INSTANT KARMA
VINI REILLY
AN AUDIENCE WITH...
The Durutti Column’s reclusive guitar genius on Tony Wilson, Morrissey and kickabouts with Pat Nevin
Interview by SAM RICHARDS
MICHAEL STEFF
“Guitars are like sculptures to me”
PROPPED up against a wall of his living room in Didsbury, where most people would have a yucca plant or a prized ornament, Vini Reilly has a Fender Custom Shop Stratocaster in birdseye maple, bought for him at some point in the 1980s by Tony Wilson.
“Guitars are kind of like sculptures to me,” he says, poignantly. “I don’t try to play it any more because it just does my head in.”
Reilly has recovered most of his coordination since suffering a series of strokes in 2010, a fact he demonstrates by giving Uncut an impromptu performance on his cuatro, a four-string guitar made by a luthier in Lewes. “But the biggest problem is that there are no tunes happening in my head. There’s nothing of substance coming through. What used to happen is I’d just start playing without really thinking about it. It’s like you become very suggestible – there’s no cerebral activity going on, you’re just feeling. I never knew what key it would be in or how long it would last, it just… occurred. And now it doesn’t.”
But if that sounds sad, he is quick to put things in perspective. “I had very serious memory damage, which was the biggest cause of what became a mental illness. I was delusional, and then I became hallucinatory and they had to section me. It was pretty horrible, but I’m very stable now.”
Reilly looks frail but still cool, in hiking trainers with the laces undone, brightly coloured plaid shirt and that familiar mop of hair. He says knowing that people still care about his music, to the point where they’ve submitted questions for this feature, is a source of great comfort and pride. “I owe it to them, definitely, so thank you. It’s great, it’s magic.”