Tony Wilson brought the world Joy Division, New Order, the Happy Mondays, and inspired one of the great rock movies of all time, 24 Hour Party People. He died last week of a heart attack at age 57.
This Slate article, by Jody Rosen, is one of the best tributes I've read so far on Wilson's life -- smart, historical, analytical -- a must-read for any music fan, and especially those 80s freaks out there. It comes complete with video links to Joy Division's iconic Love Will Tear Us Apart (though, personally, I'm a bigger fan of Warsaw), New Order's Blue Monday, and the amazing clip of the Sex Pistol's singing Anarchy in the UK during their British broadcast debut on Wilson's influential TV show, So It Goes, with intro by Tony himself.
Wilson was a badass, "a strange mix of carnival barker, hack journalist, and intellectual. He
was forever bloviating about punk's links to the Situationists
and
other philosophical movements." Personally, I am especially moved by Wilson's love
for, and promotion of, his hometown of Manchester. He saw value in its
uniqueness. How art emerges from the specific.
I leave you with a scene from Michael Winterbottom's 24 Hour Party People, accurately described by Rosen as a film "not (like Ray or El Cantante or any of a dozen others) an earnest hagiography sprinkled with Behind the Music prurience. It was a comedy, a fizzy farce. The tone befit the movie's hero, who managed to accomplish some very serious things, changing the face of popular culture."
Joy Division lead singer Ian Curtis has just had a epileptic seizure during a live show. Not only does the film's effective cross-cutting between the band's subsequent on-stage row with unruly skinheads and newsreel footage of the inflamed social conditions on the street convey that rare occurrence when a pop band reflects its bitter times, but the scene ends with one of the best lines of the movie. A real feat considering the film's chock full of comic gems such as "This is it, the start of rave culture, when even the white man started dancing."
After Curtis's seizure, with Wilson rushing to check on the lead singer's fragile condition, a doofus music reporter chooses this chaotic moment to confront Tony with a question on the supposed offensiveness of a band calling themselves Joy Division, the name for Nazi-run camps of sexual slavery. Wilson stops in his tracks. Even the well-being of the lead singer of his label's most successful band can take a back seat to some necessary edification: "Have you never heard of the Situationists, or post-modernism?," an exasperated Wilson answers the clueless reporter. "Do you know nothing about the free play between signs and signifiers?!" Wilson then encourages the band to kick the reporter's ass.
Brilliant.
Comments