BACK IN THE CITY CITY LIFE magazine on IN THE CITY

TONY WILSON Tony Wilson
In The City Director, Granada TV presnter and all-round Manchester face. Likes to talk. A lot.

What's happening at In The City this year?
In The City's very famous for its unsigned section and that's going to be happening again. There's always complaints that we don't do it for the other genres of music, so this year three other genres are being dealt with - black music unsigned, dance music unsigned, and acousticity unsigned. All the unsigned gigs are free.
The big theme this year is telling Alan McGee [Creation Records' boss] to fuck off (although at last year's In The City he made a comment about young musicians on the dole which resulted in a lot of discussions between the music business and the government. There's a whole series of government proposals which will be announced at In The City this year). On the other hand, Mr McGee made a comment saying that the music industry was over and everybody will be downloading. In fact, a lot of us agree that the music industry isn't over at all; the fact that the majors are having a problem has to happen for a new wave of independents to come. The secondary theme is that downloading will not destroy the music business, it will be fairly minimal. What is going to happen is web retail and that will be a major explosion.

What's the importance of In The City to Manchester?
Thinking back to 1992, the whole wonderful madness of Madchester had gone, we had the gang problems, there was the backlash against Manchester and the city had suddenly gone into a lull. In The City wound everything up again and gave it a shove, and put life back into the industry in '93. Similarly, this year everyone's reeling from the closure of the Haçienda and Sankeys and Kaleida and one has a little hope that it'll serve exactly the same purpose: give things another boost. The thing that makes Manchester different from every other provincial city in Britain is that there is a music business infrastructure here, and one aspect of that is having the annual British music conference happening in the city. It's very important for the infrastructure in Manchester - the music business people, the dance labels, the indie labels, managers of bands - to be in the privileged position of being able to hang out for five days with the music industry. London was always pissed off that Manchester hosted the annual music conference so last year a big new one called London Music Week was set up and it got loads of support from the big record companies, which we don't always get. It was big, it was crap, it went bankrupt in February. So Manchester has seen off London.

Best In The City Memory?
If In The City hadn't been invented, we'd never have met Peter Grant - a relatively old man who'd been a real mega-figure in the industry, the manager of Led Zeppelin and one of the most famous managers of all time. He'd been in retirement for about ten years but for some strange reason came out of retirement to talk to In The City. Peter Grant's the most stunning human being.

TONY WILSON WAS TALKING TO HELEN DUFF


SEE ALSO TONY WILSON IN EYEWITNESS IN MANCHESTER BACK