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Critically-acclaimed and bestselling author Paul Morley's long-awaited biography of Factory Records co-founder and Manchester icon Tony Wilson. Morley’s biography is as illuminating on Wilson’s strange ability to hold others in his orbit, even after his death, as it is on the story of his life.’
To Paul Morley he was this and much more: bullshitting hustler, flashy showman, aesthetic adventurer, mean factory boss, self-deprecating chancer, intellectual celebrity, loyal friend, shrewd mentor, insatiable publicity seeker. It was Morley to whom Wilson left a daunting final request: to write this book. Just because couples need to spend the most romantic night of the year at home in 2021, doesn’t mean they need to cancel Valentine’s Day all together. Funds raised by this compilation will go directly to We Love Manchester emergency fund, run by the British Red Cross in tandem with Manchester City Council.
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In terms of my generation, I’m a fan of that disruptor, rather than the Happy Mondays associate and the guy who set up the In The City conference. In the 1990s, he had this moment where he went for power, in a more conventional sense. That’s interesting in the overall structure of his life, yes, but I was more interested in him creating himself as a kind of work of art. The guy who had Factory Records but also worked on the telly, and in both of those ways was smuggling ideas, content, and connections to people.
It took Morley 10 years to complete this book and there’s a lot in it. Fifty-one chapters, three sections: the central, shortest part is, cleverly, about the Sex Pistols’ 1976 gig at Manchester’s Lesser Free Trade Hall, the one attended by around 40 people, whose lives were changed because of it. Morley was there. Wilson said he was there, too, though Morley doesn’t remember him. It doesn’t matter. Morley has a way with a list, and starts each chapter with one that describes Wilson at that moment In the way that sometimes happens when reading books, I found that during the weekend I was reading the section about the zenith years of the late 1970s and early 1980s, I began behaving slightly more iconoclastic or bloody minded in situations. Thankfully this wore off after a few days, but I started to think that this was probably Wilson’s biggest talent. The ability to – and I don’t mean this in a sentimental way – inspire people into action. To draw things out in people. That’s an underrated, and potentially harmful, gift for a person to have. I thought it was revealing when Vini Reilly described the Durutti Column as just music he made for Tony to drive around and listen to. There was never a moment where he said, oh, write my book. It would be more… rumours. I knew he desperately didn’t want him writing my book, or him writing my book, so it was through a process of elimination that I was the last man standing, and the only one prepared to take him on. Tony Wilson was a man who became synonymous with his beloved city. As the co-founder of the legendary Factory Records and the Hacienda, he appointed himself a custodian of Manchester's legacy of innovation and change, becoming a cultural pioneer for the North. To Paul Morley, he was this and much more: bullshitting hustler, flashy showman, inventive broadcaster, self-deprecating chancer, publicity seeker, loyal friend. It was Morley to whom Wilson left a daunting final request: to write this book. Morley's biography is as illuminating on Wilson's strange ability to hold others in his orbit, even after his death, as it is on the story of his life.'
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He can be a broadcaster but it’s still not the same, because it isn’t combined with these other odd things. Now, we can see that it’s leading up to his life coming to an end and we can see the shape of it. Every time I had a conversation with him he was always grumbling about talking too much about the past, he wanted to talk about what he was doing, what he was up to. There was a tragedy about him, to some extent. All of his contemporaries in broadcasting went onto become world leaders in broadcasting – including many people he’d given their first chances to. Tony stays at the same level as a broadcaster, as much as he’s got this grandness about him. He isn’t seen to have developed. He could have become a Jeremy Paxman in one area of his life, but he sacrificed himself for this dual existence. Factory pulled down Granada, and Granada pulled down Factory. force of personality. In the cultural theatre of Manchester, Tony Wilson broke in and took centre stage. There’s a chapter called ‘Be Careful What You Wish For’, and that’s applicable in Manchester. A lot of what has happened to the city is not Tony Wilson’s fault, but since the destruction of the modernist 1960s city and its replacement by something else entirely, a lot of Wilson’s contradictions are now Manchester’s contradictions, which is summed up by the experience of standing in Tony Wilson Place.
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