Bruce Springsteen at the Co-op Live arena

 I was there on Wednesday night when a global news event was happening right before my eyes.

At the opening night of his European tour, American heartland rock legend Bruce Springsteen introduced his three hour set at Manchester’s packed Co-op Live arena with a declaration that “The mighty E Street Band is here tonight to call upon the righteous power of art, of music, of rock’n’roll in dangerous times. The America I love is currently in the hands of a corrupt, incompetent, and treasonous administration.”

Billions of people have now engaged in a viral story at which the venue where it happened is referenced, as is the city where the still sprightly 75-year old legend chose to kick things off.

It seemed inconceivable a year ago when the venue endured such a disastrous opening month that would become so firmly woven into the cultural fabric of the region.

Their economic impact has been valued at over £785.5m. Their General Manager Guy Dunstan will be joining us at our Business of Greater Manchester conference on the 1st of October to talk us through the remarkable story so far.

The biggest corporate news of a very busy week has been the merger of Daisy Group with Virgin Media O2, creating “a major new force” in the UK business communications and IT sector with combined annual revenues of around £1.4 billion.

In time, the new group will have to have a new name. When I spoke to a bleary eyed Daisy founder Matthew Riley on Tuesday it seemed a long way down a to-do list that has had “reduce debt costs” at number one for the last five years.

It may seem a trite point to quibble over something like a name, but these things matter. The UK cable communications industry, out of which this business has emerged, only really took off once it licensed one of the best known UK consumer brands from Richard Branson.

I’m sure the Co-op also have other issues on their mind this week as the impact of last week’s cyber attack lingers on, but they will have taken great cheer from the exposure The Boss has given them.

Three years of Music Therapy

Music Therapy started out as a bid to be better mates with Neil Summers.

Me and Neil have always got on well and we bonded over the untimely death and musical life of Mark Hollis, the driving force behind the band Talk Talk.

I came up with the initial idea, Andy Hoyle at Tameside Radio gave us the green light, and Neil came up with the genius name.

Music is therapy isn’t it? 

Our show started during the second lockdown, on a Sunday night, with both of us at the time mildly dreading elements of our working lives.

We were convinced there are plenty of other people out there in the same boat, for whom Sunday night held an uncomfortable dread.

Music Therapy was always for them, something different, not too taxing, but ultimately uplifting.

Our first hour was usually full of nostalgic disco, Europop and a genre of music I never even knew had a name - sophisti pop.

I just thought it was the things I liked - bands like the Style Council, Prefab Sprout, Aztec Camera, early Simple Minds, Roxy Music and lots of Talk Talk. 

The second hour we quickly christened bean bag blowpipe hour, typified by proper chilled out tunes you might imagine yourself listening to as you drifted off in Ibiza with your toes in the evening sea listening to the music of the iconic Cafe del Mar.

I’ve got plenty out of doing the show for the last three years, mainly a deepening of our friendship, but also an appreciation of whole new types of music and artists I never knew existed, from all over the world.

Neil also introduced me to mates of his like Blossoms, DJ s like Luke Unabomber and Justin Robertson and opened my ears to the magic of Colleen Cosmo Murphy, Leo Zero and Jason Boardman, who have in turn continued to curate incredibly inspiring sets of music that touched our souls.

I’ve taken a deeper interest in new music and had my eyes and ears opened to creative geniuses from the past who may well have passed me by had I not made such an effort with the show.

We are far from musical snobs though. 

Early on, Neil said our show had to have no such thing as a guilty pleasure. There must be no artist who was off limits. 

I wasn’t sure he meant that until the second week when he added Romeo and Juliet by Dire Straits and something by Phil Collins. 

Trust me, in my snooty musical upbringing there is nothing as uncool as those two, and yet I had always secretly loved Romeo and Juliet. Lifting that cloak of snootiness, and appreciating a beautiful song for what it is, was a game changer for me.

Since then we’ve found a golden thread of glorious music from unlikely sources. AD/DC, ELO, Status Quo, Queen, we even did a Gothic special and dropped over 100 versions of True Love Will Find You In The End, which became our mental health anthem.

We’ve also been resolutely proud of being from Manchester, but without resorting to the increasingly tiresome nostalgia fest of banging on about what went on in a certain former yachting showroom on Whitworth Street, even though both of us were regulars at different stages of our lives. 

Along the way we’ve shared these with our loyal band of listeners all across Tameside and beyond. The power of technology and the internet means we have been able to prescribe our regular musical fix to Middle East, North America, Italy, France, Australia and Mexico.

So that’s it now. We’ve done three years at Tameside Radio and have called time on the regular Sunday slot. Alex Cann and John Dash have happily left the door open for us to come back and do other things in the future, but while we’re both up for doing other things together, we’ve also got to concentrate on some of our other creative projects for the time being.

It’s been amazing, thanks for listening, look after each other out there.

John Niven's O Brother might be his best book yet

 

One of my favourite fiction writers has just published his best book yet.

The twist though is it’s not a novel, or a screenplay, of which John Niven has earned fame and riches, but a true life harrowing account of the most dramatic event in his life; the death of his younger brother Gary in a hospital in Ayrshire in the west of Scotland in 2010.

O Brother is astonishingly well written, a breathtaking and pulsating roller coaster. But here’s the thing that I really didn’t expect; it’s also really very funny in parts.

In no way is it a misery memoir, but it succeeds on so many levels because it weaves in so many themes about families, class, culture and the chaos of modern life. 

Before his writing career took off John Niven was a talent spotter for a record label, which provided him with the raw material for his outstanding breakthrough novel Kill Your Friends, the rip roaring tale of 1997 Britpop excess, which I bought for my son Joe as part of his essential reading list for studying the Music Business at University.

In that era Niven (as he’s popularly known) notoriously turned down the chance to sign Coldplay and Muse, thinking the world already had one Radiohead and didn’t need another. Instead he backed Mogwai to the hilt, but also Gavin Clark of Sunhouse, one of my absolute favourite British singer songwriters, but who was (to put it politely) way before his time and out of step with the crazy Britpop times.

I‘ve seen John do author events before, but last week at Waterstones in Manchester an packed audience including Badly Drawn Boy, heard John and the writer Dave Haslam open up about the book and the process of writing it.

I asked him a couple of questions and had a chat to him at the end.

Honestly, I could have listened to him all night, but as we were chatting after he’d signed my book I looked over my shoulder and saw a queue of about fifty people glaring at me and quietly urging me to jog along.

I think that such was the familiarity and accessibility of his writing that it feels like getting back in touch with an old pal.

It’s clearly not just me he has that affect on. A few years ago I took the eldest son to see him with the writer and broadcaster Stuart Maconie and like the latest event, was a brilliant evening, full of great stories about the music business, the film industry and the dire state of the world. But we were at the back of the queue that night and had to bail as people really wanted to talk to him. 

That night I took home a copy of Niven's novel, Kill 'em All, the follow up to Kill Your Friends in that particular comic universe, which I really, really enjoyed, but I described as like a band cashing in on a greatest hits tour before getting back to the studio and banging out another classic.

The novels before that one had been getting progressively more ambitious and expansive, Straight White Male and No Good Deed, really impressed on me how he'd progressed as a writer - observant, dark, but not without sensitivity. 

Yet seeing him up close backed up the point Stuart Maconie made - how can this affable, kind, funny man I have before me, who I know well, create a dastardly character with such an authentic and believable inner narrative as Stelfox?

It’s the writer’s skill. Having a good ear, as the late great Martin Amis put it. 

He spoke at the event last week about the writer’s desk being the place where he has time to think and reflect, in the way religious people pray. An outlet for contemplation, but also to replay back at the world as observed by the writer’s eye and ear.

There’s a passage in O Brother where he describes taking out his notebook in the bathroom of the hospital having just witnessed Gary’s demise and recorded all the details.

Here’s a line I have written myself on more than one occasion: this is John Niven's best book and marks his real growing maturity as a writer.

Music Therapy column from the Tameside Reporter and Glossop Chronicle

Picking a side in the culture war

The culture wars are playing out everywhere this summer, including on our chilled out radio show. 

I hinted at this last week when the horrible right wing press cried crocodile tears over the death of Sinead O’Connor. The same lizards that will have mocked her mental illness, decried her efforts to expose injustice and sneered at her appearance.

I want the world to be nicer. I want people to be kind.

I would much rather we didn’t boil the planet and left somewhere habitable for our kids and grandkids.

I think my politics are pretty middle of the road, and all of the things I marched against in the 1980s when I was called a loony lefty, are pretty much accepted societal norms now. 

You know, not being a nazi, a racist, or being horrible to someone because of who they love.

Or arresting Irish people and throwing them in jail for crimes they haven’t done.

For me, music represents an opportunity to promote harmony, as well as occasionally being a voice for the voiceless. 

But the people who are fighting the culture war now are the perpetually angry, the frightened and confused who ended up winning a referendum in 2016 and don’t know what to do with the Brexit they won.

Stripped of one enemy without - those dratted eurocrats and bureaucrats - they are now constantly on the hunt for enemies within. Refugees, trans people, protestors, students, Mick Lynch.

The Daily Mail even publishes a Woke List. 

None of whom have been responsible for putting our energy bills up, or pumping sewage into our rivers, lakes and seas, or bringing the NHS to its knees and swollen the waiting lists to 7 million people.

None of them have pushed kids into food poverty, a mental health crisis and prevented our housing stock increasing to meet demand.

In the 80s when Margaret Thatcher was prime minister I had plenty of friends who were Tories because their parents had bought their council house, their Dad had started his own business and they thought they might make a few quid off British Telecom shares. 

She had a dream, however flawed and selfish, of people owning their own house or business.

Harry Enfield had a character, Loadsamoney, he symbolised the spirit.

Even bands and fanzines could claim an enterprise allowance to claw out of unemployment by another route. 

But what have we got now? 

A few years ago, the former local DJ and Peak District sauce seller Elliot Eastwick created a comedy character called Ged, as in ‘Get it Done’ (say it quickly). 

He wore a flat cap, drove a wagon and supported Brexit.

He thought Boris was great, because he would ‘get it done’. 

Whatever ‘it’ was.

But Ged was no more ridiculous than Lee Anderson, the Tory party deputy chairman. Railing at the “woke brigade”. 

Same with GB News, Nigel Farage, and that bloke from Stalybridge who writes long letters to this newspaper. 

As a conservative, what does Lee Anderson want to conserve?

What do they think is good about the country?  What does the party they support feel proud of after running the country for 13 years? 

But it’s worse than that, because the parody has become the reality. Spewing hate, like sewage into the sea, is all they’ve got.

I’m not laughing anymore. The culture war is real. And this radio show has picked a side.

And we’re going to win, do you know why? Because despite everything we’ve got the best artistic parodies, like Cold War Steve (pictured), the best comedy, which I’ll be enjoying in Edinburgh next week, and the best music. 

And what have you ever produced? Jim Davidson.

No, not Sinead

 

No, not Sinead, we both said. Of all the deaths that Music Therapy has lamented, then the tragic, awful, desperate sad loss of Sinead O’Connor has hit us the hardest.

We slipped a couple of songs that featured her on last week’s show.

But she’s been a constant since we started the show. Not only the greatest ever cover version, the transformation of a beautiful buried ballad in the archive of His Purple Highness (Prince) but Sinead truly did such an amazing, heart-rending job of making Nothing Compares 2 U her absolute own, that most tributes absolutely led on it last week.

Whenever I put together a playlist for our show, and add it to Spotify, and the anoraks amongst you are very welcome to take a look, then the next song the Spotify Artificial Intelligence powered robots suggest is Jah Wobble’s Invaders of the Heart, featuring Sinead O’Connor, singing ‘Visions of You’. 

Stockport-based Jah Wobble, or Jon Wardle to his family, described her input into the project as “a huge act of generosity”. 

In one of the many, many tributes to her he added: “Typical of her. Refused to take a penny for the session. That track had a massive positive influence on my life. From writing the track with her voice in mind, through to recording it was transcendental.”

Her own songs were incredible too, I Am Stretched on Your Grave and Thank You For Hearing Me, and not just her covers. Though as well as NC2U, her rendition of John Grant's Queen of Denmark is off the scale.

I saw her perform just once, in 2011 at the Manchester International Festival.  

She performed a mix of old songs and new and, yes she did do THAT Prince cover. 

I remember saying at the time that her voice was truly incredible, of that there is no doubt. 

Some of her lyrics are breathtakingly poignant and reflect her complex and confused life - abusive mother, sexual orientation issues, bipolar, relationships, her vacillating faith. 

She carried with her such brutal honesty - such baggage - which clearly brought many hazards. 

As she told her own stories between the songs she never tried to hide anything. It was all laid bare. 

She was really good and I came away slightly comforted that she seemed to have found a kind of peace, and had begun to appreciate the talent she possesses and the respect she still has.

To remind myself of the date I found a review from the Daily Mail. Sure enough they were brutally rude about her and horrible, frankly. Spare me your false tears.

On the evidence of the concert I thought she was on the brink of a bit of a comeback. Her band was very tight and her reggae influences show a varied musical style that nicely complemented her own powerful vocal strength.

Last year, however, she lost her youngest son Jake to suicide. I honestly can’t comprehend how any parent recovers from such a trauma.

But she was recording new material. It is heart breaking that it has taken her death for so may to express the admiration and love they had for her, and the understanding and solidarity with her struggles, be they against the deeply conservative and repressive forces of Ireland’s Catholic church, the patriarchy, the media and the music business.

There have also been re-publications of some of her most memorable open letters. One to Miley Cyrus was priceless and direct.  

I don’t even know if it’s real or fake, but her response to Piers Morgan to a request to come on his show was hilarious. I can't repeat it in a family newspaper, but look it up.

RIP Sinead O’Connor. 

True love will find you in the end

Not long after we started doing our radio show, Music Therapy, I stumbled across a mesmerising and powerful song called True Love Will Find You In the End by Headless Heroes. 

I heard it on the soundtrack of the head-stretching BBC documentary series Can’t Get You Out of My Head by the film-maker Adam Curtis.

Headless Heroes are a collective of musicians who came together to record a number of cover versions, most notably featuring blossoming vocalist Alela Diane. 

The structure of the song is simple. 

The message of the lyrics a very obvious plea to someone in absolute despair to just hang on in there.

True love will find you in the end

You’ll find out just who was your friend

Don’t be sad, I know you will

But don’t give up until

True love will find you in the end

This is a promise with a catch

Only if you’re looking can it find you

‘Cause true love is searching too

But how can it recognise you

If you don’t step out into the light, the light

Don’t be sad I know you will

Don’t give up until

True love will find you in the end

It immediately felt like a song that was right for our Sunday evening show, Music Therapy. 

A simple song that folds neatly into our message that music can bring people together, make you feel a bit better and that by sharing thoughts, feeling, and ideas, we can look after each other.

It wasn’t until after that version of the song had lodged as a semi-permanent earworm that I started to discover more about its origin.

It was initially written and recorded by Daniel Johnston, an artist, and musician based in Texas who had a massive influence and touched an entire generation.

He died in 2019 from natural causes but had battled with his own fragile mental health all of his life. 

He was a cult figure in the alternative music scene in Austin, even though his pinched, high tenor vocals made it unlikely that he’d ever be a major star, his following flocked to the sincere raw power of songs like Life In Vain and True Love Will Find You In The End.

As well as his music, Daniel was also an artist of sorts and a doodle of a frog he produced in 1983, entitled Hi, How Are You? has become an emblem for a campaign in his memory - hihowareyou.org - and its location on a mural in Austin has become a shrine to him.

Its simple message is a call to check in with people and let them know you care about them when you know they are in trouble, and inviting supporters to pledge to do that. 

I’ve also discovered there are literally hundreds of versions of the song. 

We’ve shared a few of them with listeners to our show as the opener to the mellower second half of the show at 10pm and will continue to do so as long as we keep finding versions that do Daniel’s memory justice.

Neil declared his love for a version by American singer and songwriter Beck, which was recorded in 2004. 

I still don’t think the Headless Heroes version has been topped, but all the interpretations we’ve played have brought something new to what feels like a rising chorus of voices to do what we ask you all to do, as times get tough, to look after each other out there. 

You can listen to Michael Taylor and Neil Summers on Music Therapy on Tameside Radio 103.6FM on Sunday evenings from 9pm to 11pm. Click here to subscribe and catch up on previous shows.

Proud day for graduating students

 

All across this area, proud parents have putting on their best dresses and suits to see their kids walk across the stage and graduate from university.

Many will have been doing so in a state of mystery, as their sons and daughters are the first in their family to graduate. They won’t know what to do, where to clap, or what to compare it to.

I was that kid many years ago, as I was the first member of my family to go to university.

But I’ve also been the proud parent watching two of my lads graduate, and I’ve also had the strange honour of sitting with the kids when I graduated as a 55 year old with my Masters degree.

The degree ceremony is a brilliant occasion. When I worked at Manchester Met I sat in on a few ceremonies and looked after the special guest motivational speaker. 

They have a really important job to do. I got asked to do it at the University of Central Lancashire in 2021, when they gave me an honorary degree. 

I talked about journalism and my own life, hopefully telling the graduates a few stories they’ll remember. The main one was just don’t be a dick, and look after people you meet on life’s crazy journey.

The previous day’s class of 2012 got Peter Hook from New Order and Joy Division. I genuinely don’t know what he said, but I’m sure it wasn’t that.

I was thinking about that day again this week even though I’m not involved in any ceremonies this year, as a student, parent or staff member.

One of our show’s favourites, Rebecca Lucy Taylor, better known by her stage name Self Esteem, was made an honorary Doctor of Music at the University of Sheffield on Monday (17 July 2023).

Frankly, she could have delivered large chunks of her breakthrough hit I Do this All the Time, notably the line, "Prioritise Pleasure", and brought down the house. 

But given the large numbers of Greater Manchester kids who study in Sheffield, I’m sure a few Tameside Reporter and Glossop Chronicle readers were there.

I’ve watched the whole thing on YouTube and she’s fantastic. Addressing head on the siren voice of self doubt and to comment from her experience on how women are often positioned in music, despite the supposed advancements of feminism. 

She said: “So I started my solo project, Self Esteem, which at the time I thought was just a cool artist name. But over the last seven years it has been exactly what standing up for myself, staying true to my vision and never compromising has given me every time I wasn't quiet just to keep the peace.

“Every time I said no, when I really meant no. Every time I didn't let a sound engineer assume I wouldn't be playing the drum kit, every time I let my emotions show.

“Every time a bloke on line attacked my appearance and I accepted that he is just a product of his lived experience and to reply would be futile.

“Every time I surround myself with people who accept me for exactly who I am, every time I've been brave, when I proudly exist in my skin, when I respect myself, when I remember there is simply not enough time left to doubt myself. It's completely pointless to ever think I'm anything other than the absolute tits.”

So don’t let some Oxford educated weasel tell you that your achievement is low grade, because we’re in a world that measures everything by monetary value and assumes university isn’t the right road for other people’s children.

Go Becky!

More to Manchester than the Hacienda

 

Speaking as a couple of old blokes with fading memories, there was actually so much more to Manchester clubs in the 80s and 90s than popular legend has it, writes Michael Taylor, with help from Neil Summers. 
On hearing the news last week that The Hacienda will return to Manchester this winter with an "epic homecoming show" at Mayfield Depot on Saturday 2 December with DJ’s, Stone Roses frontman Ian Brown headlining a 10,000 capacity venue alongside Techno legends Leftfield.
It's as far away from the actual experience of going there in the 80s as it's possible to imagine.
But in talking to mates about my Manchester memories, so many of the club nights that really stick in the memory didn't involve the Hac.

I remember some actual warehouse parties years before they were called raves, that had such an incredible vibe, merging different scenes from around the city.

Our go-to club was Man Alive on the corner of Grosvenor and Upper Brook Street, while later club devotees speak in hushed tones of the magic nights at Spice, where DJ Justin Robertson filled the room with musical joy.

My earliest memory of the Hac is of a student night that hardly anyone went to. It then had an elitist and slightly po-faced phase in 1986 and 1987, which we endured, rather than enjoyed; because I always thought the music sounded poor.

By the time we left University in 1988 it all changed again and the rest is musical history.

For his part Neil remembers that era at the Hacienda and how door policy moved the scene on to other places in the city.

“Towards the end of 89 young bugged eyed scallies from Stockport had become persona non grata at the Hacienda. 

“Fortunately around this time a number of smaller clubs popped up in Manchester specifically to cater to those ravers who weren’t mates with New Order or didn’t wear Paul Smith suits. Alongside the Thunderdome, NRG House, Man Alive & the Sound Garden was my favourite haunt ’Konspiracy’.”

“A cross between the Star Wars cantina and the ghost train at Blackpool this subterranean shebeen was one mad Saturday night out. I saw some truly insane things in there throughout the Summer of 1990 before things came to a head one night in October when someone (stood a couple of feet away from me) got a bit ‘trigger happy’. 

“Not the kind of thing you want to see in any state of mind, but it probably ruined my night less than the guy being shot at. Even the golden rule of ‘don’t stop the music’ was broken albeit it temporarily as the house lights went on & DJ Pig C hit the stop button on his 1210s & we all tentatively headed towards the exit. 

“A few weeks later someone got stabbed and Konspiracy was no more. Great while it lasted though.”

For all the house music legends and for all the pretending to look cool, my best night there remains an indie night in the summer of 1988, when I went with friends from Lancaster, where the DJ was Dave Haslam who I’ve since got to know.

Dave’s a great writer and touched on this selective nostalgia in challenging essay he wrote in 2015.

He said: "The city authorities habitually give a nod to Factory Records, but I’m not sure they quite get important parts of the Factory story. The Hacienda wasn’t a disco version of the Trafford Centre. 

“The Factory label, the club, those around and involved – from musicians to video makers – produced culture. It wasn’t an exercise in consuming but creating. In addition, like Shelagh Delaney, not only were they forced into action by despair at the cultural provision of the time, Factory operated outside the margins. One of the richest chapters of Manchester’s cultural history began when the lads who went on to form Joy Division began to meet up in a makeshift rehearsal room above the Black Swan Pub, near Weaste Bus Depot.

"This self-organised, independent activity still happens of course; actors, crews, artists, printmakers, musicians, freelancers hiring pub functions rooms, meeting wherever and whenever, trying to bring ideas to life. Isn’t it time these people were celebrated and encouraged?"

Since then I feel the city has become even more of a shallow memorial to the misunderstood past of Madchester. But there we go, adding to the legend.