New Order to win Ivor Novello songwriting award next year, says Wilson. If this is old news, I'll shut up, but at least Tony bashes The Cure. 
Svengali with attitude
From the archive, first published Saturday 17th Dec 2005.
Music mogul Anthony Wilson will forever be linked with the Manchester music scene, which launched some of the country's biggest bands. He talks to Stuart Arnold about his legacy to the industry and his latest venture to find the next big thing in pop.
HE will always be known as the music maverick who helped launch Joy Divison, New Order and The Happy Mondays. Now the punk and rock loving Anthony Wilson has turned his attention to the much maligned world of manufactured pop.
The outspoken former Granada Television presenter and founder of legendary Manchester record label Factory Records is behind a national talent contest aiming to find the next pop big thing.
Unlike Pop Idol or X-Factor, those taking part in the auditions for Are You The Voice? are at first completely anonymous and sing their tracks down a telephone. The aim is to go back to basics and judge on raw talent alone, not looks or physical attributes. Only when the competition reaches a national climax next year will the identity of the finalists be revealed.
Wilson, whose uncompromising attitude to the music industry over the years has helped cultivate a "love him or hate him" image, seems a strange choice to get involved with such a venture.
This, remember, is the man who once used his own blood to draw up the first contract with the artists on Factory's label. The contract, scrawled on a napkin by Wilson, simply said: "The musicians own everything. The company owns nothing. All our bands have the freedom to f**k off."
However, today he's keen to talk about Are You The Voice?, for which he is one of the main judges. He says: "It's about the voice and the personality, not looks.
'No-one ever judged The Happy Mondays by their looks and I'm not going to pick my next success story on anything less than their talent alone.
"The media commented more on Michelle McManus's waistline than her voice on Pop Idol but with this we take all the unimportant elements out of the process and let the vocals speak for themselves."
On whether he has heard any of the entrants yet, he says: "I have heard the good and the bad. I recently did something at the Trafford Centre in Manchester with two of the regional North-West finalists who have wonderful voices and I have heard one or two people who sound like sh*t, but that's what you'd expect."
Wilson refuses to condemn the current splurge of music talent shows on television, but draws a distinction between those and Are You The Voice?. "The problem that this gets over is that you can't tell whether all these people entering these shows want to be in music or whether they just want to be on television.
"We will go to television towards the end of the process, but at the moment it is purely about the voice and the sound, which is interesting. I have told the judges to look for not just a good singing voice, but there must be something special about it, sometimes not being able to sing perfectly is the great thing because there is something individual about the voice," he says.
Wilson, who was inspired to set up Factory Records by an early Sex Pistols gig he saw in 1976, is polite and friendly, as you would expect of a former journalist used himself to posing the questions, but seems as though he could talk for England.
Once described by New Order drummer Stephen Morris as a "gobsh*te", he tends to shoot off at little tangents, beginning sentences only quickly to end them and pick up another thread.
He talks about how he would love the talent contest to produce a bona fide rock star, rather than someone of the ilk of say Will Young or Gareth Gates, although he concedes that's an "outside possibility". But does anyone evoke the spirit of the sometimes shambolic, but occasionally inspired Happy Mondays in their heyday?
He says: "I have a group of my own which I have been working with for two and-a-half years. They are an act called Raw-T. I see in their eyes the same intensity and passion that I saw in the Mondays and in Joy Division and New Order.
"However, selling black music in Britain is a f*cking nightmare and you have to be patient, which was something I had to be with Joy Division. When Raw-T finished their album I went out and bought a seven inch single copy of (Joy Division song) Transmission and waved it in front of them.
"I said, 'Your record company boss was someone who had to sit and look at what 9,000 of these look like in a pallet in a warehouse'. When I got delivery of Transmission it was like , 'Oh my God, Radio 1 will play this, we will have a hit', and I pressed 10,000.
"We sold 1,000. Now, Transmission is one of the great rock songs of all time, but at the time I had to sit there and look at this f*cking pallet of unsold records."
He says that of today's acts he is particularly fond of the Arctic Monkeys - "because their accents are so f*cking Northern" - and was a big Franz Ferdinand fan when they first came through.
Wilson is about to be portrayed on the big screen again in an upcoming film about ill-fated Joy Divison singer Ian Curtis, having already been played by Steve Coogan in 24 Hour Party People, about the Manchester music scene.
That film featured the Haçienda nightclub, in which Wilson was also involved, and told the story of both New Order and The Happy Mondays. He's proud that both bands are still around, The Happy Mondays, along with their lead singer, the famously hedonistic Shaun Ryder, having recently reformed.
Wilson says: "New Order have just been told that they will receive an Ivor Novello songwriting award next year, which they are pleased about. Last year the Novellos gave a major award to Robert Smith. I have no problem with The Cure, but they stole our market in Germany, the b*stards.
"I then wrote a letter to the judges saying, 'How can you give him an award, yet you have Love Will Tear Us Apart on your best song of all time CD, not even thinking about Blue Monday or True Faith or Everything's Gone Green'."
He says New Order can keep going despite what is now a near 30-year career. "The Rolling Stones are still going and they are 15 years older. People find different ways of keeping going.
"New Order keep going by writing new songs. The Mondays have kept going by bringing in a whole pile of new, young musicians, which is something that Shaun loves.
"The last Mondays' gig to about 20,000 people in Manchester three weeks ago was a great gig, even though the rhythm was more rocky than the rolling rhythm which was always their secret ingredient.
"There was a wonderful review in the New Yorker magazine of a Gorillaz show in Manchester, which described how appalling Shaun was, but described the amazing reception he got and then said 'presumably for the fact that he wasn't dead' which I thought was quite sweet."
http://archive.thisisthenortheast.co.uk/2005/12/17/214139.html
Raw-T are probably just as shite as all the other bands over the years he's claimed as being the new Joy Division or Happy Mondays. I do like the guy, but his days of being involved in a 'happening' music scene are long gone, he should just content himself with his 77-92 legacy which is mostly untouchable.
