Rob Gretton grew up in Wythenshawe and worked at Manchester Airport while immersing himself in music and football. Before management became his life, he DJ’d and collected records, with northern soul, reggae and Black American dance music among his interests.

On 14 April 1978, at Rafters on Oxford Road, Gretton saw a young Manchester band then performing as Joy Division. Convinced almost immediately, he became their manager. That decision placed him at the centre of one of Manchester’s most important post-punk stories and connected him with Tony Wilson, Alan Erasmus and the emerging Factory operation.

Factory Records grew around a network rather than a conventional corporate hierarchy, and Gretton was one of its practical engines. Joy Division’s Unknown Pleasures and Closer established the band internationally, but Ian Curtis’s death in May 1980 forced everybody around them into a crisis with no obvious script.

Gretton helped the surviving members continue as New Order. Bernard Sumner, Peter Hook and Stephen Morris — later joined by Gillian Gilbert — moved forward without simply recreating Joy Division. That choice opened the way for one of the most important shifts in British music: a post-punk band becoming increasingly absorbed by sequencers, drum machines, clubs and dance records.

Gretton’s own enthusiasm for new Black American dance music was central to that change. Visits to New York exposed him and New Order to clubs that combined live music, DJs and large dancefloors. The idea of a Manchester venue that could work in a similar way became part of the thinking behind FAC 51 — The Haçienda.

The club opened in May 1982. It was designed by Ben Kelly, financed heavily by New Order and Factory, and initially lost astonishing amounts of money. Yet Gretton remained one of its strongest believers. Over time the Haçienda moved from post-punk and live bands toward electro, hip hop, house and then acid house.

That transition is where Gretton’s Hall place becomes unmistakably part of rave history. Mike Pickering later remembered Gretton as both an old friend and a key ally. The club increasingly gave space to DJs who understood imported dance music, and by the late 1980s the Haçienda had become one of the defining institutions of Britain’s house and acid-house explosion.

Gretton’s trips to New York had convinced him of the importance of large warehouse-scale venues and of the possibilities in hip hop and house. He later described the Haçienda idea plainly as a “New York-type club”. That matters because the room was never only a post-punk venue that accidentally stumbled into rave; the ambition to combine bands, DJs and a serious dancefloor was there from the start, even if Manchester took a few years to catch up with it.

For ravers looking back, that long gap between idea and ignition feels familiar. The building can be ready before the crowd is. Then a handful of DJs, the right imports and one generation of dancers suddenly make sense of the whole place. Gretton kept backing that possibility when the balance sheet gave him every reason not to.

His taste also extended beyond the obvious Factory canon. Gretton was a major supporter of Marcel King, bringing the former Sweet Sensation singer into Factory for the electro-soul single Reach For Love in 1984. The record was produced by Bernard Sumner and Donald Johnson and became an enduring Haçienda favourite even without becoming a major chart hit.

When Factory collapsed in 1992, Gretton did not retreat from dance music. He had already started Rob’s Records, initially issuing material connected to artists he wanted to support outside the Factory structure. The label went on to release A Certain Ratio, The Beat Club, Sub Sub and an early Mr Scruff.

Sub Sub’s Ain’t No Love (Ain’t No Use) became a major club and chart crossover in 1993. The group would later evolve into Doves. Mr Scruff, meanwhile, went on to become one of Britain’s most distinctive DJs and producers. Gretton’s post-Factory label therefore became another bridge into the next phase of Manchester dance and electronic culture.

He remained New Order’s manager and was instrumental in bringing the band back together for live work after their mid-1990s break. Rob Gretton died suddenly from a heart attack on 15 May 1999, aged 46.

The scale of his contribution is unusually broad: Joy Division, New Order, Factory, the Haçienda, dance music, Rob’s Records and the careers of artists who came after Factory. He was less visible than Tony Wilson, but the machinery of Manchester music would have looked very different without him.