5
Manchester, the Haçienda and the price of Madchester
New Order
This would ultimately result in collaborations with leading American dance producer Arthur Baker, and a minimalist, technotronic behemoth of a single, ‘Blue Monday’, the bestselling British 12-inch record of all time.Open in YouTube ↗
Happy Mondays
Mike Pickering produced the first Happy Mondays single, ‘Delightful’, which was released in 1985.Open in YouTube ↗
Funkadelic
‘Funkadelic, One Nation Under a Groove … Northern Soul … punk rock … Jimi Hendrix … Captain Beefheart.Open in YouTube ↗
Happy Mondays
‘Freaky Dancing’, the Mondays’ second single had been called, and here it was in action.Open in YouTube ↗
New Order
One night they held a debauched rave in the Haçienda’s basement; they had just completed recording their Technique album in Ibiza, and later that year Bernard Sumner would do a fair impression of Bez’s demented choreography on the television chart show Top of the Pops.Open in YouTube ↗
BBC
One night they held a debauched rave in the Haçienda’s basement; they had just completed recording their Technique album in Ibiza, and later that year Bernard Sumner would do a fair impression of Bez’s demented choreography on the television chart show Top of the Pops.Open in IMDb ↗
Happy Mondays
Bummed, says Shaun Ryder, was first and foremost an Ecstasy album.Open in YouTube ↗
Happy Mondays
‘The phrase we used, which we don’t anymore, is “Did you bum her?” So bum was like our term for fucking.’ By this time Spectrum was running a franchise in Manchester, too – the Mondays filmed a strobe-lit video for their ‘Wrote for Luck’ single there – but the London jaunt demonstrated the band’s ragamuffin charisma to the music press in a conducive environment.Open in YouTube ↗
Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels
Friedrich Engels lived there in the nineteenth century, and its dark, satanic mills provided some of the inspiration for his and Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto.Open in Goodreads ↗
ITV
The quaint nostalgia of the long-running television soap opera Coronation Street is the best-known of these: an idealised memory based on lost notions of community and cultural homogeneity, of honest working class folk, cobbled streets and a warm welcome in the Rover’s Return pub.Open in IMDb ↗
Sarah Champion
Manchester also had its rock myths – the wryly humorous but rain-soaked tales of The Smiths, and the fantasy of the city as pop-cult central, where all roads begin and end, encapsulated by Sarah Champion’s breathless eulogy, And God Created Manchester: ‘Why?Open in Goodreads ↗
T-Coy
In 1987, Mike Pickering’s band T-Coy had written the theme tune for Manchester’s nascent house enclave, a loose-limbed Latinate shuffle called ‘Carino’.Open in YouTube ↗
A Guy Called Gerald
It was followed in 1988 by two records which announced the city’s new generation to the world: ‘Voodoo Ray’ by A Guy Called Gerald and ‘Pacific State’ by 808 State.Open in YouTube ↗
808 State
It was followed in 1988 by two records which announced the city’s new generation to the world: ‘Voodoo Ray’ by A Guy Called Gerald and ‘Pacific State’ by 808 State.Open in YouTube ↗
Happy Mondays
The Mondays’ EP of remixes, Madchester Rave On, had given the scene its name; the scallies in their 20-inch-bottom flares and brightly-coloured hooded T-shirts had given it a style; the Haçienda had given it a focus.Open in YouTube ↗
New Order
On first hearing, ‘World in Motion’ was barely believable; so audacious that you had to play it again immediately to make sure you hadn’t misheard.Open in YouTube ↗
Happy Mondays
Pills, Thrills and Bellyaches, co-produced by Paul Oakenfold, was voted the album of 1990 by the NME. The band filled Wembley Arena and at the end of the show ignited a huge illuminated ‘E’ over the stage, to delirious applause.Open in YouTube ↗
Happy Mondays
By the end of the summer, the album was finished, but although it cost around £250,000 to make – which at that time made it the most expensive indie album ever recorded – Yes Please sounded dull and flat, and sales were mediocre.Open in YouTube ↗
Various artists
The important North album, a compilation which introduced Mancunian house to the world, released in December 1988 with contributions from Mike Pickering, A Guy Called Gerald, 808 State and other local machine dreamers, should in theory have come from Factory; instead it was released by Deconstruction, a label which would increasingly be identified with house music in the north-west.Open in YouTube ↗
A Guy Called Gerald
The titles of his 28 Gun Bad Boy and Black Secret Technology albums captured the tone.Open in YouTube ↗
A Guy Called Gerald
The titles of his 28 Gun Bad Boy and Black Secret Technology albums captured the tone.Open in YouTube ↗