Alan Mcgee The Story Of Creation Records

At the beginning of 2000 Alan McGee of Creation Records stunned the music business when he announced that he was leaving the label. This is the behind-the-scenes story of Creation and of one man's vision.

'Essential reading for anyone interested in the heady, vulgar, marvellous miasma of British music and culture in the nineties' – Irving Welsh 'A true believer in the power of music and more importantly a believer in the people that make music. He gave me and many more like me a chance to change my life' – Noel Gallagher Alan McGee's Creation Stories is a star-studded, outrageous, funny and anarchic account of the record label he set up and the bands that defined an era, including Primal Scream and Oasis. A charismatic Glaswegian who partied just as hard as any of the acts on his notoriously hedonistic label, Alan McGee became an infamous character in the world of music in the nineties. In Creation Stories he tells his story in depth for the first time, from leaving school at sixteen to setting up the Living Room club in London which showcased many emerging indie bands, from managing the Jesus and Mary Chain to co-founding Creation when he was only twenty-three. His label brought us acts like My Bloody Valentine, House of Love, Ride and, of course, Primal Scream. Embracing acid house, Alan decamped to Manchester and hung out at the Hacienda. His drug-induced breakdown, when it came, was dramatic. But as he climbed back to sobriety, he oversaw Oasis's rise to become one of the biggest bands in the world. Alan himself becoming one of the figureheads of Britpop. Having sold the label to Sony to stave off bankruptcy, he became disenchanted with the increasingly corporate ethos and left in 1999. Since then he's continued to be an influential figure in the music industry, managing the Libertines and setting up a new label, 359 Music, with Cherry Red. 'Studded with diamond anecdotes . . . From mixing sound for My Bloody Valentine on mushrooms, via driving motorists off the road by commissioning billboard posters of Kevin Rowland flashing his pants, to escorting Carl Barat to A&E with one eyeball hanging out of its socket, the book bursts with tall-but-true tales.' – NME

Alan McGee's legendary Creation record label brought us Oasis, Primal Scream, Jesus and Mary Chain, My Bloody Valentine, House of Love, Teenage Fanclub and many of the other most exciting and innovative bands of the eighties and nineties. But it also eventually brought McGee to a breakdown so complete that it took him two years to recover. Alan McGee started Creation in 1983 with a loan of ?1,000. McGee considered himself a loser when it came to school, girls and good looks, but he had two things on his side: punk attitude and an uncanny ability to detect musical genius. Within two years, McGee had launched The Jesus and Mary Chain, sold hundreds of thousands of records and created an indie empire that was a byword for headstrong independence. By 1992, McGee was a millionaire, living an unrestrained hedonistic lifestyle. In 1993 he discovered Oasis, and within a year of partying with the band he entered rehab following a near-death experience in Los Angeles. Paolo Hewitt, the bestselling biographer of Oasis, received full co-operation from Alan McGee and all the key Creation personnel for this candid, often funny, sometimes shocking oral history. It captures in vivid colour one of the richest chapters in British rock history. Creation and its roster are going to live forever.

'The greatest book ever written on British independent music' Guardian 'One of the best British music books of the last ten years' Mojo Founded by Alan McGee in 1983, Creation Records achieved notoriety as the home of Primal Scream, the Jesus and Mary Chain and other anti-Establishment acts. During the Britpop boom of the mid-90s, the astonishing success of Oasis brought Creation fame on the world stage. In 1999, however, McGee announced his shock departure as his label's influence over a generation of British music came to a confusing and disappointing end. Containing interviews with Creation musicians, employees, supporters and detractors, this is the inside story of Creation Records - and of British music since the 1980s.

Tenement Kid is Bobby Gillespie's story up to the recording and release of the album that has been credited with 'starting the 90's', Screamadelica. Born into a working class Glaswegian family in the summer of 1961, Bobby's memoirs begin in the district of Springburn, soon to be evacuated in Edward Heath's brutal slum clearances. Leaving school at 16 and going to work as a printers' apprentice, Bobby's rock n roll epiphany arrives like a bolt of lightning shining from Phil Lynott's mirrored pickguard at his first gig at the Apollo in Glasgow. Filled with 'the holy spirit of rock n roll' his destiny is sealed with the arrival of the Sex Pistols and punk rock which to Bobby, represents an iconoclastic vision of class rebellion and would ultimately lead to him becoming an artist initially in the Jesus and Mary Chain then in Primal Scream. Structured in four parts, Tenement Kid builds like a breakbeat crescendo to the final quarter of the book, the Summer of Love, Boys Own parties, and the fateful meeting with Andrew Weatherall in an East Sussex field. As the '80s bleed into the '90s and a new kind of electronic soul music starts to pulse through the nation's consciousness, Primal Scream become the most innovative British band of the new decade, representing a new psychedelic vanguard taking shape at Creation Records. Ending with the release of Screamadelica and the tour that followed in the autumn, Tenement Kid is a book filled with the joy and wonder of a rock n roll apostle who would radically reshape the future sounds of fin de siècle British pop. Published thirty years after the release of their masterpiece, Bobby Gillespie's memoir cuts a righteous path through a decade lost to Thatcherism and saved by acid house.

Alan McGee's role in shaping British culture over the past thirty years is hard to overstate. As the founder of Creation Records he brought us the music that defined an era. A charismatic Glaswegian who partied just as hard as any of the bands on his notoriously dissolute label, he became a star himself.In Creation Stories he tells his story in depth for the first time, from leaving school at sixteen to setting up the Living Room club in London, which showcased many emerging indie bands, from managing the Jesus and Mary Chain to co-founding Creation when he was only twenty-three. He then discovered dance and acid house, decamping to Manchester and hanging out at the Hacienda, and took Creation into the big time with Primal Scream's Screamadelica. His drug-induced breakdown, when it came was dramatic. But as he climbed back to sobriety, he signed Oasis, becoming one of the figureheads of Britpop. He sold the label to Sony to stave off bankruptcy and eventually left in 1999 but has continued to be in an influential figure in the music industry.

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