Pitchfork

Pitctured: Yvette Livesey and Tony Wilson

Tony Wilson is pretty much unstoppable. As the founder of the legendary Factory Records, he weathered the suicide of Joy Division's Ian Curtis, the rise and fall (and rebirth) of the Happy Mondays, and the fabulous disaster that was the Hacienda club. More recently, he's been fighting cancer.

Wilson's latest project is the In the City of New York conference, taking place June 13 and 14 at the W Hotel in Manhattan. Wilson and partner Yvette Livesey have collaborated with AEG Live to bring their In the City music industry summit-- which has taken place in Manchester, England since 1992-- to the United States for the first time. In the City of New York will feature panels about new media, DRM, branding, festivals, social networking, and much, much more. Speakers include members of the Rapture, Tommy Boy Records head honcho Tom Silverman, "My Boyfriend's Back" / "I Want Candy" songwriter (and Sire Records co-founder) Richard Gottehrer, and r&b superproducer Rodney "Darkchild" Jerkins.

The Happy Mondays were supposed to headline two shows during In the City of New York, to celebrate their upcoming album Unkle Dysfunktional, to be released on Sanctuary in the UK later this year (The band is looking for a label in the U.S., since Sanctuary is no longer putting out new albums in the U.S.) Unfortunately, their performances were canceled today, "due to temporary visa issues", according to a press release. (We're assured that they'll be back to play America sometime soon.)

The Manchester In the City is known for breaking new bands; past acts that have vaulted to stardom after playing it include Radiohead, Oasis, Elastica, and Muse. The New York edition hopes to do the same with the five up-and-coming British bands they're importing for this week's fest. The best-known in America is the Rakes, who charmed U.S. audiences with their wirey (and Wire-y) 2005 debut album Capture/Release. Their second album, Ten New Messages, has yet to be released on our shores. The Rakes will perform at the Knitting Factory on June 13, supported by the Pigeon Detectives, the Leeds band currently celebrating the number three UK chart debut of their first album, Wait for Me.

On June 14, Scottish alternarock band Biffy Clyro will headline the High Line Ballroom, having just been signed to Roadrunner Records for the Stateside release of their latest album, Puzzle. Opening for Biffy Clyro will be Brighton duo Blood Red Shoes and dance-metal DIY stars Enter Shikari, making their American debut. They also happen to be Tony Wilson's current favorite band.

We chatted with Tony Wilson about Enter Shikari, In the City of New York, his health, and the new Joy Division film, Control. Along the way, he outed himself as a Fall Out Boy fan, and called the Killers' Brandon Flowers "a fucking idiot." Read the interview after checking out these streams from all of the bands playing the conference.

The Rakes: "Dangerous" [B-side from the "We Danced Together" 7" on V2]



The Pigeon Detectives: "I'm Not Sorry" [from the Wait for Me LP on Dance to the Radio]



Biffy Clyro: "Semi-Mental" [from the Puzzle LP forthcoming on Roadrunner]



Enter Shikari: "Mothership" [from Take to the Skies LP on Ambush Reality]



Blood Red Shoes: "It's Getting Boring by the Sea" [from the "It's Getting Boring by the Sea" single on V2]



Bonus: Happy Mondays: "Jelly Bean" [from the Unkle Dysfunktional LP]



Pitchfork: First of all, I wanted to ask how you're feeling.

Tony Wilson: I do feel inside myself that [the chemotherapy] worked and that I'm going to be all right. In fact, I've been working quite hard ever since [I got out of the hospital], so I'm feeling good. I'm feeling nearly back to normal. My whole recovery process was based on being able to walk onstage at Coachella and introduce the Happy Mondays.

Pitchfork: The Happy Mondays are working on a new album, right? Have you heard any of it?

TW: They've finished it. They finished it just before Christmas. The new tracks I've got are just full of fucking guitar, and they're fantastic. It's a wonderful album.

Pitchfork: Why did you decide to bring In the City to New York?

TW: You know, this really wasn't our idea. This was a friend of ours at AEG in London. At some point he said, 'In the City's reputation for unsigned bands, for new bands, in the best in the world. We have this history-- why don't you organize a new band event in New York?' And we said 'that'd be quite fun' and we began to do that. We just thought this would be great because what we do is very different from what SXSW or any of the other conferences do. It really has a core that is very passionate, a very informed discussion of what the industry's up to. And we do it in a particular style.

I come from a television background, so things are kind of produced. We do kind of educate while we entertain and we entertain while educating. One of the things that we added to the format of conferences-- now it's obviously copied elsewhere-- is celebrity interviews. So if you get one of the great industry figures and they're properly dealt with, these are inspiring moments.

Pitchfork: Right now seems like a particularly good time for the music industry to do a bit of thinking and talking about itself. We're at this point of crisis where nobody seems to know what the future holds in terms of how people are going to make money selling music over the internet.

TW: It's a fascinating period, it's a fascinating time. To be honest the music industry is always fascinating-- it was fascinating in the bloody 60s and stuff, and even further back. And it's funny, I think the first panel we had was around DRM [digital rights management], several years ago, I think in the late 90s. [Partner] Yvette [Livesey] and I started a download company in England, which actually went live for about a year, and the one regret we had was we were the only fully operational downloading system with both fully operational monthly payments and fully operational DRM. And even when we launched it we felt stupid adding DRM. But there you go.

Pitchfork: Once again, you were ahead of the times.

TW: I've learned a great truth, that being ahead of the times does not make you any money [laughs].

Pitchfork: In interviews I've read with you recently, you seem quite excited about Enter Shikari, who will be making their American debut at In the City of New York.

TW: I'm so excited because they're my favorite band of God knows how long. I saw them live in October with my daughter. I'm very fortunate that my kids are very bright-- they're brighter than me. There's a big headline in a British newspaper recently: 'The Band That No One Over 20 Gets'

Pitchfork: And they aren't signed to a record label, right? On purpose?

TW: They went 'fuck off' to everybody.

Pitchfork: That's probably smart nowadays.

TW: Well, maybe it is, maybe it isn't. Who knows?

Pitchfork: Why do you like Enter Shikari so much?

TW: When I first started going on about Shikari and playing it in the office, it was like my dog had shat in the office. They were going 'Ewww, that's terrible, turn it off.' The thing is it is quite weird and difficult at first.

My daughter had taken me to a record shop, she wanted to get me into screamo about a year ago. She took me to buy an Alexisonfire album. Driving off in the car I put it into the CD player and I thought 'my God, I've finally grown up. This is shit.' And I didn't like it. I thought, 'my God, screamo, one step too far for me.' I was just interested that my daughter, who's got wonderful taste and who is 16 years old, who told my son who's 22 about Shikari, and he texted me to say they're the best band in the world. I was just baffled that I couldn't get this thing.

Then I looked at iTunes, and the top track is by Alexisonfire. I discovered that none of these tracks were on the album I got. I downloaded it and they were fantastic, I had to get this album! So then I got into Alexisonfire and therefore I got very used to screamo by the time my son introduced me to Shikari. They are the most amazing thing.

One of the things that pleases me is that I know the [Sex] Pistols never played New York, which is Malcolm [McLaren, the Sex Pistols' manager] being typically Malcolm, and that whole idea-- they didn't do L.A.-- they just wanted to do minor markets. But to be really, really honest, seeing the Pistols in '76 was such a refined moment of my life and obviously I saw early Joy Division at their height and early Mondays and stuff like that and all the rest of the stuff. But when I saw Shikari in front of 200 15-year-old kids who were going nuts, it really was the most exciting thing I've seen since the Pistols in '76. And I would not say that lightly.

Pitchfork: What was your involvement with Control, the Anton Corbijn film about Joy Division?

TW: I was involved in the initial stages as an associate producer to fuck off some rival people who wanted to make a film, to get rid of them, which I did. And then I was just a general advisor.

More recently there was a slight falling out. I bought a Fall Out Boy DVD special at the bookshop on Union Square. I'm very fond of Fall Out Boy, and there was this wonderful cover version of 'Love Will Tear Us Apart' which really shocked me. And I know that emo-- which I'm quite fond of-- treats Mr. Morrissey as its godfather, which is fine, but the fact is that 'Love Will Tear Us Apart' is one of the core songs.

And suddenly I thought 'well fuck this, this is amazing!' And then I thought 'all we've got to do is get Panic! At the Disco to do a cover and we've got a soundtrack album featuring songs by Fall Out Boy and Panic! At the Disco and suddenly Joy Division's music will be revealed to millions more kids!'

That seemed very exciting, so I drove all the way to Nottingham where they were filming, and I hadn't realized that Anton has just come back from a photo shoot with the Killers and-- I mean they're a good band but their lead singer's a fucking idiot. He hates emo, doesn't he? Anyway, I had this big row with Anton about the soundtrack album.

Pitchfork: I remember a few years ago reading that you had revived Factory records as F4. Your first signing was Manchester hip-hop group Raw-T. What happened with that?

TW: I came across this brilliant young group, and they were utterly brilliant, and I ignored all my experience of the last 30 years-- the experience of trying to make black Manchester music happen. Nothing in black Manchester music has ever happened. There was actually [late 90s teen pop sibling act] Cleopatra who lasted six months and then fucked up. Nothing ever comes out.

So I forgot all that and thought this band was so brilliant, something is actually going to work this time. And I did it all over again, and it completely blew up in my face again. Well, you keep trying, and I kept trying with some other people's money and I let them down. Well, I didn't let them down, but I ignored what I knew to be the probable case which is that nothing has ever come out of Manchester in terms of black music and that's a tragedy.

Pitchfork: Do you have any plans to start up another label in the future?

TW: No, but if I saw a Manchester band halfway as good as Enter Shikari I would go nuts for it.