Tony Wilson
In 1978, the Factory name was minted, firstly as a club night, then as a record label, Wilson forming a partnership with band manager Alan Erasmus and drawing in designer Peter Saville, producer Martin Hannett and Joy Division manager Rob Gretton. Factory's name was burnished with tragedy in 1980 when Joy Division front man Ian Curtis committed suicide just before the band's planned tour of the USA.In May 1982, the Factory empire extended to a club. Housed in a former textile factory turned yacht showroom, the Hacienda was a triumph of understated, industrial design. The early years were lean, and the club lost thousands of pounds a month. Even when the Hacienda was thronged, the money was still not rolling in as the punters often preferred ecstasy to drinks from the bar. By 1985, married for a second time to Hilary, living in Withington and with a family on the way, Wilson was still professing to earn ..virtually nothing' from Factory, and even used the annual holiday from his TV day job to produce the latest Durutti Column album.But it was in the middle of the 1980s that the Hacienda caught its wave, with DJs such as Mike Pickering being the first in Britain to play club music coming out of Detroit and New York. When dance rhythms were welded to rock and suffused with the grimy Manc poetry of Shaun Ryder, a movement was afoot and its name was Madchester. Factory was renowned for inspired yet not necessarily business-like strategies. In 14 years, not one decision was ever made with an eye to profit, Saville once said.Durutti Column's first album had a sandpaper sleeve which scratched adjoining records in the record store racks. New Order's Blue Monday was the biggest selling 12 inch single ever, yet, legend has it, the sleeve design was so lavish that money was lost on every copy sold.There was an unwise 750,000 refurbishment of Factory's building on the corner of Charles Street and Princess Street.AgreementsMore music evangelist than hard-nosed businessman, Wilson had not even tied Factory's bands to conventional contracts, preferring gentlemen's agreements.Most crucially, the Happy Mondays failed to provide a follow-up to the successful Pills ..n' Thrills & Bellyaches album in time to plug the gap in Factory's finances. So began torrid times. In 1991, Wilson had parted company with Hilary, mother of his children Oliver and Isabel, and fallen for Yvette Livesey, a former Miss England 18 years his junior. They became the original loft-livers in Manchester city centre, their home being a cavernous two-story conversion of an industrial building at Knott Mill. They were partners not just in life but also in work. The In The City conference made Manchester the music business's talking shop once a year. "I am the boss. He's just the mouth," Livesey joked of their respective In The City roles. Together they did their bit to put Manchester on a world stage at a time when Manchester's regeneration was gathering pace.In 1992, Factory crashed with debts of 2m. The Hacienda faltered when Greater Manchester Police tried to revoke its licence because of drug-taking. Then it closed voluntarily in the face of gun-toting gangs, opened yet again but closed for good in 1997 with debts of 500,000.The name of Factory continued to ebb and flow. By 2005, Wilson was on to the fourth incarnation, F4, singing the praises of Hulme drum and bass collective Raw-T.For much of the 1990s, Wilson was, with Lucy Meacock, a presenter of Granada Up Front - a late night TV show which was a feisty forum for topical debate. Wilson returned to Granada Reports in 2002 after a 13-year absence, but stepped down the following year. His ..new mission' was to campaign for devolution for the north west. He founded the Necessary Group, made up of politicians and opinion-formers keen to see an elected regional assembly, and even asked Peter Saville to design a flag for the north west. But Wilson later said that there was ..horrendous' apathy about devolution, blaming the media for ignoring the issue. The idea for regional assemblies was eventually shelved by the government .When 24 Hour Party People told Wilson's story in 2002, he did not just take those ..prat' posters in his stride, he smiled benignly on a film which he admitted had ..lots of untruths' in it. "There's that line about the choice between truth and legend{hellip}always pick the legend," he said.In January this year, Wilson underwent emergency surgery to remove a cancerous kidney and then began chemotherapy at Christie Hospital. He wrote, courageously, of his ordeal in a feature for the Manchester Evening News, crediting a long list of doctors and nurses by name."Strange how everyone has a complaint about the NHS except for people who actually use it," he said. "When you actually come face to face with its care and concern, it is little short of wonderful."When he discovered that the NHS in Greater Manchester would not fund a pioneering new drug called Sutent, a group of showbusiness friends joined together to fund the 3,500-a-month cost of having the treatment privately.But Wilson found another ..new mission' in his final days - campaigning on behalf of those others who were not fortunate enough to have wealthy benefactors and were losing out on the treatment because of a ..postcode lottery.'"I'm lucky I have this fund and my friends have been very generous, but some people needing these drugs are cashing in life savings, some are selling their homes", he said."You can get tummy tucks and cosmetic surgery on the NHS but not the drugs I need to stay alive. It is a scandal."...................................................
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UNKLE lyrics
