Belfast Telegraph Takes A Look at Alan McGee

30/01/06

Nose for talent since the dawn of Creation

Belfast-bound Alan McGee is a quirky one-off in a world of corporate suits. Lucy Gollogly takes a look at the man credited with discovering Oasis, The Jesus and Mary Chain, and Razorlight, to name a few

Any music lover with a shred of good taste will be at Belfast’s Stiff Kitten tonight when Creation Records boss and indie guru Alan McGee takes to the decks at David Holmes’ New Left Bank club. It’s a set that’s unlikely to disappoint - after all, this is a man with a seriously envy-inducing record collection.

The 45-year-old Glaswegian, famed for discovering Oasis (top left) and more recently managing The Libertines before their drug-fuelled implosion in 2004, has broken an amazing array of great bands in the past 20 years or so. And anyone who even attempts to tame the notoriously temperamental Liam Gallagher and organise self-styled junkie poet Pete Doherty (below left) must have some fine mettle.

A youthful McGee first demonstrated his nose for the next big thing and canny ability to charm the music Press after a move to London in the early 1980s. He had been seeking recognition for his own band, Laughing Apple, but he quickly found his talents better appreciated behind the scenes. His dreams of rock stardom may have been dashed, but the enterprising McGee soon sniffed out fellow Scots The Jesus and Mary Chain, the first of his many musical discoveries.

He took on a management role and the band became cult favourites after their debut single, Upside Down, was released on his fledgling label, Creation Records, set up in 1984 as a bedroom business venture. The band’s reputation for outrageous on-stage antics - including smashing up equipment and demonstrating their contempt for the audience by playing with their backs to them - soon caught the imagination of the music Press. In fact, their gigs often ended in rioting and the savvy McGee ensured the hacks always witnessed the carnage.

After blanket music Press coverage and respectable sales, The Jesus and Mary Chain moved to Warners in 1986. McGee used the profits to bankroll later signings such as Primal Scream, The Pastels and The Loft. The label also became home to indie touchstones My Bloody Valentine, Ride and Sugar and Teenage Fanclub.

But sales did not match the critical acclaim these acts garnered and that, along with the added pressure of McGee’s well-documented drug habit, led to escalating debts at Creation. He was forced to sell half the company to Sony Music in 1992 to keep afloat.

But a band that a rejuvenated McGee, who had undergone a spell in rehab, discovered soon after was to save the label from disaster. That band was Oasis, who McGee signed in 1993. Just when his beleaguered label seemed on the point of collapse, the cocksure Mancunian upstarts began shifting records in impressive volumes - second album (What’s the Story) Morning Glory went on to be one of the biggest selling British albums of the decade, and Creation lived to fight another day.

Due mainly to his association with Oasis, McGee became a key player in the ‘Cool Britannia’ media frenzy of the mid-1990s, so much so that in 1997 the Labour Party enlisted his help in its (mostly unconvincing) efforts to woo young voters. He was made a member of a task force on the creative industries but later fell out publicly with the government after backing Sex Pistols manager Malcolm McLaren for London mayor.

“The irony is not lost that some boy who got one O Level was involved in British government. But I wish I hadn’t done it,” he later admitted.

McGee shut Creation down in 2000, and the last album to come out on the label was Primal Scream’s critically lauded techno-punk effort XTRMNTR. The Scot swiftly set up Poptones, currently home to hip new bands such as Hull punk hopefuls The Paddingtons, The Others and psychedelic DJ Cherrystones. He also manages ex-Libertine Carl Barat’s new band Dirty Pretty Things.

McGee continues to seek out and nurture new talent by way of his regular club nights - indie chart toppers Razorlight got a £250,000 record deal after appearing in the unsigned band slot at his Death Disco club.

McGee is often seen as an idiosyncratic character in a music industry stripped of much of the old quirkiness. Fittingly, his entry on networking site myspace.com lists his interests as “Diet Coke, bananas, Ipods, eastern Europe, Mexico and rock ‘n’ roll”, and defines his occupation, somewhat cryptically, as a “situationist”.

Meanwhile, a blurb entitled “about me” states “Scottish. Too old to take drugs to (sic) young to die.” Who needs to apply the rules of spelling and grammar when you’ve already discovered Oasis?

Alan McGee DJs at Stiff Kitten, Belfast, tonight. Admission £8. Stiff Kitten & 9023 8700.

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