CityLife

Vini's own tribute to great friend Tony

FITTING TRIBUTE: Vini Reilly at home

IN all the welter of tributes and special events which followed the death of broadcaster and music mogul Tony Wilson in August 2007, one voice was notable by its absence.

“I did not feel I could take part in all the public events that were going on, because Tony was a personal friend, and grief is a very personal thing for me,” says Vini Reilly, prime mover of The Durutti Column and one of Wilson’s oldest musical associates.

“I wanted to have my own personal way of doing it.”

That personal tribute has now taken shape in A Paean To Wilson, a piece of music Reilly has only just finished recording, and which The Durutti Column will perform over three nights in the Pavilion theatre.

As yet, Reilly has no plans as to how it may be released as an album.

The Paean uses recordings of Wilson’s voice – an extract of an early interview with producer the late Martin Hannett, and Wilson talking about socialism in one of his last public appearances.

It also mixes Reilly’s eclectic guitar playing with viola, trumpet and recordings of sacred Indian themes chanted by two 12-year old Manchester schoolgirls, Kate Williamson and Ruby Morgan, sister of Reilly’s partner and Durutti Column pianist Poppy Morgan, aged 23.

“There’s all kinds of things in it,” says Reilly. “There’s a piece which is very angry, screaming guitars and stuff, because that’s part of the grieving process. You get angry that a person you love has gone.”

Wilson lived long enough to hear fragments of the work as he lay in The Christie hospital, where he died of a heart attack after suffering kidney cancer.

“I’m sure Tony would like this album, and that’s the only thing that matters,” says Reilly.

The Durutti Column were one of Wilson’s first passions in the music business. Reilly was in a punk band, The Nosebleeds, which appeared on Wilson’s So It Goes TV programme, and Wilson built The Durutti Column around Reilly. The first of Factory’s numbered products, Fac 1, was a Durutti Column poster.

Stifling

But Reilly soon walked away from the original band, complaining that it was “stifling and a bit predictable”.

“Tony to his enormous credit, just kept coming to see me. I was completely dysfunctional, very depressed, physically quite ill. I had post-traumatic stress from stuff that happened a long time ago and I couldn’t eat. My stomach was in a knot all the time,” says Reilly, who has spoken in the past of sleeping rough after leaving home as a teenager and falling in with a bad crowd.

“Tony said: ‘You’re Durutti Column, so let’s release an album of your little guitar pieces’.”

That has been the pattern for The Durutti Column’s career ever since, with Reilly’s “little guitar pieces” winning marginal commercial success but critical acclaim from the likes of Brian Eno and Red Hot Chili Peppers’ John Frusciante, who once dubbed Reilly “the best guitarist in the world”. 

“All the time that Tony managed me, which was a long time, we argued constantly, not viciously, but constant bickering,” Reilly recalls.

Schoolboy poetry

“He was trying to stop me from singing, because my voice isn’t up to it and my lyrics are like schoolboy poetry. He was right. I shouldn’t sing. My voice is awful.”

In one of Factory Records’ most famous art stunts, early copies of The Durutti Column’s first album were packaged in a sandpaper sleeve, designed to wreck anything it came into contact with on the record store racks.

The gentle jazz and folk-influenced guitar instrumentals were unlike anything else released by the label.

After Factory fell apart with huge debts in 1992, Reilly had his own financial woes.

“I never opened any of the brown envelopes I was sent, and ended up owing the tax man a huge amount of money,” he says.

Bankruptcy

“So I lost everything. In fact, I am still bankrupt. I’ve never done anything to clear my bankruptcy. All I need to do now is fill in a form, but I just can’t get round to doing it.”

Rendered homeless, for six years Reilly was taken in by Bruce Mitchell, long-time drummer and manager of The Durutti Column.

Mitchell “kept my body and soul together”, says a grateful Vini, aged 55. Now he is living in a rented flat in Didsbury with “my very glamorous, beautiful girlfriend” Poppy. The depression which once haunted him is now in the past.

“Every so often, it creeps back in, but it’s very manageable now, hardly worth talking about,” says Reilly.

When Wilson launched another incarnation of Factory in 2006 F4, again, The Durutti Column were among his first choice of artists.

“I never had a contract with Tony. We were friends and trusted each other completely, right to the end,” says Reilly.

“Tony used to give me all the money anyway. Even though he was my manager, he still didn’t take any money. He never lost faith in the music, ever. He was an amazing friend.

“I was actually at the hospital when Tony died. His son and daughter, Oliver and Isabel, and his partner Yvette were there, and a few people took it in turns to visit. The last couple of weeks, I was there quite a lot.

“I remember the last thing he ever did for me. He couldn’t really speak towards the end, but I chatted with him and then I said: ‘I’m going to go now, Tony, and give you some peace and quiet’. As I got up to leave, he half-raised himself up and gave me a victory V sign and a big smile, which was a huge effort. That was the last communication we had.”

The Durutti Column play A Paean To Wilson at the Pavilion Theatre, Albert Square, on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday July 15-17, at 8pm, tickets £16, £9 concessions.