Tony Wilson, 1950 - 2007.

"Terribly sad news at the end of the day Friday," notes Matt Dentler. "Brit-pop mogul, television personality, and writer Tony Wilson died at the very young age of 57. Wilson was the legendary founder of Factory Records, which helped discover Joy Division (later becoming New Order) as well as the Happy Mondays.... If you haven't seen that terrific film [24 Hour Party People], featuring an amazing performance by Steve Coogan as Wilson, seek it out immediately."

"How could you not love this freewheeling, freethinking bundle of contradictions, even as he drove you up the wall with his non-stop need for adventure and his loathing for mental and moral inertia?" asks Paul Morley in the Observer:

Updated through 8/17.

Those of us who spotted the curious Wilson at those early Sex Pistols shows at the Lesser Free Trade Hall in June and July 1976 couldn't quite believe what we were seeing. A few of us there might have remembered the time he turned up at a Rory Gallagher concert a couple of years before and was cheerfully jeered by the entire audience. It seemed inappropriate that the clumsy, slightly camp man from the telly should infiltrate the rock world, and then even more impertinently the new, anti-cliche punk world, and this was the source of the suspicion that somehow Tony was a dilettante, an outsider. Even at his most triumphant and groundbreaking, this made him something of an underdog, a misfit, but he liked it that way, constantly identifying with the marginalised, unloved and isolated.... It seemed as though all along he was destined to become known as Mr Manchester.

And in a piece on Anton Corbijn's Control, Kevin Cummins writes, "He believed in bands when no-one else did, and was prepared to spend his own money making things happen. He was the catalyst for everything that happened on the Manchester music scene from the 1970s."

Update, 8/17: "For music fans, Wilson's legacy is self-evident on 'Love Will Tear Us Apart,' 'Blue Monday,' 'Step On,' and other records that bridged the gap between genres and eras," writes Jody Rosen at Slate. "Factory's earliest releases, especially those of the label's flagship act, Joy Division, remain massively influential and totally transcendent."

Posted by dwhudson at August 12, 2007 5:36 AM