2006 03 Q Classic Morrissey and The Story of Manchester - Part 2 - Tony Wilson

TRIUMPH OF THE WILL

TV presenter and Factory Records guru Tony Wilson is probably as famous as the bands he signed. Andy Fyfe digs beneath the motormouth persona to uncover a thwarted actor with a seam of steely determination.

TONY WILSON IS very much the public face of Manchester. Born in 1950, the former Granada arts-programme presenter found himself at the centre of the city’s rise as the hub of British youth culture after co-founding the Factory label.

He is also the man behind Manchester’s annual music-business conference In The City, and currently runs F4, the latest incarnation of Factory, to which he has signed what he hopes is the future of British hip hop, Raw-T.

Since the original Factory disappeared, Wilson has had his fingers in many pies. He has made documentaries about famous Mancunians and travelling to Peru to take strong jungle hallucinogens, and is now embarking on a new career as a building regeneration consultant. He has long flagged the internet as the future of the music industry, is helping the Western Australian government set up a version of In The City, frets about his son getting a better degree than he achieved - “If he gets a 2:1 then I might have to kill him” - and can never imagine himself tiring of music.

A swift, tangential and fastidiously opinionated conversationalist, his favourite words appear to be “fucking” and “twat”...

Let’s start at the beginning: you’re Manchester born and bred...

No. Salford. I come from Salford - but by the mid-’80s I came from Manchester. Until about 1980, when people asked where do you come from I'd have said, “I come from Salford.” And people would go, “Ah, Manchester.” “No, it’s fucking Salford.” Albert Finney would have said that to you, Ben Kingsley, Alistair Cooke... we come from Salford. In the early ’80s, the word Manchester came not just to mean the centre of Manchester, so I’m quite happy to say that I come from Manchester, even though for many years I would have denied it completely.

What is it about Salford that makes you so full of pride?

It was the working-class city. There is, of course, a romance about being working class. Rock’n’roll is meant to be working class, but it never is. Elvis Presley was working class. The Beatles were all grammar-school boys. I have to accept that John Lydon - after he once had a go at me in a seafood restaurant in Malibu where we bought him 16 seabreezes for lunch - was actually working class.

New Order were grammar-school boys in certain ways, and then you get another burst of real working-class rock’n’roll activity with Happy Mondays and The Stone Roses - which is one of the reasons why they’re not still around, while the nice middle-class boys of U2 and Coldplay do very well.

If you’re middle class, you have a work ethic, where it’s a wonderful job and you work at it and you make lots of money and take it seriously. If you're working class in the music industry, it’s like robbing the bank.

 

Rob the bank, take the money, shove it up your nose and fuck off.

What did your parents do?

My mother bought herself a tobacconist and card shop at the end of William Road in Salford. She married my father in 1948. He was an out-of-work actor, who then began to run the shop.

Were you a typical Cambridge student?

Well, I was a typical late-’60s student - LSD, The Grateful Dead, demonstrations, revolution, rock’n'roll... I had always wanted to be an actor, but at Cambridge I discovered that I was either a shit actor or an OK actor, but I wasn’t a great actor. I really was surprised that by being a reporter I might actually be known.

What’s On, your Granada TV show, was quite wacky. Were you given carte blanche?

Absolutely. The one night they didn’t let me do what I wanted I resigned and walked out. It was during the Anarchy Tour in 1976, on the What's On? music spin-off So It Goes. Roger Eagle from Eric’s in Liverpool rang to say that he had to cancel the Sex Pistols. Merseyside police had been round and told him his licence wouldn’t be renewed if he put the band on. I had a graphic made up saying “What’s Off”, but my bosses said I couldn't use it.

Being what I thought was a professional, I did the show then walked upstairs, tore up my cards and walked out the door. They got me back and made me sign a piece of paper saying, “I’ll do whatever you tell me, because you fucking pay me.” I learned so much from that. People who worked for me, I used to say, “You don’t like this? I understand. Start your own fucking company. I pay your salary, so I can tell you what to do. It’s a tough life but you can also leave.”

What was happening in Manchester between the first flourish of rock’n’roll and punk?

Absolutely fuck all until spring 76, and suddenly things started to happen. A junkie friend rang me up and said, “You have to hear this album Horses by Patti Smith.” Then an envelope arrived with an album sleeve in it - no record - and a note saying, “Dear Mr Wilson, your TV show on music was fantastic, could we have more of this please.” The sleeve was the New York Dolls and the note was from Steven Morrissey, in brackets “aged 14” [Morrissey would have been 16 or 17 at the time] .

I also got a cassette in the post with a note saying, “These are three tracks from a new band from London who I think are wonderful, and I’m bringing them to Manchester on 4 June, to play Lesser Free Trade Hall, yours Howard Trafford.” He later became Howard Devoto.

The band, of course, was the Sex Pistols. Howard is the one who brought the Sex Pistols to Manchester, the one who lit the spark. I think we owe everything to Howard.

And so Factory started...

The thing I remember specifically about starting Factory is that independents are set up to get bands signed to majors. Everyone thinks that punk was all about some anti-capitalist response to the majors, but the Pistols signed to anyone; The Clash’s first single came out on CBS; and Buzzcocks signed to United Artists the night Elvis Presley died. It was all major label stuff until this wonderful distribution network called Rough Trade started, and also Pinnacle, who used to supply Dustbugs.

You say Factory was about finding bands no one else wanted. Who were the bands you didn’t want?

I don't think we missed out on anybody, but the bands I didn't sign that were successful were obviously The Smiths and The Stone Roses.

I thought Steven was going to be our novelist, our Dostoyevsky. In fact I lost a one-act play he wrote about eating toast in Hulme. One day he told me that he was going to be a pop star, and I had to stifle my laughter. Four months later I went to either The Smiths first or second gig at the Manhattan club and was utterly stunned.

The Smiths’ version about not signing to Factory is that Wilson was a cunt, blah blah blah, but my version of the story is that Factory was two and a half years old and a dinosaur. I was extremely depressed about Factory at the time. The first New Order album had sold poorly, and I felt that I couldn't sell the first James single or the first Stockholm Monsters single, and thought my company had lost something. I didn’t know what but I thought it had gone stale and I wasn't going to saddle Steven with a shit record company. And Steven is a nightmare to work with.

And The Stone Roses?

I hated The Stone Roses. I’d seen them in the early ’80s when they were a goth band and badly dressed. Also, they were managed by my ex-wife, my ex-partner Martin Hannett, my ex-protege from the Hacienda, Tim, and the guy who used to run the Hacienda, Howard Jones. Everyone who was an ex in my life was involved with the Roses, so I completely ignored them. One night I went into the Mondays’ dressing room and the drummer, Gaz Whelan, goes, “Hey, Tone, listen to this”, and I’m like, “Fuck, that’s fantastic, what is it?” The whole group go, “Nyah, it’s the Roses,” because they all knew I hated them.

Shaun Ryder seems to be getting respect from all quarters. Why now?

Well, Shaun is the singer of one of the five great Manchester groups: Joy Division/New Order,

The Smiths, Happy Mondays, Stone Roses and Oasis. Also, Shaun has taken more drugs than almost anyone else, and this is a drug town and people respect that. When I went to the Peruvian jungle to take ayahuasca for a documentary, I couldn’t wait to get back and show off to Shaun. I said to him, “I've been taking this amazing stuff, ayahuasca, in the jungle,” and he just goes, “Fucking great, in’t it?” I couldn't believe it. I’m, like, “I went to the far corners of the fucking rainforest to take it, how could you have had it?” “Oh, Bez brought some back from his holidays.”

In Manchester we know that acid house was as big a youth explosion as punk, and everyone is slowly understanding that Shaun Ryder is the Johnny Rotten of acid house, which is a major cultural thing.

Who were Factory’s unsung heroes?

Stockholm Monsters. I didn’t so much underestimate them as not appreciate that they were the Mondays five years early. There’s a Cath Carroll track, Moves Like You, and Reach Out For Love by Marcel King - any other record company in the world could have had a hit with those two songs except me.

So the big question: why Manchester?

Manchester’s always welcomed immigrants, and that openness to outside people is essential as it also applied to outside influences. Which was the one city in Britain that was welcoming Chicago and Detroit house music in 1986-87? Manchester.

The other reason I got was from a guy called Dave Ambrose, an A&R man, who said that Manchester kids have the best record collections. When he said that I immediately flicked to a squat in Hulme in the early '80s, ACR's place or somewhere similar, and there on this floor with no carpet would be 200 albums. In those albums would be the entire Parliament/ Funkadelic catalogue, 20 Brazilian samba albums and German metal-noise albums. In a Liverpool flat you’ll find the entire works of Love, and the White Album. Tra la la. We’ve lost that broadness of shop over recent years because we closed ourselves off and became dance snobs. The real excitement now comes from Yorkshire, which is a bit of a shit.

Such as...

Well, Arctic Monkeys mainly. I think they’re fantastic, the least American-sounding band ever. You could cut steel with those accents.

Do you think Factory could have thrived in today’s market?

Well, the bright group of the 21st century will always sign with an indie and grow with the label. This century the two most significant bands so far, Franz Ferdinand and Arctic Monkeys, have both chosen to go with an indie. The Music, who I tried to sign, chose big money and a major, and look at them.