“Get The Files” : Remembering Rob Gretton

Relatively little has been written before about Rob Gretton and his place in the Manchester music scene. Most of it focuses on his role as co-founder of the Haçienda, or his management of Joy Division and New Order. Even less has been said of his post-Haç career, and practically nothing about his involvement with Sub Sub/Doves. He was a private person, reluctant to talk to the media, as evidenced by journalist and dj John McCready: “I always used to ask him if I could write his biography but he said he would never tell. Mostly he would rarely talk in any official capacity to media people.” Hillegonda Rietveld, who knew Rob from the early 80s, explains that: “Rob did not speak much, partly due to a kind of shyness, but also because the (non)marketing of New Order had shown that, the less you say, the more the myth will develop itself, making him a larger than life character. And so the myth continues.”

Rob died tragically young on 15 May 1999, aged 46. He suffered a heart attack at home. He was a force to be reckoned with in life, and a man for whom many in Manchester and beyond still carry a lot of affection and respect. In the obituary carried on NME.com, he was described as “a warm, funny man”.[1] McCready remembers him as “a really, really lovely person ... [who] just gets greater in your mind as the time passes. A genuine original, a man of real principle.” His passions in life, according to Dave Rofe, who worked closely with Rob from the late ‘80s, were: “New Order, his family, The Haçienda, Man City - although not necessarily in that order.” Jane Weaver agrees: “He was a really quiet guy, a man of few words, but I really looked up to him... His passions, well I don’t know. When I went round to the office he’d always have the cricket on or the football. He loved Manchester City. I went to a match with him once, and they lost – as usual (laughs). Music. His family. He would always talk about his family.” Steve Paice, drummer with Gabrielle’s Wish, adds: “The last conversation we had was about his son ... [He was] very proud of his family.”

It’s hard to write a feature about a man you have never met, or about whom the only things you know are the things that leak from the minds and memories of musicians, journalists and djs. I thought it was time to try to fill the gap in Rob’s musical history – bring the story up to date, and pay tribute to the man who helped establish Manchester as the cultural icon is now is for music fans the world over. My apologies to all those who really knew Rob well. My thanks to those who agreed to let me pilfer their words, among them Dave Rofe, Steve McGarry, Donald Johnson, Jane Weaver, Hillegonda Rietveld, Mick Middles, Jimi Goodwin, Steve Paice and John McCready.

Rob Gretton grew up in the Newall Green district of Wythenshawe, an area south of Manchester that is now dominated by a council estate built in the 1960s. At one point Wythenshawe was the largest overspill estate in Europe. It is also a hotbed of Mancunian talent. The area sprawls up from Manchester Airport and the wealthy Cheshire commuter-belt to take in districts such as Benchill (birthplace of Paul Young, singer in Sad Café and more recently Mike & the Mechanics, and of cartoonist Steve McGarry), Baguley (home to Johnny Marr from the early 1970s, when thousands were relocated there from Ardwick in the city centre) and Newall Green itself, reaching up to the southern Mancunian suburbs of Northenden, and East Didsbury. Joy Division and New Order producer Martin Hannett was from the area and Vini Reilly of Durutti Column, for whom Tony Wilson effectively established the Factory label, spent a large part of his youth there. Hannett was one of a number of hangers-on who surrounded local glam-punk outfit Slaughter & the Dogs. Reilly was a member of Wild Ram (later to become Ed Banger & the Nosebleeds), the rival punk band to Slaughter and the Dogs.

Cartoonist Steve McGarry attended St Bede’s RC College in Moss Side with Gretton, and moved in the same scene, designing record sleeves for the main Manchester punk-rock bands, including Joy Division, Jilted John, Slaughter & the Dogs, John Cooper Clarke and Ed Banger and the Nosebleeds. McGarry was also the in-house poster/flyer designer for legendary Manchester rock venue Rafters, where Rob Gretton was, from 1977, the house dj.[2]

Steve McGarry agreed to share some of his memories of Rob with me for this article. “Although Rob and I both lived in Wythenshawe (Rob in Newall Green, me in Benchill) we passed our 11 Plus exams and were accepted at Bede's, which was the premier Catholic grammar School in Manchester. It was a 30 minute bus ride from Wythenshawe each day.”

Hillegonda Rietveld sees a dichotomy in Gretton, brought about by the fact that he was brought up in Wythenshawe, yet benefited from a middle-class Catholic education at Bede’s: “Working class Wythenshawe may have provided him with his harder edge. Yet, despite his self-demeaning posturing, he was not a man raw from 'the streets'. His middle-class Catholic upbringing provided him with the ability to understand intellectual ideas and to acquire a social and economic overview.” This intellectual base acquired early in life was later put to good use to make Gretton’s development plans for Joy Division, New Order, The Hacienda and Dry work.

Gretton and McGarry were both Manchester City fanatics, and as a result struck up a friendship pretty early on during those bus rides to Moss Side. McGarry remembers: “We used to attend all the home games and I can remember hitch-hiking all night with Rob to places like Coventry to see City. One year, he hitch-hiked all the way to Spain to watch City – there was a photo of him outside the ground in the Manchester Evening News Football Pink.”

By the time Gretton and McGarry were 15 they were practically inseparable. “We were mods - cropped hair, Levi jacket and jeans, brogues – and huge soul and r&b fans.” A little gang of Wythenshawe lads, including Gretton and McGarry, would go to one of two youth clubs in Baguley every Friday to see live bands. These nights were usually preceded by a sneaky drink in The Firbank pub. On Sunday nights they would go to the weekly disco at Longley Lane Cricket Club in Northenden. “I remember that we used to blag tickets there from dj Ugli Ray Terret, another Wythenshawe legend, to attend the recording of a pop show called "Lift Off" at Granada Studios,” says McGarry. Rob and Steve were in the audience for the show a couple of times during 1968, and McGarry remembers seeing Elton John and The Equals performing live.

Occasionally, on Thursdays, the pair would bunk off school for the live lunchtime broadcast of the Radio One Club at The New Century Hall in Manchester. Most of their other leisure time was spent hanging around outside the Red Rose pub in Newall Green, where they would also sneak in for a pint if any of the gang had the money.

Rob’s musical taste began to change from the age of 16 or 17, when McGarry remembers him drifting into the skinhead movement. “He drifted into that skinhead, crombie coat, iridescent trouser thing, where I grew my hair out and went "weirdo", as was the popular terminology, so we didn't hang out as much.”

After he left school, Gretton took an office job where he met his future wife Lesley. Lesley was the source of sanity in Rob’s life, which was a complex network of friendships, alliances and outcasts. Hillegonda Rietveld, who shared Rob & Lesley’s home for about a year on coming to Manchester as Mike Pickering’s wife in 1982, sees Rob’s loyalty to Lesley as an anchor: “despite his self-declared love of 'ogling women', Leslie [sic] was the one and only woman in his life, a pivot that kept him sane in the face of so many things going on at once.” Lesley is also seen by some, including Mikey Eastwood, a member of the Factory family from the early days, as an unsung player in the wider scheme of things, especially the day-to-day running of Factory.

John McCready used to talk with Rob a lot during the early 1990s: “I remember him talking about working for some insurance company in the city centre when he was growing up. He said he used to wear cravats and see through shirts at the time!”  

Following a moment of hippyish rebellion that removed him from the rat race, Rob and Lesley spent 7 months working on a kibbutz in Israel in the mid-70s. To some who knew Gretton later in life, this apparent flirtation with liberalism might seem surprising. Rietveld, discussing Gretton’s notions of loyalty and patriarchy that formed the backbone to his methods of dealing with people in business and friendship, believes that: “hippy liberalism was especially at the receiving end of his more radical yet conservative venom.”

When Rob and Lesley returned to Wythenshawe in 1976, punk was just beginning to happen and, in Manchester, Wythenshawe was at the centre of it all. Gretton always claimed never to have listened to rock music before he joined Wythenshawe’s social whirl in 1976, preferring instead the smooth sounds of soul.

Moving among the local players, Gretton became more and more involved in the scene, his unassuming exterior masking the subversion he carried within. From 1977 onwards, Gretton became inextricably linked with Slaughter and the Dogs. Friendships were formed with the Dogs’ inner circle which included Martin Hannett, then known as Martin Zero, and Ray Rossi, manager of the Dogs and someone Gretton knew from the Maine Road terraces. Gretton became the Dogs’ roadie and financial support, co-financing their first single Cranked Up Really High. The success of this venture was the bug that really bit Gretton, drawing him further into the scene and setting him on his way to being one of the most influential men in Manchester’s burgeoning music industry.[3] Gretton eventually became the Dogs’ co-manager with Vini Faal, after Rossi was imprisoned.[4]

Gretton also persuaded old friend Steve McGarry to work with him on a Slaughter & the Dogs fanzine, called Manchester Reigns, a title chosen by Gretton, according to Mick Middles, to reflect his love for Manchester City[5]. Rob and Steve had drifted apart since leaving school, but working together and back in the same scene again, they began to see more of each other. Gretton by this time had started to promote bands with Vini Faal at The Oaks in Chorlton. McGarry carried out some artwork for him and remembers some of the bands Gretton booked for the Oaks: “He put on the likes of Johnny Thunder & The Heartbreakers, Siouxsie & The Banshees. He also managed a band called The Panik and asked me to do the sleeve for the single. He was working for the council as a census-taker or something at this point – I remember he got chased by a pack of wild dogs on Greenwood Road in Benchill when he came round to pick up the artwork.”

Two stories related by Mick Middles from this era paint Rob as something of a Mancunian hard man. The first relates to Gretton’s friendship with Vini Reilly and his place in the wider Wythenshawe social scene. As well as his punk credentials, Reilly nurtured jazz leanings, and in the late 1970s made numerous attempts to perform at the weekly jam sessions at Band on the Wall. Following weeks of rejection by the club’s management, a gang of fellow-Wythenshawe musicians and side-kicks, including Rob Gretton, accompanied Reilly to Band on the Wall, initially to hear Reilly play. When he was again snubbed by the management, the group’s mood changed and a mini-riot occurred. The second story suggests that Gretton was also involved in some unorthodox promotional activity by certain Mancunians at Ed Banger & the Nosebleeds’ Roxy gig in London. According to Middles[6] “Two close associates of the band – allegedly Vini Faal and Rob Gretton – wandered around the cellar club, smacking people totally at random in the face, before offering the explanation “We’re from Manchester ... YOU take notice!”

So Wythenshawe breeds them tough. And according to some, none tougher than Rob Gretton. Gretton is famed among Manchester City fans for his vehement support of the club, and especially for his habit of launching himself at rival teams’ supporters on the terraces at Maine Road. Although Steve McGarry says this: “He was a pretty hard guy and could look after himself - he took karate lessons at one point - but I don't ever remember him actually starting on anyone.” Hillegonda Rietveld agrees that Rob did not employ violence as a tool to control those who crossed his path, but that his notions of loyalty and patriarchy meant that those who crossed him would experience the darker side of his personality. “[Rob’s] immense sense of family extended way beyond the confines of the nuclear version, making him a benevolent godfather to more than one. He was extremely generous to all those on the inside. Anyone who would threaten that family, or his position within this, would experience a very much less nice side of him - not violent, perhaps, but certainly unforgiving.”

Mike Pickering, to whom Rietveld was married, was the Haçienda’s booker and dj-ed at the club. He formed Quando Quango with Rietveld and was later the guiding force behind M People. He remembers meeting Gretton for the first time as a sixteen year old in a rose garden in Nottingham. This was no romantic interlude. The pair had travelled separately to watch City play Nottingham Forest. During a pre-match encounter with Forest fans in the streets around the ground, Gretton had decided to forego his usual meet & greet approach and had leaped for safety into a nearby rose garden. Seconds later Pickering did the same. Gretton was asked later if this meeting actually took place. “Oh yeah,” he said, “that is true. We used to do a lot of running in those days ... running and fighting. Great times.”[7]

John McCready cites Gretton’s passions as music and football. “He used to be bemused as to why I had (and have) no real interest in football. He always used to ask me why I'd ended up in Manchester having been born in Liverpool. He was puzzled by the idea of living anywhere but the city you were born in.”

Gretton is also remembered for his enhancement of match-watching pleasure by Steve Anglesey in his online column: “The recent effective decriminalisation of cannabis by Home Secretary David Blunkett all but ensures that more and more fans will inevitably follow the example set by the late rock band manager Rob Gretton, who could customarily be seen in the stands at Manchester City's Maine Road cocooned from the appalling events transpiring below him by a comforting cloud of appropriately blue smoke. Gretton, a clever man who discovered Joy Division and financed the Haçienda nightclub, understood that comprehensive self-medication was virtually essential during the Alan Ball-Steve Coppell-Phil Neal-Frank Clark era.”[8]

But Rob Gretton was more than just a football hooligan or Main Road dope-fiend, if he was either of those things at all. Paddy Considine played him in the film 24 Hour Party People. He never met Gretton, but while promoting the film he recalled that "I had lots of people coming up and putting their arms around me and I just got the vibe that he was a well known and popular guy and very influential."[9] Steve McGarry agrees: “I remember Rob with a great deal of affection. My fondest memory of
him is ridiculous really. When he was 14 or 15, he had his two front teeth extracted. We went to a party at a girl's house in Baguley and Rob refused to speak all night - wouldn't open his mouth to say a word. Towards the end of the evening, someone put the lights out to encourage smooching ... and Rob started chunnering incessantly. It was a daft moment but very funny. He was a lovely guy and I think of him often.” John McCready adds; “I think he was a different person when I was getting to know him from 1990 onwards. Apparently there was a wilder Rob before then. I wish I'd got to know him better.”

When asked what Gretton was like as a person, Dave Rofe said: “Very funny, warm, extremely generous, sharp, honest and about the nicest person you could ever wish to meet. God knows where his fearsome reputation came from.” Jane Weaver, answering the same question, said: “His generosity was unbelievable, he just gave and gave. You’d go out, and people would come in, you know, at Atlas and places like that, and he’d always be, ‘Do you want a drink?’ and he’d buy the drinks and he never expected one back. Or he’d be out with someone and he’d see you and he’d be like, ‘Do you want a drink, girls?’ He was very gentleman-like, old-fashioned in a way. Like my dad. Very like my dad.” Her fondest memory of Rob is of him sitting in his office, “laughing his head off. What I used to love about Rob, really love about him, was his laugh.”

Jimi Goodwin of Doves gave a similar response when asked what his fondest memory of Rob was: “Just talking to him about music in the Britons Protection pub and going in the office for meetings – well if you can call them that. We’d go in and talk to him and drink coffee and I’d skin up for him/us as he hated rolling joints ‘Honest I cant do ‘em’. When we were meant to be having a serious talk he’d shout Pete Robinson to come in from the office next door –  ‘Peter! Get the files in here’ – that used to make us smile. We’d walk out 5 hours later, say after supposedly talking about the next step or a release date, and none of us would be any the wiser. But y’know shit did get done. It was just unorthodox and funky and we liked that…on the whole.”

In 1977, Paul Young of Sad Café and Dougie James began promoting at Rafters in Manchester. Steve McGarry remembers: “When Youngy bailed, Dougie continued promoting. Rob was the house dj and I used to do all the flyers and in-house posters. He used to drink Pernod and Blackcurrant, I recall. Hideous concoction.”

By this time Gretton had become a central figure in the Manchester punk scene with his involvement with Slaughter & the Dogs, his management of The Panik, his dj sets at Rafters, and his presence at punk gigs around the city. Mick Middles first met Gretton at this point in his life: “To be honest, I have nothing but fond memories of Rob Gretton. By chance, I knew him before his days running bands, clubs and terrorising journalists. It was 1977, Gretton, just back from a mind-swelling spell in a Kibbutz, was trying to write a fanzine about his local glam rock punk band, 'Slaughter and the Dogs'. It's odd to recall him as a young man. Same glasses, smaller frame, curiously reverential attitude. As I had scaled the dizzying heights of actually producing the kind of wholly illiterate, appallingly written, indecipherable drivel that passed for a fanzine in those days, Gretton clung to my coat tails - literally - during interviews with sundry fallen legends, The Drones and Slaughter and the Dogs.”[10]

It was in 1978, at a gig at the Electric Ballroom, that Gretton first took real notice of Joy Division. Gretton had previously encountered the band under the name Warsaw when he was dj-ing at Rafters in June 1977. At that time he thought that they looked a little weird but also that: “they were the best band [I’d] ever seen.”[11] In April 1978, Gretton had been at a family wedding all day and turned up to the Electric Circus gig still in his formal clothes. By no means a small man, he must have cut an imposing and incongruous figure. The gig was the "Stiff Records/Chiswick Challenge" held on April 14. Joy Division were last to appear on a bill of seventeen bands. Gretton is reported to have said, after their 3 or 4 song set: "So they went on about ten to two and they were blazing madmen. And I just went and watched them. Great! Best band I've ever seen – and they sent a tingle up my spine. And I was dancing all over...I went up telling them - at the end - telling them how brilliant I thought it was...And I went raving about them all next day"[12]

Joy Division were at the time managed by their former drummer Terry Mason. On 21 May 1978, Bernard Sumner decided to employ Gretton as the band’s manager. Promotion of bands not being the slick marketing machine it now is, most bands used button badges to make the public aware of their existence. Gretton's first act as the Joy Division’s manager was to commission a sequence of badge designs from Better Badges.[13]

Gretton also wanted to get his band exposure in the press. Journalist Mick Middles was the first person to interview Joy Division for the national press in 1978, around the time of their first gigs at Band On The Wall and The Factory. Middles asserts that it was Gretton’s insistence that persuaded him to carry out the interview with this group of hopefuls.[14] The interview is peppered with interjections from Rob, showing him to be as much a member of the band as Barney, Hooky, Steven and Ian.

The interview also touches on the record company interest in the band at the time and negotiations for contracts. The band is portrayed by Gretton as naïve, with him as their protector. As well as the potential signing to RCA mentioned in the interview, and the single re-issue on Rough Trade, Joy Division were originally being courted by Genetic, a subsidiary label under WEA-owned Radar Records. Ultimately, the deal didn't happen, and Rob was more keen for the band to become involved with Tony Wilson’s nascent Factory label. Peter Hook recalls: "The more we went into it the more we realised that it was going to be very difficult to work with these people... Genetic were offering us a lot of money... which was flattering, but so far out of our comprehension that it didn't matter. Rob just decided that the toing and froing with Tony was (a) more interesting and (b) more frustrating, but (c) ultimately more rewarding. He decided it was better to work with someone you could just walk down and get hold of."[15]

Although in the early stages of the band’s development Rob was happy to make use of the press where he could, a later part of his marketing technique, already touched on by Hillegonda Rietveld, was for a mysterious silence to be maintained. This was not just for myth-creating purposes, however. After a couple of “mistakes”, Gretton and the band decided that silence was the better option. "Rob thought the music was such a beautiful notion that he didn't want us daft bastards fucking it up for anyone," says Peter Hook.[16] This technique continued beyond the Joy Division days, to when the band re-emerged, after Ian Curtis’ death, as New Order. Gretton’s managerial nous is celebrated by Hooky in this little aside delivered as part of a faxed Q&A session on the World In Motion website: “In the 80s I was nervous and unsure, I'm not anymore. It was considered as aloofness. I remember Rob Gretton saying to Barney and me keep your mouth shut and everyone will think you've got something to say!”[17]

Another of the few interviews conducted with Joy Division, published originally in Extro sci-fi magazine in 1980, was carried out by Alan Hempsall. Hempsall was later a member of Manchester band Crispy Ambulance, with whom Gretton cut his A&R teeth at Factory. Hempsall interviewed Joy Division and Rob Gretton on January 8th 1980, when the band and Martin Hannett were working on Love Will Tear Us Apart (original version, to be found on the B-side of FAC 23), These Days and The Sound Of Music, in the Pennine Studios in Oldham. This was at a time when the band no longer granted interviews, and Gretton asked Hempsall not to record the interview on tape. Hempsall did his best to take notes and commit what was said to memory. The background to the interview is described by Hempsall as: “Rob screaming his head off and trying to persuade Steve to run over anyone who gets in the way [of the mini-bus]”[18]

Hempsall’s interview depicts Gretton affectionately as the instigator of mock-slanging matches. This is an image reinforced by Mick Middles who describes the way Gretton slammed into Anton Corbjin during New Order’s New York tour in 1983. “Rob ... recalling the darker side of his nature, chose to unleash an unrelenting stream of quite astounding abuse at poor Corbjin ... Even Sumner, not a man noted for sensitivity in such matters, softened into an unlikely conciliatory role ... [but] the abuse never faded.”[19] In a more recent article, published at the time of the FAC511 Memorial Gig, Middles sums Gretton up with these words: “He was a bear. A big 'Ballou' of a man who came complete with a grey streak in his hair and a pair of large glasses that would forever slide down to the tip of his nose. When they reached the bottom, he would slide them gently back up, look you in the eye, and say things like, ‘If you ever call my band a bunch of juvenile Nazi lovers again I will have you buried in concrete.’ ... He was also the only person I ever knew who could lace a sigh with sarcasm. He had bite and could fight. But only if, as I recall from more than one instance, somebody stroked his angst. Old Rob didn't suffer fools and could languish and relax in the most intense of circumstances.”[20]

John McCready suggests that Rob’s dark side was still in evidence later in life, tempered with a black humour: “I remember the time he let me borrow some of his really rare reggae dub records. I had them for ages and was reluctant to give them back. He said he was going to wait until I was away from home somewhere dj-ing and have some dodgy character break into my flat, steal the records back, then brick up my doors and windows. I laughed but Andy Rob[inson] said he was serious.” Not everyone who worked with Rob took his dark humour so lightly, McCready continues: “I remember him calling Jon Dasilva and me in for a meeting. We sat in his office and he told us, because we were putting tracks out for several labels under different pseudonyms, that we were, 'taking the piss'. I just burst out laughing but Jon was really disturbed that he'd pissed him off.”

Over all, though, people remember Gretton with deep affection. McCready recalls: “He was a good host. Always seemed to have someone rolling a joint for him. He had a little kitchen bit at the back of the office there and, once he'd got some conversation going, he’d temporarily disappear then come back with a piece of toast and stand there behind us all, pushing up his glasses and chomping on his toast.” Jane Weaver recalls him as “very caring as well. He’d be like, ‘Who’s carrying that guitar for you? Get your manager to do it’, you know, always looking out to see that you were alright.” For Jane Weaver he was a godfather figure, someone for whom everyone who knew him had a great deal of respect. He may have been a man of few words, but he was one who people in Manchester looked up to and admired.

The ‘benevolent godfather‘ aspect of Gretton’s character is also recalled by Hillegonda Rietveld: “Rob was special. I shared his home for nearly a year, as Mike Pickering's wife, when we arrived from Rotterdam in early 1982. Rob and Leslie [sic] came to Rotterdam for our wedding, just before that. Being foreign and having a different social and cultural background than himself, we had our small differences, but it was with mutual respect - on this basis, he'd declare that I was ‘mad, but good mad’... Even if no-one else cared, Rob looked after me, like a godfather, and for that I love him still.”

Rob Gretton was also a self-effacing man. Reluctant to blow his own trumpet, the only thing people remember him saying about himself is that he had “golden ears”, as Andy Williams of Doves recalls: “’Golden Ears, these, Golden Ears’ – that’s what he always used to say”[21]. He certainly knew good music when he heard it, as John McCready says: “We'd often end up in the office room he had, with those big hi fi speakers and the sofa. He always wanted to play you something to see what you thought - something that was coming out or a new record that had caught his ear. He never stopped listening to new music.” Although his reputation could cause nerves in the acts he worked with. Jane Weaver: “I know that when I was playing him new stuff, I’d be really nervous, sitting on the edge of my seat while he was listening to it, because his opinion mattered to me more than anyone else’s in the office, more than Pete [Robinson]’s or anybody’s.” Jimi Goodwin agrees: “[During meetings], listening to music, our stuff that say we’d just recorded. You’d never really know what he thought. No sometimes he’d say “yeahh its good that” but other times he’d just rub his chin and listen.”

A Joy Division fan, known only as Duncan, who taped many of Joy Division’s gigs, has this to say about Rob’s personality: “A month or so after Ian's death [I first met] Rob Gretton at Rough Trade in London, with six of my Joy Division master tapes. [It] was the Futurama tape that he wanted to hear first. He put on I Remember Nothing and I said he should fast forward to Wilderness as he'd be able to assess the tape better. He just smiled and said "I can tell fine with this track". He handed me a copy of Licht Und Blindheit -Sordide Sentimental and about 6 of those flexi freebies. Rob was a really nice bloke.”[22]

After Joy Division singer Ian Curtis committed suicide in May 1980, Gretton’s role in the Manchester music scene took another route. While he continued managing New Order, becoming seen as the fifth member of the band because of his closeness to all four members, he also sought new challenges.

He became an equal shareholder in Factory Records, began moving and shaking in the world of A&R by persuading Crispy Ambulance to release their second single on the Factory label. He also became involved with Manchester punk-funk pioneers A Certain Ratio (ACR). The band had formed in 1977/8 as part of the punk scene. Donald Johnson, who became the drummer with the band shortly after they formed, had known Rob since the age of 14, both of them moving in the same scene in Wythenshawe. Rob was impressed by ACR’s early live shows, and introduced them to Tony Wilson, who signed the group to Factory and became their first manager. Jez Kerr, bass player with ACR, recalls: “[Tony Wilson] must have been [our manager from the beginning], because when we played the Russell Club he asked us to do a single, “All Night Party”, and from that moment on, he was sort of managing us. But Rob Gretton had seen us play at band On The Wall, and he had asked us to do the gig at the Russell Club, The Factory... [He] also used to dj around Manchester, playing Northern Soul. He was a big dj, lots of people used to follow him in all sorts of things.” Martin Moscrop: “And then when punk happened, he turned into a bit of a punk dj. He was one of those punk djs who dropped reggae tracks into a Northern Soul track and mix it up.”[23] The band themselves always hoped that Rob would become their manager one day. Moscrop: “Rob was a massive influence in everything. It was Rob that always fought for the black music element in Factory. So when Rob got more involved that’s when you would get bands like 52nd St (Derek Johnson’s band), Quando Quango (formed by ex-ACR member Simon Topping and Mike Pickering) you know. He was a total visionary as far as that was concerned. It was him that told Tony about us.”[24]

Quando Quango also featured Pickering’s then-wife, Hillegonda Rietveld, who got to know Rob during a tour with New Order on which Quando Quango were support. Rietveld remembers Rob’s generosity to her as a foreigner trying to make a new home in, to her, an insular northern city: “despite being a foreigner, I had been welcomed into his world, been made an honorary Mancunian, if you like, and had been made to feel welcome in his home.” The early 80s, when Rietveld came over to Manchester from Rotterdam, were an exciting time for the Mancunian music scene. It was at this time that Gretton came up with the idea of establishing a new club in Manchester. The Haçienda.

John McCready tells the story this way, shedding more light on the Gretton persona along the way: “It's 1981. You are Rob Gretton and you have nowhere to go at night. Nowhere at least that suits you - a no-nonsense Northerner with a few bob in your pocket - secretly too arty for tatty pubs and too young for dinner parties. You or I might have gone to night school or taken up crosswords. Rob instead decided to buttonhole a few of his mates who, like him, had recently come into a few bob through this pop music lark - rambling on about an idea he'd had about opening a club.”[25] As McCready goes on to say, the idea was not entirely new. Tony Wilson had already attempted an alternative club with The Factory, held at The Russell Club in Hulme in the late 70s. By 1980, however, The Factory club night at The Russell Club was over. McCready says: “Rob was thinking of a different kind of club. A purpose-built place that you actually owned - not some badly-lit basement that you borrowed off some thug in a camel coat. When asked many years later why he had come up with the idea, Rob, typically flip, would claim he wanted somewhere he could go to ‘ogle birds’.”

Rietveld: “I witnessed first hand the developments of ideas & spaces of the Haçienda since at least 1980. I worked for [Rob] at the Haçienda in the early 80s. I travelled with him on some New Order tours in the early 1980s,  as part of Quando Quango. Thanks to Rob, Mike and I released 4 singles and an album on Factory records (recently re-released). Even when I stopped [working] with the band and stopped working for the Haçienda, Rob made personally sure that I would attend all the parties.”

McCready first met Rob at the Haçienda in 1990. He describes their first encounter as: “just chatting ... having been introduced by someone else. He was always very approachable - very open to conversation. He knew I was a journalist and he seemed intrigued about that.” In the box notes to Retro, the New Order compilation instigated by Gretton but not completed until after his death, McCready explains further: “I was the man who – pissed and hence overly confident when I otherwise wouldn’t/shouldn’t have been – in a booming sweaty Haçienda cornered a bemused Rob Gretton one night and told him that New Order were rubbish... Rob, as would have been the case with almost anyone in the club who might have engaged him conversation, had probably drunk more than I had that evening... As I slurred on, ... Rob, with the kind of Zen tolerance only a real saint could muster, simply nudged his glasses back up his nose and stared out at a thriving acid house-propelled dancefloor. He probably thought I was a twat. Right there and then I was... But Rob let me talk and never reminded me of this conversation during many subsequent discussions about the life-changing music he had had the prescience to usher into view.”[26]

The Haçienda is an important part of Rob Gretton’s story. Dave Rofe, manager of Doves, believes that Gretton’s drive to set up the Haç is his greatest legacy to Manchester and to the music scene in the city: “[He was] THE prime motivator in opening a nightclub in Manchester, leading to the redevelopment of a previously ignored area of town which continues to this day with bars and businesses clamouring to trade close to a well-heeled block of flats called The Haçienda.” You have only to look down from Deansgate station or the Metrolink at the likes of The Comedy Store and Revolution to understand what Rofe is driving at here.

Gretton put a lot of his own money into the development of the Haç, but he also needed the backing of Factory. Effectively this meant Wilson, Alan Erasmus, and the money New Order should have been making off the sales of their Factory releases. The trials and tribulations of the Haç are well documented elsewhere, but it bears remembering that the club was Rob Gretton’s idea, and without him there may arguably have never existed the scene that catapulted Manchester to the forefront of music in the late 80s and early 90s.

While being interviewed about the release of the New Order box set, Retro, in 2002 – a project that Gretton had long dreamed about prior to his death in 1999 – Peter Hook was asked about the redevelopment of the Haçienda site into housing. He expressed sadness at the end of an era but accepted that times change. “All I asked them to do was to put a brass plaque downstairs in the foyer for Rob Gretton... The Haçienda was very much Rob's baby and it needs to be remembered as that.”[27]

The Haçienda-era Rob Gretton is sympathetically portrayed by Paddy Considine in 24 Hour Party People. His performance as Gretton elicited this reaction from Peter Hook: “The guys who played [Martin Hannett and Rob Gretton] looked uncannily like them. It was spooky. Spookiest of all was going to the reconstructed Haçienda club to find the director shooting scenes with 'Ian' and 'Martin'. I turned to Bernard [Sumner, of Joy Division and New Order], and said, 'You know, we're here at the Haçienda watching all our friends have a great night out. The only person missing right now is Rob Gretton.' 'Look over there,' said Bernard. And there was 'Rob' ... It was barmy, but it was nice to feel as if I was seeing those people one more time.”[28]

24 Hour Party People’s director, Michael Winterbottom, adds this: "For people like New Order ... when they came down for the Haçienda night, they just came down for fun, they were, like, really shocked. They felt like they were back in the Haçienda. Paddy Considine, who plays [band manager] Rob Gretton, who's not a public figure at all--they were just shocked that they felt like, 'He's dead isn't he? How come he's back there?' There's only 500 people who would know [Gretton]. But actually they were the 500 people that we were making the film for, so for us it was really important to try and get it right at that level."[29] Jimi Goodwin also has praise for Considine’s performance: “... his mannerisms. Pushing his glasses up and his laugh. Big friendly bear gurgle! That was one thing about 24 hr party people. Paddy Considine had Rob down. Quite impressive for someone who’d never met him.”

Steve McGarry recalls occasional meetings with Rob in Manchester in the early 80s: “I used to see him once or twice a year... We'd meet up for a drink in Manchester ... He and Lesley came to our wedding in 1984 ... he took me into the Haçienda, I'd take him into The Daily Star's offices and drinking with the journalists.”

It was at the Haçienda in 1988 that three former schoolfriends re-encountered each other. The Haç was by then Manchester’s driving force in the city’s obsession with House music, and Jez & Andy Williams and Jimi Goodwin were drawn there each week along with thousands of other Mancunian teens and 20-somethings. Goodwin was playing bass in a band, but the trio soon started to work together on dance tracks, inspired by the burgeoning club scene. As Andy puts it, being interviewed for the band’s 2003 DVD release Where We’re Calling From: “Our big spur, really, for all three of us, getting a record made, was getting on the guest list at the Haç.”[30]

At the same time, 1988, Dave Rofe first met Rob Gretton. Rofe was then drum tech for Donald Johnson of ACR, but was trying to establish his own record label. The label had seen about 3 or 4 releases, but was not quite taking off. “At the time I was on The Prince's Trust benefit program, which meant that if you had a business idea and could raise £1000 then you got £40 a week and didn't have to sign on, instead of what I was getting on the dole (about £24 a week).You could only qualify for this scheme for a year and my 12 months was just about to run out.” Johnson, a long standing friend of Rob’s, advised Rofe to talk to Gretton, warning him that Rob didn't suffer fools gladly and, if he thought what Rofe was putting out was no good, he would soon let him know. “So I phoned him and arranged a meeting round at his house. I told him what I was doing and played him some of the releases I had planned & how I wanted to take it further.” Rofe also explained his financial situation. “I said if he'd fund my label to the tune of £40 a week I'd split the profits with him. He agreed there and then, which, given the fact I'd only met him that day, was pretty good of him to say the least. Over the next year or so I put out a few tunes and he used my label as a platform to release a tune Andy Robinson had been working on with Debbie Anne Turner as 'TOT'.”

New Order, at around this time, found themselves in need of a replacement drum tech for some tv work they were doing, and Rofe stepped in to replace Shan Hira. This brought him into more regular contact with Gretton, and ultimately gained him office space to run his label. “I couldn't afford office space and, as Rob had a large office above The Haçienda, he said I could base myself there, rent free. All I had to do was answer the phones if it got busy.” McCready, by now a regular visitor to Rob’s offices as an employee of the Haçienda, remembers thinking that Rofe was also one of Gretton’s employees: “He would answer the phone, make cups of tea, take messages, all the same things Pete Robinson was doing. But in fact it was only Pete who worked for Rob.”

Rofe has good memories of working with Rob from this time: “...generally just working day to day with him for years, listening to his tales of excess with Joy Division/New Order, [his] pearls of wisdom, etc, was without doubt the best 'work experience' I have and probably will ever know.” He describes the most important thing Rob ever taught him in one short phrase: “Never Peak.”

Around 1991, Rofe got his first taste of band management. “One of the acts on my label started to get interest from record companies in London, and as a result ended up signing with one of them. In order not to be pushed totally out of the picture I started to manage them.” At the same time a good friend of Rofe’s, Phil Kirby, who was the drummer in Yargo, was doing some session work with a local singer called Joe Roberts. The bass player in Joe's band was doing some dance stuff with a couple of mates and the nascent group were looking for management. Rofe: “That's how I met Jimi, Andy & Jez.” At the time, though, Rofe did not assume the role of manager.

A little earlier than this, Rob Gretton had been looking into setting up an independent record label in Manchester. He started with ‘robs records’[31], which he founded after hearing South American dance outfit The Beat Club. Tony Wilson had no interest in releasing dance music through Factory, and passed over the chance of releasing their debut track Security. Rob saw potential in the track, and used his new record label to try to break the tune in the UK, with limited chart success. However, the release of Security created a platform for Rob to release more dance-based music.[32]

ACR had already begun their transition from punk to punk-funk in the 1980s. The band had never achieved great commercial success on the Factory label and in 1987 had signed a major-label contract with A&M. By 1991, however, realising that A&M were no better than Factory at marketing them, the band “came home” and signed to ‘robs records’, releasing Up in Downsville on the label in 1992.[33] Donald Johnson remembers meetings about the album and singles. “We’d go in for a meeting and all sit round, supposed to be talking about the release of the record or something, and then we’d spend the whole time talking about City and football. Stuff we just found funny. Always laughing. Then at the end of the meeting we’d look at each other and go ‘Weren’t we supposed to be talking about the album?’”

In 1991, as well as bringing ACR home, Gretton began his working relationship with the trio who would become Doves. Dave Rofe explains: “As Sub Sub they'd put ‘Space Face’ out through Virgin and were then dropped after playing them the follow up, despite reasonable sales on the first record. Rob had recently started 'robs records', so putting two and two together I played him demo's of tracks like 'Coast' and 'Past' and set up a meeting with Rob and the lads in Dry on Oldham Street.” Bassist Jimi Goodwin remembers: “We met Rob in Dry Dar around 90-91. I forget when exactly, but it was through Rofey who was nearly but not yet our manager. I remember walking in and [Rob] was sitting all the way at the back as that’s where all proper Manc-heads sat. The front was for the Saturday crowd and acid teds from Warrington!”

Rofe continues the story: “The lads were a little apprehensive about meeting Rob as his 'no shit' reputation was renowned, but they hit it off.” Goodwin puts it this way: “I imagine I was quite nervous, didn’t know what he looked like but his reputation preceded him. By that I mean he was New Order’s manager and, shit – he owned the Haçienda!”

Rofe: “I remember Rob starting the meeting with ‘Basically, I don't want to spend any money…..’, and when Rob asked Jimi what he wanted to be Jimi coming straight back with ‘A musician...’ which seemed pretty odd at the time for anyone coming from the dance field, it being computer based & all.”

Goodwin places the “I don’t want to spend any money” speech in context: “I think he’d just spent a lot of money promoting the beat club track ‘Security’, which in my opinion should have been massive, well it already had been in the Haçienda for about 15 months and Rob was giving it the relaunch. I might be wrong but I think that was the first thing Rob put out.” Goodwin also explains about why he told Gretton they wanted to be musicians: “I remember saying, when he asked how we perceived ourselves, ‘We just want to be really good musicians and make great records.’ I could see Andy and Jez cringe as this was and is probably a real uncool thing to say in front of a veteran punk! I don’t know why I said it but it felt right at the time. I cant quite remember what he said to that but he flashed that wry smirk of his and probably said something like “musos heh?”  which we all would have profusely denied!”

Gretton said he would be interested in putting some of their tracks out, but he recommended they get a manager to run the day to day side of things. It seemed only natural for Rofe to take on that role. Andy Williams, the band’s drummer, remembers that “We didn’t even really sign to Rob. It was very much just an agreement, you know, ‘I’ll put your rec... you make the tunes, I’ll put them out.’ Dealing with Rob was very much back to basics, you know, independent kind of spirit... It was just very much ‘If I like your tunes, I’ll put them out.’ And you know at the time with us it was like fair enough. We worked with him for like about 7 or 8 years.”[34]

Their first release on ‘robs records’ was The Coast EP, followed in 1993 by ‘Ain’t No Love (Ain’t No Use)’ which sold around a quarter of a million records world wide and became a number 3 hit in the UK. Rofe: “The timing of this was crucial for Rob, as it turned out, as The Haçienda wasn't on the strongest footing financially and with the money from the record he was able to shore it up for a while. So in a roundabout way I felt I’d repaid his earlier generosity [in giving Rofe free office space].”

With the success of ‘robs records’, which also saw the release of the single Holding Out recorded in Chicago in 1993 by Hillegonda Rietveld with Vince Lawrence, Gretton quickly established a family of record labels, including Pleasure Records and Manchester Records.

Manchester Records was an early home for Jane Weaver in the 1990s.[35] Jane’s band Kill Laura was the second signing to the new label in 1993/4. “I was in a band called Kill Laura and I first met him at a gig, we were supporting Marian at Band on the Wall, and Rob came to the gig. I remember my manager saying “Rob Gretton’s here” and I didn’t know who he was, I mean, I was from Liverpool, why would I know who he was? Rob Gretton? Who? Anyway, he expressed an interest in the band, and was talking to our manager. This was, I don’t know, in about 1993, I suppose.” Rob later met with Jane and band-mate John in Liverpool, where they discussed a record deal over a Chinese meal. Jane remembers not being able to understand everything Rob said, because his Mancunian accent seemed so impenetrable to her.

The record deal was informal at first, taking the form of a verbal agreement. Later, after the first Kill Laura record was released on Manchester Records, the band’s manager and Rob decided that a contract was needed, to make sure everyone was protected. Jane remembers: “We signed the contract a while after the first record was released on Manchester Records. It took ages to sort out, I remember, because Rob’s lawyer or solicitor or whatever, I think he had his office in a shed at the bottom of the garden, and was some sort of a hippy bloke, and our lawyer kept saying ‘Oh their lawyer is taking ages’.” The deal was signed in about 1994, around the time Kill Laura were doing gigs at the Haçienda. Jane was on the label up until Rob’s death in May 1999. “Kill Laura had finished by then, but I carried on as a solo artist on the label. My first solo album was just about to come out when Rob died, so that died a death at the same time, it just sort of got lost.” Jane’s early solo EPs, released on the label in 1998, included “Scream and Shout”, “Cupboard Love” and “Everyone Knows Everyone Else”, which featured the collaborative track “Seven Day Smile” with Doves and a collaboration with then boyfriend (now husband) Andy Votel. Jane remembers Rob teasing her when she first started to see Andy: “We were trying to keep it under wraps, and Rob knew that I really liked him. Andy rang me while I was at the office, and when I came back in Rob was like, ‘What’s up with you? You’ve gone bright red. Who’ve you been on the phone to?’ He wouldn’t let it go, and I just got redder and redder. He just sussed me out straight away. He was lovely. You know, the quiet one in the corner, just observing.”

Jane’s “Starglow” single was released on Pleasure Records in 2000. In the mid to late 90s, Pleasure was seen as a pioneering independent label. Run by Pete Robinson, the label specialised in original, quirky and expressive music.

Manchester Records, Kill Laura’s first label home, was also home to Manchester indie band Gabrielle’s Wish. Jane remembers Rob’s passion for the band: “Rob used to really love Gab’s Wish, he used to love hanging round with them, going to gigs in really dodgy pubs like The Castle on Oldham Street, and I’d be like, ‘Do we really have to go in here?’ But he loved that band.”

The beginnings of Gabrielle’s Wish was formed in 1992 at Clayton Labour Club, but it wasn’t until 1993 that the original full line-up of Robert Corless (vocals), Paul Ryan (guitar), Edward Corless (drums) and Darren Moran (bass) came together. Edward Corless soon left the band to be replaced by Nick Harris on drums, and former founding member Dave “Paps” Peplow (the original bassist) later rejoined as four track tape mixer.[36]

It wasn’t until 1994 that Chris Nagle, producer and assistant to Martin Hannett on Unknown Pleasures, offered to manage the band and carry out production on their recorded output, after seeing them support The Fall at Glasgow Arena. Chris persuaded Rob to come and see the band, and Rob subsequently signed them to Manchester Records.

Drummer Nick Harris recalls in an interview[37] that Nagle “knew Rob Gretton from way back and at some point enticed him along to a gig from which a record deal came with Gretton's new label Manchester Records. Some studio time was pencilled in at Suite 16 in Rochdale (Hooky's old studio) for us to record the cream of our current set. A small cash advance was tendered, with which various items of essential gear were bought (mostly second hand) including a PA and desk, a vintage DX7, a new guitar and amp for Paul, a new bass amp for Daz, a drum machine, and a good second hand kit and new cymbals for myself.” He goes on to say: “Being signed to Rob Gretton's label had some kudos, although I think he was worried that we were a bit too left-field and undisciplined, i.e. not commercial enough... he said we were one of the few bands around who reminded him of the energy of early JD and Happy Mondays.”

The band booked into Peter Hook’s Suite 16 recording studio with Chris Nagle producing and Rex Sargent (The Fall’s producer) as sound engineer. In September 1995, the clear vinyl double A-side “Marooned/Warmonger” with Jane Weaver’s band Kill Laura was released – the first release on Manchester Records.

The release was backed up by a launch at the Haçienda, and another support slot with The Fall later in the year, also at the Haç. Over the next two years, the band released two EPs on Manchester Records and gigged extensively, making Oldham Street’s Castle Hotel their home venue.

Nick Harris quit the band in October 1997, and was replaced by displaced Londoner Steve Paice soon after.

Steve recalls: “I met Rob just after I auditioned for G-wish. I went to The Room, where they made their music in East Manchester. We got on O.K. so the next thing was to meet the Label. So I went to the Haçienda met John Drape and Rob Gretton.”

Steve remembers that Rob was very involved as a record label boss, and would help his acts out by paying petrol and organising tour buses when bands were out on the road: “He was a great friend & boss – didn’t get in the way just helped in the right places.”

Back in 1993, meanwhile, just as Sub Sub were beginning to take off, New Order had all but effectively split up. Taking advantage of the break, Bernard Sumner formed Electronic with Johnny Marr. Steve McGarry remembers going to Marr’s house with Rob and Bernard during the recording of Electronic’s first album: “After I moved to the States in 1989, I'd meet up with him in Manchester and he stayed with me in Huntington Beach for a couple of days in the early '90s. I also remember tagging along with him to Johnny Marr's house in Bowdon to meet Barney when they were recording the Electronic album.”

Gretton was therefore able to form an influential relationship with Sub Sub. Although he is often perceived to have been Sub Sub/Doves’ manager, Gretton was only ever their record label boss. The misconception, according to Dave Rofe, has probably come about because Rob was so well known as Joy Division/New Order's manager that people assumed his role with the band was as manager and not record label boss.

As a record label boss, Rofe has this view of his friend: “[He was] sometimes infuriating, as he spent a lot of time tending to New Order and Haçienda business, but overall [he was] brilliant as you could talk to him about all sorts of music and he'd understand where the band were coming from, aided as he was by his 'Golden Ears'.” Steve Paice adds that: “everyone loved working for him, it wasn’t like work, making music.”

The early promise shown by Sub Sub with ‘Ain’t No Love’ never really came to fruition. First album ‘Full Fathom Five’ was, as admitted by Jimi Goodwin, a patchy affair: “The record was a bit of a disappointment. We’re proud of about half the songs on it – but the rest didn’t come together because we were just finding our feet.”[38]

John McCready also worked with Sub Sub, in partnership with Jon Dasilva, remixing their early tracks. He remembers the time as being an opportunity to get to know Rob better: “When me and Jon Dasilva started doing remixes for Sub Sub and putting records out with Rob I got to know him better. He had a really dry sense of humour but I recall he was generally economical with his language. He just seemed to initiate conversation and then listen.” Jane Weaver has fond memories of Gretton’s wry humour as well: “He was a very funny man, even though he was so quiet. You’d go for a drink with him, and he’d just be taking the mickey out of people... He’d be taking the mickey out of me all the time, you know, ‘Oh, why are you eating that? Don’t you think you need to lose weight?’ that sort of thing and I’d be like, ‘Oi, what do you mean, what about you?’ ”

Sub Sub worked with ACR in the mid 90s, bringing the relationship from Gretton to Donald Johnson, to Rofe, to Jimi, Andy & Jez, via McCready & Dasilva, full circle. The band remixed the ACR track 'There's Only This' at The Lock Up in 1994 for the creation records release 'looking for a certain ratio'.[39]

The burning down of the band’s studio in the mid-90s is now something of a Doves legend. Most of the tapes for the follow-up to ‘Full Fathom Five’ were destroyed, along with recording equipment. Goodwin: “Luckily we had insurance, but it was not a happy time.”[40] Rather than kick it all into touch, the trio decided it was time to take a new direction. There was plenty of support for the band in Manchester. As Jimi puts it: “people there knew we were more than just a disco band.” More importantly was the belief Rob Gretton showed in the band. The result was the formation of Doves. Previous attempts to attract a singer for Sub Sub had failed, and once their new direction had been chosen, the band decided to do it themselves. Jez Williams: “At the end of the day we didn’t need to look for a singer, it was, we could just do it ourselves, you know: the punk, DIY ethic, yeah it’s always there you know, and that’s what Rob Gretton said, and he was right.”[41]

In 1998, New Order reformed. The 'reunion' came about because Mean Fiddler boss and promoter Vince Power had asked Rob at the end of 1997 if the band would be willing to put on a few shows.[42] Hooky: "We'd never thought about getting back together at all. Rob just rang up one day and said we've been offered these gigs, what are you all going to do about it?" The band agreed to get together and, as Morris puts it: “it was like we'd never been away."[43]

Gretton involved John McCready with the band immediately: “He'd get me involved a lot in what [New Order] were doing. It's why I still do stuff for Andy and the band now. If there was a party or something he'd always ask you to dj. It's how I ended up dj-ing on those gigs like the Apollo comeback gig, Alexander Palace and NYNEX.”

The come-back gig was on 16 July 1998, and featured Gabrielle’s Wish as support, and “new” band Doves – the ex-Sub Sub trio of Williams, Goodwin, Williams performing only their eighth gig under their new name.[44]

Having re-emerged as Doves at the beginning of 1998, Andy, Jez and Jimi’s first recording under the name was The Cedar EP, released on their own Casino label. Everything seemed to be going well, with contemporaries like The Chemical Brothers heaping praise on the nascent band. Then tragedy struck again. Rob died of a heart attack in May 99 as Doves were readying the release of The Sea EP and working on their debut album. Dave Rofe: “I last saw him in the office (by then sited round the back of the Boardwalk) on a Friday, just as we learned that there was some problem with getting The Sea EP out from the distributor to the shops, so I was a bit fucked off with it all, said 'Tara' and went home. The next afternoon I got a call to say he'd just died that morning.” Jimi Goodwin says simply of the man: “He was really an amazing bloke; bankrolled us for, like, 10 years.”[45] Speaking to me for this article, he adds: “Rob was lovely. He was hard to read but when you knew him he was extremely down to earth and charming and generous. He was also extremely funny, a proper wind up merchant.“

Jane Weaver thinks of Rob whenever she hears “Sea Song”. “Whenever I hear Sea Song I always cry, even at Doves gigs, I shed a tear, because it just reminds me of Rob.”

Steve Paice recalls the last time he saw Rob alive: “The Thursday before Rob died me and an  ex-girlfriend put on a gig at the Night and Day, with Gabrielle’s Wish top of the bill. Jane [Weaver] went on first [performing an acoustic set] because the band Plastic Gun Alliance couldn’t play. Rob [had] said what about Jane’s band, so I suppose Simon Duffy spoke to her and she decided to play acoustic. This was the last time I saw Rob as he staggered over to Matt and Phred's looking for more beer.”

Rob’s death deeply affected everyone who knew him. As Donald Johnson put it, speaking over the phone, “we are all equipped to deal with life, but none of us are equipped to deal with death.”

In a statement released 3 days after Rob’s death, New Order had this to say: “[We] were shocked and saddened to learn of the death of Robert Leo Gretton. We are sure that all who have dealt with him as a colleague share with us our feelings that we have lost a unique and genuine friend. His loyalty, generosity and the strength of his principles combined with his love of life will remain an inspiration to us all. Our thoughts are with his partner Lesley and children ... at this time.”[46]

Steve McGarry remembers that “Rob told me he'd had some health problems but he was very low key about it and I didn't give it much thought. I think it was Donald Johnson of A Certain Ratio who called to tell me about Rob's death. It was a terrible shock, of course.”

Hillegonda Rietveld was less surprised at Gretton’s premature death: “Rob was not perfect - he was a human being with his own limits. For example, he had a conservative view on health and diet – like, in his twenties, he favoured lots of salted butter on his toast. Combined with a demanding and stressful set of unrecognised job demands, one is not entirely surprised he died prematurely.”

John McCready: “I remember he seemed secretly troubled and strangely silent sometimes... one day quite a few of us [were] talking in the office and the subject got around to the record you'd have played at your funeral. Rob talked about Marvin Gaye's Abraham Martin ... I remember saying, 'Oh, come on Rob, it's not going to happen' etc. When they did play that record at his funeral it really upset me.”

Given the chance to say one more thing to Gretton if he could, Dave Rofe chose these words: “You were right...”

Jane Weaver feels as though she didn’t really know Rob well enough to talk about him in the same way as some of the other people quoted in this article, but his death still affected her deeply: “I only knew him for a short period of time, really. I feel like an impostor trying to talk about him like I really knew him. But when he died, it really hit me like a ton of bricks, because it was so sudden, such a shock. It was really upsetting. He was so young and such a massive character, you just didn’t expect him to, you know. Suddenly he just wasn’t there anymore. It was a massive loss for Manchester. He really was one of the people you just expected to be around forever, like your mum or your dad.” The aftermath of his death had an effect on the community as a whole. The community feeling ended. While Gretton was alive, people would wander in and out of his office, dropping by for a chat. Jane Weaver: “People stopped popping by, me included, I mean I wasn’t on the label any more, I never saw anyone anymore, everyone just went west, you know. It was kind of like an atom bomb went off.”

Steve Paice only knew Gretton for 2 years, but in that time became a good friend of his family. “I would go to Rob and Lesley’s house every Saturday to play drums with his son. Doves gave him a drum kit and I did the lessons. Rob would pay me.” Steve would usually go round to the house in the morning and Lesley would wake Rob when Steve arrived. On the 15th May, Lesley couldn’t wake him and Steve spent the morning with the family waiting for an ambulance. He remembers: ”Me and Lesley and two ambulance men were in the kitchen and they said yes he’s dead. So I had to tell the rest of our friends.”

Everyone who knew Rob feels they learned something from him. Steve Paice recalls: “I always said I knew a lot about music but when Rob was around there was so much to take in and always with a smile. The thing that sticks with me about Rob is he said once ‘always check that things are right, never think that’s o.k.’ – good advice!”

Hillegonda Rietveld: “Loyalty was Rob's most precious quality and it was a quality he rated most in the people he dealt with. Most of his business deals were based on trust - and on intense distrust of outsiders. This may also explain the silence of those who were closest to him during his most politically active days: Lesley, Mike Pickering .... and Rob himself, when he was alive... [He] was a man of principle with a vision. He made things happen. He cared for his friends and family and put a big price on loyalty. A patriarch? Certainly, without a doubt. A naturally born leader, to return to myth making, who seems to me like a Wythenshawe version of Star Trek's Captain Jean-Luc Picard.”

John McCready: “His legacy is, I guess, integrity and humour and a kind of provincial pride which is based on the belief that the North has always produced the finest music in the land. I don't think we'll see the like again.” Jane Weaver agrees that Rob’s legacy for Manchester has been the way that he did things. “It was a brilliant blueprint for people, not going outside of where you were from, not going to London. You know, create an industry of your own up north, why not just do it all here, why go to London? You don’t need to. It’s important, I think, to keep things on your own doorstep. And his generosity, that’s his legacy. There’s not been anyone to replace him.”

Donald Johnson: “He’s not just a legend. He’s a double legend. A legend twice over. He was loved by everyone who knew him. You won’t find a person with a bad thing to say about Rob, and if you do it’ll just be out of jealousy. He was a great man.”

This article is a work in progress. If anyone who knew Rob has anything further to add, please contact me using the Feedback Form on my site.

Attempts have been made to obtain copyright clearance from all published works I have quoted from. If any have been missed, please let me know. Thanks to all who have agreed to let me quote from their work.