2006 03 Q Classic Morrissey and The Story of Manchester - Part 3 - Vini Reilly

Lost Inside

Vini Reilly, Factory's delicate guitar genius with the dark past, has endured illness, penury and Morrissey's whims to create 20 extraordinary albums. By Ian Harrison

VINI REILLY WAS in a bad way in 1979. “I was seriously depressed,” says the famously fragile guitarist today, “I was desperate to eat and be well, but I’d been wrongly diagnosed with anorexia and put on medication that completely did me in. I lost all sense of the real world... over the next couple of years, psychiatrists would try to have me sectioned 12 times.”

At such a juncture in a musician’s life, few record companies would see fit to send them into the studio. The newly birthed Factory Records was such a label. For two days in spring, producer Martin Hannett would roll up to a house on Pytha Fold Road in Withington in his Volvo, to convey the guitarist and his Les Paul to Cargo Studios in Rochdale. En route, Hannett would talk of subatomic particles and quantum theory, while Reilly would wonder who, if anyone, would want to listen to his music anyway.

The album they made together,The Return Of The Durutti Column, was one of the definitive early Factory releases. Packaged in a sandpaper sleeve — a nod to Situationism that was intended to knacker any record it was stored next to - it contained nine meditative guitar instrumentals, with electronic beats and ambience provided by Hannett. In the context of post-punk, it was, and remains, a most satisfying enigma.

It would be the first of more than 20 albums in a career that is ongoing. And all because Tony Wilson had faith in what Reilly himself calls “a dysfunctional guitar player who could barely speak”. “Wilson always backed him,” says Bruce Mitchell, Durutti drummer for more than a quarter-century. “One thing he’d say to Vin was,‘This isn’t your music! You’re just the conduit - from God.’”

WHO IS THE BEST guitarist to come out of Manchester? Johnny Marr? John Squire? Noel Gallagher? For those who know The Durutti Column, there is another choice -Vini Reilly. His most visible endeavour is probably playing on Morrissey’s Viva Hate in 1988, though his name was mysteriously removed from that album in 1997. Look beyond this, though, and a remarkable underworld of beguiling music exists.

If Manchester bands are often given to a certain swagger and directness, The Durutti Column are cut from different cloth. Reilly seems to be a man engaged on a deeper struggle with life than most of his contemporaries, with an independent sensibility and a distinct sound that intertwines tragedy and joy. Played with the improvisational freedom of jazz, his music takes in the blues, flamenco, funk, African and classical styles, and more; there are songs played on solo piano, dance tracks and rock. Reilly readily admits his admiration for Jimmy Page and Hendrix, but other influences, such as pianists Art Tatum and Fats Waller or Romany guitarist Django Reinhardt, predate rock. Fittingly, if you revisit the Durutti canon at random, songs recorded decades ago sound freshly minted. The Red Hot Chili Peppers’ John Frusciante calls him “a great guitar player, full stop”. Ian Brown says, “Beautiful music. He’s a genius.”

Put this to Reilly, however, and he declines to comment, believing that none of his records has successfully translated the impulses that led to their creation.“You can over-analyse stuff, I think,” he says, sat in favoured spot the Oklahoma Cafe, in Manchester city centre’s ‘Northern Quarter’. “If a piece of music stirs an emotion or has a resonance, just accept it.You don’t need to look for anything else ”

It seems Reilly is not the tortured wraith of legend. He’s a charming, softly spoken man, smartly dressed in new grey jumper, jeans and brogues. With his hair dyed a convincing black, he could pass for 15 years younger than his real age, 53. His voice, quiet at first, grows in strength and timbre as he talks, becoming particularly animated when speaking of the power of music.

This has been the constant theme of his life. When he was growing up in south Manchester, his dad, Frank, wouldn’t allow TV or pop music in the house, raising his kids on a continuous soundtrack of classical, jazz and opera. “I didn’t even hear pop music until I was 16,” says Reilly. “I was at a friend’s house and he played Abbey Road. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing; I spent a day and a night just listening to it.”

In 1960, Frank Reilly’s observation that his son could play Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata by ear, in its correct key of C sharp minor, led to a prolonged period of guitar tuition for the young Vini. His German-Jewish instructor, Mimi Fletcher, taught him classical techniques, and more importantly, not to be shy of writing his own music.“If there’s seven people in a small council house and no money, you find it hard to get your voice heard,” reasons Reilly, whose other interests included ju-jitsu and football. “So you go inward. I did, and found my release playing guitar.”

After his father died, conflict with his elder brother, also called Frank, caused the teenage Reilly to absent himself from the family home for extended periods. Lawlessness began to manifest - he speaks of “serious street violence and having guns pointed at me” - but his music did not desert him. After some detours into folk and jazz, he ended up in the mid-’70s playing with Wythenshawe hard rockers Wild Ram. As for so many others, the coming of punk necessitated a rethink.

“The band were already punk really, because they were so wild,” he recalls.“So, just get your hair cut and look it. And I made up what I thought was the most stupid punk name imaginable.” 

Ed Banger And The Nosebleeds became known for their almost suicidally confrontational shows, where frontman Ed would provoke the crowd into violence. The Nosebleeds’ sole single, Ain’t Bin To No Music School, released on local indie Rabid, would become an essential Manchester punk purchase. An appearance on local news programme Granada Reports would, sadly, fail to deliver fame (the full saga can be seen on John Crumpton’s film The Rise And Fall Of Ed Banger And The Nosebleeds). Dismayed at how quickly punk had turned into an orthodoxy of its own, Reilly left after six months. It was 1977.

By the beginning of the following year,Tony Wilson and Alan Erasmus were taking the first steps in building the Factory label. They just needed some bands. In The Durutti Column — named for the anarchist Buenaventura Durruti, who fought in the Spanish Civil War and was adopted as a symbol of resistance by the Situationist International in 1966 - a band existed, though it was still in need of some members. Following a doomed experiment to engineer a five-piece group, they decided to stick with Reilly. Wilson would manage him for the next 20 years.

“As soon that first album happened, it got to have a momentum of its own,” muses Reilly.“I couldn’t stop it then. It was a joke, though, really. I couldn't tour, I could only do gigs with a backing track made in Martin Hannett’s flat. Until I met Bruce.”

A one-time Moss Side bebopper, now 65, Bruce Mitchell started his musical life drumming along to jazz records. Though Reilly remembers engaging Mitchell in conversation about the band Suicide at a bus stop in the ’70s, the two would first play together in 1981 on the single Danny/Enigma.

“He just came round to the house and asked me,” recalls Mitchell.“In those days, Vin would sit opposite the drumkit and say, ‘This is how it goes,’ and you would play along. Then you’d record it. And then it was on to the next one!” 

Mitchell had admired Reilly’s playing after seeing an early Durutti show at Rafters in 1978, finding himself thinking how he would have played had he been onstage.

With 1981s LC - a refining of the first album’s bittersweet melodies with added rhythmic dynamism and, for the first time, vocals - the Reilly/Mitchell partnership was on its way. In the following years, vocalists and musicians, including trumpeter Tim Kellett and viola player John Metcalfe, would pass through the ranks, as albums found regular release. In the early ’80s, a myth of sorts would grow up that these recordings were the ultimate in suicide music.

Reilly cringes at the suggestion. “I’m not depressed when I’m recording it, mostly,” he says of his illness, which he confides was later diagnosed as a post-traumatic stress reaction, dating from his times living outside the law. Does he feel his medical condition, which continued to threaten his career, defined his music? “You can’t separate your creative process from your life,” he counters. “It’s a two-way mirror: my life’s determined my music and my music’s determined my life.”

“When we were in Japan the first two times, those sort of fans would write letters,” says Mitchell, “but the sentiments were,‘You saved me from topping myself.’A positive thing, I’d say.You can tell that these people are quite disturbed, and they’ve needed it, at that time. I don’t think it’s miserable. I think it’s life-affirming.”

REILLY’S MOST high-profile collaborator was another Manchester musician who had been accused of unhealthy levels of maudlin. After the Smiths split, producer Stephen Street contacted Reilly to play guitar on Morrissey’s first solo album. “I really enjoyed making Viva Hate,” he says. “Afterwards, Morrissey approached me to write the music for his second album, and I said I would if we could do something like Patti Smith’s Radio Ethiopia. He said yes and then he said no, so I declined. If we’d made that second album, I think it would really have been something extraordinary. Would I do it again? Definitely.”

It’s tempting to imagine Morrissey singing on songs from the next Durutti album, 1989’s superb Vini Reilly. Released the following year, it used voice samples from such varied sources as Otis Redding, Annie Lennox and opera singer Joan Sutherland to remarkable effect. Incredibly, although all the samples were listed on the sleeve and none was cleared, no legal redress has ever been sought. This and the albums that followed continued to sell to a modest but loyal fanbase in places such as Portugal, Japan and parts of America. Durutti were the de facto house band of Factory, and Reilly was well looked after. They made sure his bills were paid, never expected much in the way of promotion and allowed a creature of habit to do pretty much what he liked, even after the old Factory went under in 1992 and Reilly went with Wilson to Factory Too. In retrospect, he’s ambivalent about this freedom.

“I look back on those years and don’t think I achieved anything,” he says carefully.“For a long time I was smoking strong weed, constantly. When you’re stoned all the time, you lose all perspective and momentum and time just evaporates. I enjoyed it, but I can’t remember much of the ’80s at all.”

IN 1998 HIS safe area crumbled, dramatically. The Inland Revenue took revenge for unpaid tax and Reilly lost his home. The same year, he parted company with Wilson.

The story didn’t end there. Since 1998 there have been three albums, a best-of collection and several compilations of archival material. Live dates are more frequent, though Mitchell is still wary of his partner suddenly becoming incapacitated. “Take him out on three or four gigs and you can see weight coming off him,” he says. “But once he gets to the stage and the guitar starts, you know why you’re there. You’re playing inside a piece of music, songs you’ve been playing 20-odd years, and it keeps on showing you new things... He lives and breathes it, all the time.”

Of the former Factory acts, none has creatively sustained as well as Reilly, who has since reconciled with Wilson and declares himself well and positive about the future. “I haven’t got one solitary regret, not one,” says the man whose latest album is aptly entitled Keep Breathing. “I’ve spent my life doing the only thing I wanted to do, by the good grace of others, because Tony believed in me and he gave me my musical life. And, I’m still here. Doing ju-jitsu taught me that if you stay down you’re gonna lose, so always get back up again. I’m making a second attempt at a career now, to finally make an album worth the plastic it’s pressed on. I’ll get there, one day.”