Gordon in the morning: Liam Gallagher at 40

Today, Liam Gallagher turns 40, and Gordon is in a laudatory mood:

THERE is only one man truly qualified to pass comment on Liam Gallagher. His brother Noel.

Despite Gordon kicking off with this claim, he then proceeds to pass comment, and then invites Alan McGee to do the same. Despite admitting that neither he nor McGee are actually qualified so to do.

Smart trots out the usual "one of the best frontmen in music history" line (which, if you're mostly going to see The Spice Girls and Kasabian, is probably the sort of thing you'd genuinely believe) and then shares an anecdote through which we can get the measure of the man:

Jon McClure, from band Reverend And The Makers, told me: “When we supported Oasis, Liam asked me what my favourite type of peas was. I said garden. He said, ‘Don’t you like mushy?’ I said, ‘No, I prefer garden.’ He said, ‘You’re all right, you are.’ I think that’s how he susses folk out.”

It's interesting that although Smart has met Gallagher frequently, he has to fall back on someone else's anecdote. Even if it's one that doesn't really mean anything; a profile built on a throwaway story about a throwaway line.

Gordon does offer one story about meeting Liam. The scene is him, talking with Noel:

By that point I knew Noel quite well. Liam bowled over and said: “You’re mates with arr kid, right? As far as I’m concerned, you’re a c*** in a nice coat.”

Arr kid? Arr kid? Did this happen on talk like a pirate day?

Still, we've at least established that Liam is a pretty good judge of character.

McGee's piece is actually quite sweet, sharing a story about how - after McGee's return from his drug hell - Liam was the first person to talk to him in a normal way:

Even people from my own record company, Creation, didn’t know what to say. But Liam was the one to say, “Are you all right?” For that I will always love him.

He warns us that Gallagher will be playing in a band until he dies. Happy birthday, Liam, and heaven help us all.

Re-Creation

Alan McGee is, reckons Louder Than War, thinking of bringing back Creation:

Rumours have increased in the last hour though as Gun Club Cemetery (who we featured as a New Band of the Day yesterday, interviewing Alex Lowe) tweeting they have signed to Creation.

It’s rumour at the moment with the only signs the legendary label, once home to Oasis, Super Furry Animals and others, is back in business coming from the band and their manager.

A revival of Creation? Wasn't that what we were all praying for? Admittedly, we were praying for it at the time it was still going and mostly just churning out Oasis records and hanging out with Tony Blair, not recently.

There is a pressing problem, though: if you look at the back of any Creation re-release, it states clearly that Creation is wholly-owned by Sony.

Admittedly, they don't really care for it overmuch - never mind that the Creation Soup albums are out of print, Amazon have lazily lobbed all the Ride re-releases into the store under the impression that each record is called, erm, The Catalogue:

But own it they do - McGee got, apparently, £30million for the bit Sony didn't own when things were wound up, and although the soundtrack to Creation biopic Upside Down was supposedly released on a revival of Creation last year, it was really just Sony being adorable and pretending, like when Kelloggs put a 1950s version of Snap, Crackle and Pop on the cereal packet to frighten kids.

Is McGee going to, then, buy back Creation? At the time Sony bought it it was apparently worth £60million - clearly the value would have sunk since then, and he could buy it back without the catalogue, but even so that seems like a lot of investment just to allow Gun Club Cemetery to put out a record with a word that meant something to their fathers' generation in the middle.

I imagine McGee could turn up at Sony's offices and resurrect the label from within its failing empire. But 'wholly owned subsidiary of an electronics manufacturer' wouldn't really be the Creation myth that anyone would expect to be played into, would it?

McGee could follow both Branson and Tony Wilson and, with his baby off working for the conglomerates, he could create a Creation form of V2 or Factory Too. This sort of thing always ends in disappointment, though.

Like the time Harry Corrbett had sold Sooty to his son, decided he didn't like retirement and started doing the odd show. Matthew sued his own dad's ass.

Because Matthew knew, once you've flogged your dream to the highest bidder, it's been flogged.

So there's ways Creation could come back. But the real question would have to be: why would you bother?

On the other hand: if he revived Elevation, that would be audacious.

Alan McGee accepts the blame

In Q Magazine's How To Buy Creation Records feature, Alan McGee issues an apology:

Ride were great from the first day I met them. They were shoegaze with tunes - a massive influence on bands like Coldplay. I hold myself responsible for fucking up their career by introducing them to The Byrds and The Beatles.

Actually, McGee is being uncharacteristically harsh on himself - certainly The Beatles were there from the get-go, as Tomorrow Never Knows shows.

Alan McGee laughs as the world burns

Long-term friend of this blog Alan McGee has been sharing the benefit of his insight into the modern world of music with The Australian.

Shall we listen in?

“I don’t really like music,” he said, adding that considering that people in the industry were “drug-addled” and he’d grown tired of them. “With music it’s never enough for anybody… everyone wants to be Jagger or McCartney. As you grow older, it’s bullshit, you’re not that.”

Alan McGee was thirty six when he helped bring Be Here Now into the world. So clearly he must mean you have to quite a bit older before you realise that shouting drug-doused donkeys isn't that interesting. Thank god he's reached 50 and finally worked that one out.

He explained that in his time away from the industry not much has caught his attention. In fact, outside Glasvegas and The Libertines he wasn’t fussed on much these days.

Yeah, if you want an example of band that doesn't have any sense of a singer with a drug-addled Jagger complex, The Libertines would be exactly the sort of thing you should go for.

Still, McGee knows the struggles of being a small label owner, so perhaps he'll drop his grumpy old sod persona when asked about the PIAS fire?

“I read that the Sony PIAS Building burnt down. I’m probably the only person who thought that was funny. I call that a result. Got rid of all the shit music. And you get paid for it, the stuff you couldn’t sell.”

Oh.

What a contrarian, right?

Indeed, when asked about the comments later, McGee even trotted out a defence which even included that last refuge of the boring old fart, the "I'm not afraid of being politically correct" line:

I hate Sony, if the Sony building burnt to the ground again as it did, I’d say that was a result, I think it's funny. Loads of shit music getting burned, I think it's great, and I'm sorry if that’s not popular and if that's not PC, but fuck PC, that’s what’s ruined England, not being able to say what you think; sorry, but I do, and if you don’t like it go fuck yourself.

Let's just try and stop our eyes rolling for a couple of minutes to squeeze in one last quote - because as well as standing by his oh-so-brave assault on PC, he also claims all the other things he said were just ignored:

The British media have tried to ignore what I think. They took the statement, they weren't even there; come down here and basically take what I said out of context, which was basically taken from 5 or 10 seconds from a 30-minute chat, but I don't back off it, there’s loads of shit music and if it gets burned so what?

Perhaps they only took those few seconds because everything else was boring, confused garbage like how all music is rubbish apart from The Libertines?

[Thanks to Michael M]

Mini liveblog: Alan McGee & Marc Marot on Today

Following the death of Amy Winehouse, Today has just hosted Marc Marot and Alan McGee wondering if management and labels could do something to help, rather than enable, self-destructive artists:

Marc goes first, calling for a change to how the music industry does business to stop putting pressure on artists:

"Recording contracts have a ticking clock attached to them - a three year cycle of hard, hard work. It's a cycle that has a contractual option at the end; there's enormous pressure on the artist to keep repeating themselves. There's no way to take time out."

He proposes a mechanism allowing the contract to be suspended. "The problem is who arbitrates"

Alan McGee says it's a reasonable idea, but "only you can get yourself clean". In other words, it's no good having a break clause because if the person doesn't want to clean up their act, it won't be invoked.

He's also a bit more clear-eyed about how much management can do in the face of an addict.

Marc's suggestion, though, is that touring and recording increases stress and - though he doesn't quite say it - puts the addict into a world knee-deep in drugs.

He praises Island for having tried to wean Amy Winehouse off drugs and alcohol.

Marc is one of the great guys, agrees Alan, but says that there aren't many like him. Blame culture is part of this nation, says McGee - you can't really blame management for someone who wants to destroy themselves.

Marc says there's a bigger problem: how do you tell a star 'no'? "Try telling someone who has sold 21 million records 'no' agrees Alan McGee.

We're not much further forward, apart from appearing to decide there's nothing management can do. Which doesn't feel entirely right.

Gordon in the morning: Punk springs a surprise

There's a decent bit of writing under the Bizarre banner this morning, with David Hepworth turning up to offer a Punks Got Old piece following the death of Poly Styrene:

A devotee of the Hare Krishna movement, she was still giving interviews to promote her new album, Generation Indigo, from her hospice bed.

It seems barely possible that such vibrant young spirits should succumb to an illness like that.

It seems doubly odd that we should remember Marianne Elliott by the comic book name she gave herself in those mad times.

That's the great melancholy truth of pop fame. It begins as a lark. It ends up as a life sentence.

Alan McGee also write about Poly:

Poly wasn't a conventional kind of sexy woman but she was still very sexy.

He does mention her other achievements, but he does choose to end his eulogy for one of his heroes by mentioning how sexy she was.

Elsewhere, it's business as usual as a photo of David Beckham with a cheerleader in the foreground inspires Gordon to write a piece which appears to not be bothered that it's unlikely that Beckham was actually looking at the woman who appears to be in front of him.

UPDATE: Thanks to the person in the comments who pointed out that McGee's piece went on beyond the 'sexy' comments, so in fairness to Alan: apologies for assuming you ended your bit with those words.

The actual ending is:

She helped to get rid of the w*****s.

And this bit:

Poly paved the way for people including Madonna and Lady GaGa.

You wonder if they would have even existed without Poly and Ari Up from The Slits, who died last year.

Hmm. Would there have been a Madonna without Poly and Ari? Yes, probably. Would there have been a Lady GaGa? Er, yes.

Alan McGee says no to 'just the facts' Creation story

Alan McGee says he's turned down plans to film the story of Creation Records because the people who had the money wanted a factual story, and he wanted to follow Irvine Welsh's plan:

He explained that Welsh had come up with the idea to morph McGee's character with the Sex Pistols' impresario Malcolm McLaren and Andrew Loog Oldham, who managed The Rolling Stones in the 1960s.

"That to me was a 10 out of 10 idea," McGee commented. "It was going to be called something like Beyond The Eruption."

You can see why McGee want to go with a story which dumped straight narrative for something a bit more myth-making, although probably the elements we'd like to see the most are the ones that he'd care for least:

A lovely, lingering shot of piles of Legend singles under Alan's bed.

A short sequence of Are You Scared To Get Happy measuring the empty space in the middle of Creation twelve inches.

A recreation of the launch party for Kiss Me, I'm Cold.

At least ten minutes on the contract negotiations that created Elevation.

Alan McGee gurgling as Noel and Liam Gallagher honk horns and ride round and round on tricycles while, outside, over his shoulder, Piotr Fijalkowski taps the window trying to get his attention before sloping off into the rain.

Bob Geldof, hanging around.

If McGee really wants the film to merge him with some other characters, could I suggest Harry Fenner and Guy Hands?

Alan McGee: The modern contrarian

There's a big interview with Alan McGee in today's Daily Record, where the man who brought us Oasis, and then kept on bringing us Oasis rails against... oh, The Brits:

McGee, 49, said: "I saw the Brit Awards nominations and I mean, God, is it that bad?

"They should get rid of the Brits and start again with 20 music journalists who actually care about music getting together, instead of a bunch of self-interested record company people who just vote for their own acts."

I remember you saying the same thing as Oasis were getting a best album prize for What's The Story... oh, hang on, I don't.

He also calls for McCartney to retire, because he's too old:

"Music should be like football. Once you turn 40, you should become a manager or get lost. It's for kids. You lose perspective.

"You don't have 66-year-old football players. There's a reason for that."

Erm, yes. Because football requires a degree of physical fitness and dexterity that declines as you grow older. It's not because you get confused about where the goal is or start thinking it'd be better to concentrate on doing push-ups instead of scoring.

And if you reach an age where you can no longer write a decent song because you no longer have the "perspective", why would you be any good as a manager?

McGee's oh-so-contrary Logan's Run style proposal would, of course, have robbed the world of Johnny Cash doing Hurt and everything from Robert Wyatt from Old Rottenhat onwards. Paul McCartney was 39 when he did the Frog Chorus, so it wouldn't have even spared us that.

The man I was at 24 managing The Jesus and Mary Chain is not the same person at 49.

That's becoming increasingly apparent, Alan.

Creation: The movie

After the success of a couple of films mining Factory Records' history, it's perhaps inevitable that a Creation film would follow.

And, arguably, the Creation story is even better than the Factory one - even if there's a risk of the finished product being more Oasis and Sony than cramming Legend singles under your bed and Elevation.

The Guardian's excited about it, and already buying into the myth:

When an unsigned Noel Gallagher took the train from Manchester to meet the bosses of Creation records in 1993, he had little idea what to expect.

Really? Despite sharing rehearsal space with one of McGee's mates?

Upside Down - so at least there's going to be some Mary Chain in it - is due out this Spring. Heidi Berry is available for the Original Soundtrack.

Gordon in the morning: Remember I told you

Given Gordon's ability to run a dozen stories that are wrong to every one that's sort-of right, it's perhaps unsurprising he's enjoying having been kind-of right earlier this week on the Oasis story.

Of course, if you read today's piece, you'd come away with the impression that Smart had written a piece predicting the actual moment that Liam would smash Noel's guitar rather than a hedging, cagey "could this be the end" type piece.

Still, he's making bold predictions now:

In ten years' time, if the money is right and Liam finally calms down from his permanent rage then maybe, just maybe, they will play again.

I hope they do. But it is going to take a long time for this one to blow over.

Still, you'll be wondering - especially in light of his boss James Murdoch insisting that The Sun and it's "independent" journalism is worth paying money for - who, exactly, on Gordon's team alerted him to the end of the current phase of Oasis? Let's see the News Corporation investment at work:

Scots singer AMY MACDONALD, who was at the French gig, said on Twitter: "Oasis cancelled again with one minute to stage time!!! Liam smashed Noel's guitar, huuuge fight"

Ah. So when James Murdoch was in Edinburgh railing at the BBC for telling people what's happening in the world without expecting people to pay, he should also be calling for the future Cameron government to dismantle Amy MacDonald for doing the same thing, should he?

Still, that independent journalism would have kicked in once Gordon was aware of the story, right? Gordon would have been sending someone out to get coverage of what was going on, rather than merely hitting F5 on his keyboard, over and over?

The man who first signed the band, ALAN McGEE, then chipped in on Facebook.

He said: "Just got phoned by somebody at Rock en Seine that Oasis have just split up an hour ago and manager or tour manager made the announcement to 50,000 fans. Madness are now playing 2 sets as they played already at festival. f*** knows..."

God, James Murdoch really has a point, doesn't he? If the BBC crush the likes of The Sun's online service, how ever will we get the chance to pay Gordon Smart for cutting and pasting from free news services online?

Gordon in the morning: Take me back

Gordon Smart reveals that Robbie Williams is starting to think he might have been a little hasty:

ROBBIE WILLIAMS has given his biggest hint yet that he will rejoin TAKE THAT

Really? What did he say?

“I’d love to be in the band again but I’ve got some unfinished business of my own.”

Thank God we've got experts like Gordon on hand to unpick subtle hints like that, eh?

Williams bangs on about how well he's getting on with the guys again - having laughs that hurt his belly, that sort of thing, and it's all quite touching were it not for the lurking suspicion that Williams is not so much fond of his former band mates, as aware how fond the nation are of Take That.

If the prospect of Robbie Williams sniffing round his old mates wasn't surprise enough for this morning, Gordon's new intern might make your jaw a little slack. Yes, today, for perhaps one day only: Alan McGee writes for Bizarre. Sorry, that's:

ALAN MCGEE
The man who discovered the Gallaghers

It's a fairly bog-standard trot through the Blur versus Oasis feud, which concludes:

I think it’s great for music that both Oasis and Blur are playing gigs next year.

Is it really, though, Alan? Or is it just good for people who hire out those massive TVs and sell tabards with "Steward" printed on them?

Gordon in the morning: Me and Mr McGee

Today, as happens from time to time, Gordon has a cracking story. Not, perhaps, so cracking that it justifies the 300-odd days a year when he doesn't, but it's only fair enough to applaud today's mind-warping story about Bob Geldof hearing the news that Peaches was getting married.

What makes it such a strange tale is who he was with:

Sir Bob dealt with the news in a way few would have predicted – through the medium of dance. The Live Aid legend hit the dancefloor on holiday in Majorca after a few sangrias.

Not only that, his dance partner was the man who discovered OASIS, godfather of cool ALAN McGEE. And the choice of music? Er, High School Musical. Shameful.

A source said: “Sir Bob took the call from Peaches on a holiday with Alan."

Alan McGee? On a package tour with Bob Geldof? The same Alan McGee who was poking fun at Kevin Shields for his nostalgic cabaret?

And, the story is topped with a cracking headline, too:

Dancing on the beaches getting over Peaches

Fair enough. That's worth reading. Let's hope it's the start of a golden era of Alan McGee related gossips.

... and I never liked Kevin Shields anyway

Alan McGee takes to his MySpace blog for what presumably was meant to be an enthuse over Mogwai, but which crashes into being another one of his tiresome railings against former friends:

Finally got time to listen to it and it's even better than the last two Mogwai albums which to me have both been wonderful.I'm Jim Morrison,I'm Dead/Danphe and the brain/Local Authority/Kings Meadow/Thank you space expert are all beautiful Mogwai music.Their is a beautiful irony that the ''nostalgic cabaret'' that is my bloody valentine are throwing at people in 2008 gets critical acclaim in the easily pleased UK press with MBV still playing the exact same set they did 20 years ago and the only trick Kevin Shields has anymore in 2008 is actual volume and double extra pa to numb you and zero new songs.


Hear the new Mogwai record it's beautiful.Mogwai are 2008 My bloody valentine were a joke signing in 1991 maybe they got better...

This, of course, from a man who would be sleeping under the arches but for Oasis' tired old slogging.

Niall, who emailed us to bring the post to our attention, also offered a little context:

From the man who in 1996 took out a full-page ad in NME to rave about a gig the reformed Sex Pistols had played at Shepherds Bush Empire...

Also he seems to have trouble with "there" and "their".

If only he'd spent as long on the 'who comes next' problem

More from Alan McGee's gossipy interview with Uncut, as he reminds us that he hung out with Tony Blair:

“Blair is in a T-shirt and Bermuda shorts and we’re discussing the new Oasis LP, the Beatles . . .” McGee told Uncut. “We talked about who was the best songwriter in Teenage Fanclub - he thought Gerry [Love] and I thought Norman [Blake]. “That was the conversation I was having with Tony Blair. That’s how strange, how totally fucking psychedelic things had become.”

Of course, for quite a while McGee and the Gallaghers had been hoping that everyone would forget their shining-eyed endorsement of Blair, but now that the nation is trying to work out how things were able to get worse, it seems that the Creation/New Labour years have moved from 'awkward embarrassment' to 'worth name-dropping' again.

... but then he realised they didn't have a thought in their heads

It turns out that Alan McGee's first impressions of Oasis were that they were fascists:

"My little Manchester mate, Debbie Turner, shared a practice space with this band that had a Union Jack on the wall," McGee told Uncut.

"I remember looking at the Union Jack and asking, 'Are they fascists?' and she said, 'Yes'. She was taking the piss, of course."

He continued: "It was a psychedelic Union Jack, sitting alongside pictures of John Lennon and Yoko Ono.

"But it was still a Union Jack – and back then, before the whole Cool Britannia bollocks, a Union Jack meant you had to be right-wing. I truly didn't have a clue."

Of course, it's still possible to be right-wing and not actually so extremely right-wing that you're shading into fascism; it seems McGee was comfortable enough with Noel Gallagher's more reactionary stances. At least he didn't see the flag and panic that they were Morrissey fans.

What's actually fascinating about this little insight, though, is what it actually means for the great Oasis myth - that McGee discovered them in a club in Glasgow and more-or-less signed them on the spot. What an astonishing coincidence that the band he discovered at King Tut's were sharing a rehearsal space with one of Mcgee's mates.

Alan McGee doesn't love the companies

We're sure that Alan McGee's latest spot of record-company slapping is in no way motivated by the failure of Poptones, oh no:

"I'd recommend a band not to go to any record label, I think they're all fucking rubbish.

"You're better off doing it yourself. They're living in the past, it's like owning a tram company or something."

Like running a tram company? Like the one that runs the trams in Manchester, do you mean, or the one that runs the Croydon trams? You really think that owning a record company is akin to being in charge of a modern, rapid, urban transport network?

We suspect he probably meant something more like a steam railway, didn't he?

Alan McGee loves Frank

Someone - Scotland On Sunday doesn't record who - asked Alan McGee what his favourite record of all-time was.

He chose My Way. Frank Sinatra's reading of it:

"Hands down my favourite song is Sinatra's 'My Way'. What a song! Like it's narrator it's had a rough life but managed to survive – in this case, mistreatment from a multitude of hotel karaoke parties, X Factor contests and ageing lounge singers drunkenly entertaining middle-aged couples on their third honeymoon from the Catskills in New York state to Kathmandu.

"As Martin Scorsese demonstrated when he used Sid Vicious's rendition to roll over the credits of Goodfellas, 'My Way' is still the greatest rock'n'roll anthem to life ever written. But even Sid couldn't top Frank's definitive version."

It's nice that McGee doesn't feel the need to choose a song to show-off with, but at the same time, his choice is disappointingly obvious. Especially since he seemed a lot fonder of the Creation a few years back, didn't he? And weren't Oasis supposed to have been the greatest rock and roll band?

Tim Burgess finally due to give it away

The long-promised free Charlatans album has finally got a release date: it's due out (via the XFM site) on March 3rd.

It'll then have a physical release, which we think you're supposed to steal from shops in May. We're not sure about the stealing, though. You might want to check that. It's called You Cross My Path, and everyone was really excited about this idea when it was first announced, although only until Radiohead introduced the pay-as-you-feel model about twelve seconds afterwards.

Perhaps more socially useful than just 'giving away' your records

The Baseliners - perhaps inspired by the current belief that you can't make money out of recorded music anyway - have tossed all the take from their debut album to the Rotary Club.

Now, imagine if the supposedly-still-socialist McGee had thought of that for the Charlatans album, instead of merely giving it away... a good cause could have had a nice payday; the band would have still got the publicity (and might have not been edged out quite so swiftly by the Radiohead story) and the perception that the band's music is without value could have been avoided.

The Creation Divorce

The Music Week daily mail-out is reporting the end of one of the longer-running music business collaborations: Alan McGee and Stephen King are ending their partnership, after apparently deep sixing Creation Management.