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The Durutti Column

The Manchester project of the guitarist Vini Reilly, Tony Wilson's first signing to Factory Records, whose 1980 debut The Return of the Durutti Column set clean, delayed guitar against Martin Hannett's electronics.

Origin
Manchester, England
Years active
1978-present
Genres
post-punk, ambient, instrumental, jazz rock
Labels
Factory, London, Artful, Kookydisc
Also known as
Durutti Column

Manchester, 1978

The Durutti Column formed in 1978 in Manchester. The name is a misspelling of the Durruti Column, the anarchist militia of the Spanish Civil War, and also comes from a 1966 Strasbourg comic strip, "Le Retour de la Colonne Durruti" by Andre Bertrand. Tony Wilson and Alan Erasmus assembled the first line-up around Chris Joyce on drums and Dave Rowbotham on guitar, both formerly of Fast Breeder. Vini Reilly joined on January 25, 1978, followed by the singer Phil Rainford, who was replaced in July by the actor Colin Sharp, and Tony Bowers on bass. The band split on the eve of a debut album after a dispute over the producer, and Reilly carried on alone with a rotating cast.

Vincent Gerard Reilly was born on August 4, 1953 in Higher Blackley, Manchester. He declined a Manchester City trial to focus on music, and his first recorded work was with Ed Banger and the Nosebleeds, on "Ain't Bin to No Music School". He was Wilson's first signing to Factory, and the band appeared with two tracks on the double seven-inch A Factory Sample in 1979, produced by Martin Hannett. Bruce Mitchell, formerly of Alberto y Lost Trios Paranoias, drummed and for years co-managed the group with Wilson.

The Return of the Durutti Column

The debut was recorded in August 1979 at Cargo in Rochdale and released on Factory in January 1980 (FACT 14), produced by Hannett, with the engineers Chris Nagle and John Brierley. All the pieces are by Reilly; the album line-up on Wikipedia is Reilly on guitar, Pete Crooks on bass and Toby Toman on drums. The original sleeve was made of sandpaper, a nod to Guy Debord's Situationist book Memoires, designed by Rowbotham and Wilson and assembled by band members and Joy Division. The first 2,000 copies came with a flexi disc of Hannett pieces.

PopMatters wrote in 2025 that Reilly was depressed after the first band's break-up, that Wilson signed him to help him recover and that Hannett, absorbed in a new synthesizer, built electronic backing tracks and berated him, so that Reilly walked out and was given a mixed test pressing as a fait accompli. AllMusic called it a quietly stunning debut and the Guardian gave it five stars; Record Collector's Ian Shirley called it arguably the most distinctive record in the Factory canon, and Clash wrote of the guitar as paintbrush. A 45th anniversary reissue on London Records in 2025, remastered from the original tapes, reached eight on the UK independent albums chart.

Later records

LC (1981) was a home four-track cassette made without Hannett, and Brian Eno has named it his favorite album of all time. Another Setting (1983), Without Mercy (1984), Circuses and Bread (1985 or 1986), The Guitar and Other Machines (1987, with Stephen Street) and Vini Reilly (1989) followed; Reilly played on Morrissey's Viva Hate in 1988. After Factory, Sex and Death (1994) and later records came on Factory Too, Artful and Kookydisc. Short Stories for Pauline (2012) was among the later albums, and Renascent was announced for release on London Records on July 31, 2026, with the single "Liars".

John Frusciante has called Reilly the best guitarist in the world. Setlist pages from 2005 at Cerysmatic Factory show "Sketch for Summer" as a regular opener, at the Islington Academy on April 14, 2005 and at Ronnie Scott's that December, and the band played Primavera Sound in Barcelona on June 2, 2007.

Members

Records

Songs

A Certain Ratio, Brian Eno

Where to go next

Reference

Discography and data

Writing and criticism

Interviews

Sources

  1. The Durutti Column, Wikipedia
  2. Vini Reilly, Wikipedia
  3. The Durutti Column discography, Wikipedia
  4. The Best of the Durutti Column, Cerysmatic Factory