Use Hearing Protection Exhibition
2021–22
The guitar's first public showing in thirty years, at Use Hearing Protection: The early years of Factory Records, at the Science and Industry Museum in Manchester, including BBC Breakfast's report on the show.
The early years of Factory Records
The exhibition ran at the Science and Industry Museum in Manchester from 19 June 2021 to 3 January 2022, and told the story of Factory Records' first few years — roughly 1978 to 1982. Tony Wilson and Alan Erasmus founded the label, and what it did with music, design and technology gave Manchester a voice that the city has never really stopped using.
The spine of the show was the first fifty entries in the Factory catalogue, FAC 1 to FAC 50 — a numbering system that took in posters, films, a nightclub and, now and again, actual records. Around that sat Joy Division, New Order and Durutti Column material, Peter Saville's design work, and objects lent from the estates of Tony Wilson and of Rob Gretton, who managed both Joy Division and New Order.
It had an earlier and smaller life as a display at Chelsea Space in London in 2019, rebuilt and considerably expanded for Manchester with help from, among others, Jon Savage — who had written the Bonhams Magazine piece on this guitar the year before.
Thirty years out of sight
The museum's own listing put it plainly: this was the first time Ian Curtis's Vox Phantom had been on public display in thirty years.
It was also the first exhibition the guitar went to after it came to us, which made it the point where the whole idea stopped being something we talked about and became something that had actually happened. Manchester was the right place for that.
The BBC Breakfast report
BBC Breakfast covered the exhibition and gave the guitar a decent stretch of the piece. Their report is the video at the top of this page.
Use Hearing Protection closed on 3 January 2022. The latest page always has where the guitar is now.
