Tony Wilson, R.I.P.

Anthony Howard “Tony” Wilson — the slightly off-kilter, irrepressibly passionate man, affectionately portrayed/parodied in the 2002 film 24 Hour Party People, and known to rock fans everywhere as the founder of Manchester’s Factory Records — died from complications due to kidney cancer today. He had been struggling with the disease for over a year, having one of his kidneys removed in January, undergoing chemotherapy, and attempting various forms of drug treatment. First coming to the public’s attention as a gregarious television reporter in the 1970s — a role he continued to play on and off for the next three decades — Wilson formed Factory after being blindsided by punk rock, particularly an epochal Manchester visit by the Sex Pistols in 1976. Factory was his attempt to tap into and channel the youth energy punk had unleashed, and it certainly helped that one of his first signings would turn out to be one of the most famous bands Manchester has yet produced.

Factory was, of course, the label that shepherded four young Manchester boys with a scrappy punk band named Warsaw — quickly changed to Joy Division, and later New Order — earning it a somewhat deserved reputation for dour, serious rock (and later, forward-thinking dance music) that came wrapped in high-end sleeve design. But it also championed bands as diverse as the Durutti Column, A Certain Ratio, and the Stockholm Monsters, bands that were nonetheless tied together by a certain Factory atmosphere. These acts never achieved Joy Division/New Order ‘s cultural/chart omnipresence, but they helped to cement Manchester as one of postpunk’s prime outposts in the U.K. As the label’s fortunes wobbled somewhat precariously during the mid-’80s, Factory was given a cash (and aesthetic) transfusion thanks New Order taking over club dancefloors from New York to New Delhi. The label was also buoyed by late-’80s rave culture, thanks to Wilson’s next big signing, the Happy Mondays, and the label’s own dance club, the Hacienda. (Which Wilson, ever the conceptualist, infamously gave its own Factory catalog number, one many music geeks can recite from memory.) The Hacienda became the day-glo, ecstasy-fueled epicenter of the Madchester phenomenon of rockers turning on to house and techno.

Thanks to financial mismanagement on an epic scale — owing in part to Wilson’s punk-era refusal to enforce contracts with some of his biggest bands — Factory folded in 1992 and the Hacienda closed in 1997. Wilson continued to work in TV and radio, but his Factory days had left him cash-strapped. When he was diagnosed with cancer, doctors recommended a pricey drug as a last-ditch effort — a drug that the NHS refused to pay for. Friends and former associates chipped in to defray costs, but even in the face of this charity, Wilson was dour about his prospects for the future, telling the BBC, “”This is my only real option. It is not a cure but can hold the cancer back, so I will probably be on it until I die.”

That interview took place almost exactly one month ago, and despite being “the one person in this industry who famously has never made any money,” you can only hope Wilson took some small comfort in knowing that Factory’s aesthetic legacy would outlast him. Wilson was only 57.

Anthony Wilson Dies From Cancer [BBC]