Mancunian Blues
Created | Updated Aug 23, 2007
Tony H Wilson
My friend was in a film, you may have seen it. It was called 24 Hour Party People, it was about a news reporter turned who returned Manchester to being one of the major music cities in the World. My friend is credited as being a goth.
I have another friend, she used to work in Manchester City Centre and used to see this man around every week or so. She wasn't a fan of him personally, something that she had in common with many people, but still, I think she was well aware of the influence that he has had on her city.
He was Tony Wilson. Or Anthony H. Wilson. I used to split the difference and refer to him as Tony H. Wilson. I don't know what the H stands for and even though, through the wonders of countless search engines and a broadband connection, the answer is just a few clicks away, I don't feel I want to know.
A few years ago I wrote about a man called Biggs, saying he was in many ways a Tony H. Wilson for the new generation of Manchester bands. In some ways he was, he put himself out there, did all he could for the bands and ended up without a penny to show for it.
I think that part of the reason that I now call Manchester my home is thanks to Tony H. Wilson. Cast your cultural clock back to the early 1960s and Manchester was one of places to be. It was producing major bands, it had hundreds of folk clubs, Dylan placed the Free Trade Hall and the docks made it one of the busiest ports in the world. Then ....
Well, the rise of airfreight and the container-port killed off the commerce and The Beatles along with countless other Merseybeat groups meant that Liverpool overtook it as the place for new bands.
We trundle on into the 1970s in what is a depressed city, loss of industry, mass unemployment, bloody raining all the time. We return to the Free Trade Hall, it was built on the site of the infamous Peterloo Massacre, where men women and children protesting about the corn laws in 1819 were killed by a cavalry charge. This time, another group of working class protesters where appearing, The Sex Pistols. Most of there people who were anything in Manchester's music scene for the next decade or so claimed to have been in that small upstairs room in 1976. I find it hard to picture Mick Hucknall of Simply Red pogoing to The Pistols, but then again, I find it hard to picture Mick Hucknall at any time without vomiting.
Tony H. was there and saw the 'future' of music. He arranged one of the Pistols' first TV appearances. I'll leave the whole biog for somebody to write an entry about him, so I'll just so a brief skippage.
Tony H. begat Factory Records, which begat Joy Division, which begat A Certain Ratio and The Durutti Column and so on and so on. Joy Division became New Order. New Order and Tony H. opened up the The Haçienda. The Haçienda produced major house DJ talent and begat the Madchester scene of The Stone Roses and Factory Record's The Happy Mondays. Somewhere in this new musical landscape were also The Smiths and The Fall and out of it came Oasis, James, The Verve and many others.
This was all down to Tony H. Wilson. Factory Records was, to say the least, uniquely run. None of the artists were on contracts, and pretty few of them made any money for the label.
New Order also brought The Dry Bar, a bar in Manchester's Northern Quarter. So where do I fit in?
Well, Manchester's music scene attracted students to its Universities. The students wanted to stay up north because of the scene and the jobs migrated up to meet them.
I arrived in the Rainy City in 1998, a year after the Haçienda had died. Drugs such as Ecstasy, which has fueled the Madchester Scene were causing gang turf wars inside the club. One of Manchester's major gangland figures started his underworld life on the doors at The Haçienda.
But the city was thriving. On Oldham Street around the Dry Bar, Manchester's alternative culture was becoming established. Young Professionals were making there home in the city that a decade or so ago had been a bleak shadow of its industrial glory. Manchester of the late 1990s saw terrorists try and rip out its core and came back bigger and stronger than ever.
And Tony H. Wilson must be held partly responsible. I'm still holding him responsible for Young Offenders Institute, an abomination on the city's music scene. I'm also holding him responsible for In The City, an event that brings some of the Music Industry's biggest figures to the city every year allowing bands to showcase themselves.
And what did Tony H. get from it all? Well, fame, notoriety, but not money. Thanks to his unique business practises, he saw little of the income generated by his bands.
And, what about 2007? The Haçienda has been replaced by a block of flats for 5 years now. Some of Manchester's gigging venues are long gone, and I don't know how many of the Dry Bar's visitors will know about its Rock and Roll history. But if you look across the skyline you will see one of the tallest and strangest buildings in the country, you will see duplex penthouse apartments let to footballers who, 10 years ago, would never think about living in the city. And walk the streets of the City Centre on a weekday night and you will hear the music of another generation of hopefuls playing through the doors of pubs and clubs. That is what we have to thank Tony H. Wilson for.
He died yesterday, and as I write this at 3am on a Saturday morning, I can't help feeling that the city he gave so much to gave up on him. Suffering from cancer, in a city home to one of the world's leading cancer centres, and the Manchester Health Authority won't pay for the drug to help him.
Tony H. Wilson, thank you for what you did for my adopted city, and sorry.
Till next time
Love, peace and blues
tjm
