Manchester Music History Print: See More
Manchester music is much more than the big names. It is also about the underdogs and sounds that have been buried below the popular Manchester bands. This print obviously includes all the big names, but also celebrates labels like New Hormones, Rabid Records or Playtime Records; studios like Strawberry or Cargo Studios; venues like Band on The Wall; the eye of Kevin Cummins, the artwork of Linder Sterling and Peter Saville; the sound of Martin Hannett; the words of John Cooper Clarke; underdogs like Ian Moss and true heroes of Manchester music like Bruce Mitchell, Vini Reilly, Graham Gouldman, Ewan MacColl, CP Lee and of course, Mark E. Smith. As an example, this print helped me to discover fantastic groups like Manicured Noise, Crawling Chaos, or Inca Babies and the new blood of Manchester music like ILL or The Blinders.
Without the sources below, the print would have been an impossible task. This is a compilation of fantastic reading material and websites for those interested in learning more about Manchester music. Enjoy!
BOOKS
Manchester, England: The Story of the Pop Cult City, Dave Haslam
“A music history like no other, Manchester England comes complete with a recommended soundtrack for each chapter evoking aural memories as Haslam unleashes an assembled cast of artists, musicians, hooligans, writers, workers, students, entrepreneurs and poets playing out a unique history of a unique city.
Manchester England is not simply about Dave Haslam flexing his academic muscle alongside his DJ-ing credentials. The book is absorbing, insightful and entertaining. There’s been enough overblown hype surrounding this rainy Northern city. Haslam’s earnest and intelligent approach betrays his quiet conviction that “on the third day”, as the t-shirts used to shout, “God did create Manchester”. – Tony Martin
24 Hour Party People Paperback, Tony Wilson
“Tony Wilson’s 24 Hour Party People: What the Sleeve Notes Never Tell You is a curious book. It’s a novelisation, by Wilson, of Frank Cottrell Bryce’s screenplay of a film ostensibly about Wilson’s years at the heart of Manchester’s music scene–a kind of post-post-modern reversal of the trend to convert books into films“. – Travis Elborough
When We Were Thin: Music, Madness and Manchester – Alberto Y Lost Trios Paranoias, CP Lee
“CP Lee produced one side of the first Factory Records release, ate muffins with Andy Warhol, drove a table with Wreckless Eric and was Elvis Costello for a day – All these stories and more are presented on the pages of this lavishly illustrated memoir”. – Amazon
Factory Records: The Complete Graphic Album, Matthew Robertson
“A creative juggernaut of the post-punk era, Factory Records was the catalyst behind the U.K. music explosion of the late ’70s through the ’90s with groups like Joy Division (soon to be the subject of an Anton Corbijn movie), New Order, and Happy Mondays leading the New Wave. At Factory, musicians and designers commingled creatively, with innovators such as Peter Saville, Den Kelly, Mark Farrow, 8VO, and Barbara Kruger elevating album covers to a new art form. The label broke further ground when it opened its own disco, the legendary Hacienda. Factory Records is the ultimate and only collection of Factory’s complete graphic output, including every single piece it produced: extremely rare record sleeves, club flyers, and posters all gathered together for the first time. A must for collectors and enthusiasts, Matthew Robertson’s meticulous compilation of underground ephemera is poised to introduce a new generation of music and design fans to the creative genius of Factory.” – Amazon
Factory: The Story of the Record Label, Mick Middles
“Critically acclaimed on its original publication in 1996, this book tells the complete story of Factory Records’ spectacular history, from the label’s birth in 1970s Manchester, through its ’80s heyday and ’90s demise. Now updated to include new material on the re-emergence of Joy Division, the death of Tony Wilson and the legacy of Factory Records, it draws on exclusive interviews with the major players to give a fascinating insight into the unique personalities and chaotic reality behind one of the UK’s most influential and successful independent record labels”. – Amazon
The Hacienda: How Not to Run a Club, Peter Hook
“Peter Hook, as co-founder of Joy Division and New Order, has been shaping the course of popular music for thirty years. He provided the propulsive bass guitar melodies of ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’ and the bestselling 12-inch single ever, ‘Blue Monday’ among many other songs. As co-owner of Manchester’s Hacienda club, Hook propelled the rise of acid house in the late 1980s, then suffered through its violent fall in the 1990s as gangs, drugs, greed and a hostile police force destroyed everything he and his friends had created. This is his memory of that era and ‘it’s far sadder, funnier, scarier and stranger’ than anyone has imagined.
As young and naive musicians, the members of New Order were thrilled when their record label Factory opened a club. Yet as their career escalated, they toured the world and had top ten hits, their royalties were being ploughed into the Hacienda and they were only being paid £20 per week. Peter Hook looked back at that exciting and hilarious time to write HACIENDA. All the main characters appear – Tony Wilson, Barney, Shaun Ryder – and Hook tells it like it was – a rollercoaster of success, money, confusion and true faith”. – Amazon
I Swear I Was There: Sex Pistols, Manchester and the Gig That Changed the World, David Nolan
“On 4 June 1976, four young men took to the tiny stage of the Lesser Free Trade Hall in Manchester. The noise they made changed everything…The NME named it as the most important gig of all time. When the Sex Pistols played Manchester in ’76 they set off a series of musical detonations that are still being felt today. Despite thousands claiming they were in attendance, only a handful of people were actually there – but those that were went on to form bands including The Smiths, Buzzcocks, Joy Division, New Order and The Fall. They kick-started the Manchester music scene, created Factory Records and laid the foundations for the world-famous Hacienda nightclub. Forty years on, music journalist David Nolan tells the true story of that legendary gig, plus the Pistols’ follow up performance and the band’s first ever TV appearance at Manchester’s Granada TV a few weeks later. The question has truly become one of rock ‘n’ roll’s greatest mysteries: Who really saw the Sex Pistols at the Lesser Free Trade Hall in 1976? So how does David Nolan finally solve it? By trying to track down the whole audience!In an updated edition comprised of extensive interviews with key players and audience members, and featuring previously unpublished photos, I Swear I Was There is the true story of the electrifying gig that changed the music scene forever”. – Amazon
‘The Buzzcocks. Joy Division. The Fall. The Smiths. The Stone Roses. The Happy Mondays. Oasis. Manchester has proved to be an endlessly rich seam of pop-music talent over the last 30 years. Highly opinionated and usually controversial, stars such as Mark E. Smith, Morrissey, Ian Brown and the Gallagher brothers have always had plenty to say for themselves. Here, in John Robb’s new compilation, Manchester’s gobbiest musicians tell the story of the city’s thriving music scene in their own words.
When the Buzzcocks put on the Sex Pistols at Lester Free Hall in 1976, they kickstarted a musical revolution and a fervent punk scene exploded. In 1979 the legendary Tony Wilson founded Factory Records, the home of Joy Division/New Order and later the Happy Mondays. The Hacienda, the Factory nightclub, became notorious in the late 1980s as a centre of the influential Madchester scene, led by the Mondays and the Stone Roses, with a unique style and sound of its own. Then, from the ashes of Madchester rose über-lads Oasis, the kings of Britpop and the biggest UK band of the 1990s”. – Amazon
Manchester: Looking for the Light through the Pouring Rain, Kevin Cummins
“Manchester: Looking for the Light through the Pouring Rain is a portrait of these individuals, the city, and their times. Whether it be on a rain-soaked stage in Brazil, a rented room in Whalley Range, or on the dancefloor of the legendary Hacienda, Kevin Cummins’ exquisite photographs capture the anarchic energy of the Manchester pop moment. This stunning visual record of the city and its pop history is complemented by four textual contributions from Paul Morley, Stuart Maconie, Gavin Martin and John Harris. What is it about that city that makes it the Memphis of the UK? Cummins’ photographic record of the past 30 years captures the highs, the lows and the transcendent pop moments of Manchester’s most famous sons”. – Amazon
Shake Rattle And Rain: Popular Music Making In Manchester 1955 -1995, CP Lee
“Shake, Rattle and Rain charts the emergence and development of a phenomenon that has brought the world Northern Soul and Factory Records, and artists and performers like 10CC, John Mayall, Simply Red, Buzzcocks, Joy Division, New Order, The Smiths, Inspiral Carpets and Oasis, to name but a few.
CP Lee combines oral history and personal observation to provide an invaluable insight into what made Manchester such an innovative, creative, musical centre during the period 1955 to 1995. The text is drawn from Dr Lee’s 1996 PhD in Musicology”. – Amazon
NICO, SONGS THEY NEVER PLAY ON THE RADIO, JAMES YOUNG
“The story of Nico, former model, film actress, singer with the Velvet Underground and darling of Andy Warhol’s factory.;In 1982 Nico was living in Manchester, alone and interested only in feeding her heroin habit. Local promoter Dr Demetrius saw an opportunity, hired musicians to back her, rented a decrepit van and set off with Nico and the band on a disastrous tour of Italy. Over the next six years, until her death in 1988, Nico toured the world with assorted thrown-together bands. They made next to no money, appalled many of their audiences and occasionally, on the rare nights when the music worked, pleased a few.;James Young played keyboards for Nico throughout those years. In this book, he records the never-ending antics of a picaresque circus of addicts, outsiders and misfits who travelled the world – East and Western Europe, the United States, Australia and Japan – encountering an equally bizarre and extraordinary mixture of people: poets, artists, gangsters, losers and drifters. John Cale, John Cooper Clarke, Allen Ginsberg and Gregory Corso are among those who appear in this story of Nico, the last Bohemian”. – Amazon
WHO KILLED MARTIN HANNETT?: THE STORY OF FACTORY RECORDS’ MUSICAL MAGICIAN’, COLIN SHARP
“Factory co-founder, tortured genius, Martin ?Zero? Hannett created the soundtrack of a generation. As the highest profile producer of his era, he produced the Manchester greats ? Buzzcocks, New Order, Joy Division, Happy Mondays, Stone Roses, to name but a few. His influence resounds in today?s top bands such as the Killers, the Kaiser Chiefs and Radiohead. Yet despite the extraordinary influence his production work and personality had on the seminal bands of the time, his life was as tragic and destructive as his work was innovative and creativity. Now Colin Sharp reassesses his friend?s life. Speaking to dozens of Martin?s friends, colleagues and family members, he asks: how did it all go so wrong for Martin? How did the shy, creative ?magician? end up a sad, overweight junkie humiliatingly pushed around in a shopping trolley for a music video before his early death in 1991? This original and fascinating biography ? the first on Hannett ? takes us on a journey into the heart and soul of a sonic genius”. – Amazon
Popular Music in the Manchester Region Since 1950, Dave Russel
“Manchester was ‘at the heart of English pop music creativity for at least three decades’. This fascinating book celebrates this contribution and delves into the music cultures and subcultures around the city during one of the most exciting eras in musical history”. – Amazon
