As they release their first album in 16 years, the Vini Reilly-fronted band answer your questions on sandpaper record sleeves, having Harry Styles as a fan and inventing a new style of guitar music.
Gang life and early struggles
Vini Reilly: Gangs then had a different meaning. It was just “their lot” and “our lot”. We’d sling insults at each other. Then you’d play football in the park and realise you were playing with the local thugs. They were actually very funny, and I could have fun with them because I was so little. At the time I’d been going through a recurring depressive illness and felt I didn’t fit in at home, so I left without any clean clothing. I wanted to end my life so I decided to go to Moss Side, where the gangsters would shoot me. Of course they didn’t. I’d had a very happy childhood until my father died when I was doing my O-levels, but I’ve come to the conclusion that the really bad things gave me more than they could ever take.
Bruce Mitchell: Vini does kick off, though, properly battles. We had to section him once, and six people had to hold him down.
Sandpaper sleeves and Joy Division
Vini Reilly: I walked into Factory Records to find Joy Division gluing them all. It was mortifying, so I escaped as quickly as I could.
Bruce Mitchell: Vini denies this, but Hooky [Peter Hook] always says that Vini quickly stopped gluing them so he didn’t damage his nails. Joy Division had no cash, so they were paid to do it, which they did while watching porno movies. Alan Erasmus at Factory Records had got a load of thrown-away sleeves from an album of steam train noises: you can tell it’s an original edition because if you peel the sandpaper back you’ll find a steam train.
Famous fans and musical influences
Keir Stewart: Dev Hynes [Blood Orange] has been a fan for a long time, and he sampled [the 1998 track] Sing to Me and made a tune out of it. He asked permission for the sample, and when we met we had this two-hour babble about the Durutti Column and all sorts. Durutti have all these famous covert fans: Stewart Lee, Chris Morris, Max Richter, Richard Ayoade, John Frusciante from the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Chris Martin from Coldplay, AG Cook, Caroline Polachek, loads of artists on the hyperpop scene.
Vini Reilly: One of my favourite guitarists was Al Casey, who played with Thomas “Fats” Waller: really sparse melodies and harmonic progressions. I had this notion that whether you went to a big orchestral performance at the Free Trade Hall or a folk club in Sale, you knew exactly what the audience would look like, because people identify with genre. So I wanted to create something that wasn’t a recognisable form. When we were trying to get into Canada, the customs guy asked what kind of music we played and I piped up: “Avant garde jazz classical.” It was a joke, but it stuck.
Harry Styles tribute and Ian Curtis memories
Keir Stewart: Harry Styles told Radio 1 that the biggest influences on his new album are LCD Soundsystem and the Durutti Column. Then he was asked to curate the Meltdown festival, so we were asked if there was any way Vini could do a show. There wasn’t, so we got the musicians together for the tribute. I played guitar – I can’t play like Vini but put in a lot of practice! When Bruce came on to play drums, everyone was cheering. A promoter’s already asked if we could do a UK tour, so we’ll see.
Vini Reilly: It’s fantastic that they’re doing it, but I couldn’t bear to see it. If Bruce is involved, it’s always right. Whenever we played together we didn’t rehearse, but we had such chemistry he always knew when a song would end. It worked every time.
Vini Reilly: Ian and I were getting to know each other – we both worked for different parts of the civil service. We were planning to do some music together but never told anyone in case people like Mark E Smith called it nepotism. Then I was staying with Tony [Wilson, Factory boss] and Lindsay [Reade, Wilson’s then wife]. I answered the phone and it was Ian. He wasn’t making any sense. He fluctuated from being really positive to the opposite. He was angry that Tony had called him a poet. When I saw all the pills Ian had been prescribed for epilepsy, I knew he didn’t have a chance. Also his marriage was falling apart, he had a little girl … I wasn’t surprised when he killed himself: it’s all there in the songs, but nobody – not even Tony – ever asked him about them. There’s an anger to The Missing Boy because it’s like I’m gritting my teeth.
Bruce Mitchell: I was living round the corner. Vini said he needed someone to go in the studio with him to record a memorial for someone who had died. He played it for the engineer, then played once more, leaning over to play the grand piano while his guitar went through a space echo. That second take is on the record.
Tony Wilson and the band’s name
Vini Reilly: There wasn’t a worst [thing about Tony Wilson]. The best is that he was a true altruist, and that never changed. Factory was conceived with the money his mother bequeathed to him after her death, and he was determined he was gonna do something out of respect for her. He made loads of recordings possible. A lot are very precious to me, because without him people would have never got to hear them.
Vini Reilly: The name was Tony’s idea. He felt that since anarchy was the basis of punk, we should go back to that idea. But he decided not to explain that to people, which was great for me because it meant I could waffle on talking absolute nonsense about it. It was probably misspelled by Factory as a mistake, but even in Spain some people think it looks better with one “r”.
Working with Morrissey
Vini Reilly: Certainly, because he’s so ridiculously gifted. I remember him talking about the Moors murderers and how he could have been one of those [murdered] kids, which never left him. On the song Late Night, Maudlin Street you really felt that doomy power. But also we never stopped laughing.
Bruce Mitchell: I dropped Vini off at the studio half-expecting to pick him up again after half an hour, because all the musicians and engineers were eating at this long table, and right at the end on his own was Morrissey. But they got on so well that when I eventually picked him up, Vini said: “Can we take Mozza?” They were nattering in the back seat all the way. It was like listening to two old ladies on Coronation Street.
Renascent is released via London Records on 31 July.
