![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Aug. 20th, 2007 08:03 pmFuck, Tony Wilson is dead.
Fuck.
For those who don't know, Tony Wilson is kind of a hero of mine, this insane idiot from Manchester who started all these club nights, a venue, a record label - which was HUGE but on which he made no money because the big rule about Factory Records was that the artists own everything, the label owns nothing, the label doesn't make money off the artists success - and pretty much a new culture.. he helped start off Joy Division and he was responsible for the Happy Mondays.
My old screen name was taken from, well, it's a Mondays song title, but it's also a movie, a bio-pic of his life, he's played by Steve Coogan and the real Tony has a cameo in it. He was a total selfish jerk but he was brilliant and I wanted his life - he couldn't put up with proper jobs and he just sort of did what worked for him, and it worked out real good.
Last I heard about him was Shaun Ryder at the NME awards this year, giving him a shout-out cause he'd been pretty sick.
And now I hear he's just died, in hospital.
edit: After developing renal cancer, Wilson's doctors recommended he take the drug Sunitinib (aka Sutent), the £3,500/month cost of which was not funded by the Manchester Primary Care Trust. He was turned down by the NHS, while patients being treated alongside him at the Christie Hospital and living just a few miles away in Cheshire are receiving funding for the therapy.
A number of Wilson's music industry friends, including the Happy Mondays former manager Nathan McGough and their current manager, Elliot Rashman, formed a fund to help pay for Wilson's medical treatment.
Wilson said: "This [Sutent] is my only real option. It is not a cure but can hold the cancer back, so I will probably be on it until I die ... When they said I would have to pay £3,500 for the drugs each month, I thought where am I going to find the money? I'm the one person in this industry who famously has never made any money ... I used to say some people make money and some make history - which is very funny until you find you can't afford to keep yourself alive ... I've never paid for private healthcare because I'm a socialist. Now I find you can get tummy tucks and cosmetic surgery on the NHS but not the drugs I need to stay alive. It is a scandal."
Bugger.
Fuck.
For those who don't know, Tony Wilson is kind of a hero of mine, this insane idiot from Manchester who started all these club nights, a venue, a record label - which was HUGE but on which he made no money because the big rule about Factory Records was that the artists own everything, the label owns nothing, the label doesn't make money off the artists success - and pretty much a new culture.. he helped start off Joy Division and he was responsible for the Happy Mondays.
My old screen name was taken from, well, it's a Mondays song title, but it's also a movie, a bio-pic of his life, he's played by Steve Coogan and the real Tony has a cameo in it. He was a total selfish jerk but he was brilliant and I wanted his life - he couldn't put up with proper jobs and he just sort of did what worked for him, and it worked out real good.
Last I heard about him was Shaun Ryder at the NME awards this year, giving him a shout-out cause he'd been pretty sick.
And now I hear he's just died, in hospital.
edit: After developing renal cancer, Wilson's doctors recommended he take the drug Sunitinib (aka Sutent), the £3,500/month cost of which was not funded by the Manchester Primary Care Trust. He was turned down by the NHS, while patients being treated alongside him at the Christie Hospital and living just a few miles away in Cheshire are receiving funding for the therapy.
A number of Wilson's music industry friends, including the Happy Mondays former manager Nathan McGough and their current manager, Elliot Rashman, formed a fund to help pay for Wilson's medical treatment.
Wilson said: "This [Sutent] is my only real option. It is not a cure but can hold the cancer back, so I will probably be on it until I die ... When they said I would have to pay £3,500 for the drugs each month, I thought where am I going to find the money? I'm the one person in this industry who famously has never made any money ... I used to say some people make money and some make history - which is very funny until you find you can't afford to keep yourself alive ... I've never paid for private healthcare because I'm a socialist. Now I find you can get tummy tucks and cosmetic surgery on the NHS but not the drugs I need to stay alive. It is a scandal."
Bugger.
