The Madchester Scene

From New Order and The Smiths to Primal Scream and Oasis

Richard Luck

• Editorial: Pocket Essentials
• Año: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781843442899
• Categoría: Media & Performing Arts
• Categoría: Music

In the 1990s, Manchester hosted the most exciting British music movement since the Two-Tone explosion of the '80s. The home of legendary acts such as New Order and The Smiths, the early '90s saw Manchester give birth to great groups like The Happy Mondays, James and The Stone Roses. Blending the attitudes of The Fall and The Buzzcocks with cutting edge sampling techniques and the occasional chemical, these bands created the superb 'Madchester' sound. Of course, no sooner had the apple cart been upset than the scene began to suffocate under the weight of impostors. You need look no further than Primal Scream and Oasis to see that not all that was great about baggy died along with regional institutions like Factory Records and The Hacienda. The Pocket Essential Madchester profiles all the major bands of the time, together with the groups that influenced them and the swines that ripped them off. The book also pays tribute to important local figures like impresario Tony Wilson and DJ Mark Radcliffe and doffs its cap to Michael Winterbottom's ambitious attempt to transfer the story to the big screen, 24 Hour Party People.

1. Wrote For Luck

 

 “I’ve finally got a group,” exclaimed the then 26-year-old Ewan McGregor to Neon magazine in 1997 on having fallen in love with Oasis. It took me a long time to find a band, too -not as freakishly long as Ewan but a long time, nonetheless. I’d been buying records for years (pretty haphazardly, mind you. I’m sure I was one of the few 13-year-olds to own records by both Grandmaster Flash and Bucks Fizz), but while I’d bought copies of ‘Shellshock’ and ‘State Of The Nation,’ it wasn’t until the release of the New Order compilation Substance and the single ‘True Faith’ that I truly found my sound.

I can’t really put my finger on the appeal of New Order and perhaps that’s how it should be. But I can say that I liked the story behind the band. I was impressed by their earlier work as Joy Division. I respected them for what they’d gone through. I loved the sublime swash of their synthesisers and admired the fact that a skinny rabbit like Steven Morris could land a place in a pop group. I liked the fact that Bernard Sumner sung in a voice so fragile it couldn’t disguise his sincerity and I was choked by the fact that here was a band who told you how it is and then showed you how wonderful it could be. But what special ingredient X made me feel for them in ways I’d never felt about any other band, I couldn’t say and I couldn’t care. Within a month of buying Substance, I owned the entire New Order/Joy Division album back catalogue.

 

And from there, I became a follower of most things Madchester. I picked up The Stone Roses’ ‘Elephant Stone’ because it was produced by Peter Hook and then bought their debut album during the first week of release. I bought Academy, New Order’s awful concert video which came with a T-shirt so tight, even Posh Spice would have struggled to get into it. I was even one of those fresh-faced saps who wandered into Our Price and said: “Hello, have you got Bummed by the Happy Mondays?”

There were, I should point out, limits to my dedication. I never grew my hair long and the only hooded top I owned was the one I trained for rugby in. But my first gig couldn’t have featured a more Mancunian line-up (New Order supported by Happy Mondays) and I did pay a visit to the sainted city, although since I was on a rugby tour I was more concerned about my hamstring and my coach’s experimental decision to play me out of position than about visiting the Hacienda or experimenting with E.

Of course, I could have been a more committed member of the Madchester community. I could have bought more records, worn more appropriate clothes, taken any drugs. But 1990, the year the movement really hit its straps, was a ludicrously happy time for me - England’s glorious failure in the World Cup, visiting America and Paris, getting my rugby colours, passing A-Levels I expected to fail - and it’s because this music was the soundtrack to such a great summer that I remember it so fondly and have longed to write about it so badly.

Almost a decade on, my music tastes have changed. Now I listen to Blur, Air, Rage Against The Machine, Foo Fighters, Beastie Boys, De La Soul, DJ Shadow and Daft Punk. But despite all the years that have passed and all the records I’ve bought, the final revelation of The Stone Roses’ ‘Sally Cinnamon’ still chokes me up a bit, The Charlatans’ ‘The Only One I Know’ remains one of the few songs guaranteed to bring a smile to my face, Black Grape’s recapturing of the Mondays’ glory couldn’t have felt sweeter and I am happier than anyone that New Order never properly split up. And when The Stone Roses’ ‘Fools Gold’ came on the sound system at LA2 on Charing Cross Road in the early hours of 1 September 2001, do you think I was there dancing like a primate with the rest of the throng? Well of course I wasn’t! I’m 29 for fuck’s sake! I did feel pretty privileged that I was writing a book about them, mind you.

 

Richard Luck

Welwyn Garden City, September 2001

 

2. Madchester - So Much To Answer For

“Madchester - what a name!
Best name ever for a scene, wasn’t it?”

- Clint Boon, Inspiral Carpets

‘And on the eighth day, God created Madchester.’ That was a T-shirt slogan you saw quite a lot of in the late 1980s and early 1990s. (Tops were also available which claimed that the miracle occurred on the Lord’s sixth or seventh day at the office.) It wasn’t the only weird thing appearing on leisurewear around that time. You could also buy gear sporting the blandest of monikers, Joe Bloggs, or carrying obscure out-of-context phrases like ‘Come Hone.’ Or, if you preferred, you could purchase a T-shirt baring an image of a mashed-up cow smoking a spliff and the legend ‘Cool As Fuck.’

The one thing you didn’t see a lot of back then were shirts bearing the crests of Manchester City or Manchester United. Utterly dominant in recent years, it’s incredible to think that Man U were really on the ropes at the ass end of the 1980s. Outside of a few FA Cup wins, the team had achieved little during the decade outside of sacking managers, fielding players who weren’t up to the task (Mike Duxbury, anyone?) and getting ever so frightfully pissed off about finishing second to Liverpool. As for the men from Maine Road, meanwhile, their parlous state was best summed up by Steve Coogan’s pissed-up, pissed-off scrounger Paul Calf: “I had a trial for Man City but I was terrible - missed an open goal, headed it into my own net, I was absolutely shite. Anyway, they offered me a place... but I was sixteen - I wanted to concentrate on smoking. But you can say what you like about Manchester City. You can say they’ve gone down, you can say they’re rubbish, you can say they’re the biggest shower of shite you’ve ever seen but... I forget the original point I was making.”

As soccer was always seen as being the heartbeat of Manchester, you’d imagine this sort of failure might have caused a metropolis-sized depression. But it didn’t and the reason it didn’t was the most exciting musical movement since the Two-Tone explosion of a decade earlier: Madchester.

But what was Madchester? Well, like a lot of youth movements, Madchester was about being young, dumb and full of come. But it was about so many other things. Yes, it was about being naïve, but it was also about knowing yourself. It was about having a bit of money, a plectrum and a few grams of your ‘medicine’ of choice in your pocket. It was about drinking beer but also quaffing litre after litre of water. It was about altering Manchester street signs so that they now carried the name of the scene. It was about experimenting with E, blagging bennies and coke, and maybe even rediscovering glue. It was about eating stodge just to soak up the booze and pick up the ‘poison.’ It was about talking in an exaggerated Mancunian accent whether you came from Hulme or Hythe. It was about using words and phrases like ‘bangin’,’ ‘sorted,’ ‘crackin’,’ ‘top one,’ ‘kickin’,’ ‘blindin’’ and ‘on one.’ It was about growing your hair really long and then cutting it with the aid of a bowl. It was about buggering up your posture, hunching up your shoulders, scuffing your feet on the floor when you walked and swinging your arms like you were Galen from Planet Of The Apes. It was about dancing like a monkey. It was about staying out so late, you got up before you fell asleep. It was about constantly looking as if you were in need of a few hours kip and a gallon of orange juice. It was about romanticising gang culture and graffiti even though you probably weren’t in a gang and almost certainly didn’t own an aerosol. It was about hanging outside warehouses on the off chance that there was something going down inside and thinking that it would be great to be a drug dealer even though you were probably going to wind up working in a bank. What’s more, it was about owning albums such as Happy Mondays’ Bummed and Pills ‘N’ Thrills & Bellyaches, Inspiral Carpets’ Life, James’ Gold Mother and The Stone Roses’ er... The Stone Roses. It was about referring to yourself as a ‘scally’ irrespective of the term’s negative connotations. It was about pouring a pint of lager over your head at the Hacienda i) to help you cool down and ii) because you felt like it. It was about wearing outsized T-shirts, huge hooded tops and bog-awful beanie hats. It was about sporting labels like Reebok, Kangol and Joe Bloggs. It was about wearing a pair of jeans with 19 inch bottoms that threatened to trip you up every time you took a step. It was about learning to like a city in spite of its shite weather, hideous 1960s architecture and absence of certainties. It was about realising that no matter how shit things got, there was another great Saturday night just around the corner. It was about realising how terrifying life was and then choosing not to be afraid. And it was about realising the whole world was against you and then saying: “OK, let’s have it!”

So when did this party begin? Opinion is divided although people certainly agree that the North was well and truly at its heights when Spike Island, a massive concert, was staged in Widnes. It was headlined by The Stone Roses and proved that the scene could support a gig that rivalled Knebworth for size if not organisation, situation and sound quality. There’s also little argument about when the scene hit the mainstream. Jackie Brambles and Jenni Powell were the hosts who brought you that 29 November 1989 edition of Top Of The Pops. The line-up that evening featured two Manchester acts, Happy Mondays and The Stone Roses. To be fair, the performances they gave that night were pretty lacklustre. Shaun Ryder struggled to remember the lyrics to ‘Hallelujah’ that he was supposed to lip-synch to, Ian Brown looked like he couldn’t be bothered as he performed his simian shuffle to ‘Fools Gold’; shit, if it hadn’t been for the immaculate Kirsty McColl who guested with the Mondays that night, you could easily have overlooked either band. Mondays’ dancer/vibe merchant Bez knew exactly why the groups appeared so ambivalent: “The thing about Top Of The Pops is that it’s the most boring, crap day you’ve ever had. It looks great on television but in reality you’re just stuck in a room with a mirror, a sink, a chair and yourselves for company.” Top Of The Pops producer Chris Cowey, though, thought the bands were both brilliant: “It was just a complete breath of fresh air. You could feel the brooding resentment, bollocks-to-the-lot-of-you attitude coming right down the camera.” Regardless of whether The Roses and Mondays were brilliant or bloody awful, by the time the show went off air, the whole country had heard of Madchester.

And as for what happened next, well, it was really quite beautiful. A small but gifted band of bands sprung up across the North-West like Oldham’s Inspiral Carpets, the idiosy...

Índice

• 1. Wrote For Luck
• 2. Madchester - So Much To Answer For
• 4. The Big Two
• 5. The Also-Bands
• 6. Lost In Music
• 7. Bog Awful Baggy
• 8. Rave On?
• 9. Reference Materials
• Books