Tony Wilson
There is no celebrity quite as powerful as the local, homegrown celebrity.Collection: Famous
You either make money, or you make history.Collection: History
Jazz is the last refuge of the untalented. Jazz musicians enjoy themselves more than anyone listening to them does.
I am very much an only child, meaning I am self-reliant, egocentric, sociable. I had my mother, father, and an uncle who lived with us, all doting on me.
I'm a minor player in my own life story.
Factory Records would not have existed and my life would not have been what it was without Joy Division.
You don't know reality until someone makes a fiction of it. Reality needs the completion of fiction.
Energy, energy? Energy is, is, it's nothing more than a lot of new age hokum masquerading as religion.
Every band needs it's own special chemistry. And Bez was a very good chemist.
I am not a piece of hash. I'm in charge of Factory Records. I think.
I've been a minor celebrity since I was 23 years old.
The special relationship between the region and a regional celebrity means that people feel that they have a special investment in you.
Richard Branson once said: 'Tony's very good at selling bands and he's very good at making television programmes. But he'll never be great at either, until he decides which one he wants to do.' I entirely accept that. That doesn't matter to me very much. I like the irony of the two lives.
I'm going to be the next David Frost.
People shouting abuse has happened for a very long time, and I find it kind of amusing and irrelevant.
It's hard to describe how bloody awful music was, how desperately bad it was, how our 1960s heroes had become boring and useless. Not only were they bad - they were badly dressed.
Maybe the worst thing is not caring what people think. That came from my mother. She was the biggest influence on my life.
My public image is none of my business.
I had the virtue of wanting to hang out with people who were more talented than me. I can't write songs, I can't perform, I can't design clubs, but I was an enthusiast. My gift was that I said yes to everybody.
We had a heroic attitude to artistic freedom, and we thought normal contracts were a bit vulgar - somehow not punk. But that was the whole point - we weren't a regular record label.
I hate English kids rapping - complete crap.
Even though the hero of emo is Morrissey, the great song of emo is 'Love Will Tear Us Apart.' An emo soundtrack would introduce Joy Division's music to a whole new generation.
I don't mind the fact that people hate me. Nobody likes anyone who's been on the telly as long as I have.
I have this problem that I just like to get a reaction from people.
In the '80s, we played the Roxy and the Whiskey with our bands.
This is Manchester, we do things differently here.Collection: Different
When forced to pick between truth and legend, print the legend.Collection: Legends
Most of all, I love Manchester. The crumbling warehouses, the railway arches, the cheap abundant drugs. That's what did it in the end. Not the money, not the music, not even the guns. That is my heroic flaw: my excess of civic pride.Collection: Pride
I’ll just say one word: Icarus. If you get it, great. If you don’t, that’s fine too. But you should probably read more.Collection: Should
Nothing useless can be truly beautiful.Collection: Beautiful
If you live in Birmingham, then being awake is not necessarily a desirable state.Collection: States
That came from my mother. She was the biggest influence on my life. I remember once refusing to get on a bus with her because she was wearing a mink, and I thought we should be taking a taxi. She just said, 'Who cares what people think?' and I remember sitting on that bus, being utterly embarrassed, but knowing somehow that she was totally correct.Collection: Mother