Five years on: Friends and fans pay tribute to Manchester music icon Tony Wilson on anniversary of his death

By Kevin Benson

Music fans across the country have been paying tribute to Tony Wilson, the Factory Records boss, who died five years ago today.

Salford-born Wilson, who worked for many years as a journalist for Granada TV, was the music mogul behind making Manchester famous for its music and nightlife culture in the 1980s.

Wilson co-founded Factory records in 1978 alongside Rob Gretton, Alan Erasmus, Martin Hannett and Peter Saville, and was responsible for bringing cult band Joy Division to prominence with the release of their seminal debut album Unknown Pleasure’s in 1979.

Wilson also managed the famed Hacienda nightclub, the centrepiece to the acid-house rave culture of the late 1980s and the city being dubbed Madchester.

TV and radio presenter Terry Christian is to pay tribute to Tony Wilson on his Northerner’s With Attitude radio show this Sunday on 104.9 Imagine FM.

Christian took to twitter to pay his own tribute, urging others to do the same.

He said: “Fifth anniversary of #tonywilson death today, get him trending and remembered.”

Wilson developed renal cancer in 2007 and tragically passed away on August 10 the same year. His coffin was given the catalogue number FAC501, in-keeping with everything else in the Factory Records empire.

Tim Burgess, frontman of The Charlatans also paid tribute on twitter, saying: “Tony Wilson left us five years ago today. Typically he called himself a ‘cultural analyst’. To me he was simply a genius.”

Guardian-blogger and co-founder of Creation Records, Alan McGee, tweeted: “Tony Wilson RIP – 5 years ago today.”

Mick Middles, author of Factory: The Story of the Record Label, said: "Tony was energy, intelligence and charisma. He wasn't always right and, indeed, had a tendency to only see the black and the white. This could be infuriating and inspiring at the same time. He added colour. He was fun."

In May 2012, Manchester artist Mark Kennedy immortalised Tony Wilson in a mosaic which was unveiled at Afflecks as part of the shopping emporiums 30^th birthday celebrations.

Wilson’s legacy is not only felt by those who knew him, but also by scores of music fans who will remember him for being responsible for some of Manchester’s most successful bands, giving the city lasting mark on the UK music scene.

Music fan Alex Wright tweeted: “RIP Tony Wilson, without you I may never have heard of Joy Division, there may never have been the Madchester music scene.

Kerry McCarthy, Labour MP for Bristol East and Shadow Foreign Minister paid tribute to Wilson on twitter by sharing her favourite Factory Record’s single, Reach for Love by Marcel King.

“It’s five years since Tony Wilson died, so here’s my favourite Factory single, what a tune,” she said.

Wilson is buried in Southern Cemetery in Chorlton-cum-Hardy, Manchester.

His black granite headstone, designed by Peter Saville, was erected in 2010, and features a quotation, chosen by Wilson’s family, from G Linnaeus Banks’ 1876 novel The Manchester Man.

The quote reads: “Mutability is the epitaph of worlds. Change alone is changeless. People drop out of the history of a life as of a land though their work or their influence remains."

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