Tony Wilson, the legendary boss of Manchester’s Factory Records, who died of cancer in 2007, has finally had a fitting gravestone unveiled. The black granite stone’s type and layout was designed by Peter Saville, who created classic album covers for the likes of Joy Division and New Order.
The memorial stone is located above his resting place in The Southern Cemetery in Chorlton-Cum-Hardy, Manchester, and bears the inscription ‘Anthony H Wilson – Broadcaster, Cultural Catalyst’. It is completed with a quote from The Manchester Man, an 1876 novel by Mrs G Linnaeus Banks (aka Isabella Varley Banks), which describes life in Victorian Manchester. Appropriately, the epitaph reads ‘Mutability is the epitaph of worlds. Change alone is changeless. People drop out of the history of a life as of a land, though their work or their influence remains.’
Wilson’s Factory Records, immortalised in films such as 24 Hour Party People and Control, bequeathed the world one of the most chaotically run record labels of all time, but also the timeless music of Joy Division, Happy Mondays, New Order, The Durutti Column and countless more. Alas, it does not appear to have been given a FAC Catalogue number, which was given to everything from their best selling releases to the office cat. Apparently Wilson’s casket, catalogued FAC 501, was the last FAC number ever assigned.
