The Return of Vini Reilly

A 2001 24 Hour Party People website (FAC 433) feature retrieved from the depths of the internet comprises an in-depth feature on The Durutti Column and an interview with Vini Reilly. Some minor typos and spellings have been corrected to protect the innocent...

THE RETURN OF VINI REILLY

We explore long running Factory signing Durutti Column, and get a rare chance to speak with enigmatic front man Vini...

Despite fourteen albums and countless releases on a multitude of Manchester record rarities, Durutti Column remain quietly on the sidelines of popular awareness. Never quite achieving the global-munching success of their long-running label mates, New Order, the band have profically released record after record of beautifully crafted guitar soundscapes, and written themselves into Manchester's music history.

Durutti Column emanate from the guitarmanship of front man Vini Reilly, who himself was initially invited to join the band by its manager, and long running friend Tony Wilson. In 1978, the music scene was in a time of great flux - punk was sending shocks through the old establishment and opening the floodgates to a new era of musical lawlessness. Right in the middle of it all, Factory Records started up to give musicians the freedom to exert that. Vini joined Durutti Column, a name derived from two sources - firstly from Spanish revolutionary Buenaventura Durruti, who led his 6,000 'column' of men in a charge in a failed bid to liberate Saragossa, and secondly from the antics of think-tank Situationists Internationale, who decided to be really rebellous and paper up the streets of Strasbourg with posters stating "The Return of the Durutti Column" It's possible some of the effect was lost in their mis-spelling of Durruti, but this cannot be confirmed.

The Durutti Column started off promisingly, featuring on the very first Factory release (FAC-2), The Factory Sampler, along with Joy Division. However, after in-fighting, most of the members left, leaving Vini to carry on the Durutti name.

The first proper Durutti release was the debut album, The Return of the Durutti Column, recorded in two days in a studio with infamous producer Martin Hannett. Stories about the legendary über-producer run for pages, but no one could dispute his vision. "Quite amazing, but he would drive you mad" recalls Vini, "He would spent days listening to the sound of a bass drum, just one bass drum, over and over and over again. You'd have to leave the studio and leave him to it. The end result was an overall identity to an album that it wouldn't otherwise have had, so he really was quite incredible, way way ahead of his time, an amazing producer."

Vini's contributions were no less unique - tracks were often improvised, recorded in one take, and then never played again. In this manner The Return Of The Durutti Column was carved and released on Factory. A sweeping guitar soundtrack, the sound was more Gone With The Wind than Slaughter and the Dogs.

How did he fit in with the revolution going on around him?

"After punk you could do anything you wanted. There were no rules, you didn't have to sound like Roxy Music or whoever, you could just do whatever you wanted, mess about and experiment, and just be yourself. The idea of doing very personal guitar pieces, pre-1977, would be a joke really, you'd be a big old fart and generally be stale and boring, consigned to the folk/rock thing or whatever. But post-punk, it was something else, it became something other, and so it fits in to a degree with all the other mish-mash of strange things that were going on."

In fact, it wasn't just the punk ethos that Vini shared - his initial foray into the Manchester music scene comprised a brief stint with the understatedly-named Ed Banger and the Nosebleeds. Yet another contradiction?

"I'd told the rest of the band that we'd be confrontationalists." Vini counters. "So for example when we played the Roxy in London, which was the venue to play, even though we had a full set of songs, I said 'No, we're just going to play two songs all night, that's it, and keep playing the same two songs and wind them up' which we did. The audience went absolutely beserk, and consequently we were asked to play again and again, because that was what was required. But I would also do things like sit with my back to the audience and play a very melodic guitar piece, which was what I'd always been doing all my life anyway, and the punks were totally confused by this, and baffled and maybe hostile, but at least it was a reaction, and I thought that was valid."

From then on, Vini, frequently accompanied by percussionist Bruce Mitchell, would jump into the studio whenever Factory money allowed it. The Durutti Column album recording sessions are more about moments than organised and methodical planning - 1981's album LC was recorded on a four-track in Vini's mother's bedroom, after Vini happened upon a basic drum machine. "It's all kind of organic and experimental, messing about. Very self-indulgent." says Vini, with typical humility.

To Vini, the extensive back catalogue of DC material doesn't hold much interest. He owns very little of it - not even the legendary cover to the debut album, made of sandpaper, so that other records would get damaged in the rack - "I can't bear to listen to them. My friends will tell you that, a lot of them I don't actually own copies of. They're not very good." One might think we are verging on another contradiction, but Vini goes on: "But then I find the idea of recording an album and going round and listening to it for the next year, I think that's a bit sad really. The other thing is that by the time an album is released, it's usually quite a while since you finished recording it, by which time you've written a whole batch of new stuff and you play that and that's what's making the switches click."

Factory Records provided Vini with the means to produce the albums, but also did not demand anything in return. The famous artists' contract at Factory consisted of one simple phrase - "All our artists have freedom - the freedom to fuck off." And nowhere was this more true than with Vini - he was not required to do any of the usual press rounds or interviews, a chore he resents greatly - "I find it very difficult doing interviews about an album, let alone doing gigs to promote it. If I'm asked to do interviews after I've made an album, by the time you get to do the interviews, you're sick to death of the album, and you've realised its failings and where it falls down. The truth is that it usually isn't a really fantastic album and I'm not usually very proud of it. So that's it, I'm kind of stuck with that."

Despite his astonishing natural ability on the guitar, Vini has rarely farmed out his talent as a session musician. The one exception to this is his work on Morrissey's first solo album after The Smiths, Viva Hate (1988). Brought in to be the guitarist and keyboard player under producer Stephen Street, Vini found himself immediately unhappy at the situation: "I've no wish to criticise him [Street], but the songs that he had written, the chord structures were so banal and unbelievably trite that I said I would only make the album and be part of it if I could rewrite every note of every song from scratch."

Amazingly, they agreed, although contractually Street had to keep his writing credits. Vini went through and re-arranged everything, deconstructing every track except single Suedehead. Vini found the experience incredibly enjoyable, even though it required learning a completely different recording discipline to one he was used to. "I enjoyed the challenge of it really. Some of them were so abstract that they barely existed and it was only when the backing track was completed and Morrissey came in and did his lyrics over the top of it and sang that you could tell where the verse and chorus were. Because up until that point the verse could have been the chorus and the chorus could have been the verse. There was no structure. And then I'd adjust the pieces to make them make sense."

The album was, of course a major success, but Vini's relationship with the similarly reclusive Morrissey ended on a sour note, when asked to work on the follow up. "I'd felt I'd already done that side of my repetoire or my experience or whatever, so I didn't really have any interest in it." he explains. "So I turned it down, and Morrissey hasn't spoken to me since then, to this day." Vini pauses, and considers. "I think he just didn't understand why I would turn it down. I think he took it as a personal sleight, which is a shame, because it certainly wasn't that."

If Viva Hate was a pleasureable experience, the Durutti Column's latest release was the very antithesis. Recorded over the last eighteen months, with a colossal year-long gap in the middle while the producer wrangled over contracts with the record company, the Rebellion sessions could not have been set against a more turbulent time in Vini's life. Coping not only with the death of his brother and the serious illness of his mother, Vini was undergoing serious financial problems, drawn into court seven times with the bailiffs. The years with Factory Records left him with messy accounts and large debts. "I've had to sell my my home. All kinds of stuff. I've had to sell my flat and just try to avoid bankruptcy, as well as my family stuff. It's just been very very diffcult, a very hard time. So to record an album through that period was difficult, but we did manage it, so I'm pleased to that extent."

To some musicians, a turbulent time can produce the most inspiring music, but this is not the case for Vini. "Trying to make music was very very very hard, really hard. I found it very difficult. Couldn't concentrate at all. But, I'm now in the situation where I've got no creditors, and I've paid off all my debts but I don't have a home anymore."

Vini's personal life has always been a difficult area, with Durutti Column receiving much publicity in the early days about Vini's "anorexia" problem. "People who make instant judgements, they decide that I'm either a junkie or anorexic, and I'm neither.. it's a bit funny really" he says, lightly. "A lot of experts, supposedly, diagnosed me as anorexic for a long time until I went to see a specialist who realised that it was nothing to do with anorexia whatsoever. Not even related to it. I had no appetite and once I had eaten, because I was so stressed, my stomach was very tense and wouldn't digest food very easily, so it would limit how much I could eat and I had a great deal of discomfort."

The Durutti Column and Vini (both as a character and a cameo) do appear in 24 Hour Party People, but Vini has distanced himself from the project. "I wasn't really that interested, because for me it's kind of gone, that record company went under and besides that I sacked Tony Wilson maybe 18 months before the record company collapsed. I'd left Factory anyhow by then, so I was only academically interested vaguely. I've kind of moved on now, I've got a new album out with another record company and I'm doing that now."

Despite having sacked Tony in the last months of Factory's existence, Vini still holds kind words about Manchester's televisual mascot. "He had incredible vision, which nobody else had. I remember with the Haçienda when there'd be sixteen people, and it would be cold and miserable and everyone would be going 'Pull out, pull out now because you're losing so much money' and Tony would just say 'No, it's going to be the best club in the world, and it's going to be the most famous club in the world.' And certainly in Manchester he was determined that it should be so. And he could see that it would be. So he did have that vision, and he had the guts to see it through and put his money where his mouth was. I think he was quite extraordinary."

Rebellion, Vini's latest album, is released through Artful Records, is out now. But after 23 years releasing records, has he finally created something he can be proud of? "Again, not musically much of an achievement I don't think. I don't think it's a particularly good album. But I'm hoping the next one will be. Hopefully things will have settled down a bit." But then, this is no insult to the record - Vini has not liked any of his recordings. Perhaps he is just the wrong person to ask..."