Paul Morley: The Tony Wilson Interviews

On Wednesday 20 October 2010, Vini Reilly was one of Paul Morley's guests at the Purcell Room in London's South Bank Centre for a special evening of spoken word (and a little bit of music). Morley introduced the event as part of his ongoing research for his forthcoming book about Tony Wilson. He explained how the norm for events of this type was for them to take place after the publication of the book and how he had decided to reverse the sequence.

Three, never before seen in public, clips of Wilson filmed by Paul's sister Carol Morley were shown at intervals through the evening. The clips were originally part of Carol's research to prepare for a film about a Chinese Joy Division tribute band (sadly the film never got made). In the clips, Wilson spoke about himself, Manchester, football and the bands he worked with, but the real star was his Weimaraner dog, William, that barked menacingly throughout one segment and then proved very difficult to get into the back his car. Wilson said that he regretted not going to Barbados to see everything fall apart whilst Happy Mondays were recording their final album on the island, especially when they tried to get the sofa out of Eddie Grant's studio to sell for crack.

First of the evening's on-stage guests was Mike Garry who began by performing his epic poem in honour of Tony Wilson, St Anthony and closed with God Is A Manc.

The second guest was Richard Boon, Buzzcocks' manager and New Hormones label boss. Boon got in a great pre-emptive strike to "confound him, before he confounded me".

The final guest was Vini Reilly. He spoke with Paul Morley about his deep friendship with Tony Wilson and how The Durutti Column came into being. Morley then suggested that the Durutti Column were Wilson's "boy band". Vini somewhat amused by the proposition, reluctantly agreed.

On Wilson's influence on his music: "In a way there's a similarity between him and my guitar teacher who was this wonderful Jewish lady who taught me for many years and would always begin the lesson by saying, 'Well, what have you written?' And I was seven or eight years of age. The fact that she would listen to what I had written for me was a kind of tacit approval of my music. She would never comment about it. Tony believed in the music and he approved of what I wanted to do. Every so often he would buy me a sequencer or a keyboard or a drum machine but he really just left me to it."

The topic of conversation then turned towards the expensive custom Strat gleaming at the other end of the stage. Vini recounted the story of how he came to acquire it through Tony Wilson's most generous patronage(to the tune of £8K). That was the cue for Vini to play some tunes, without accompaniment. He began with Spasmic Fairy which featured an extended intro for which he sat down and followed with Tomorrow.

Vini had asked Paul Morley to preface the performance with consideration for his recent health issues (but that didn't seem to be necessary). After the two tunes Vini Reilly disappeared through a secret door hidden behind the stage curtains.

With many thanks to Sunil.