Once upon a time in the west – or in the North West to be precise – and mostly Manchester, I met someone who had a profound influence on my life without either of us realising it. So it goes.
“So it Goes’ was the title chosen for his first music TV programme for Granada. A fellow fan of Vonnegut. In those days he carried a famous leather bag, made like a western saddlebag, worn over his shoulder, to carry a dozen LPs in each pocket. It was made for him by my second husband. It featured in ID magazine.
To start at the beginning, I first met Tony Wilson when I was about fifteen. He was the school friend of my friend’s oldest brother.
Tony was striking in many ways, physically and intellectually. He was reading English at Cambridge. He was confident and opinionated, but in a fascinating rather than facetious way. He was something foppish about his style. More Cam than Irwell.
Our paths occasionally crossed at family get togethers.
I was offered a choice of places at university, when I was seventeen. My options were Durham or Exeter, and I didn’t know which to choose. I was going to read English. Tony gave me some advice. Quoting Carlos Castaneda, he told me to follow the path with heart. So I did. I had friends in Devon, and Exeter offered American Studies, so I headed southwest. By Christmas I had left. So it goes.
I came back to Manchester and worked at On The Eighth Day. After a Sha Na Na concert in Liverpool, promoted by the legendary Roger Eagle, I found myself living at a famous house on Wilbraham Rd, with Cathy Hopkins and Martin Hannett among others. I was invited to join Drive in Rock, a 50s revival band managed by Roger Eagle (in a nutshell, Twisted Wheel DJ, Magic Village, Eric’s in Liverpool and friend of Captain Beefheart).
Later that summer, the summer of 1973, I met up with Tony again, and we ended up wandering through Longford Park in Chorlton, under the influence of mescalin. I thought the parrots I could hear calling were some sort of jungle flashback to my time in the far east. It was only later I discovered that there was an aviary there.
He told me to go and see the Wailers if I got the chance. Within a few weeks I had started university afresh in Leeds. And the Wailers were on at Leeds Polytechnic, so I went to see them.
After university, I returned to work at On the Eighth Day. It was 1977, when two sevens clashed. Tony came into 8th Day very excited, and told me he had new protégés, the Durutti Column, or the Movement of the 24th of January. ‘That’s my birthday’, I cried. So it goes.
My Dutch boyfriend was asked to roadie for them, and I was asked to regularly do the door for Factory at the Russell Club, and Alan Wise at Rafters. Our paths crossed again. I was there the night he was attacked by feminists. He got up people’s noses. He was clever and eccentric. A contradiction – a posh lad from Salford, and a grammar school boy who went to Cambridge. Granada had claimed him, but he had influence and ambition. He was a big fish in a provincial sea.
I left the boyfriend and spent a year teaching in Morocco. On my return Ian Curtis had died and the Hacienda had been envisaged. I was invited to become part of the team on the basis of my previous door-keeping experiences. At the same time I was offered a job as a local history researcher at Manchester Polytechnic.
I took the day job, and I worked a couple of nights a week on the door or in the cloakroom. I was on the door the night the Hacienda opened, May 21st 1982, but I don’t feature in 24 Hour Party People. I was too busy to watch Bernard Manning, I do remember being introduced to the architect, Ben Kelly. It was an amazing space, created in a former yacht showroom. The industrial factory style design echoed Peter Saville’s designs for the Factory label. If you were culturally literate, it referenced Warhol’s New York Factory, but wasn’t no CBGBs. The space was clean and bold, both utilitarian and expensive looking and above all an unfamiliar aesthetic. In the early days the club included a hairdressing salon in the basement, and was intended as a daytime arts centre. Whilst this double life never really succeeded, at least it wasn’t doubling up as a hen party venue with sticky carpets and flock wallpaper. Venues in Manchester tended to be based in existing mainstream clubs on quiet weekday nights. There was the Free Trade Hall and the Palace for sit down concerts, and the Band on the Wall, and student union venues for beer swilling musical events. Tony famously said that the Hacienda was ‘for the kids’, but it attracted a much wider age group. People recognised that it was a statement, a custom made club with style. There was even talk of putting the bouncers in track suits rather than tuxedoes, to make them less intimidating.
I saw some unlikely bands there. Grand Master Flash, Thomas Dolby, Burning Spear, Robert Palmer. There were videos – Fish Heads sticks in my mind. The Jazz Defektors danced. Mike Pickering (later of M people) booked the turns. I missed out on the night when Madonna performed for the Tube. I still have a handwritten photocopied list of forthcoming bands. Sadly it was a live venue with poor acoustics and a badly designed stage. I am convinced I did the cloakroom with Johnny Marr. I didn’t know him, but I translated his name from the French as ‘I’m bored’. I wasn’t sure if it was a stage name. I have other memories – New Order in baggy shorts, Hewan Clarke playing the Thunderbirds theme to close the club at 2am. Of course I may have imagined some of this.
It was good to reconnect with Tony. I left the Hacienda after a few months and
I married and had a daughter. We lived next door to Bruce Mitchell and Vini Reilly of the Durutti Column. She was born at home to the sound of Vini’s guitar floating through the party wall. The midwife was very impressed. Her son was a big fan. I only knew Tony’s first wife by sight and reputation, but I met his second wife through a toddler group and eventually our children played together. I was deeply shocked when she was attacked on her doorstep by a woman wielding a Stanley knife, who was looking for Tony. He was a very provocative man. Just think of the names of the bars in the Hacienda- Kim Philby and the Gay Traitor, named after homosexual spies of the cold war era, or the name Joy Division. A colleague was held at gunpoint in the basement, in an attempt to persuade her to reveal the code to the safe. As she told me at the time, she hadn’t taken acid regularly in her youth to be intimidated by a gun held to her head. So it goes.
We never met again. I watched his career develop, and then the legend turned to myth. He wasn’t a musician. In spite of Factory’s cool image, his favourite band was Kid Creole and the Coconuts. Fair enough. He was an enigma and an entrepreneur. A pompous poser and a manipulator. A mover and a shaker. His professed cure for the common cold was LSD. So it goes.
Fac 51. Madchester. 24 Hour Party people – the book, the film, the soundtrack. There was a Hacienda exhibition at Urbis. My life as a museum exhibit. It was good to be able to show my children something of what it represented. The V & A are now planning to recreate the interior.
Tony’s the only man I can ever imagine having a ticketed funeral, in the wonderful St Mary’s Church, the Hidden Gem, beloved of Manchester Catholics. I wasn’t invited but I have seen one of the fancy Perspex tickets.
If I had gone to Durham, I might have stayed. And if I had stayed, everything that have happened to me since I followed that path with heart, that didn’t lead where I expected it to take me, would never have happened. So it goes.
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