In November 2003, Tony Wilson, the music impresario and turbulent visionary behind such bands as Joy Division, New Order, and the Happy Mondays, was contemplating whether or not to sign a promising young Manchester group called Raw-T. Doing so would mean reviving Factory Records, the twice-failed tastemaker indie label that had lain dormant since 1999.

“I spent all Saturday thinking I should sign Raw-T,” he said. “I spent all Sunday thinking: ‘No. No. No. You don’t understand f–ing black music.'” The decisive moment came that Monday when Wilson’s business partner arrived from the country with two messages for him: “One, I’m buying you a dog for Christmas, and two, you should sign Raw-T.”

“I don’t know about a f-ing dog,” he told her, “but I’ve been thinking about Raw-T all weekend. I can’t believe you said that.”

When I caught up with Wilson by phone recently, he was regretting having accepted the dog, which was just then wreaking havoc in his office – “my dog’s just got something out of the … ah! ah! I give in! I give in! What a bastard dog!” – and relishing being back in the label business with Raw-T, whose debut album he will release later this month. “I’m back in business, and I can’t believe it. I’m loving it, and I feel very privileged,” he said.

Wilson’s rise and Icarus-like fall were chronicled in the fictionalized 2002 Michael Winterbottom picture “24 Hour Party People.” (“The miracle of this movie is such a collection of bloody downright lies should, in so many ways, tell a series of profound truths,” Wilson said in the commentary track to the DVD.)

The story opens in 1976, when Wilson began using his position as a reporter and host for Granada Television to spotlight the burgeoning punk bands of the day: the Sex Pistols, Siouxsie and the Banshees, and Iggy Pop, among others. “Then my company said, in 1978, ‘that’s it, we want no more of that. And if we ever see that guy with the horse’s tail coming out of his ass, you’ll be fired,'” he recalled.

Instead of discouraging Wilson’s interest in music, it deepened his involvement. He began managing a band, a job he likens to “wiping people’s bottoms,” but found his true calling when he started Factory Records in 1979. He famously drew up the deal with his first band, Joy Division, in his own blood.

A series of stunning artistic successes and ignominious business failures ensued. Wilson envisioned Factory as an anarchic utopian enterprise: no contracts, total artistic freedom for the bands, and 50-50 profit sharing. There would be far more freedom than there would be profits. The label had a string of significant chart successes in the U.K., and introduced the world to Joy Division, New Order, and the Happy Mondays, as well as lesser bands like James, A Certain Ratio, and Cabaret Voltaire. The Factory-owned Hacienda Club gave birth to rave culture in the late 1980s. But due to lavish overspending and the desertion of key acts, Factory succumbed to bankruptcy in 1992, and then again in 1999.

Wilson, however, never stopped wanting to run a label. He nearly resuscitated Factory in 2001, after being bowled over by a young Leeds band called the Music. “I spent six months thinking I was going to sign them and start my life again,” he said. “Stupidly they decided to have a bidding war and signed a big-money deal to Virgin.”

“For about two years I was so bitter and so angry, because it was like my dream was being dangled in front of me: having a third major band.” A long period of disillusionment followed, and a dry spell in which he saw nothing he liked.

In fact, he very nearly overlooked Raw-T. “I’m someone who hates English kids rapping – be they black or white – it all sounds inauthentic. It all sounds like a faded copy of America,” he said. His son ultimately prevailed on him to go see the young Manchester band that was winning local acclaim. Wilson was instantly sold: “There’s four kids on stage who just utterly, totally blew me away with their attitude and their charisma and everything. And that’s where it always comes from. I always sign bands because of the way they stand in a room or something.”

The band is composed of four MCs and a DJ – all black, and all in their teens. “I actually signed two kids and three mothers, because three of them were all under 17,” said Wilson. The group’s sound is grimey, full of percussive rhymes and sparse, groaning beats that show the clear influence of Dizzee Rascal. Never one for understatement, Wilson claims he’s every bit as excited about Raw-T as he was about Joy Division or the Happy Mondays.

In one respect, the group even outdoes their Factory forebears: sex appeal. Wilson recalls seeing a group of 50 young girls screaming at the “incredibly pretty boys” in the band. “Obviously, no girl ever screamed for Ian [Curtis] or even Shaun Ryder. No, you didn’t scream about those people,” he said. “So suddenly I’ve got a group who’s serious and strange, and the fact that girls can scream and wet their knickers is quite remarkable for me.”

Along with his new band, Wilson has a new approach to the business of music. “Number one, we have contracts,” he said, “we got so tired of our bands leaving us and f–ing off.” He’s also finalizing a music publishing deal, and plans to sell downloads through the soon-to-be-finished Factory Records site. Raw-T’s entire album will be available, along with tracks from a young Manchester band called The Young Offenders Institute and longtime Factory act the Durutti Column.

But what really gets him going is telephone ringtones. “I know that when [the Raw-T song] ‘Where We Live’ becomes a minor hit or whatever, we’re going to be making more money off ringtones,” he said. He views them not as something to be scared of or derisory about, but as the very essence of rock ‘n’ roll. “Rock ‘n’ roll is all about a kid saying this is who I am, I like this band,” said Wilson. “In the old days, you had to carry a f–ing record around. Now, every time your phone rings it says: ‘This is who I am this is the band I love.'”

Hearing him rave about it, however, I suspect that Wilson’s enthusiasm for technology is just another way of expressing his excitement at being back in the saddle again. “Technology has always been wonderful for music,” he said, “It’s getting more wonderful, and it’s just wonderful to be doing it at this time.”