Andy Qunta - Factory
I was born in Warrington, England, in 1951, and my brother came along two years later. Our whole family were musical, including our parents and older sisters. We listened to our sisters’ records, Elvis Presley, Buddy Holly etc, and then we discovered Cliff Richard and The Shadows, and all the Sixties music. I got a guitar when I was 12, and Tony started playing the drums. We both went to boarding school, so could only play rock or pop music during the holidays. The first gig we played was in January 1968. We recorded drums and guitar on tape, and sang live over it, adding another guitar and bass, which Tony was playing by then. We didn’t see bands till around when we left school in 1969. Among the first bands we saw were the Jimi Hendrix Experience and The Who.
Qunta on his Baldwin bass.
About this time, we moved to Hastings, on the south coast of England. Tony and I formed our first real band, Static Emotion. By now Tony was playing lead guitar, and I did the singing and 12-string guitar. After a few months we got to know all the local musicians. We jammed with Jaffa quite often. We would have liked to jam Laurie (Lol) Cooksey too, but he was in another band. One day Jaffa happened to bump into Laurie, who said he wanted to form a band with Jaffa and the Qunta brothers. From the first time we jammed, in May 1970, it was magic! We loved each other’s playing and songs, and we had so many laughs!
None of us can remember for sure where the name Factory came from, but Jaffa and I did work together in a kind of factory at the time. We did our first gig a few days after our first rehearsal. We weren’t called Factory yet, I think we called ourselves Jack Plugg, but we lost interest in that name very fast! We played a few gigs early on, obviously not having had time to write new songs, we just played covers of Led Zeppelin, Cream, & The Who etc. We then decided to spend six months concentrating on writing our own songs. We were, and are, an unusual band, as we all write songs separately. We all shared certain influences, especially Genesis and The Who, but each have other influences too. Because of that, I think our sound is different and unique. Also, because Tony also played electric violin, and after I started playing keyboards, we had a lot of sounds to choose from.
Taken in the ‘70s at a haunted old mansion in the band’s hometown of Hastings. Even more eerie is the fact that, when they went back there a few years ago to do more photos, there was no sign of the mansion!
In January 1971 we decided we needed to record some demos to help us get gigs. We recorded four songs, one written by each of us. It was done at RG Jones Studio in south London. (Tony and I had recorded demos there before, while we were still at school, calling our band Velvet Hush. Not sure if Laurie or Jaffa had been in a studio before, but it’s possible). The four songs were recorded and mixed in 3 hours. Gerry Kitchingham, the engineer, said we could put out a couple of the tracks as a single on their Oak Records label. We chose Time Machine and Castle On The Hill as the two tracks. We had to pay for processing, so we could only afford. 100 copies. Those sold out very fast. You can sometimes find an original copy on the internet, but they are so rare they sell for 600-800 GB Pounds now.
After that we concentrated on playing live gigs, and became a really good live band. As years went by, we got to the point we were playing 200 gigs a year, all over the UK, Germany and the Netherlands. We supported many of the big bands of the time - Fleetwood Mac, Spencer Davis Group, Suzi Quatro, Manfred Mann’s Earth Band, Status Quo, The Scorpions etc. In 1972, Roger Daltrey of The Who built a home studio, and needed a band to test it. We were recommended to him. It was fabulous to meet him! He seemed to really like us, and invited us back several times over the next year. In fact he was quoted in music magazines, saying “Factory are really good!” We still have some of the demos we did there.
In May ‘72, Factory supported Stone The Crows in Maidstone, Kent. Fabulous band, and really friendly & helpful road crew, which wasn’t always the way. They suggested the band should get themselves a better PA system, so they ended up buying a WEM system, previously owned by Manfred Mann Chapter 3. Here they are pictured with it a few months later.
We spent so much energy on playing live, we neglected the recording side. When we finally tried to get a record deal, punk was in, and ruled everything. In fact the Sex Pistols had supported us on their 3rd gig. Our kind of music was not what record labels were looking for. We got a bit discouraged, and the band split up at the end of 1976. After that, Tony, myself and Steve Kinch, who had replaced Jaffa on bass when he left in ‘74, decided to form an even more Prog-type band, which became Head On. We had an American manager, and the plan was to move to the USA, but it didn’t work out. We wrote some fabulous music, which we are now working on recording.
Factory live at the Hope & Anchor, London, late 1974. Steve Kinch, Andy Qunta, Laurie Cooksey and Tony Qunta.
I decided if I couldn’t beat Punk I would join it! I joined New Wave star Hazel O’Connor’s band in 1980. Shortly afterwards the bass player left, and I recommended Steve and he got the job. Next, I joined Steve Harley and Cockney Rebel for a tour, and a single produced by Midge Ure. I was recommended for Icehouse, passed the audition, and joined them in 1982. I stayed with them till 1988. We had a lot of success, toured the world, and had hits, one of them, Crazy, I co-wrote. Also during this time I got signed as a songwriter by a publishing company.
One of the songs I co-wrote was You’re The Voice, which became a huge hit for John Farnham. Sometime in 2014, I was talking to Tony on the phone, and mentioned that another band we knew from the ‘70s had just done a reunion gig. Half joking, I said maybe we could do a Factory reunion. Tony said maybe we could ask the other guys what they thought. So we did! Laurie was really excited about it. Steve said he was too busy playing with Manfred Mann’s Earth Band, which he’d been doing since 1985, so we asked Jaffa, and slightly to our surprise, he said yes!
First of all, we spent a week in France, rehearsing and playing a gig, to make sure we still had the magic. It did! We decided that, as we had missed out on recording an album in the past, we should focus on doing that. The next few months, Tony, Laurie and Jaffa rehearsed in England. I’d been living in California for several years by then, so I practiced my parts too. In October 2015 we got together at Harvey Summers’ studio and finally recorded can album. We released it on our own Sumareider Records label. This was a new expert for us, and we didn’t really know how to promote it, but it got good reviews.
Icehouse.
Taking what we had learned from that experience, we recorded another album, Aiming High, with Harvey in 2019. This time we were able to get a much better sound. Also we got signed to Rock Avenue Records USA, and managed to hire some great Publicity Agents. It has been much more successful, and we’ve had several interviews and reviews, and a lot of radio plays. Harvey is now remixing and remastering the first album, Back In The Time Machine, now that we know how to give it an improved sound. We plan to release it later this year.
We are very excited that we are now getting recognition for the band. We wish we could play more gigs, but Covid has made that difficult. Hopefully we can tour again before long. What else have we been doing lately? We all still play and write with other projects. In my case, my 1989 solo album, Legend In A Loungeroom, has just been remastered and reissued by the Melodic Rock Classics label. It includes bonus songwriter demos from the ‘80s/‘90s. I’ve also written songs and music for two stage musicals. One was produced in Bremen, Germany, in 2018. Hopefully after Covid more can be done with them.
