes, but, with memory proving a notoriously unreliable witness, that, apparently, had just been some actress playing a character called Katie, in a campaign later acknowledged as the birth of British ‘soap opera’ advertising.
It was probably just post-event confabulation, but Stuart felt sure he could recall his family all picking ‘Waterloo’ as the best song of the night, proving a talent for A&R must run deep in his genes. To what degree his own choice had been led by the music however, as opposed to the carnage that Agnetha (even in a blue knitted hat!) had wreaked on his early-onset hormones, was a different question entirely.
If they had indeed chosen ABBA, this qualified them as better judges than the UK’s supposed jury of ‘industry experts’ who, on the evening, did not award the Swedes a single vote (from the ten they had available). In fact, Stuart now discovered, ABBA never achieved the landslide victory he had mistakenly remembered. Of the seventeen international juries, only a neighbourly Finland, and a far-sighted Switzerland, managed to predict ABBA would run out winners. It must have been hard, with that scoring, to realise ten years of unrivalled chart domination lay just around the corner.
The only other detail from Eurovision ’74 that had stuck with Stuart was the mid-show entertainment. Ireland may have garnered all the plaudits for ‘Riverdance’, twenty years later, but surely, Stuart would argue, there had never been a better kitschy, cultural fit for the competition than the UK’s admirable mid-Seventies spectacular; a specially commissioned, Brighton set, video of ‘Remember You’re a Womble’!?
ABBA may never qualify as mavericks, Stuart accepted, except perhaps for their non-sense of fashion, but boy could they craft a good pop song! So why, he now challenged himself, had they only ever managed to register one entry on his iTunes? And why this one? There were, he retrospectively concluded, probably three answers to this riddle:
Pragmatism - it was his favourite ABBA song. Both musically (with wonderful flowing verses and a soaring chorus) and lyrically/emotionally (as a beguilingly dark tale of a broken relationship),
Visual Impact – ‘The Winner Takes It All’ remained one of the rare videos Stuart could recall in full filmic detail (filed alongside Bowie’s ‘Ashes to Ashes’, New Order’s ‘True Faith’, and Johnny Cash’s ‘Hurt’), featuring little more than Agnetha looking wistful throughout, but doing it so beautifully, and finally, overridingly,
Humour – it is a peculiarly British trait to scoff at foreigners for their poor use of the language (ignoring our own refusal to even attempt the reverse), but this song undoubtedly includes some extraordinary Swenglish gaffs. First, a grammatically vital s is missed from, “no more ace to play”, then we get gods casting dice with, “minds as cold as ice,” before they top everything with the most ludicrous couplet ever employed in a love song, “I figured it made sense, building me a fence!”
Maybe though, Stuart realised, he should now be adding a fourth category. Fate?
Had ‘The Winner Takes It All’ just been biding its time on his iTunes all along, awaiting a day when its positional pertinence could no longer be denied? If so, today would be that day. Stuart was confident come 10am, or very shortly thereafter, just one of the dozen remaining ‘Challengers’ really was going to, “take it all,” whilst the eleven losers, to borrow some more of Benny’s mangled words, would be left, “standing small.” There was a palpable feeling of ‘cup final nerves’ pervading the whole house.
Stuart had managed to stay relatively calm for the first few days after their ‘Haven Arms’ epiphany, keeping himself busy by working through his latest completist compulsion. There could be no real remaining doubt, from what they had gathered on the day, that FAC numbers (from the Factory Records catalogue) must constitute ‘Challenge 69’s elusive key, the one they had spent so long seeking. It was immediately evident this would successfully link all the previous clues and their solutions, but Stuart understood he would only feel fully composed, and totally assured, once he had reassessed every single ‘Challenge’ to confirm exactly how everything fitted together.
This exercise had proven to be a strange journey, a sort of imagined odyssey back into the maverick mind of Mr Manchester. But what Stuart hadn’t fully anticipated was how many additional insights this would bring, regarding the many half-formed, never quite connected, theories they had partially uncovered along the way.
In a hopelessly ineffective attempt to calm his nerves, as the clock ticked agonisingly slowly towards their final judgement hour, Stuart decided to take one further look back over the ‘FAC Numbers’ review notes he had pulled together post-revelation. Beside the discographic detail (the bare Factory facts) for each ‘Challenge’, he had also appended his conjecture, with the benefit of hindsight, on the logic that may have sat behind their erstwhile quiz master’s individual selections, and the impacts they had.
###
Challenge 2 = Voltaire: Cabaret Voltaire (alongside Joy Division, Durutti Column, and John Dowie) had two songs each on ‘A Factory Sampler’, the first ever Factory record release, issued as a double EP under catalogue number FAC2.
They had speculated a few times this solution might reference ‘The Cabs’, rather than the French writer/philosopher the band borrowed a name from, but had never, as they should have, wrestled this suspicion to the ground. As the contest ended this meter had still been running.
Challenge 4 = Alpha: FAC4 was a poster, featuring Peter Saville’s now iconic ‘hearing protection’ logo, advertising ‘Factory X-Mas 12/78’, a series of Russell Club concerts leading up to the festive season, including one featuring a group called Alpha Omega.
Alpha Omega were not a band Stuart, even as a Factory-phile, had ever heard of, but, given how Googleable their name (in its entirety) may have proven, it was a smart move by Wilson, early on, to split this solution up, with its completion only coming through a late ‘reprise’.
Challenge 7 = Palatine: Factory’s odd approach to cataloguing, with a mix of items, rather than just records, saw their corporate stationery designated FAC7, including the address of the flat housing Factory’s offices at 86 Palatine Road, West Didsbury.
He had sadly (in both senses) known this address, but not spotted the connection. In hindsight this was obscure enough to be excusable, but Stuart had to smile, looking at the Word Search, how Tony had toyed with his ‘Challengers’, with ‘stationery’ as one of its discardable words.
Challenge 12 = Pillow Fight: As previously detailed, this song (confirmed via their triumphant call with Anne) appears on the B Side of FAC12, The Distractions debut single ‘Time Goes by So Slow’.
Thankful this detail finally registered, Stuart still regretted he hadn’t realised sooner; it had sat in his collection the whole time, he had discussed its Discogs value with Joe (when playing his lost singles), and then held a whole Distractions/Quantick conversation with Charlie and Ed!
Challenge 14 = Collette: A track from FACT14, Durutti Column’s wittily titled debut ‘The Return of the Durutti Column’. With this band renowned as Tony’s favourites, it is unsurprising Vini Reilly was singled to make such a prompt ‘Challenge’ appearance.
Post-breakthrough 20/20 vision made this another solution that frustrated Stuart. Its clue highlighted the misspelled name, yet he had ignored the need to answer Collette (with two Ls). A new Spotify search of this variant now revealed the Durutti song as its second most popular entry, behind only Billy Fury (who clearly couldn’t spell either). A definite missed opportunity.
Challenge 15 = Chameleons: From FAC15, a rare poster promoting a festival in Leigh, called ‘Zoo meets Factory Halfway’, with acts from both labels. A great line-up (for £2!) of: Joy Division (bottom of the bill), Echo & the Bunnymen, Orchestral Manoeuvres, Teardrop Explodes, A Certain Ratio, and, in their midst, Lori & the Chameleons!
At the time these bands were unknown, yet most enjoyed huge success within months. Lori & the Chameleons never did (though Bill Drummond later created a stir or two!). Wilson’s magician’s sleight of hand, using just part of the group name, misdirected people to the more popular Manchester band, so away from Factory. They owed Charlie an apology; he raised Lori & the Chameleons, after ‘Challenge 15’, only to be mocked for obscurity by Stuart and Ed.
Challenge 17 = Berlin: Title of the B Side from FAC17, a little-known single called ‘Sex Machine’ from an equally unheralded Ashington group called Crawling Chaos.
Further research gave no grounds for feeling remorse over this solution; the band didn’t even merit their own Wikipedia page, the song was on Spotify, but only in its deepest, darkest corners, and the ‘Berlin’ title held too many conflicting cultural references to ever help.
Challenge 24 = Dyslexia: A song by Blurt from FACT24 ‘A Factory Quartet’, a double album promoting four of the label’s lesser lights, likely conceived by Tony as a further attempt to bring The Durutti Column the wider recognition he felt they deserved.
Blurt were little more than a saxophone led, noise-based vehicle for an existentialist poet called (amusingly) Ted Milton, who achieved the precise level of non-success you would expect from that description. This was another ‘Challenge’ answer Stuart lost little sleep over.
Challenge 28 = Incubation: FAC28 ‘Komakino’ was a limited-edition Joy Division flexi-disc of outtakes from ‘Closer’, given away free in UK record shops. ‘Incubation’, the first of two instrumental tracks on its B-side, is still available on Discogs (from £4).
Stuart was aware of this track (from the ‘Substance’ compilation) but, with a lack of Ian Curtis vocals, had long ago dismissed it as a Joy Division song of minor consequence. Despite Charlie re-raising the song’s existence at the time (an emerging trend?) Stuart had disregarded a legitimate line of enquiry, one that could have led them to the Factory gates much earlier.
Challenge 31 = Dolphin: Minny Pops were an electronic post-punk band, signed by Factory after they supported Joy Division in Eindhoven and Den Haag. ‘Dolphin Spurt’ was the title track on FAC31, the band’s debut single for the label.
The only thing Stuart remembered of Minny Pops was a childishly parochial English amusement at their frontman’s name, Willy van Middendorp, meaning it was hard to feel any additional shame at failing to fit this song into his long conjectured musical theme.
Retrospectively, this did explain the odd mix of British and Dutch cities used in ‘Challenge 15’, a quandary he had agonised over at the time. They were all places Joy Division had toured.
Challenge 40 = The Sound of Music: Despite myriad criticism, Tony clearly cared for Factory’s acts more than a normal label supremo, handling Joy Division’s post-suicide legacy with dignity (not cashing in), making FACT40 ‘Still’ a sympathetically compiled retrospective. ‘The Sound of Music’, an unreleased ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’ outtake, has doomy, screech infested music that unsurprisingly never made it on to the single.
“Two Joy Division tracks, and still I didn’t spot it,” had been Stuart’s main, self-flagellating, complaint since they cracked the ‘Challenge’ code. It was a fair charge. Realising earlier (and this had been possible since June last year) that ‘Incubation’ and ‘The Sound of Music’ could be linked would have suggested that the band, or Factory generally, may hold the solution.
This was the point, Stuart suspected, where some ‘Challengers’ had stolen a march on their competition. Wilson had been smart again though, picking a more generically named ‘Still’ track, its title’s fame sitting elsewhere. None of them (not even Charlie!) had noticed the link; had thought to look past Julie Andrews, in technicolour, on her mountain top, to spot Joy Division lurking behind, in monochrome, crossing their snow laden bridge!
Challenge 43 = Dominion: Known for championing the underdog, if Wilson liked something enough it had a decent chance of getting a Factory release, with scant consideration given to commerciality. So, you suspect, things must have gone with FAC43 ‘Art Dream Dominion’, an EP by a group called Royal Family and the Poor, that features ‘Dominion’ as one of its tracks.
Most Factory releases, with a few notable exceptions, were abstruse, but the label’s extremities held some ultra-obscure records even Stuart had never heard of. You could travel a long way to find anyone who had heard of Royal Family and the Poor, or any of their songs. James Nice’s ‘Shadowplayers’, on the rise and fall of Factory, termed the band, "less a group than a pseudo-Situationist provocation," yet Tony, in his wisdom, granted them two albums. If seeking to maintain its complexity count, ‘Challenge 69’ had been on solid ground with this choice.
Challenge 45 = Bardo: Factory acts tended to be huge hits or abject failures, with few falling in-between. Section 25 were an exception to this rule. Too Joy Division to carve out a separate niche they later reinvented themselves as an electro/dance act, but ‘Babies in the Bardo’ was a nondescript track from FACT45, their ‘Always Now’ debut.
Regular arcane choices from the Factory catalogue (not itself a challenging task!), allied to a smart (journalistic) eye for titles that hinted, confusingly, at wider cultural or philosophical references, had allowed Wilson to peel his ‘Challenge’ onion away slowly, one layer at a time, never quite placing its core at risk. Another clue Stuart felt little annoyance at overlooking.
Challenge 48 = Ophelia: One of the four acts featured (earlier) on ‘A Factory Quartet’, it had taken a further year before the label finally released Kevin Hewick’s debut single ‘Ophelia’s Drinking Song’ as FAC48.
Another selection from Factory’s backwaters, another piece of musical detritus (dredged from the Manchester Ship Canal!) That might be a bit harsh on Kevin, a more than passable singer-songwriter (who Tony thought had the potential to become Factory’s Dylan), but it wasn’t hard to understand why this solution prompted more thought of Shakespeare than Hewick.
Challenge 56 = New Horizon: A rapid ‘Challenge’ repeat visit for Section 25. ‘New Horizon’ is their track on FACT56, a VHS compilation titled ‘A Factory Video’. This is an artefact hard to get hold of these days, and even harder to play!
Wilson’s choice of ‘New Horizon’ was likely driven less by a commitment to the Section 25 cause, more by it having a less ‘searchable’ title than the video’s other tracks. Perhaps worried, by this stage, he may have given away too much, too early, with ‘Incubation’ and ‘The Sound of Music’ it was certainly a wise move to avoid ‘In a Lonely Place’, or New Order’s ‘Ceremony’.
Challenge 58 = Stockholm: Stockholm Monsters were another Factory act who suffered from being labelled Joy Division ‘lite’, and FAC58, their second single ‘Happy Ever After’, couldn’t even match their debut’s raid on the lower echelons of the Indie charts. The band’s biggest claim to fame today is probably being the second most famous band (by some distance behind the first!) to come out of Burnage.
Tony had got into his quizzical stride by this point, prudently selecting answers that diverted ‘Challengers’ away from any potential musical link (leading them here towards the city) and, even for those that persisted, offering them more likely ‘red herring’ alternatives; such as Muse’s ‘Stockholm Syndrome’ or (if you were Stuart!) the Triffids’ live album.
Challenge 60 = Testament: Another selection following a by now well-worn groove. ‘Testament’ was an unsung track off FACT60 ‘Harmony’, the debut album from a little known (Rob Gretton championed) Factory band from Glasgow called The Wake.
With this following closely on the heels of such ‘illuminati’ as Crawling Chaos, Blurt, Minny Pops, Royal Family and the Poor, Section 25, Kevin Hewick, and The Stockholm Monsters, Stuart reflected, you could (if betting without Joy Division/New Order) put the whole Factory roster on ‘Never Mind the Buzzcocks’ identity parade, and never pick out a single member.
This theory was blown though by a discovery The Wake’s bassist, before joining Jesus & Mary Chain, was a certain Bobby Gillespie. This was never going to give the game away however; it is on Spotify, but only after wading through more than a hundred songs with the same title.
Challenge 64 = Prayer: Tony couldn’t resist one final Vini Reilly clue, with ‘Prayer’ the B Side of FAC64, Durutti Column’s single ‘I Get Along Without You Very Well’, a sentiment, it is safe to assume, not targeted at Vini’s long-besotted musical benefactor.
This selection showed Wilson in full obfuscatory mode. A Durutti Column song, however pretty, with a title using one of the commonest words in popular music, was always going to be hard to find on Spotify (or other available streaming services!) Vini’s ‘Prayer’ was simply washed away, without trace, in a tempestuous sea of Aretha’s, Madonna’s and Bon Jovi’s.
Challenge 65 = Saturn: Wilson once provocatively opined, and Stuart largely agreed, that, “jazz is the last refuge of the untalented,” yet neither upheld this maxim for the post-punk jazz-fusion of A Certain Ratio. Stuart loved their off-kilter ‘Sextet’ record, while Wilson stuck with the band for years, and used ‘Saturn’ from FACT65, their ‘I’d Like to See You Again’ album, as the solution for his last (non-reprised) ‘Challenge’ clue.
In the fantasy pub quiz that ran in Stuart’s mind, “who made the most Factory albums?” was one of its great questions. Most would incorrectly guess New Order (with just five), and while a few indie fans may know the correct answer was Durutti Column (with eight), naming their closest runner-up as A Certain Ratio (at six) would require a real anorak (in a trench coat!)
Having reached critical quizzing orbit, Tony ran rings around his ‘Challengers’ with ‘Saturn’, too obscure to reveal the musical key, plus a misdirection down false scientific corridors.
Challenge 4 (Reprise) = Omega: The reprise of an earlier tune, a trick from classical music, usually comes at the end of an album (‘Sgt. Pepper’s and ‘Wish You Were Here’ being classic examples). It seemed fitting therefore when Wilson brought his cryptic curtain down by revisiting an earlier clue. Omega added to Alpha, eighteen months later, finally completing the long lost band name from that early FAC4 concert poster.
They had often called out Tony Wilson, without knowing it was him, for clues seeming out of time, built for an analogue not digital age. But the longer Stuart considered this final clue the more he realised Tony (always an early adopter) may have been internet-savvy all along, those time-shifts being just another cloak of disguise donned by one of life’s natural charlatans.
Splitting Alpha Omega may, at first, have seemed unnecessary. Of all the arcane ‘Challenge’ bands they were surely the obscurest; they never recorded anything for Factory, even on the FAC4 poster they were just a support act, and it was impossible to find anything about the band online. The iconic nature of Saville’s poster did however mean there was one huge FAC4 internet Images hit, featuring Alpha Omega in clear view.
The fact FAC4 had only been a clear ‘solution’ clue since the ‘reprise’ (another opportunity they had missed) justified Wilson’s tactic of holding the full band name back until the very end.
###
Concluding his review, it was evident to Stuart that no amount of post-match analysis, however many open goals they had missed, was going to influence the outcome now. He needed to file away his Factory fine-print, to focus on the final ‘Challenge’ to come.
In the perceptive words of the mighty Moloko, he recognised, “the time is now!”
###
(‘Track 22’ will be continued, at 10am tomorrow, with the unveiling of ‘C69’s final challenge!)