Tony Wilson, RIP.

I live in the Hacienda apartments. Early yesterday morning someone threw a load of different coloured paint over the front of the building, I'm guessing as a Pollocky-type tribute to Wilson. There's a bunch of bouquets and posters and poems and single red roses all around the outside. We took some pictures of it and of the tributes.

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1048/1104605796_54bccae20d.jpg

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1422/1103675345_7f48550c1b.jpg

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1354/1104595314_49ebe70477.jpg

We filmed a bit of it too and literally 10 seconds after turning the camcorder off the heavens opened and a massive storm erupted, washing all the paint away. So thems probably the only pics you'll see of it looking like that.

Holy shit, are you kidding? Is that what it looks like now? Or is that somewhere else than the real Hacienda building?

That's a great story, NI -- wow. There, gone again. He probably would have liked it.

he would have fucking loved it, i'm sure. thank you, NI.

(also, woah, you live in the hacienda, etc.)

It kinda reminds you of the sleeve of Bummed doesn't it?

i doubt conor mcnichols has even heard of him.

To be fair, he wasn't born when 24hpp came out.

very sad. RIP.

I'm a latecomer to really understanding Tony Wilson's influence due to my relative youth, etc. and it's only in the past year or so after reading some interviews that I've started to see him as a person and not some larger than life character from 24hpp.

When I found out that not only had some friends seen the Happy Mondays at Coachella (and not really known what to make of it) but had seen Tony Wilson introduce them I was kind of at a loss of how to explain his importance. I really have less than a decade of listening to Factory releases with direct interest, how do I convey that to someone else?

but had seen Tony Wilson introduce them

as an aside: have you all stopped for a second to consider the irony that it's wilson who's in the fucking wooden box, not shaun ryder?

i bet he outlives the lot of them :)

Nah man, it'll be Bez who outlives them all.

Nobody has mentioned him being the first guy to put the Sex Pistols on the telly, so i will. RIP AHW.

Nah man, it'll be Bez who outlives them all

hah, i can see bez and ryder in the nursing home now. "fuckin' 'ell, X, man, i've had sixteen beta-blockers and a triple bypass this mornin' and i'm fuckin' feelin' nowt, man."

"that's 'cos yer brain's died, bez."

"mental!"

In the adjacent cot, MES with a plastic bag full of lyric scraps on his chest.

Or is that somewhere else than the real Hacienda building?

They knocked down the Hacienda to build the flats, didn't they? Whitworth Street looks a lot cleaner than when I was last there, in 1996 (leaving the Hacienda in the small hours of a Wednesday morning, I believe).

i thought part of the facade had been incorporated into the new thing? wishful thinking, i guess.

Everything you've written here and there has been a joy to read, Grimly.

OMG nursing home HA.

Doesn't look like it from the photo, though I can't really remember what the outside looked like it. My eyes were usually on the pavement (due to rain) or on the kebab shop along the road (due to bouze).

(x-p)

/imagesnohotlink.jpg :-(

suzy, thank you. that means a lot.

i'm surprised, in some ways, how well i've managed my emotions. it sounds daft -- i only met the dude once and spoke to him on the phone no more than two or three times, and i very much doubt he'd have remembered me without vigorous mental prodding -- but i'm not exaggerating when i say that he had an enormous, profound effect on my life, and i was absolutely fucking devastated when i saw ned's note on friday. devastated.

when i was 17, and working for the DSS (yes, "working for" ... i know, ever the contrarian) during the summer after leaving school in blackpool, a slightly older bloke in the office said -- less unkindly than he might, i should add -- something along the lines of: "i've worked out who you remind me of. it's that cunt tony wilson. you talk the same shit and do all that daft stuff with your hands."

and i was absolutely fucking delighted ;)

right now, i can't really think of anyone else i don't actually know who's shaped me quite as much. i guess he made me realise -- i think there's a wilsonism about this somewhere, and i should probably have worked it into the obit -- that being pretentious, even a pretentious twat, isn't necessarily a bad thing.

sometimes.

certainly, "factory cool", for want of a better phrase, was a very welcoming cultural umbrella for me and a few friends; a way of expressing ... i dunno, of taking the quotidian basics of north-western-english life (red bricks, drugs, uncommonly good music) and saying, look, this stuff actually matters. it might just be a record, or a club, or a night out, but in its own way it is art and it is as culturally valid as anything else you, or anyone else, might have to offer. so fuck off.

it's all the little things. it's not like i've spent my life modelling myself on tony wilson. (no, really.) and, obviously, in these few days after his death i'm going to find significance and resonance and "meaning" where perhaps it doesn't really exist. but what i said in the obit is absolutely true: without wilson, and without factory, i wouldn't have embraced anything -- music, art, journalism, the simple notion of going out and having fun -- nearly as hard.

some of it i might have missed altogether.

ach. enough. i have work to do. i am delighted, however, that so many people here care(d) so deeply; that, around the world, people miss the bastard deeply.

Sir, your words really say it all. And we all thank you. :-)

genius wilson quote -

"in the north west it rains and it rains and it rains and yet we managed to produce the industrial revolution, the trade union movement, the communist manifesto and even the goddam computer and down south where the sun never sets, you took all our money and what did you produce? chas and fucking dave."

so, tony wilson, keith allen, derrick may and marshall jefferson are sat in a room -

http://dewit.ca/archs/JD/New_York_Story.html

can ysi an episode of 'so it goes' from '76 if anyone wants it.

rip

Brilliant thread, this.

And it is gratifying to see his life appreciated by people from all over. I'm a Vancouverite through and through nowadays, but at heart I'm still a Manc, and Wilson (to me) personified that weird mix of self-regarding and self-deprecating shyness/swagger so typical of the good people of Grtr M/cr.

http://blog.fawny.org/2007/08/12/fac461/
'The foundation of graphic design at Factory Records had two parts: Tony Wilson’s belief that quality should almost never be compromised and the simple rigour of numbering everything. The original poster for the first “Factory club” show was FAC 1; the first record was FAC 2. And not the other way around, because the poster came first.'

Unfortunately most of my knowledge about Tony Wilson comes from 24 Hour Party People, which served as a great influence amidst my teenage hood, which, due to my relative lack of years, cemented my love for Joy Division, The Mondays and a brief infatuation rave era music. I feel at loss, because my knowledge of his life outside of 24HPP is rather limited (I will watch it with the TW commentary soon though) and almost all of that knowledge was about what an asshole he was, or how much people disliked him, heh. Nevertheless, I am furthermore at loss because in reflecting on his life I'm yet to really articulate in my mind the impact and grandeur accomplishments he held, I mean, look at the Factory back catalogue, the impact of the Hacienda, Madchester; he's carrying behind a legacy, to have such a wide reaching impact in such short time is inspiring, and so much of it just comes all back to him. RIP.

it was always northern irony/distance. No one actually hated TW. Well, some must have, but not the ones saying that.

Guess that sort of 'appreciation' doesn't cross waters.

As with the Peel tribute thread, this is also moving and full of some great stories, thanks all of you. I was very sad to hear about his cancer, and saddened further to hear of his passing.

I wonder if he's up there seeing god, and finding he looks like Tony Wilson? :D

I didn't think I was going to cry.

here is 15 minutes of a 1976 episode of tony's 'so it goes' featuring jerry lee lewis, clive james, peter cook and the first ever tv appearance by the sex pistols.

Newsnight story with Morley, Saville, and Morris

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_rlFwScEjUk

Q: "Do you have any regrets?"

TW: "Yes. I never went to Barbados with the Mondays. It sounds like it was excellent."

Factually incorrect obitpile of wank from the Telegraph

RIP Tony. Every crane in Manchester wouldn't be there without you. Hell, you even got Man City a new stadium, in a roundabout way.

jesus. that is a really bad piece of writing, by someone who doesn't actually get what wilson, factory or the past 30 years were about at all.

that said, i do love the way the "signed in blood" thing is going to pass into history as fact :)

xpost to the factually incorrect..

Well, so much has been oft repeated, it's no wonder it's now taken as fact. Apart from the 'signed bands contracts in blood on napkins' like he has a special fountain pen for that reason, it's not that bad (although smacks of 'cribbed from everyone e;se's articles')

The "Blue Monday" losing 2p for every copy.. No, they changed the design of the sleeve for subsequent pressings. There's loads without the different inner sleeve colour and the cut-out hole.

and so on.. NME has a 2 page tribute 'put together at the last minute', I guess Mojo and Uncut will have bigger ones.

Well, so much has been oft repeated, it's no wonder it's now taken as fact

yeees ... and that was the point i made at the very start of mine, ie "some of this might not be 100% fact". even his degree result ... wikipedia says a third, 24HPP (which is hardly a statement of record) a 2.2. i went with the latter because it allowed me to use the "end of time" quote.

but i think the point about that telegraph obit is it just feels like it's missed the point: that it doesn't understand the whole blurring of man and myth, of businessman and bollocks.

i'm reading the rest morley's stuff now; first chance i've had.

what's struck me is the fact that two or three phrases -- eg the twinkle in eye stuff -- are exactly how i wrote it, too. okay, it's not much of a coincidence. but still. i'm a) proud and b) bothered that people will think i've ripped it off. i promise that the only morley thing i'd read before i wrote mine was the smaller of the two guardian pieces ;)

coo ur gosh, etc.

("mixing fact and fiction to produce the truth of history", morley calls it. this is dead on. this observer piece is also truly, truly fantastic.)

(although smacks of 'cribbed from everyone e;seGrimly's articles')

fixed.

I've hard Wilson complaining about his 2.2 elsewhere - I'm fairly sure I read it the summer I got my 2.2... Something along the lines of "a third at least suggests you were out partying for the duration or had better things to do than go to the lectures; a first says that you're brilliant, a 2.1 that you're brilliant but a bit lazy. A 2.2 is nothing."

A splendid and handy compilation of AHW YouTube clips here:

http://www.thetripwire.com/news/2007/8/13/video-all-things-tony-wilson

xpost I'm sure that's in his book at the end, about how he's getting his kids through uni.

basically you want a first or a third -- the rest is bullshit.

desmond.

Great to see that Newsnight clip at last, though I had the unalloyed pleasure of the Pinefox doing all the Morley bits word- and rhotacism-perfect in Highgate on Saturday.

[thoroughly enjoyable use of the word rhotacism, Michael]

marcello, brilliant as ever; http://cookham.blogspot.com/2007/08/liberation-doesnt-have-to-hurt-tony.html

I'd refer him to my comment re Blue Monday losing money above, if he were here, but hey.

and he'd probably tell you not to fucking try it.

happy days.

that's a fantastic piece by marcello. i've just skimmed it there; i shall read it properly anon. thank you for the link, acrobat.

i miss marcello round these parts. hey ho.