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Tony Wilson has died
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| quote: | 'Mr Manchester' Tony Wilson dies
By Bonnie Malkin
Last Updated: 9:46pm BST 10/08/2007
Tony Wilson, the charismatic record label owner, nightclub manager and Granada journalist, died of a heart attack at Christie Hospital in Manchester on Friday night, aged 57.
Wilson, dubbed Mr Manchester for his pivotal role in the city's cultural emergence in the 1990s, died at 7pm after a battle with kidney cancer. His children and wife were at his bedside.
A key figure in the Manchester music scene, Wilson was credited with launching the careers of Joy Division (which later became New Order following the suicide of lead singer Ian Curtis) and the Happy Mondays through his record label Factory Records.
He co-founded the iconic Hacienda nightclub and the Dry Bar in Manchester, which together formed a central part of the music and cultural heart of the city.
However, despite his golden touch when it came to finding and nurturing musical talent, Wilson had less luck in business.
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Factory Records and Hacienda failed to turn a profit and Wilson never amassed a great fortune.
Earlier this year his friends, including members of the Happy Mondays, clubbed together to help pay for his £3,500-a-month cancer treatment after the NHS refused to fund it.
Doctors recommended the drug Sutent, after chemotherapy failed to stop the disease but he was turned down by the NHS.
Last night Phil Saxe, former head of A&R at Factory Records paid tribute to Wilson.
"A part of me, a part of Manchester and a part of modern British music has died tonight.
"Tony was a genius, he was a visionary who helped bands who were a bit unusual, who wouldn't otherwise have made it. He helped them realise their dreams and through that probably realised himself as Mr Manchester. I'm just so sad today, so sad."
Wilson was born in Salford, Greater Manchester in 1950. He attended Cambridge before beginning his career in regional television as a news reporter in the 1970s for Granada Television based in Manchester.
He went on to present Granada's culture and music programme So It Goes. It was in 1976, while working for So It Goes, that he saw the Sex Pistols at the Manchester Lesser Free Trade Hall, an experience he later described as "nothing short of an epiphany".
Wilson booked the band for the second series of the programme, probably the first time their strand of punk rock appeared on British television.
During 1980s and 1990s he anchored Granada Reports, the regional early evening news programme.
In 2002 he was immortalised by Steve Coogan in Michael Winterbottom's semi-fictional film 24 Hour Party People.
Most recently he presented a weekly radio show on Xfm Manchester and a show on BBC Radio Manchester. |
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/mai.../nwilson111.xml |
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| djdk |
the man was a legend, he diagnosed evrything thaat is wrong with the dance music secene with one fell swoop about 6 years ago, I qoute
| quote: | "The real moment for me was staring down from the [Hacienda] DJ booth one night when Mike Pickering was DJ-ing and suddenly going...
Oh , now I get it, the democracy of the art experience, its everybody - the people who made the record, it's the DJ, it's everybody dancing - and it isn't four guys on a stage with white lights on and everybody in the dark.
What dance music has become is one guy with a white light on him and everyone else in the ing dark, which is precisely how it wasn't meant to be |
Spot on.
The man will be missed :( |
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| MrJiveBoJingles |
| Interesting quote. Where did you get that? |
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| AirPole |
Rest in peace.
Can we stop the casualties now? |
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| SYSTEM-J |
| He was a ing legend and was a huge part of great British music over the last 30 years. He will be sorely missed. |
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| Mr.Mystery |
| I think I'm gonna go watch 24 Hour Party People again... |
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| bas |
Going to check this out, thanks :) |
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