Adele Tinman née Jones
Wire administrator

I first moved to 23 Mirabel Road in Fulham, south west London, the address on the masthead of the first few issues of The Wire, in 1969. The total weekly rent for the maisonette, with roof garden, was £12.12s (twelve guineas in those days). In the 1970s Anthony worked in Honest Jon’s record shop on Monmouth Street in the West End and was living in North London. I was working for the Jazz Centre and this led to our acquaintance. Anthony moved into Mirabel Road saying: “I prefer North London, but this will do for now.” When I moved out in 1988, Anthony was still there, although The Wire had, by that time, moved beyond the realms of Fulham.

When Anthony moved into the flat, accompanying him was a picture and dedication to Charles Mingus, which he placed above his bed. Sitting on the roof garden around the dinner table, Wire issues were discussed and debated and Actual Music first talked about, while Concorde flew overhead.

Actual Music musicians sometimes stayed over in the upstairs front room. One I remember in particular was the Finnish musician Laurie Nykoff. There were also American musicians LaDonna Smith and Davey Williams, who chose to perform an impromptu rehearsal on the roof garden. A voice from a neighbouring basement flat: “If you don’t shut that bloody noise up, I’ll get the old Bill round ‘ere!” LaDonna asked me: “Who’s the old Bill?”

The Wire launched at the Bracknell Jazz Festival in 1982. My son Maurice, aged 18 months, was wheeled around the festival with a notice pinned to the pushchair: ‘New Jazz Magazine, The Wire, Issue 1, 85p.’ “What’s it called?” asked one man, “The Wife?”

On the cover was another musician, greatly admired by Anthony, Steve Lacy. The Wire took its name from one of Lacy’s compositions when Anthony’s concept for the magazine was formed. Anthony’s musical judgement came to the fore when he met the future Wire editor, Richard Cook, who became a regular visitor to the Mirabel Road roof garden.

The Café St Pierre in Clerkenwell had been our ‘up west’ venue for centralised meetings and events. A particularly memorable night was when The Wire became a part of the Namara Group and launched as a monthly publication on 1 August 1984. And the rest of the story you probably know.

Thank you Anthony for your musical foresight and dedication.

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Chrissie Murray
Wire co-founder

The Beginning
I was a staff member at Musicians Only magazine in 1980 when bass player Paul Rogers stated in an interview (to encourage others?) that Anthony Wood “was making money promoting improvised music”. Two days later Anthony called, insisting that his Actual Music events had drained his bank account: he was broke. He wanted to meet me because I was ‘a rare bird’ in the music press. Thus began a friendship, through music, spanning 40 years.

The Insanity
In 1982, we met at the Spaghetti House in London’s St Martin’s Lane. Anthony was on fire, announced that he was going to launch The Wire and rattled off his manifesto for domination of the music publishing world.

The Namara Years
Anthony persuaded Naim Attallah to fund us. Overnight, I cancelled my upcoming wedding and we moved into Namara’s Beak Street office on the edge of Soho. It was an audacious and exhilarating moment. But even with Naim's generous support, we struggled to keep such a fringe magazine afloat. At one painful point, Anthony was forced to sell his treasured Charles Mingus album collection, which Anthony’s horrified father rather wonderfully bought back for him.

The Fall
In 1985 Anthony lost The Wire, the prize for which he had fought so hard and had cost him so much, emotionally and financially. He was ousted during a boardroom coup, a crushing experience from which he never fully recovered. He kept a low profile for years until moving into market research, where, with his winning personality, he thrived and enjoyed a stable income for the first time.

The BMW Years
A life-long ‘hardcore biker’, Anthony travelled the world on his custom-built BMW, a terrifying beast he dubbed the Camel. He recently blithely biked up to the Arctic Circle (Iran was to be his next trip).

The Resurrection
Anthony had begun to write captivating articles for the motorcycling press and was enthusiastic about creating a website for ‘Third Age Bikers’. On 8 August, while reporting on how the UK's biker cafes had survived lockdown, Anthony was poignantly recorded on a video by The Camping Biker’s YouTube channel.

The Trailblazer
Anthony was always larger-than-life, an irrepressible polymath, an adventurer. We will remember him for his groundbreaking Actual Music events and his bravery in risking all for The Wire, which, 40 years later, continues to explore new horizons. Anthony Wood’s place in the music endures. He left us far too soon.

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Steve Barrow
Honest Jon’s co-worker

I knew Anthony Wood and worked with him for a couple of years at Honest Jon's when it was in Camden, North London. I actually interviewed him for the job. It must have been in late 1978 or early 79. Owner Jon Clare asked me to suss out if he would be any good. I said that he would be ideal, because we all liked modern jazz, bop and hard bop, or soul jazz then, and Anthony was much more into areas that we weren't. He had a good background knowledge of jazz history, but really knew his stuff inside and way out on free jazz, avant garde, especially European music. He was a little eccentric perhaps, but he was alright in my view – a music lover and very much into his speciality. Not a trendy or hipster type, absolutely genuine, really, quite dry in his humour. I had more than a few laughs with him – he even came to my place in East London for a meal a couple of times.

He went to New York in 1979, and I asked him to see if he could find me a copy of Sonny Clark's Leapin' And Lopin', which he did: $50 for a 'review copy', which was a good price for an original Blue Note LP then. I still have it and always think of Ant when I play it (or the CD I have).

Like I say, some thought him a little odd – he'd worked for a classical music publisher before, in Kent, and got bored, and made the break to London. I'm glad to have known him back then.

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Roger Turner
drummer & label runner

Anthony had an energy that never deserved to be rubbed out by accident. He fed so much into the lives of others, musicians as far afield as Cecil Taylor, Miles Davis and Art Blakey, alongside all the old home-based improvised music buddies in London that garnered support from his Actual Music concerts and festivals.

When John Russell and I met Anthony he was working in a record shop in central London, and from the wages he earned there, he set up both the Actual Music organisation to promote primarily improvised music concerts in London, and then, together with Chrissie Murray, The Wire, also organised initially to extend the appreciation of and information about improvised musics internationally. Additionally the three of us established the CAW Records label. All these formed a coherent basis for Anthony’s serious commitment to new and improvised musics.

Anthony came to London from Ashford in Kent, and knew no fear. His quick but wry, sardonic sense of humour and survivor’s energy carried him into things most of us would never set foot near. When the young hotbloods of the early Wire found his application to administrative ambitions clearly lacking – Anthony perhaps preferring to hang out with musicians rather than fix the practicalities of running the business – they ousted him from the magazine he established. To keep himself afloat psychologically and feed his energies into something rewarding, he started to promote some huge concert events in London, Miles Davis at Wembley being the biggest.

Relying on the audience to pay the musicians, Anthony unfortunately neglected certain business essentials and instead built up an enormous, life-changing debt. When the accounts were done, he found out he owed hundreds of thousands of pounds. This in the late 1980s. He told me he was afraid of waking up in the mornings, he was so totally and abysmally pulled apart. He lost his house, allies, everything and almost everyone in the process of surviving, and had to move into hiding in a secret place I would visit from time to time, seriously hidden from those seriously out for his blood. He lived the life of a complete social outcast, living in a tiny space down a long narrow corridor of amenity piping behind a huge bus and coach station. A traumatic time for him indeed, not just surveying the wreckage of his material life, but the deep blow to his sense of self that the whole turn of events had rendered.

I spent time with him later but very sporadically. I was busy and he was very unsettled. But despite it all, he was still able to be witty and appreciative of life, and one could still sense the energy bubbling away. But all the events surrounding this blow left him very wary of public life in London, and of course for many years he was financially totally smashed.

There was talk of a move to Manchester, later occasional trips abroad on his dearly beloved old BMW motorbike, and communications about friends, and he would still regale me with hilarious stories about road-managing Cecil Taylor and his band across Europe, a certain reluctance of Cecil’s to go on stage at the first concert at the New Morning in Paris, and a hugely expensive taxi ride between countries so that Cecil could conduct various matters. And his story of providing Miles Davis and the band with fresh watermelons backstage, something you just cannot do.

Anthony should have written a book on all this stuff, very few people live such vivid lives, and indeed get so close and mixed up with so many extraordinary musicians. For someone who hid away for so many years of his life, his spirit on earth will be sorely missed. Anthony was someone with a lot of heart and a lot of commitment, and for sure we need such people on the planet right now.

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Nick White
Wire photographer

I was an ignorant nipper when I first met Anthony and didn’t know what to make of his gap-toothed, wide boy persona. I guess hustling was intrinsic to his dream of providing a platform for the music and musicians that meant so much to him. Back in the early 80s there were a few key figures who, along with the musicians themselves, kept jazz and new music alive; a resistance force countering the trainspotting anoraks intent on putting it under dust sheets in a hall of fame. Today they would be called influencers. Their enthusiasm paved the way for the transient mainstream success that helped a significant number of musicians to break through and, indirectly, for the cross-fertilisation of musical styles that is so apparent in today’s music. I will remember Anthony as one of those who, to his own cost, was actually prepared to put his money where his heart was. I would have loved for him to return my Miles Davis colour photographs though – lost at the printers – a reflection of the other side of Anthony!

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David Ilic
Wire contributor

Was Anthony Wood an enthusiast or a dreamer? I checked the online definitions for these terms, and it’s the latter (“one who has ideas or conceives projects regarded as impractical”) which seems to provide the best fit. That said, it seems only right to dial back some of its negative overtones, not because I’m writing this in the wake of Anthony’s tragic passing, but because of a fundamental truth: without his determination to turn dreams into reality, you wouldn’t be reading The Wire now.

Previously contained in the jazz department at Honest Jon’s, Anthony’s occasionally runaway enthusiasm for the sharp end of jazz and improvised music turned him from record salesman to festival promoter. But if that wasn’t hazardous enough, launching a national magazine given over to these areas of music was, in 1982, akin to diving headfirst into shark-infested waters: the mainstream music press had largely given up on it; Jazz Journal, then at its most crustily conservative, apologised for it; and Musics, penned by musicians and enthusiasts on the free music scene, was defunct. Underwriting both gigs and magazine from his personal coffers was a major risk.

Anthony’s lack of publishing experience meant it was down to Chrissie Murray’s careful hand on the tiller to keep the magazine from running aground; but the two together were a formidable force, and I for one was grateful for the licence they gave contributors. The wish to put the magazine on a firmer footing by involving a professional publishing house was to prove the undoing of Anthony’s involvement – it’s that dreamer thing at work, I guess. But although circumstances at The Wire and the later, more serious fissures with his promotions arm forced him away from the music scene he loved so dearly, his name remains on the page in the magazine where The Wire’s masthead sits, and Anthony’s involvement with it, however painful it may have become for him, is something all its readers and contributors should thank him for and never take lightly.

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Graham Lock
Wire contributor & sub-editor

The most vivid memory of Anthony I have comes from his 1984 Actual Music festival. During a solo set by Marilyn Crispell, a pedal on the piano broke. Anthony sprang onto the stage and, much to the audience’s amusement, crawled around beneath the piano, trying to fix it. Which, amazingly, he did!

He had a knack for making unlikely things happen. Like Actual, which he ran for five years; like The Wire, which he launched on a wing and a prayer in 1982 with co-founder Chrissie Murray. Her production nous brought the project to fruition but, as she’d be the first to tell you, the initial vision and drive came from Anthony.

The Wire they created quickly became the most vibrant and exciting music magazine in the country, less a broad church than a limitless cathedral. Anthony assembled a motley bunch of writers who roamed the entire spectrum of jazz and improvised music: from Ken Ansell on Annette Peacock to Brian Priestley on Art Tatum; from David Widgery on Billie Holiday to Dave Ilic on Lol Coxhill. He persuaded musicians to join in too: Ran Blake analysed the music of Thelonious Monk; Alexis Korner offered a heartfelt obituary of Muddy Waters. As Anthony explained in his first editorial, he’d coined The Wire’s slogan, ‘Jazz, Improvised Music And…’, to “allow for the unexpected”. That ‘And…’ also encompassed Brian Morton reflecting on Meredith Monk, Sue Steward surveying salsa, Paul Gilroy reviewing a book on gospel. Then, reaching beyond music, Val Wilmer talked politics with Amiri Baraka, Brian Case discussed film with John Cassavetes. And there was always space for striking photos by the likes of Jak Kilby, Gérard Rouy, Nick White and (wearing her other hat) Val Wilmer again. Looking back, it seemed almost every issue served up a heady mix of genres, delivered with bucketloads of expertise and enthusiasm.

I began writing for The Wire in 1983, and during the next 18 months or so Anthony sent me to interview Sun Ra, Abdullah Ibrahim, The Art Ensemble Of Chicago, Irène Schweizer, Mike Westbrook, Norma Winstone, Chris McGregor and Betty Carter (among others). It was as if he’d opened a door and nudged me through — into jazz heaven! I wasn’t involved in his activities as a promoter (you’ll have to ask someone else for the Miles Davis stories), but his 1984 Actual festival marked another turning point in my life.

Anthony invited Anthony Braxton to perform the world premiere of his Composition 113 and suggested I interview him for The Wire. We met the morning after his concert and just clicked. A year later I found myself joining the Braxton quartet on their UK tour — a wonderful experience (for me, at least) which resulted in my first book. Anthony had opened another door and nudged me through again — this time into ultra-heaven-plus!

Later our paths diverged, I disappeared into academia and we went long periods with little contact. I know he experienced some lean spells and was homeless for a while, but the last time we met up, some five or six years ago, he had a new flat and was in excellent spirits. Anthony had long been a keen motorcyclist and, after he retired, he devoted much of his time to his bike, making epic trips to Timbuktu and the Arctic Circle. He came off a few times but remained relatively unscathed. He always seemed to defy the odds, until that September afternoon in Yorkshire, when the tables finally turned.

But he certainly beat all the odds to bring Actual and The Wire into existence. So yes, he had a huge influence on my life and, I think, on the UK music scene in the 1980s. He conjured up the spaces in which players and listeners, writers and readers, could come together to explore and enjoy the music(s) we loved. For the community he created, and for all the opportunities he gave to me — and to so many others — I will be eternally grateful.

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Mark Sinker
Wire contributor

As a friend tells the story, it began with a testy exchange in the pages of Jazz Journal. The late Jack Massarik had written something sour against the avant garde, so my friend sent in a vigorous reply. Incoming Journal editor, the late Eddie Cook, then set out his stall concerning all music after Charlie Parker: mouldy figges ahoy! In those days Anthony was a familiar face behind the counter at Honest Jon’s. One day my friend entered the shop to find Wood raging against Cook, and suggested he start a magazine himself. A year or so later…

I still have all those earliest issues. I don’t recall purchasing them, but I absolutely remember poring over them, Kremlinologising for the glimpses they gave, of battles lost and won, old and new. Anthony’s very first editorial scorned Melody Maker for an illustrious history of jazz coverage now reduced to a risible eighth of a page, and for not spotting the rising “consciousness of jazz, especially among the under-25s.” A promise: The Wire would stay alert to this, to the musics of present and future. To me this was huge permission, and a righting of wrongs I wanted to be part of.

It’s easy to take things for granted when you’re young — the sad news of Anthony’s death has me thinking all too hard about this. In the 1980s he was a major figure in a landscape that mattered enormously to me, putting in place many of the things that allowed me to make my life and fashion my career. At the time I saw him as a daunting gatekeeper — and now I realise he was precisely the opposite, bringing the music to London that I most wanted to see and write about, but also running my very first reviews for this magazine (in issues 13-14).

One was of an LP of African dance pop that everyone’s forgotten, the other of a classic by the legendary Afrobeat drummer Tony Allen, which I liked a lot but hardly had the chops to do justice to. So naturally I faked them (I was young). I knew I couldn’t yet bullshit about jazz or the avant garde, but many fewer people were covering African music then, so perhaps I could get away with a small knowledge extremely recently gleaned. I clambered up the stairs at 51 Beak Street, just off Carnaby Street, and introduced myself. I don’t remember what was said, but the important gist was: go ahead – and I came away quickly, fully believing I was just a hard look away from being exposed as a fraud. Years afterwards I was told that Anthony had whooped with pleasure when the door closed behind me, delighted his new magazine was attracting the young and the allegedly hip. I like the idea of two people so carefully and successfully bullshitting one another, but at the time I had no clue I’d passed a test. If I even had. (To be fair I was still under 25 — and he was just 12 years older, to the day.)

I can’t now jigsaw the dates together clearly, but I was certainly also busily attending shows and festivals he promoted, often at the Bloomsbury Theatre: Braxton, Cecil, Sun Ra, Billy Bang — and that time a solo Marilyn Crispell broke the sustain pedal on her piano. As she sat, legs curled up round her stool, smiling in embarrassment, Anthony was crawling around underneath the instrument to fix the mechanism. All this — serious, collective, practical and absurd — was the feel of the world I wanted in on, with its sense of shared secrets, of qualities and values outsiders knew nothing of.

From the relevant issues I see that Richard Cook was announced by Anthony as the new Deputy Editor in June 1985, and then listed as Editor in July, the staff list and announcements my only clues at the time to the office politics behind these changes. By August, Anthony was out — and I adapted, because that’s what freelancers do. I’d loved his founding idea, but I was happy with Richard’s direction. Gradually I was drawn in myself, and onto that blessed list — only to be bundled out when my turn came to go, because owners who pick up tabs also have whims.

When your month-to-month job is a passion for the future as you imagine it emerging, you often get blasé about the importance of roots and starts — but this is no excuse. Writing this has clarified how much I owe Anthony, and how much we all owe him. I wish I’d thought to pass my gratitude on while I properly could. I thank him now and I salute him.

Read Tony Herrington’s obituary of Anthony here.