SUNDAY MORNING POST SUNDAY, AUGUST 19, 2007 Sight&Sound 3 Mad for it – music He’s one of hip hop’s most dynamic forces. and Manchester – But, as Mick Wilson discovered, will.i.am to the very end rom the terrace of his Mediterranean-style has never forgotten where he came from mansion situated in the hills that form the stunning ...................................................... natural backdrop of Los was inspired by this incendiary Paul Morley FAngeles, Will “will.i.am” Adams is performance to react creatively. able to look back on his life in every If you lived in northwest England Many formed bands – Buzzcocks, sense. A few blocks to the south at any time after 1973, it was Magazine, the Fall, the Smiths, he’s able to pick out the apartment impossible to ignore the Simply Red and Joy Division building where the creative seed indefatigable broadcaster, music members were all present. Others that turned into the Black Eyed mogul, social activist, proud became designers, writers or took up Peas during the 1990s took root northerner, football fan, writer roles in the music business. Wilson and flourished. and exhibitionist Tony Wilson, was galvanised by the event, by Further back towards the who died last Saturday aged 57 of a the combination of anarchy and horizon, beyond the shimmering heart attack, after being diagnosed music, philosophy and pop, danger skyscrapers of downtown with cancer earlier this year. and delight, image and protest, lies the gritty East Los Angeles For years, Wilson was known as and it changed his life, as it did neighbourhood where the Black an extremely opinionated, populist Manchester itself. He immediately Eyed Peas’ founding member and Granada television presenter and as invited the Sex Pistols on to the driving force grew up. “When I saw an idiosyncratic Manchester music second and final series of So it Goes, this house I thought, ‘Wow, I’ve got impresario who dedicated his life which was never shown in more to live here because I can see where to making the city internationally than three UK TV regions. Taking the Black Eyed Peas started out from famous for its music, nightlife and pop culture seriously as a social and the balcony’,” Adams says. “I never pop culture. From the moment political force, it was ahead of its felt like doing the whole Beverly he appeared on television, and time. It still would be today. Hills, Bel Air thing. It ain’t me. And especially after he combined his By 1978, still a grinning Granada to be reminded of where you came daily Granada duties with his antics personality, Wilson formally entered from ain’t a bad thing either.” as self-appointed ringleader of the the music business by opening the Not that Adams, 32, ever gives Manchester music business, he was Factory Club to showcase new local the impression of having lost touch someone you loved or hated – or music talent. Factory then became a with his roots – as evidenced by the loved and hated at the same time. record label. Wilson ran it with numerous paintings based on family In the 1990s, typically writing his fellow northern Catholic grammar photos that decorate his home. own history as he went along, he school boys, designer Peter Saville, The setting couldn’t be more made it clear that he preferred to be producer Martin Hannett, actor and appropriate, given that Adams known as Anthony H. Wilson. The manager Alan Erasmus and Joy will next month release a deeply pompous self-publicist part of him, Division manager Rob Gretton. introspective solo album, Songs enjoying the fact that the bigger Inevitably, the label was like no About Girls, that’s also a semi- name sounded grander and would other; deeply northern, stubborn confessional account of his take up more space, announced that and disorganised, it released records relationship history. Each song on this was because he wanted “to wind with a reckless anarcho-capitalist the album has a personal relevance. up all the people in Manchester who verve and an indifference towards Many touch on the painful break- think I’m a flash c***”. The more profit that verged on performance down of a seven-year relationship. reflective Wilson admitted to me art. It became the great Manchester “It’s an album about falling in that: “I never liked Tony. I was label, despite not signing Buzzcocks, love and falling out of love and always Anthony to my mum. I just Magazine, the Smiths, the Fall or all the crazy, destructive things wanted to be Anthony again.” the Stone Roses. What it did have that people in love do to each Wilson was born in Salford, was Wilson, part glib newsreader, other,” he says. “But it’s also about Lancashire. His German grandfather part cultural curator, part exuberant new beginnings.” came there in 1901, and his family nuisance, part revolutionary warrior, It would be wrong to bracket ran three jewellers’ shops before inspiring, or needling, those Adams’ solo work as another moving, when he was five, to the around him. The subversive Factory example of the the feel-my-pain leafier Marple, near Stockport. His Records became the link between emotional exhibitionism beloved mother felt it would be a better Manchester’s reforming radical by celebrities. His first instinct place to bring him up, but he kept past, the Sex Pistols’ legendary was to shy away from making a in contact with the grittier, more performance and the new personal record. darkly romantic Salford. Wilson won modernised Manchester that “I can’t say it’s something I a place at the Catholic boys De La Wilson had in mind. always wanted to do,” he says. Salle grammar school in Salford. He Factory’s best-known group, Joy “Initially, I definitely didn’t want Feel the real developed a love of literature and to do it. I mean, writing about me language after he saw a performance being in love with my new girlfriend of Hamlet at Stratford-upon-Avon. while feeling sorry about my old He felt, as someone who girlfriend, who played such an understood the accelerating important part in my life? It’s just importance of popular culture, not something I wanted to get into.” that he was always in the right Nevertheless, as soon as Adams place at the right time. He was 13 began playing around in the fully “in the school playground when equipped basement studio of his the Beatles happened”, and he was home, the album pretty much he used as sounding boards for Nigeria, Kazakhstan and Mongolia Adams also plans a separate EP studying English at Jesus College, wrote itself. I never felt like doing Songs About Girls. are planned. next year that will be largely made Cambridge, “when the revolution “I just found myself writing songs “Making a solo album wasn’t “After this tour, there won’t be up of politically themed songs. An in drugs happened”. A flirtation about that. They came naturally. I the whole Beverly really any different to making a Peas many places left that we haven’t ardent environmentalist, he made with anarchic politics possibly did try to make songs that weren’t Hills, Bel Air thing. album,” Adams says. “In Peas, we played,” says Adams. “We’ll have to headlines earlier this year when he contributed to his underperforming, about relationships, but in the end all think exactly alike – me, Apl and find a bunch of new places.” announced that he was going to but certainly infected his unique, I just decided to go with the feeling. It ain’t me. And to be Taboo grew up together. And even Adams’ energy is frightening. As blow up his gas-guzzling Hummer. often haywire approach to life, And the feeling took me where it if I’m working solo I still confide in well as recording a solo album and Since then, he has had a change of work, art, music, family and took me.” Fortunately for Adams, reminded of where them. It’s exactly the same process, preparing for a world tour, he has heart, and now plans to destroy the business; the way he would take his partner was sympathetic. “It was only they don’t have to come to found the time to pursue one of vehicle more elaborately. everything ridiculously seriously, therapeutic for me,” he says. “I’d tell you came from ain’t the studio, and I don’t have to ask his other great passions: fashion. A “The political album is going and not seriously at all. Tony Wilson in 1976 as host of the my girlfriend, ‘Hey, I wrote a song a bad thing either anyone what time I need to show graduate of the Los Angeles Fashion to be released on the internet – all After Cambridge, he began short-lived So it Goes for Granada today!’. And she’d say, ‘Oh, really? ...................................................... up to work.” Institute, he’s working on a range viral,” he says. “And in one of the his career in journalism, as a news What was it?’ And I’d have to say, The new Black Eyed Peas album of clothes due out later this year, videos I’m going to put the Hummer reporter for Granada. At that time, Division, became New Order after ‘Er, you know, er, about my ex- our relationship, so I felt our will be recorded on the road. Adams’ plus a solo album of duets. Making in one of those car-compactors. Granada was one of the great the 1980 suicide of singer Ian Curtis. girlfriend’.