Andy Warhol’s Factory People is a three-part book. Book I, ‘Welcome to the Silver Factory’ covers the beginning years 1963-1964 and presents in words and photos the true story of Warhol and his entourage of misfits and muses, who found themselves at the cutting edge of New York’s art scene in the sixties.
Chapters in Book I include: Beyond The Beat Generation, The Silver Factory Opens for Business, ‘All Tomorrow’s Parties’, Back to Work, The Triangle…Ondine, Billy, and Gerard, The Movies…zzzzz, Silver Family, and "The Statue of Liberty" poetry by Taylor Mead.
Michael Sand, Executive Editor for Little Brown and Company commented: “Pat Strachan has shared Catherine O’Sullivan Shorr’s Factory People (Book) with me and I great(ly) enjoyed reading (it). There is certainly no shortage of colorful material here and some strong visuals. Catherine’s insider perspective gives it authenticity, and I like her voice in the mix. The oral history approach will set this book apart.”
The different voices in this book are all great storytellers. Whether wickedly funny or acidly bitter, they reveal the different sides of Andy Warhol, public and private. He could be charming and beguiling to some, cunning and manipulative to others. He could be stingy; he could be generous to a fault. Some found him supportive, while others bemoaned his seeming ignorance of the needs of those around him. As Lou Reed (‘The Velvet Underground’) once succinctly put it: “The Silver Factory is not a Mental Hospital.”
Factory People Books I, II, and III span1964 to1968, four crucial years in Warhol’s legacy, and arguably his busiest and most creative period. The Silver Factory era effectively ended with the shooting of Warhol by Valerie Solanis. "The different entourages that dominated the sixties, like Leary’s, or Ginsberg’s, or Warhol’s or Dylan’s, had to do with drugs and people’s attitudes toward drugs." —Victor Bockris, Biographer, ‘Andy Warhol’
