A good portion of my favorite music was made by people from the same city, that being Manchester, England, and like any good post-punk snob, I enjoy reading about it as much as listening to it. The other day I happened upon an old interview from NME with Mark E. Smith, Nick Cave, and Shane MacGowan, giving me a fresh opportunity to marvel at what an asshole Mark E Smith is. When you manage to make Shane MacGowan seem like the reasonable one, you know you’ve really raised the bar.
Anyway, it got me thinking about the incredible number of brilliant bands to come out of Manchester and the incredibly unpleasant people in those bands. Besides MES, you can add Shaun Ryder, Peter Hook, Morrissey and the Gallagher brothers as some of the more famous examples. Now granted, there are plenty of non-jerkass musicians from Manchester as well, but what struck me about the above group was how similar their personalities are, or at least the offensive part of their personalities.
Its as if they share some kind of personality disorder that makes them completely unable to acknowledge their contemporaries. To listen to Mark E. Smith, The Fall is the only post punk band worth anything, and he accomplished it all in spite of his incompetent bandmates(who he hires and fires constantly). He and Morrissey were openly contemptuous of each other even when they shared a record label. Peter Hook called Morrissey a twat in the NME.
I could go on and on, but chances are anyone that can answer this question would also be well acquainted with the people involved. Is there something about Manchester that breeds this type of personality? Does it tend to just cultivate eccentric types? Am I just imagining things? Who put the M in Manchester?
Good question, although I’m not sure I see great commonality between their personalities. Mark E Smith and Morrissey led the two best British bands of the last 30 years, so they’re in their own solar system really. They’ve had decades of people deferring and bowing down to their genius, allowing them to cultivate some seriously eccentric personalities. Wouldn’t call Morrissey an especially Manc persona, although MES clearly is. So these two are out in front but it’s only because their music was so epic.
Of the others you mention, are they really any different from generic rock band talking heads trying to drum up interest in their music? You’ll see the same up and down the country I’d have thought. Shaun Ryder is a bit special, I agree. Rock music is a pretty middle class activity by and large, albeit with plenty of working class contributions. It’s quite rare to get a complete underclass scally like Ryder making a name for himself. Even rarer that he has so much talent - ‘Wrote for luck’ is the absolute archetypal Madchester, Hacienda track IMO.
The specific issues that made me draw the comparison of Morrissey with Smith were Morrissey’s attacks on Robert Smith and MES’s disdain for Joy Division. Both seem rooted in a similar kind of militant insecurity.
In the case of MES I think it is largely bluff and bluster as part of a public persona. A friend of mine met him just randomly outside a bar in Manchester. They got talking - had a few drinks. They got on well and met up a few times after. My friend assures me he’s the nicest person you could ever hope to meet - chatty, friendly, funny, humble. Not at all like you might imagine him to be from the media image. Never having met him myself, and just going on the public image, I would have guessed he’d be arrogant, stand-offish, hard to talk to but apparently not.
Well I probably wouldn’t want to be in his band. He seems to give band members short shrift. But my mate met him several times each time for a couple of hours and they met in pubs so they were drinking. And he came away with the impression that he’s a really nice bloke. He’s written a book which I keep meaning to read - called Renegade. My mate’s read it and says it’s pretty good.
Re your main thread point. It’s definitely true that there is a certain “attitude” that Manchester people like to portray. Not all of them of course but if you grow up there you come to recognise it. Most of the time they don’t mean it seriously. It’s a kind of cockiness I suppose. Dunno how to describe it.
I went over to Manchester in '90 or so for a couple of weeks, with a buddy of mine, and enjoyed the musical scene for a bit. We ran into a few of these guys just while out on the town but never got really deeper than “Hey, it’s those American dudes again” with them, but we had a great time. A couple things I’d say - Manchester was at the time, and probably still is, a rather ugly grey town with relentless bad weather, it seemed to me. I believe at the time the economy was terrible and there wasn’t any place for that generation to do a lot of productive things (aside from making music), and that probably played out in the dispositions of a lot of the kids. Having said that, Shaun always seemed pretty chipper when I saw him.
Funny story - my buddy and I went over there to visit my brother in Cambridge and rented a car to go up to Manchester. We drove into town (long before there were GPS’s), and got completely lost. We were looking for the Hacienda, ground zero of the scene at the time, and drove for probably 2 hours trying to find it. Finally we gave up, stopped at a little red brick hotel that looked real homie, and went in to rent a room. We came back downstairs after putting our stuff away and sat down to eat some dinner in the pub area. We look out the windows and notice there’s a really big line forming across the street on the other corner, and then a couple kids came in with ‘Fugazi’ shirts on. We started to chat with 'em, and sure enough, that was the Hacienda club right across the street. We had happened on it purely by chance, and for the next few days all we had to do was walk across the street to get in the club. We saw quite a few of the semi-famous there - Paul Oakenfold, the Soup Dragons, the Stone Roses, half of New Order. Every night was a whole lotta fun, and the only bad thing was that they had this big giant freaking Great Dane at the hotel as “security” and the owners would give us the key to the front door (normally residents were NOT allowed in after 11pm!), and it would be hell getting from the door to our room because the dog was all over us.
Yeah, we have our own special kind of arrogance :).
Undoubtedly cultural figures do play this up, and I’m sure that there’s some confirmation bias in what you’re seeing. However, I do think that (like, I’m sure, every city) there is a definite character to the city. I think part of it is that we recognise that in many ways our glory days - the industrial peak - are over and we’re not too sure what’s ever going to replace it. We also used to suffer in comparison to Liverpool, which always seemed much more exciting and shiny than we ever were. We like being sneered at, I think - it gives our slightly smug arsiness something to kick against. As an example, part of me really bridled at Sigmundex’s description of an ugly grey town with relentlessly bad weather. I actually find the Victorian architecture genuinely beautiful, and it doesn’t always rain. My inner Mancunian spins off on a rant at the rudeness, the rational part of me shrugs and admits that a lot of people would probably agree with him/her!
A huge proportion of my favourite bands are local (although I was never excited by the Madchester stuff - too chirpy for me). The attitude is a big part of why I love New Order, the Smiths and the Fall.
Being Mancunian is a huge part of my identity, it’s very important to me. This is despite the fact that I left in 1993, and there’s virtually no chance of me ever moving back - my life’s taking me to the other side of the world, in fact. I’m from Manchester, it will always be home to me and in some ways I feel sorry for anyone who hasn’t had that :).
Thanks for the response. The chapter on Manchester in “Rip it up and Start Again” that I just read says a lot of similar things. Now, could you explain to me why Karl Pilkington is the way he is?
I see on Wiki Manchester is also supposed to be responisble for the Bee Gee’s. Seems to ignore the Brisbane connection; however I am pleased that they are a stain on Manchester instead
The Bee Gees were born in a house on Keppel Road in Chorlton (which is half a mile from my house)
They came back when they had become successful and bought the house back from the current owners. The current owners had rented the house out to students, and as the Bee Gees had no intention of actually moving in, they let them stay, and as dar as I know, still rent it out to this day. When I was a student, I would have loved to have had the Bee Gees knocking on the door asking for rent.
Aww, Charley, I’m sorry that you’ve never heard me grouse about my old hometown in upstate New York… ugly, grey, and well… snowy is about the best you can say about it! Believe me, there’s a reason me and my buddy went to Manchester, and we had a great time while we were there. The town did have some lovely places. Even the place that we stayed at (it had some standard name like “Whitechapel Inn” or something like that, I think) was great, and the proprietors were nice enough to deal with a couple of characters who were obviously NOT their normal clientele. Manchester has it’s charms, Charley!
Thinking about it, I have found Mark E Smith the perfect partner. He hails from the grey and rainy north-west of America. He can play over 80 different instruments. He has released as many as three separate albums in a single year. He hires and fires band members frequently. He enjoys recreational drugs and feels they have an important role in the recording process. Meet Anton! Dig! (trailer) - YouTube
I had never heard anything particularly notorious about Peter Hook before. I’m familiar with the various hijinks the Gallagher brothers have indulged in over the years, I had heard about Shaun Ryder’s unsavory reputation, and Morrissey will always be Morrissey. But Hook never found his way onto my radar as far as behavior.
I don’t know much about Manchester, but thank you 5-HT for mention of the NME article (link here). It’s a very interesting read. All three come across about how you’d expect them, although presumably Shane’s transcript went through some translation.
Peter Hook isn’t a jerk on the level of MES, Morrissey or the Gallaghers, but he’s rather unpleasant in a self centered kind of way. He was completely oblivious to Ian Curtis’ suicidal depression, even going so far as to say he didn’t get the hint from his lyrics because he never payed attention to the singing. The whole band was somewhat guilty of this, but Sumner at least made some effort.
Speaking of Bernard Sumner, here’s Hooky’s incredibly backhanded complement to his former bandmate concerning why he doesn’t feel there’s a rivalry between the two.
Johnny Marr, incidentally, is also a bit of a twat, or at least he used to be. He and Morrissey together were a bit of a nightmare for anyone that had to work with them, especially if they wanted to actually be paid for their work.
not a chance. I suspect he’s really from Yorkshire.