Early on Martin was obsessed with having the best hi-fi equipment. Listening to and examining records became a pastime that would pay off. -LC
Neil Pointon: friend, co-worker
"I met Martin at ICI Blackley [Imperial Chemical Industries, where they worked together] in September of 1965, on a typical Manchester rainy day. He was sitting there in his Hush Puppies with a packet of Sterling cigarettes, and he offered me a cigarette. He bought a hi-fi system from a shop on Oldham Street with his first month's wages. That's when he began listening obsessively for some unattainable silence between or behind the notes. On Saturday morning we'd make the routine tour of all the hi-fi and music shops."
Bruce Mitchell: drummer, Durutti Column
"His first LP production was the Belt & Braces Roadshow Band. His second production job was Slaughter & the Dogs' 'Where have all the Boot Boys Gone?' His third job was Spiral Scratch by the Buzzcocks. It was what established him in that generation's eyes as the sympathetic producer. It was geography; he was in the right place, at the right time."
The Buzzcocks' Spiral Scratch was the first independent punk record, and the third release ever by a British punk group (The Damned and Sex Pistols were on major labels). It still remains an urgent and melodic slab of vinyl. -LC
Phil Hampson: engineer
"Tuesday, 28th December, 1976. Buzzcocks set up, we mic'd up, and started sorting out the sounds. I was used to loud noise, but this was special. 'It's totally distorted,' says I. 'Yeah, great!' says they. We got a sound, and then barely touched the faders. They played, and we recorded. Although the songs were recorded as live takes with minimal overdubs, we were using 16-track on 2-inch tape at that time, so everything was on individual tracks — and recorded with some separation, which meant that we could play around with the mix later."
Richard Boon: Buzzcocks' manager
"Although he did have set ideas, it depended on the toys he had in the studio. Sometimes the gadgets eclipsed his interest in the music he was supposed to be producing. He's as inventive as he can be within a limited budget. The studio is a playground."
Howard Devoto: vocalist, Buzzcocks, Magazine
"Martin was the only person we knew in Manchester that was known as, or called themselves, a producer. Martin felt restricted by the sessions."
Martin Hannett
"I was trying to do things, and the engineer was turning them off. 'You don't put that kind of echo on a snare drum!' I'd have whipped it away and remixed it, but he erased the master because he thought it was such rubbish."
Mick Middles: journalist
"I first heard of Martin Hannett [from] the Buzzcocks' Spiral Scratch EP. It had an intelligent energy; something strange was going on. It would set a benchmark."
Martin had a long history in the Manchester music scene before the Buzzcocks, running Rabid Records and booking bands. He became a partner in the legendary independent label, Factory Records, which released records by Joy Division and many of the artists he recorded. The first release by the label was Martin producing Durutti Column's ironically-titled debut, The Return of the Durutti Column. -LC
Chris Hewitt
"Hannett had always wanted to be a record producer, but the occupation requires a tremendous [amount of] discipline. The advent of new hardware in the early 1980s, and the constant refinements in high technology have turned the modern studio into a clinical operating room. Martin wanted to offset the barrier between the booth and the mixing room, so he preferred to record as many instruments as possible right by the desk."
Vini Reilly: guitar, piano, Durutti Column
"I first met Martin in about 1977 when we [Ed Banger and the Nosebleeds] did the first record on Tosh [Ryan] and Martin's label [Rabid]. [He was] incredibly charismatic; one of those people who communicated more by what he didn't say than what he did say. Martin had a sort of aggressive dominance with me. He was being completely oblivious to my ranting and raving in a studio with him. It was my first album for Factory, in 1979, and he was messing around with all this very obsolete synthesizer stuff — plugging pins into little sockets and making noises. I was very ill, at that point. I sat there, and after about two or three hours began to scream and shout at him. Every so often he would look up and say, 'You're being a bit irrational there, Vini,' and carry on. All of a sudden these noises became sort of bird noises. I had my guitar plugged into the desk; DI'd. I'd asked for a delay, because I used to use tape delay. He said, 'You can't use tape delay. Use this.' He'd plug in some piece of technology he'd had developed. When these bird noises came up I immediately thought of a tune, and I started playing along. In the space of about a minute he made a very basic rhythm pattern with the bird noises and it went down to tape. I overdubbed one guitar and that was the track. The whole album was done like that, in a very strange way — in that sense he was the direction of that album. Martin wouldn't let anything stand in the way of a perfectly original piece of art. Nothing would be sacrificed, unless it became too obtuse or imperfect. Everything had to be perfect, in every way."
Tony Wilson: Factory Records co-founder
"It doesn't matter if Martin falls asleep under the mixing desk. Even in his sleep Martin is creative."
Martin Hannett
"Songs unfold themselves to me. The object is to capture somebody's attention and keep it for a satisfactory [amount of] time. I'm not always that interested in the content, or the words, or even the track. I'm more interested in the feeling. Originality exercises the intellect, working out how it got to be original, from all its influences. Or you can just let it shock and amaze you. To me the technology is fairly straightforward. Technology just makes it work faster. Digital recording will sort it out, but you can't buy that; you have to lease it from 3M. There are record industry standards, but what do they mean? All I care about is that they should be recognisable as records."
Joy Division's debut album and follow up remain the most recognized of Martin Hannett's studio achievements to this day. By taking a raw, moody punk group and morphing their sound into power and texture, he created something unique, new, and lasting. The bass guitar became much of the melodic focus, the drums were isolated and treated with effects, the guitars often shimmered as a background texture. It was a whole new way to envision a rock band. At the time the members of Joy Division were shocked by the results, as it was a far cry from their powerful live shows. -LC
Martin Hannett
"Joy Division — there was a lot of space in their sound. They were a gift to a producer because they didn't argue."
John Brierley: owner Cargo Studios, engineer
"I'd only just built Cargo when he came in to record A Factory Sample with Joy Division. I'd heard of Martin before — he had a bit of a reputation as a 'name producer.' We had two enormous reclining chairs behind the desk in the control room, and once he was sat in one of them there was no moving him. We didn't have an awful lot to say to each other, which actually suited us both. I expected him to tell me where he wanted mics placed and what sort of sound he wanted, but it soon became evident that that was going to be left to me. I soon realised that he expected to sort out any problems with the sound during the mix. In this respect we worked well together. I did most of the recording side — he did the mixes. He liked working with me because I didn't hold long, incessant, irrelevant conversations. I would leave him alone to do what he wanted to do, and I worked fast. I was always up for trying anything out, which Martin always appreciated, like placing the drums downstairs and having the mics recording the kit upstairs. Recording trumpets in the loo was another one. Plugging one effects unit into another, and then another, and so on produced some amazing effects; sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't."
Chris Nagle: engineer
"No other engineer at Strawberry [Recording Studios, Stockport, UK] would work with Martin. Martin tended to tape everything, rehearsals and run-throughs included, and took delight in mistakes. The first time Martin turned up at Strawberry, the session was to mix A Factory Sample. This fella walked up, carting all this gear under his arms, and he said, 'The first rule is there are no rules.'"
Martin Hannett
[On the Strawberry Recording Studio control room] "There's a lot of depth in this studio. From behind the mixing desk you look into some sort of a tunnel. [Joy Division's] Unknown Pleasures was fun. Closer was quite depressing, for obvious reasons. A bit of a strange social climate. It took 13 days and 13 nights to record — hard work. Ian wasn't very well. Despite that — the clouded retrospect — it still has a good atmosphere, in a way, though the sound suffers. The content is more cohesive, much more accurate, much more powerful. The sound is certainly unique. We used a half-completed construction project as an echo room — a huge shell, with plaster walls."
Stephen Morris: drummer, Joy Division, New Order
"I was alright with what Martin was asking us to do mostly; although he did make me use an aerosol can on the 12-inch version of 'She's Lost Control,' like you see in the film Control. He shut me in a room with the tape cleaning fluid, and made me press it in time with the song. The booth was filled with noxious fumes by the end. I think he was just trying to kill me. If I'd lit up a fag, the whole of Strawberry Studios would have gone up in smoke. The unusual sound I like best is on 'Atrocity Exhibition.' I had a Simmons SDS-V and Synare [synthesizer drum pads], which we got out and put through this horrible fuzz box. My drumming on Closer was a disco/tribal thing, and Martin pushed his studio equipment to its limits. He had me do the snare, then the hi-hat, and then the hi-hat again, in an almost robotic style. Martin did the mixing during the middle of the night, because it's when your brain is at its most creative. He liked the unsociable hours and the isolation. I think he'd do a little speed, if only because he was on borrowed time and we had to get it done."
Peter Hook: bass, Joy Division, New Order
"The equipment we used for Joy Division sessions were the Arp Omni-2, the [Powertran] Transcendent, and the AMS delays. Bernard [Sumner] used an Altair Power Attenuator between his Vox UL 730 amp and the cabinet, and fed his guitar through Melos [Tape] echoes and an MXR graphic pedal. A set of chimes were fed through the AMS delay to get the effect that can be heard in 'Atmosphere.' Chris Hewitt owns the original set of chimes."
Chris Nagle: engineer
"Re-recording Ian Curtis's vocals, Martin said, 'He really can't sing.' The next minute I said, 'He can sing; just listen to that vocal.'"
Bernard Sumner: guitar, Joy Division, New Order
"On early Joy Division recordings, Martin was a catalyst and an experimenter. I've worked with other producers since Martin, and the point of their job is to get a hit record. Martin's job was to create an environment of experimentation. We worked at Cargo [Studios] in Rochdale; a box-type place, a good sound. 'Atmosphere' was done there. A lot of A Factory Sample was done there. At Strawberry [Studios], Martin used to work with a tape op and assistant engineer; a miserable git called Chris Nagle. He'd sneer at the band all the time."
Manchester's favorite "punk poet," John Cooper Clarke, made many of his classic recordings with Martin and the "house band," The Invisible Girls, of which Martin played bass in as well. Martin's obsession with sounds is well evident on these albums' vocal treatments. -LC
Chris Nagle: engineer
"It did hit me after a while that Martin and John [Cooper Clarke], with their habits, did used to disappear a lot at Ridge Farm Studios, during the second John [Cooper Clarke] album [Disguise in Love]. Martin and Steve Hopkins [keyboards] used to work with a supposed deck of cards: 'Right, the key for the next number is F. Run that sequencer; the next note will be G. What are we going to do with that?' Steve tinkled his piano then Martin would possibly put a bass to it. John, in my experience, had his poems ready; Martin had a tune in mind, John would take a listen, and then he'd usually run through it in one take."
Steve Hopkins: keyboards, co-producer
"I did the rational mathematical computing side of it, whereas Martin provided the anarchistic, surreal, dada-ist type of elements. Say I was trying to record a piano part; Martin would say, 'Steve, could you make it a bit more Bavarian and less Transylvanian?' I was left to interpret this, but a lot of the time I got it right. Phil Spector was one of Martin's heroes. He studied not only his techniques, but also his psychological ruthlessness in sticking to ones' production vision. He would look for spaces with unusual acoustical properties. We'd go into the shower room at Arrow Sound and have the engineer trail 200 metres of cable, then we'd flush the toilet and record it, and so on. We discovered that the lift shaft was remarkable for its rebounding echo, so we'd place a microphone at one end and get John [Cooper Clarke] to balance precariously at the other. Then he'd shout his poem into the lift shaft. On many of the Clarke albums, Martin paid care to the qualities of John's voice; virtually every track has a particular treatment of the reverberation and ambience around the vocal. On a few tracks there are things that the listener would presume are instruments, such as a xylophone; but in fact it's John's voice that has been fed through so many effects units that they're coming out as notes."
Chris Nagle: engineer
