It was curiously appropriate that on the day of Tony Wilson’s death his
beloved Manchester suffered an earthquake, rocking buildings, shaking doors
and rattling windows. In a way Wilson had done all those things and more to
the city before he died, aged 57, on Friday.
What Brian Epstein was to Beatlemania in Liverpool and Malcolm McLaren to punk
rock in London, Wilson was to acid house and rave culture in Manchester. By
signing – with a contract on the back of his hand - bands such as Happy
Mondays, Joy Division and New Order, he inspired a new musical era and all
that went with it.
Yesterday he was being lionised as the biggest single influence on
Manchester’s regeneration. As a counterweight to Coronation Street, his
bars, Hacienda club and Factory record label helped bumpstart the
loft-living and nightclub scene that changed Manchester’s image from a
gritty industrial city to a cool, happening place.
Even when his Hacienda nightclub had been turned into flats, and musicians had
squeezed him for a last hand-out to fund dissolute lifestyles, Wilson was at
the forefront of life in the city. He was a pioneer of internet radio,
bridging the gap from vinyl to downloading, and helped organise last month’s
Manchester International Festival.
And when he faced death from complications from kidney cancer, he started a
campaign for drugs to relieve the illness to be freely available on the NHS.
“He really was Mr Manchester; he believed in the city,” Stephen Morris,
drummer with New Order, said yesterday.
“He was my hero,” said Tom Bloxham, chairman of Urban Splash, the Manchester
developer behind the city’s loft-living and clubbing renaissance who became
a government adviser. “He was both the focal point and mouthpiece of
Manchester’s renaissance.”
Over the years many people have claimed to have attended the fabled Sex
Pistols gig at the Lesser Free Trade Hall in Manchester in June 1976, though
in fact just 42 people bought tickets. But Wilson was certainly one of those
there and later described it as “nothing short of an epiphany”.
The contemporary history of Manchester music was born that night. Howard
Devoto and Pete Shelley had formed the Buzzcocks to play support, and
another local band named Warsaw would later change its name to Joy Division
(after the prostitute units in Nazi concentration camps).
At the time Wilson was hosting a pop show called So It Goes on Granada
television, which had tended to sing the praises of obscure American
artists. All that changed when he gave the Sex Pistols their television
debut. “I’m very lucky,” Wilson said once. “In my early childhood I was just
vaguely aware of rock’n’roll, I was 13 in the school playground when the
Beatles happened, I was 18 and went to university when the revolution in
drugs happened, and I was 26 and a TV presenter with my own show when punk
happened.”
Born in Salford in 1950, the grandson of a German immigrant, Wilson had been
dissuaded from an early ambition to be a nuclear physicist by seeing a
performance of Hamlet. He graduated with a degree in English from Jesus
College, Cambridge, where he was delighted to be taught in rooms once used
by the poet Coleridge.
He began his television career as a news reporter for Granada and it continued
even as he delved deeper into music. He used the Factory name first for a
nightclub until he and his partners came up with the idea of forming a
record label to release music by groups who played there.
The focus was always on the music and mischief rather than making money.
Albums were usually late and overbudget. New Order’s Blue Monday was one of
the biggest-selling 12in records in Britain, but the sleeve design was so
expensive that the label lost money on every copy sold. It was little
surprise to the music industry when Factory crashed in 1992 with debts of
£2m.
The Hacienda, opened in a former Victorian textile factory in 1982, was no
different. Admission prices were kept low and even though the bar undercut
local pubs many of those drawn to the postpunk guitar music of the
“Madchester” scene increasingly preferred the drug ecstasy. The club closed
its own doors for a time in the face of gun-toting gangs and shut up shop
for good in 1997 with debts of £500,000.
However, the heroic failure of the record label and the club transformed the
mood of Manchester. Wilson said music had helped turn the city from dour
post-industrial decay to a vibrant cultural hotbed.
“I am an enthusiast about other people’s talent,” Wilson said. “My enthusiasm
is my contribution to this love you see around us. It is almost impossible
to remember 1975, how awful music was and how awful our industrial cities
were.”
He never took himself too seriously, however. When the story of Madchester was
turned into the movie 24 Hour Party People in 2002 Wilson added to his own
mythology by falsely claiming that he had signed the recording contracts
with Joy Division with his own blood.
But as Morris, the New Order drummer, said yesterday: “Signing up didn’t apply
to Tony. There were no contracts at all. All deals were done with a Biro on
the back of his hand.” Posters for the film showed a photograph of Ian
Curtis, lead singer with Joy Division who committed suicide in 1980, with
the caption “Genius”. Beneath an image of Shaun Ryder of Happy Mondays was
the accolade “Poet”.
The poster of the comedian Steve Coogan who played the part of Wilson in the
film bore the label “Twat”. Wilson approved the campaign. “I found it very
funny,” he said.
WHEN Wilson fell for Yvette Livesey, a former Miss England 18 years his
junior, in 1991 they became the city centre’s original loft-livers, setting
up home in a cavernous two-sto-rey conversion of an industrial building at
Knott Mill. Together they formed In The City, a music industry conference.
Wilson became a campaigner for devolution in the northwest. Friends believe he
would have liked to have become a sort of northern Ken Livingstone. “I
strongly suspect his ambition was to become prime minister of Manchester,”
Morris said yesterday.
Livesey was at his side when he underwent emergency surgery last January to
remove a cancerous kidney, which was followed by chemotherapy.
It failed to beat the disease and doctors recommended he take a pioneering
drug called Sutent, but the NHS in Manchester refused to fund it. It was a
tribute to his popularity that Wilson’s showbusiness friends, including
members of Happy Mondays, a band notorious for their drug abuse, raised the
£3,500 a month he needed for the treatment.
In his last days he found a new mission, campaigning on behalf of others who
did not have wealthy friends and were losing out on the treatment.
Last month he said: “I used to say some people make money and some people make
history – which is very funny until you can’t afford to keep yourself alive.”
He was fortunate to have made history and to have had friends who could help
him; but they in turn say they were fortunate to have known him.
The sound of the city
Joy Division Rather joyless group who took their name from the Nazis’
sick description for women used as sex slaves in concentration camps. The
band was a mainstay of Factory Records until singer Ian Curtis, who wrote
their biggest hit, Love Will Tear Us Apart, hanged himself in 1980.
Happy Mondays Led by Shaun Ryder and Mark “Bez” Berry, former devotees
of ecstasy. Wilson once described Ryder as “the greatest lyric writer” since
Dylan. Few would agree. Wilson attempted to instil some degree of temperance
into Bez by quoting passages of Proust at him.
His efforts were met with “F*** off, Tony.”
New Order Born from the ashes of Joy Division after Curtis’s
suicide with another name appropriated from the Nazis. Their deal with
Factory Records gave them 60% of royalties, unheard of in the music
business. Recorded World in Motion, England’s 1990 World Cup song.
The Stone Roses Launched their career in the Hacienda club, which was
part-owned by Wilson. Their T-shirts read: “And on the seventh day God
created MANchester”. Their song Waterfall became one of the anthems of the
Madchester sound.
