Futurama 1979: Joy Division, PiL and the Leeds Bill With No Dead Air

Today marks 47 years since Futurama 1 opened at Queen’s Hall in Leeds on 8 and 9 September 1979. It was created by John Keenan, the promoter whose F Club helped provide the infrastructure from which the Leeds punk and post punk scene emerged. Billed as “The World’s First Science Fiction Music Festival”, Futurama is remembered today mostly for a stacked lineup and a legendary Joy Division set. Fair enough. But the detail worth pulling out is a smaller one, and it holds up under scrutiny better than the bigger legend does.

Poster via omegaauctions.co.uk

Keenan built two stages side by side in that old tram and bus depot. While one band played, the next was already line checking on the stage beside it, ready to begin the moment the first act finished. No lengthy changeovers. No dead air. In Keenan's own words, it was 'a unique idea at the time, although it was later copied by lots of other festivals'.

The lineup barely needs the embellishment anyway.

Joy Division. Public Image Ltd. Cabaret Voltaire. The Fall. Echo and the Bunnymen. Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark. A Certain Ratio. Spizzenergi. Scritti Politti. Hawkwind topping the Sunday bill. It reads like a roll call of the entire British post punk movement in one weekend.

Flyer via joydiv.org

Around thirty five acts in total, many still near the beginning of their careers. Keenan has said that, apart from the headliners, he paid the bands fifty quid, a hundred tops. Tony Wilson, of the newly formed Factory Records, hosted the show.

The Saturday night belonged to Joy Division. Dave Simpson later wrote in The Guardian that he went in a Sham 69 fan and left rejecting everything he thought he knew, having realised that music could be far more than entertainment. That set changed the way he understood music and ultimately the course of his life. He was probably not alone.

Photo: Peter Bodenburg via joydiv.org

PiL closed the night at around one in the morning. Lydon spent much of the performance with his back to the crowd, something he later said was an attempt to help drummer Richard Dudanski keep time rather than a deliberate snub. Lydon called it a terrible gig, and Keith Levene later pointed to that night as one reason PiL began playing fewer live shows.

Make of that what you will. It is one of those endings that becomes as much a part of the legend as the set that came before it.

Four more annual editions followed. Futurama 2 returned to Queen's Hall in 1980. The festival then moved to Stafford's Bingley Hall in 1981 and the Deeside Leisure Centre in Queensferry in 1982, before Futurama 5 brought it home to Leeds in 1983. A one off revival took place in 1989. Keenan continued promoting gigs in Leeds for decades afterwards.

Not the birth of the modern festival. Just a bloke with a timber yard delivery and an unusual idea that worked, inside a building where buses were still parked by day, assembling one of the most legendary lineups in post punk history. Even if, at the time, it may not have looked particularly important.

The full bill

Saturday, 8 September

• Public Image Ltd
• Joy Division
• A Certain Ratio
• Cabaret Voltaire
• Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark
• Spizzenergi
• Punishment of Luxury
• Fischer Z
• Stranger Than Fiction
• The Chapter
• Expelaires
• The Edge
• Tymon Dogg
• Invaders
• pragVEC
• The Tunes
• The Void
• The Vincent Units

Tony Wilson hosted the show.

Sunday, 9 September

• Hawkwind, with Robert Calvert
• The Only Ones
• The Fall
• Scritti Politti
• Echo and the Bunnymen
• The Teardrop Explodes
• Nightmares in Wax (later Dead Or Alive)
• Inner City Unit, featuring Nik Turner
• The Monochrome Set
• Roger Ruskin Spear
• Manicured Noise
• Agony Column
• Screens
• E2R
• Teenage Werewolves
• Revelation
• Twist

Thirty five acts across two days, and that is the conservative count. A handful of secondary sources also list a band called Paraad or Parade on the Saturday bill, but it does not turn up in the more detailed contemporary accounts, so it stays off this list until something firmer surfaces.