A MANCHESTER SITUATIONAL Durutti Column (Pt. 1)
Feb 17, 2010
Remembering Tony Wilson with Vini Reilly & Co.
BY WILSON NEATE
At the end of the film 24 Hour Party People, Factory Records boss Tony Wilson receives a visitation from God (who is also Tony Wilson, of course). Their conversation concludes thus:
God: Vini Reilly, by the way, is way overdue a revival. You might think about a Greatest Hits.
Tony Wilson: It's a good idea.
God: It's good music to chill out to.
Tony Wilson: Yeah, you're right.
God: I usually am.
Notwithstanding questions about the film's relationship to reality (about which more below), it was a nice moment, symbolically underscoring the importance of one of the Factory family's less heralded, oldest members: not only were Reilly's Durutti Column the first band Wilson booked to play the Factory club night in 1978, but Reilly was also the first artist to put pen to paper with Factory Records.
In its original context of post-punk Manchester, Reilly's work with the Durutti Column was strikingly anomalous. The first two albums, The Return of the Durutti Column (1980) and LC (1981), established Reilly as an idiosyncratic guitar stylist fashioning his own genre from such diverse idioms as folk, jazz, flamenco, classical, rock and the avant-garde. With a filigree touch, he crafted echoing, prismatic textures that were deeply evocative and affecting. Tony Wilson adored this music.
Wilson was an unflagging champion of Reilly's work and made no secret of the fact that the Durutti Column were one of his favorite Factory acts. As Reilly himself puts it, "The Durutti Column was Tony Wilson's baby." He also served as Reilly's manager, but their relationship went well beyond business: Reilly considered him a mentor, a father figure and, above all, a friend.
When Wilson died in 2007 at the age of 57, Reilly felt unable to participate in the numerous tributes and commemorative events honoring the public accomplishments and cultural legacy of the man known as "Mr. Manchester." Instead, he sought a way to celebrate Wilson that focused not on that larger-than-life media personality but on the person he knew as a friend. A perfect opportunity arose when Manchester City Council approached Reilly and commissioned what would become A Paean to Wilson for the Manchester International Festival.
The piece was first performed over three nights in July 2009, with the studio album version released on January 24th of this year (fittingly, that date marked the 32nd anniversary of the founding of Factory Records). Reilly's objective with A Paean to Wilson was simply to record a suite of music that he knew the man himself would have appreciated. This required an entirely instrumental work: Wilson always gave Reilly complete artistic control, but he had often urged Reilly -- who's not exactly a gifted vocalist -- to refrain from singing on his records. To that end, in the late '80s Wilson gave him an Akai sampler so he could incorporate others' voices instead.
Vini Reilly's collaborator in the Durutti Column since 1981 has been drummer Bruce Mitchell (a long-established figure on the Manchester music scene, who is also now Reilly's manager). BLURT talked to the pair about their new project dedicated to Wilson's memory. The conversation highlighted the close and warm relationship among the three -- a connectedness that stands in surprising contrast to Reilly's ambivalent relationship with his own music.
Tune in tomorrow for part two of this feature. The A Paean to Wilson album, released by the Kooky U.K. label, is available in the U.S. via Darla Distribution. In addition, Reilly and Durutti Column pianist Poppy Morgan recently performed a haunting excerpt from the work on the BBC's "The Review Show"; it's viewable at this YouTube link.
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BLURT: Most of us knew Tony Wilson only via his media persona; how did the Tony Wilson you knew differ from that?
REILLY: He differed enormously. He was the same only in the sense that he was very confident, but people mistook that confidence for arrogance. He was always being described as an arrogant person, but, in truth, he was one of the most humble people I've ever met. He would never consider any task too trivial. For example, I remember that on rainy, muddy nights he'd be there helping carry equipment for our rehearsals, and on another occasion he was sweeping the floor after everyone had gone home. He was different [from that public image] in many ways. He was also very, very sensitive -- extremely sensitive -- even though he had a smoke screen of a persona, which was the only possible way he could function in the face of some of the hard-core, hard-nosed businessmen that he had to deal with. And also, some of the musicians were very awkward to deal with, so he developed this persona, which enabled things to just bounce off him. You know, people would say the most disparaging things about him, and it would be like water off a duck's back. He developed that persona over the years to a point where people thought that really was him, but he was actually a very generous-natured, warm, lovely human being. People didn't really perceive him in that way -- and I don't think he wanted people to perceive him in that way.
MITCHELL: Yes, that persona was a separate thing, as Vini says. It was a stitch-on piece of work that he enjoyed -- the laddishness of it. Nice and abrasive, we thought. But it's the way he had to be, don't you think? With some of the musicians he had! But he was always stimulating and interesting. He was ever so curious and shockingly clever. All the time. You know the Kurosawa film, Rashomon? It's like the Rashomon effect. I'm one of the "viewers" that liked him a lot: uncompromisingly. Even though he could be really badly behaved, I would always support anything that Tony did. I learnt an enormous amount off him. I'm ten years older than Tony, but I would very often defer to his judgment rather than mine. So I was a solid fan, without reservations.
Do you both remember meeting Tony Wilson for the first time?
REILLY: The first time I met him was in 1977 when I was in the Nosebleeds, my imitation punk band. We weren't really punks, but not many people were. We played in a place called Wythenshawe, which is the biggest council estate in Europe -- quite a tough area. We played in this big building and Tony was there among all the rough-and-ready young lads of the neighborhood. He was very cool and we said hello. He said something about my guitar playing -- I don't remember what he said, but he'd noticed it. And that was the first time I met him.
MITCHELL: We did things with Tony before he formed Factory. He was a Granada TV broadcaster, as you know, and I was with a band [Alberto y Lost Trios Paranoias] that he helped promote on his show, and I knew him before that, going back to around 1972, because we ligged at the same gigs.
How accurate was the portrayal of him in 24 Hour Party People?
REILLY: The film was complete fiction. You know, many of the things that happened in that film didn't really happen. And if they did happen, then they were more extreme than is described in the film. Also, there are many things that happened that are not in the film, things which are too outrageous to be put in the film. It would have made the film X-certificate. Everyone was really right out there, you know. So I think it was sanitized to a certain extent and made into a semi-humorous thing -- which I suppose it was -- but looking back, it was also quite extreme as well. I don't think the film was meant to be an accurate representation of what actually happened. And the Tony Wilson is the smoke-screen Wilson, and that's all you get in the film.
A Paean to Wilson celebrates Tony Wilson the friend, not the public figure. What were you aiming to convey in the music?
REILLY: Well, when you start to make a piece of music, you don't really have specific aims. It's not that cerebral. It's not an intellectual process or anything. It's all totally intuitive or instinctive. All I knew was that I wanted to do an album of music where I didn't sing, because all the time Tony managed me, he tried to stop me from singing and wanted me to concentrate on playing music and writing music. So, if the album had any aim at all, the only aim was to do instrumental music. That was because when he was very poorly, very ill, I sent him a demo of an instrumental piece -- just something to chill out to, to relax to -- and he was very pleased with that. He liked it; he appreciated it. We had a running joke of text messages where he would say, "Come and play the Spanish guitar for me," and I'd say, "Yeah, OK, when?" and I was supposed to do it. And then at the end of it all, he'd just put, "But promise: no singing!" And that carried on right up to the end. It was a kind of jokey thing, but he did really prefer it when I didn't sing and just played. So that was really the only aim of the album: to do instrumental music and use samples, rather than my own voice. I can't even hear the album any more, I can't bear to listen to it, so I don't know whether it's achieved anything at all. For all of us -- me, Bruce and Keir [Stewart, Durutti Column bassist], who produced the album -- it was our way of paying tribute and celebrating the fact that we knew Tony and that he was such a fantastic guy to have in your life. He was almost like a father figure to me. I was also very frightened of him, in the way that you're a bit scared of your dad. It was a bit like that with him. [laughs]
MITCHELL: Vini says he was in fear of Wilson -- it's bollocks! They used to have big knock-down fights! [laughs]
You say you can't bear to listen to the new album, Vini. Why is that?
REILLY: Well, I can't bear to listen to any of the albums that I've ever done. They all sound so inept and stupid. And this one's supposed to mean something, but I don't think it captures anything at all. But it's not as bad as some of the albums I've made.
You've often said that you don't like your own records. You enjoy the process of creating them but once they're gone, you're already moving forward. I think you've said elsewhere that 2006's Keep Breathing was the only one you'd actually give a passing grade: what about Paean to Wilson? What grade does it get?
REILLY: Well, if the pass mark is 45%, I think Keep Breathing got that. I think this one maybe gets 50%.
This is probably a stupid question, but was making this particular music at all a therapeutic process?
REILLY: Yeah. That's part of the way any musician lives their life. Everything that happens in your life is reflected in the music you write and the music you play, in one way or another. So, yeah, it was.
Your work draws directly from your experience and often seems intimately connected to friends: many of your song titles include friends' names. But even given the fact that your music has generally been very personal in its inspiration, was this album more difficult to make than most?
REILLY: No, not really. It was actually very easy to make. We made it in about a week. What was different about this album was that rather than be my usual megalomaniacal, egocentric self -- doing everything myself and being in charge -- I took a step back, and Bruce and Keir were a lot more involved in this album. They were very directly involved. I think that has given the music a wider scope, and it's a bit more interesting than it would have been had I not done that.
A Paean to Wilson premiered in July 2009 at the Manchester International Festival. Was it originally conceived simply as a live performance, with the album coming later?
REILLY: Yeah, it was commissioned by the Manchester City Council. The thing is, when Tony died everyone was doing something, and Manchester was full of things that were happening, celebrating his life and so forth. There were many events in honor of Tony, but I didn't feel that it was right for me, that it was appropriate for me to attend them. I'd just lost a friend -- one of the best friends I've ever had -- and I was very affected by it, and I didn't feel like doing anything public about it. It's a very personal experience when you lose someone you love; you have to go through a grieving process, obviously, and I wasn't ready. But when I was asked to do this commission, the timing was right and I did feel ready to do something. I wanted to do something that Tony would like. It's as simple as that, you know.
Were those initial performances especially emotional experiences?
REILLY: Yeah, we did three nights consecutively in Manchester, and they all meant something.
The album before A Paean to Wilson, 2009's Love in the Time of Recession, opens with a track called "In Memory of Anthony," on which you sing about him. So, despite his feelings about your voice, did you feel the need for one tribute song with lyrics?
REILLY: Sort of. But that was a kind of botched attempt, really. It was a failure. It didn't achieve anything. So I dismissed that immediately.
In what sense do you think it was a failure?
REILLY: Well, musically and lyrically. You just can't capture those sorts of emotions with schoolboy poetry, which is what my lyrics are like.
I've heard you say that about your lyrics before. Don't you think you're being too harsh on yourself?
REILLY: No, not at all. There's poetry and there's nonsense, garbage. I'm not a lyricist, and I never will be. I'm not good with words. The written word is difficult for me, and I'm not a natural poet or anything.
The album begins with a looped sample of Tony Wilson asking, "Is this an art form, or are you just a technician?" That's a quintessential Wilsonism. What can you tell me about the source of that sample?
REILLY: That was from one of Tony's early broadcasts. Bruce had an archive of Tony's public appearances and so forth, and that's from one of Tony's very early Granada TV programs. It's actually an extract from an interview with Martin Hannett that Tony did. It was an example of Tony's technique of interviewing people, because he knew that it was a kind of dumb question when he asked it, but he didn't mind asking the dumb questions because he knew they would provoke a real reaction from the interviewee. And in this case it was Martin, and he knew that Martin would find that a very funny, crazy question. He knew that Martin would react in some way and that it would be good television. He knew what made a good interviewer. That was one of his skills. So that's why we used that sample. There's another Tony sample at the end of the album, on the track "How Unbelievable," again sourced by Bruce. It's from his last public appearance when he was very poorly, but he still managed to do it. He was ranting about the divide between the rich and the poor. It really is very Tony.
You use several vocal samples on the record -- most memorably, some bits from Marvin Gaye's "What's Going On" on the tracks "Brother" and "The Truth." Did you choose the samples with Tony Wilson in mind? Were they from songs you knew he liked?
REILLY: No, we just thought they were very musical samples. I always have a collection of samples that I gather from various strange sources. The Marvin Gaye one was a very direct lift from the song itself, which is unusual -- usually, I find samples which are a little bit more obscure. Keir, the producer, and myself found that Marvin's voice was just so simpatico with the feel of the music. And also it was in the right key -- if you don't have to mess about with shifting keys and stuff, it just makes it easier. But it's very random, really. There's no great plan or anything to making these albums. [laughs]
On this album you rework some previously released tracks. "Catos Revisited" returns to "Catos con Guantes," and "Duet with Piano" incorporates an element of "Royal Infirmary." Was there any specific motivation for doing that?
REILLY: Well, when I recorded the "Royal Infirmary" track the first time around, it was on Circuses and Bread, a particularly bad album. And it seemed to me that, from that album, that was the only riff, the only little piece of sunshine on the album that was worth remembering. So having dismissed the entire album, it was nice to rescue the one tiny little chord sequence that I did like. I just thought I didn't use it well the first time, so I tried to use it a bit better this time.
[Pictured above: Tony Wilson (L) and Vini Reilly]
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