Alan McGee: An appreciation

Nov 6, 2008

So, as we said last week, Alan McGee has quit the music business. With him being a man who put out much of the music that inspired this website to come in to existence, we thought it only fair to do a bit (well, a lot) of a look back at his career..

Having been born in Glasgow, McGee moved to London, primarily because of the profound effect that the punk scene had had on him, in the early 1980s. He formed a band called The Laughing Apple, who one must assume were crud as there doesn't seem to be a single Youtube clip of them. It would be easy to say that McGee soon realised he didn't have the talent himself and so seamlessly moved into nurturing other people's talent. That though, would be to ignore his future crimes in Biff Bang Pow! (more of whom later). It is fair to say though that McGee started to devote more and more of his time to his club night, The Living Room (held at The Enterprise in Chalk Farm) and his Communication Blur fanzine.

The big break came with The Jesus and Mary Chain. McGee had gone to school with Bobby Gillespie, who had become a huge fan of the band, recommending that McGee put on a gig for them. He did, was similarly smitten with their naive racket, and ended up managing them. Oh, and Gillespie ended up in the band after their original drummer left.

The Mary Chain's early gigs often ended in riotous chaos. They couldn't actually play their instruments, but they had attitude and were really fucking loud. Essentially, they were a manager's wet dream. McGee knew all he had to do was get some journos to a Mary Chain gig and he would have instant publicity. In 1983, McGee had formed Creation Records (named after the band, of whom McGee was a huge fan; Biff Bang Pow! being named after one of their songs) with friends Dick Green and Joe Foster. The first release was an execrable one, '73 in 83' by The Legend (Melody Maker journalist Everett True). However, once he got the Mary Chain signed to the nascent label, putting out their debut single 'Upside Down', things started to happen for him.

Though the Mary Chain left Creation in 1985, the money he had made from them kept the label going for years to come.

In the early years, the label consisted primarily of well meaning but not commercially successful bands such as Primal Scream (whom Gillespie had left the Mary Chain to concentrate full time on), Felt and The Weather Prophets. The next band on the roster to achieve anything approaching mainstream success was the ludicrously talented Guy Chadwick's The House of Love, though much of that came, in a by now familiar theme, when they left Creation for major label backing.

Probably the key moment in McGee's life (professional and personal) came when he got hugely in to the Acid House scene of the late 1980s. From that point, he began signing bands who, while still guitar by nature, seemed to have a similarly trance like spirit. There followed a rash of classic releases such as Loveless by My Bloody Valentine, Screamedlica by a similarly pill inspired Primal Scream, Nowhere by Ride and Bandwagonesque by Teenage Fanclub. A dissident bunch at first glance, but McGee was as enthralled by classic songwriting as he was by experimentation and noise.

While this period saw some of the most important indie albums of all time being released on his label (and there were underrated acts on there too, like Swervedriver and The Boo Radleys), few of them made any money. In fact, in Loveless' case, they almost bankrupted the label. Besides, any profits they would have made would have gone towards McGee's burgeoning drug habit. So bad did things get, on both a personal and financial level, that McGee sold half of the label to Sony in 1992 to raise some much needed funds. He now says that this was the death of the true Creation records. Ironic then, that the main reason for his infamy was still to come.

Now, the story of how McGee discovered Oasis is told, in his own words, here. Essentially, in mid 1993, McGee was at a gig at King Tut's Wah Wah Hut when he stumbled across a life changingly brilliant rock 'n' roll band (he famously and accurately described early Oasis as being akin to an early Mary Chain that could actually play their instruments) to whom he offered a deal on the spot. There have always been industry rumblings that this isn't necessarily the whole truth. It is now known that Oasis actually signed to Sony, who in turn licensed them to Creation for the UK. The official line is that this was because of difficulties with getting an American deal. Some rumours go much further than this (indeed, see the comments on the clip); that Sony had already discovered and indeed signed Oasis, and that McGee was given first refusal on them for the UK as Sony wanted them to be on a cool label. McGee therefore, was sent to run the rule over a band he already knew he could and maybe would sign, rather than discovering them by accident. Whatever the truth, the romantic version is better. And hey, if it turns out not to be true, it's evidence that McGee had continued to use the same methods of working the press that he'd been using since the Mary Chain.

Of course, really, the rest is history. Post Knebworth, meeting Tony Blair et al, McGee (always in his own head, if not always in reality, a rock'n'roll rebel) found his passion waning. It was announced in 1999 that Creation was to close, and he sold the remaining shares to Sony in 2000 for fucking loads of cash. Fittingly, the last release on the label was Primal Scream's experimental (and indeed ace) XTRMNTR.

Since then, though not as ubiquitous a voice as he once was, McGee has got back into the management game, managing, among others, The Libertines and The Charlatans. He was an early adopter to internet distribution of music, predicting the demise of traditional label structures long before the industry crash. This year, he managed to get The Charlatans their first publicity in years by giving away their latest album for free via XFM. A canny move indeed, particularly to those who have heard it. He also ran his Poptones label, and continues to put on club nights - the one thing he intends to continue with, bringing a nice (and possibly deliberate, knowing what a romantic he is) symmetry to his career. Alan McGee is far from without fault: he can be self important, pompous and revisionist. But for releasing much of the greatest music we have ever heard, we salute him and wish him all the best, and will valiantly ignore Hurricane #1, Heavy Stereo and all the songs he wrote.

Oliver W J Rock

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