A STUDY TO UNDERSTAND MANCHESTER’S EMERGENCE AS A CREATIVE CITY. Jordan Strong History BA Honours dissertation Aberystwyth University 9th May 2014 1 Acknowledgements Throughout this piece of work I have had some fantastic support, critiques and feedback, never more so then from Barbara Jones of student support at the university. Her support, motivation and editing of this piece of work has been second to none. The process of writing a dissertation is a hard task as it is without the persistence of dyslexia, but with Barbara’s help, the process has been as smooth as one could hope. It has been a long, hard process with some laughs along the way, I am truly grateful for her help. I would also like to thank Dr. Richard Coopey, his supervision has been excellent, his guidance with source material has been extremely beneficial to this study. Furthermore I would like to thank Suzannah Reeves of Oldham sixth form college for helping me contact Dave Haslem, Also Dave himself for taking time out to email me. Finally those who helped me at the Museum of Science and Industry during in the couple of days I spent at the Rob Gretton Archive. 2 Table of content 1. Introduction p.3 2. Chapter One – ‘The scene is very humdrum’ p.7 3. Chapter Two – ‘Evidently Chickentown’ p.14 4. Chapter Three – ‘The Hacienda must be built’ p.25 5. Chapter Four – ‘I don’t have to see my soul he is already in me’ p.39 6. Conclusion p.44 3 Introduction On the 16th of August, 1819, eighteen people were massacred during a peaceful protest in Manchester’s St. Peter’s Square. The protest, led by Henry Hunt, was in aid of political reform, universal suffrage and equal representation. Some seven hundred infantrymen on horseback, armed with batons, set about the crowd to supress them and arrested the protesters. As well as the eighteen dead, hundreds were injured. The event would later become known as the Peterloo Massacre1 . Although at the time the massacre seemed a dead end, the fallout led to the Chartist Movement saw beginning of the slow march to reform British society, Manchester led this revolution. Manchester was a city ‘not shy of wearing its politics on its sleeve’ whether it be with the formation of Manchester capitalism under the guidance of Cobden and Bright , Marx and Engels’ development of the Communist Manifesto in the city’s Chetham’s Library or the establishment of the Co-op by Robert Owen in 1844.2 Manchester was at the heart of political development. However, this study is not going to focus on the vast array of Mancunian politics; it is purely cultural as, along with the politics, Manchester has never been shy at coming forward culturally whether it be with the writings of Thomas De Quincy or Anthony Burgess, the art of L.S Lowry or the sporting prowess of Manchester United and City. Manchester is rich in cultural as well as political heritage yet it is not the art, politics or the sport where this study finds its home. It is in music; if the politics of Owen is the heart of the city then music is its brain. A seemingly ever progressing entity that is not afraid of failure as long as it can be said ‘At least we tried’3. Manchester has a lot to be proud of and its music is at the forefront of this. However, this study is not a polemic on the beauty of Mancunian music, it is a study to address thematic 1 ‘To 1945’ The People's History Museum, Left Bank Spinningfields Manchester M3 3ER 19th April 2014 2 ‘To 1945’ The People's History Museum 3 Factory: Manchester from Joy Division to Happy Mondays BBC4, Mon 17 Aug 2009 00:15 4 developments of music in the city. It will do so by firstly addressing the event that is alluded to as the starting point of Manchester’s musical history; The Sex Pistols’ gig on June the 4th 1976, held at the Lesser Free Trade Hall, a short distance from St Peter’s Square.4 Historiographically, The Sex Pistols’ gig is widely accepted as the starting point for Manchester music and it is hard to find a piece of literature that does not allude to it as such. There is a host of secondary sources including: James Nice, Shadowplayers: The Rise and Fall of Factory Records. , Mick Middles, From Joy Division to New Order, David Nolan I Swear I Was There: The Gig That Changed the World, Simon Reynolds Rip it Up and Start Again: Postpunk 1978-1984 and Paul Morley The North: (And Almost Everything In It) and all indicate that Manchester’s music scene stemmed from The Sex Pistols’ gig on June 4th. However this study, although it does not necessarily disagree, it states that this belief undercuts Manchester and its predisposition as post industrial, that shuns authority for a more DIY. This study draws similarities between North American cities such as Detroit and Chicago to draw resonance with the curious case of Manchester. 5 Fundamental to the study are two works by Richard Florida and article by Nick Crossley. Florida argues that a creative class is fundamental to the regeneration of a city and these creative classes are drawn to creative centres, these centres do not follow conventional politics, have an abundance of artisans and what he calls ‘Super creative class’.6 This study started by alluding to Manchester’s unconventional politics and its cultural prowess and through the use of Florida’s ‘The Rise of the Creative Class’ and ‘Cities and the Creative Class’ the study will link how it is the music that regenerated the city, but it was also a combination of pre existing entities as well the Sex Pistols’ gig. This will be furthered by the use of Professor Nick Crossley’s The man whose web expanded: Network dynamics in Manchester's post/punk music scene 1976–1980 article in which he explains the complexities behind the networking in Manchester that was built 4 Nice,J. Shadowplayers: The Rise and Fall of Factory Records Aurum Press Ltd (London, 2011) p.10 5 Connell,J. Sound Tracks: Popular Music Identity and Place. Routledge (New York, 2002) p.106 6 Florida,R. The Rise of the Creative Class: And How it's Transforming Work, Leisure, Community and Everyday Life Basic Books; New edition edition (New York 2003) p.68 5 after the Sex Pistol’s gig. Although this can be aligned with the gig itself, the study argues that the ‘actors’ in the network Crossley alludes to were pre-existing. There was the D.I.Y attitude and that the gig ignited this network further7. It is through the use of primary evidence such as the Rob Gretton Archive at the Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester, the Defining Me exhibition at the Lowry in Salford and contact with David Haslem, the author of Manchester a Pop Cult City have formed a basis for the primary sources used and have given the background evidence to formulate such arguments. Furthermore several documentaries have been used as primary sources, however trepidation have been taken when using these sources due to the subjectivity that comes with interviews. Using both primary evidence and secondary source, this study aims too highlight Manchester emergence as a ‘creative city’. The first chapter of the study uses the arguments of Crossley to shed light on The Sex Pistols’ gig and its importance to the scene whilst also questioning the importance of the time between the first gig in June and the second a month later in July which saw the crowd increase from 42 to near 10008. It is here where the Crossley article points to a network of actors in the city as opposed to the idea that The Sex Pistols’ gig was just an almost class conscious uprising against the music of the time. Chapter two develops further the argument Manchester became a creative city, showing that Manchester was not the only place to take the punk mentality and start a revolution but it was the only city dedicated to progression, never more evident than in the fact that the man who brought The Sex Pistols to Manchester would go on to be the frontman of the Buzzcocks. Howard Dovoto would leave the band shortly after their self-realised Spinal Scratch Records claim that punk was over. Manchester progressed on to post punk and formed its own identity and the chapter argues this is embedded in the DIY attitude of the city that stems back to Peterloo. Chapter Three shows the progression of Manchester from punk to world renowned city with particular emphasis on the model of Factory Records which took the ideas of 7 N. Crossley, ‘The man whose web expanded: Network dynamics in Manchester's post/punk music scene 1976–1980’ Volume 37, Issue 1, February 2009, Pages 24–49 8 Morley,P The North: (And Almost Everything In It) Bloomsbury Publishing (London,2013) P.507 6 Situationist International and an ethos based in art to become what Florida calls a ‘creative city’. It is in this chapter that the transition from post punk to Madchester happens all with the philosophy of ‘creating anew’9. Chapter Four steps out of the Factory’s shadows and shows that it is something from within the city that creates this creativity; the idea that creative people flock to creative places10. The two bands highlighted are the Smiths and the Stone Roses, two bands that did not fit the Factory mode but followed the reaction to Thatcherism in the same way Factory did.