Wood grew up in Ashford, Kent. As a teenager in the 1960s he started listening to blues and R&B having been inspired by the British blues boom, in particular its father figure, Alexis Korner, and his group Blues Incorporated. When Korner died in 1984 Wood wrote an obituary in The Wire 6 crediting Korner, who he referred to as “a musical friend and companion, a guru who set me on the path to understanding and appreciating black music”, with introducing him to jazz: “It was a record by Blues Incorporated, featuring the likes of Dick Heckstall-Smith, Johnny Parker and Phil Seamen, which for me opened the door from blues into jazz and beyond.”

By the early 70s Wood had moved to London and become involved in the city’s avant garde jazz and improvised music scenes. He worked as a buyer in Honest Jon’s record shop, and started promoting concerts under the banner Actual Music. In 1979, the same year he started Actual, he co-founded the short-lived CAW label with drummer Roger Turner and guitarist John Russell. The following year he started the Actual festival at London’s ICA. For the next four years the festival’s line-ups would feature many of the most significant established and emerging avant garde jazz, improvising and experimental musicians from the UK, Europe, the US and beyond.

Wood co-founded The Wire in 1982 with the journalist Chrissie Murray in order to fill a void in the media coverage of the kind of music he was now active in promoting. The first issue appeared in the summer of that year featuring Steve Lacy on the cover (the magazine had been named after a track by Lacy) and with the strapline, “Jazz, Improvised Music And…”.

Wood’s editorial in that first issue outlined the magazine’s philosophy: “The Wire’s brief will be to cover the field of contemporary jazz and improvised music. But more than that, The Wire will attempt to unravel the mysteries of the music and its musicians for those who look for fundamental answers about the nature of the music and the musicians making it. The Wire’s sub-title has been left deliberately ambiguous to allow for the unexpected.”

For its first two years The Wire was a quarterly publication and was initially based at the South West London flat shared by Wood, who had no previous editorial experience, and the magazine’s administrator Adele Jones, who had met Wood through her work for the Jazz Centre organisation. Its contributors during this period included designer Terry Coleman, established jazz critics and commentators such as Charles Fox, Brian Case, Brian Priestley, Jack Massarik, Max Harrison (who also covered modern composition along with Brian Morton), and photographers Val Wilmer and Jak Kilby. The magazine also published writers who had previously covered underground, alternative or experimental music for publications such as NME, City Limits and Impetus including Graham Lock, Richard Cook, David llic and Kenneth Ansell.

In October 1984 the magazine went monthly after Wood did a deal for it to become part of Naim Attallah’s Namara Group. Namara already owned Quartet Books, which published a number of jazz titles, so the deal seemed a good one for both parties; in particular it meant The Wire, which up to that point had been underwritten by Wood out of his own pocket, would receive some much needed financial security and the resources to realise Wood’s ambitions for the magazine. As he wrote in issue 8: “The country’s most important jazz magazine and book publishers are now stablemates which will have far-reaching advantages for jazz publishing in this country. After years of neglect and decay, jazz journalism and debate will be able to rise to the same heights which the music itself is currently experiencing in popularity. The Wire as a monthly will have a louder voice and exercise a greater influence in the jazz world.”

As it turned out, however, Wood would only be at The Wire for another 12 months. He was now the magazine’s Managing Editor, and Chrissie Murray was named Editor. When Murray left the following year, Wood hired Richard Cook as her replacement. But the two quickly clashed over the magazine’s editorial direction and publishing culture, and Wood was forced into leaving the magazine.

Since founding The Wire Wood had continued to work as a promoter, and in 1984 he staged the fifth Actual festival, which was headlined by Anthony Braxton and Musica Elettronica Viva, at London’s Bloomsbury Theatre. The move to a larger venue was intended to increase Actual’s audience and profile but it lost money and the 1984 festival turned out to be its final edition.

Still based in South West London, after his departure from The Wire Wood continued to promote concerts throughout the 80s. Operating under the name Gemini Productions (or Promotions), Wood put on events headlined by some of the major names in the black avant garde, including Ornette Coleman & Prime Time, Sun Ra’s Arkestra (who Wood put on at the Fridge nightclub in Brixton, South London), Joe Henderson, Alice Coltrane, and Cecil Taylor, who Wood had first brought to the UK in 1982. Gemini also produced events featuring Michael Nyman, Miriam Makeba, Terje Rypdal, and Trevor Watts’s 13-piece Moiré Music. In 1986 Wood promoted three concerts by Miles Davis at London’s Wembley Conference Centre, and in 1989 he produced two further concerts by the trumpeter in Cardiff and Manchester.

Gemini events were both ambitious and expensive, and many lost money. By the end of the decade Wood was financially bankrupt. He eventually moved out of music promotion entirely and began working as a market researcher. When he died he was still living in South West London, not far from the house where the first issues of The Wire had been planned and produced.

The Wire has invited a number of Anthony Wood’s former friends and colleagues to pay tribute to the founder of the magazine. You can read those tributes here.

Tony Herrington