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information even easier. Ask him something as simple
as the time and you’d receive a cultural pontification
about the lines of the Meridian and the way it effects
the Northern psyche. Respectively finding himself
lost in Swindon and taking his nutcase New Order
dog for a walk on the two occasions we spoke, he was
distracted many times during the conversation. But due
to the sharp thinking of the man, he managed to keep
a solid thread through out and spouted long, detailed
soliloquies about his iconic past, his hip-hop present
and things that’ll kick off in the future.
What do you say to people that shout “Wilson you
wanker!”?
I just keep walking and have always ignored it.
Funnily enough I’ve got to go to Chorlton in about an
hour, because Harry Goodwin the original rock’n’roll
photographer of the 60s has a show which he asked me
to go to. But Chorlton I despise with a passion. I come
from Salford, then lived in Marple, went to school in
Salford, went to university when I was 18, went to
London when I was 21 and aged 23 came back home.
I’m on television as a local reporter and putting music
on television, just soundtracks really. I thought my
generation will love this, we children of the 60s, but
who in the early 70s were all solicitors, young teachers
and trainee accountants in Chorlton and it turned out
they utterly despised me. Just like all those people who
shout ‘wanker’.
BUY Tony Wilson books online from and
I remember going to a Rory Gallagher gig in 1975
at the Free Trade Hall and there was 2,000 people and
1,199 people fucking hated me. And I just thought
‘What the fuck have I done to these fuckin’ people?
What shits they are.’ And then about a year and a half
later along came punk and suddenly I’m at The Circus
and all these kids are like ‘Hey Tone, thanks for putting
Costello on, thanks for putting Iggy Pop on.’ I realised
I found my generation and they weren’t my fucking
generation. So people shouting abuse has happened
for a very long time and I find it kind of amusing and
irrelevant.
What sort of bands are you looking for to add to
the F4 roster?
A band that’s going to sell a lot of records because
they’re important. The most innovative is always the
most commercial at the end. The Mondays did sell a lot
of albums, they sold a couple of million albums which
I think is reasonably good, but if they hadn’t had the
self-destruction they might of sold some more.
What made you want to start a new label?
I’d never really stopped I suppose. I had a two year
layoff between the bankruptcy which led to London
Records buying Factory, that awful period of Factory
Too ended and I had to walk away, and when I finally
got tired of the Space Monkeys we stopped again. It was
always a question of the next time we sign a good band
we’ll start again. We started again with King Rib and
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