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 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
