Creation Once Again

The last time I spoke to Alan McGee was 13 years ago when he was setting up his first post-Creation Records label, Poptones.

Maybe it was the scattershot A&R policy – the world probably could have done without Mexican Presleyalike El Vez – or the city investors bankrolling it, but the imprint soon went the way of the great auk and woolly mammoth.
It was, insisted the man who brought us landmark releases by Oasis, Primal Scream, My Bloody Valentine, The House Of Love, Super Furry Animals, Saint Etienne, The Jesus & Mary Chain, Ride and Sugar, the last time he’d be sullying himself with the music industry.
“Yeah, and I meant it,” he says relaxing over a cuppa in his Welsh country pile. “Poptones was too far ahead of the curve, really. We wanted to be an internet label before the technology was properly in place. I was never going to do it again.”
Hot Press received proof of that in September 2011 when an invitation for Alan to speak at an event we were running in the RDS was met with a terse, “I hate the music business!”
“Sorry about that,” laughs the 53-year-old good-naturedly. “What happened, in terms of changing my mind, was that in 2011 this Japanese fella called Takashi Yano flew me over first-class and paid me £10,000 to play five records before Primal Scream went on stage at a massive gig in Tokyo. Then he asked me to curate this thing, which I booked Neil Young and Blur for. It ended up not happening, but I found myself enjoying the involvement again. Takashi had just done a deal with Warners Japan for a label, 1123, which he offered me a six-figure sum to run worldwide. I was, ‘Okay, I’ll do it.’ It took far longer than expected though to come together, during which time an old friend of mine, who co-owns Cherry Red Records, Ian McNay, said, ‘If you want to set-up a label again, why don’t you go the indie route with us?’ I thought, ‘Yeah, why am I going with a major? I don’t need them financially because I’m set up and it’ll be more fun doing it with people I like.”
And thusly 359 Music – motto: “Bang Yer’ Own Drum” – was born. Before giving us the 359 sales pitch, I’m dying to hear Alan’s Michael Jackson story, which derives from a previous trip to Tokyo.
“Creation signed a deal with Sony in 1992 and they had me over doing promo,” McGee recalls with a grin. “At the end of a busy day they said, ‘You come to Michael Jackson, he do eight nights at Tokyo Dome.’ I was like, ‘Yeah, alright, whatever…’ It was before any of the paedophile stuff he’d been accused of had come out. It was me and this guy from Sony, Luc Vergier. We went through four doors of security to get to this room where 50 people were waiting for an audience with the King of Pop. In the end it’s decided that only four people will get to meet, one of them being yours truly. I laughed because I couldn’t have given a fuck about meeting Michael Jackson. Well, that’s what I thought until I was brought in and choked a bit because, well, at the time he was possibly the most famous person on the planet. This 80-year-old press guy who’d been there since the Jackson 5 days said, ‘Announce yourself to Michael’ and I went in my best wheezy Glaswegian accent, ‘Alan McGee, Creation Records.’ Michael Jackson just looked to the left and was like, ‘You fucking weird little bastard!’”
Not a Slowdive fan then?
“No, I think shoegaze had passed him by!”
I’m still trying to get my head round Jacko spending time during his final few years at Grouse Lodge Studios in Westmeath and wanting to work with Christy Moore,
Donal Lunny, Damien Dempsey and Aslan.
“What?” Alan says incredulously. “That’s insane! I tell you who’d be better than Christy though – Mike Scott. I don’t know who’s more out there; him or Michael Jackson’s. Mike’s sober these days, but Michael definitely wasn’t. I’d have paid good money to have seen those two in the studio together. The poor producer...”
Having developed a Partridge-esque dislike of London – “I can name you 10 British cities that have better music scenes” – McGee journeyed to Rotherham to sign the magnificently named 15-year-old, John Lennon McCullagh, who looks like being 359 Music’s first breakthrough act.
“Rotherham isn’t one of the 10 British cities with better music scenes than London. There ain’t nothing rock ‘n’ roll there – it’s even worse than you think! I got him at 15; he could be a fucking superstar at twenty, know what I mean?”
Having listened to Master McCullagh’s North South Divide debut on ‘repeat’ for the past fortnight, I do. Cut from the same precociously talented teenager cloth as Jake Bugg and Alex Turner, he’s all Highway ’61 Revisited-era Dylan one moment, his Beatles-y namesake the next.
“Jake Bugg’s okay but a bit too manufactured for me,” McGee asserts. “The Arctic Monkeys though are really, really special.
“Of the other people on 359, Chris Grant’s It’s Not About War! is one of the best records I’ve ever put out; Tess Parks is Mazzy Star meets The Brian Jonestown Massacre – just brilliant rock ‘n’ roll; Pete MacLeod’s a Glasgwegian like me and an amazing singer; Gun Club Cemetry are fronted by Alex Lowe who used to be in Hurricane #1 and produce these stunning ballads and Mineral are a really cool dance act who flit between Serge Gainsbourg and Kraftwerk with some Syd Barrett and Pixies thrown in for good measure.”
Mineral’s otherwise-French ranks include Dubliner Craig Walker who Alan knows from his Power Of Dreams days.
“Yeah, I gave them 72 support gigs with House Of Love in 1990!” he laughs. “Power Of Dreams were a genius band who should have been massive.”
Asked, “Why didn’t Power Of Dreams make it?” recently at the Hot Press MIX Course Wrap Night, Craig said, “I think the problem was, er, I was a bit of a cunt!” Having only got to know him over the past few years I don’t know if that’s an accurate assessment or not.
“Craig was actually a pretty good guy then,” McGee protests. “My cuntdom, on the other hand, wasn’t in doubt. It was the drinking that did it!”
While Creation and Poptones were reliant on the NME, Sounds and Melody Maker to help them sell records, nowadays, Alan reckons, it’s all about the ‘net.
“At the end of the day it’s almost an irrelevant job that you and me have. It doesn’t matter a fuck whether you give something a good review or a bad review. Whether a band are on the label or they’re not on the label doesn’t matter a fuck either. All we are, Stuart, is gatekeepers. Besides radio, the only people who can in reality make or break a band are Pitchfork. I don’t understand those 7.9 and 8.1 album reviews though. What do you lose or gain .1 for? Artistic impression? It’s not fucking gymnastics!”
I shan’t name names – that reminds me, I must give Eamon Sweeney a call – but a little Hot Press dickie-bird tells me of Alan’s now sadly scuppered plans to stage a Britpop musical with Irvine Welsh.
“It might still happen. We’re in talks about that with a certain big time promoter. It came to life again about two-weeks ago, so there you go – you’ve got your fucking exclusive!
“I met Irvine the other night and – you have to put this in! – he had a fucking skirt on. He said, ‘It’s a kilt’ but I know a skirt when I see one. I’m worried about Irvine…”
Either the Scottish author is indulging in a Kevin Rowland-style expression of his sexuality or McGee is using this august journal to royally wind him up. What can’t be denied is the basing of Freddie Royle, the sexually deviant celebrity hospital volunteer in Welsh’s 1996 tome Ecstasy, on Jimmy Savile whose crimes weren’t publicly acknowledged until 14 years later.
“Well, what about ‘Panic’? I mean: ‘He says nothing to me about my life/Hang the DJ, hang the DJ, hang the DJ.’ It mentions Leeds; ‘On the Leeds side-street that you slip-down.’ Either Morrissey had heard the rumours about Savile or he was magically pulling it out of the fucking air.
“I met him in ’99 and thought he was a piece of work, but I never thought he was a paedophile at that point.”
Talking of which, is it true that Gary Glitter gets a million quid a year from Oasis’ sampling of him on What’s The Story Morning Glory’s ‘Hello’?
“Fuck no, Glitter got a pay-off ages ago,” McGee insists. “He probably gets money when it’s played on the radio, but that wouldn’t amount to anything like a million. Paedophile or not, he did write ‘Hello Hello I’m Back Again’ and was still a glam rock god when Noel came up with his song. I think all of our worlds caved in a bit when the Gary Glitter story broke.”
It was presumed that all of his former label’s dirty secrets had been revealed in 2011’s Upside Down documentary but, nope, there are enough left-over to fill McGee’s Creation Records: Riots, Raves & Running A Label autobiography, which hits bookshelves on November 7.
“It’s salacious about me rather than other people – which is still plenty salacious enough!” he chuckles. “There are a lot of revelations, but you’d have to look at the book to understand what I’m trying to say.”
Returning to matters of a worldwide web-ian nature, was Alan impressed by the internet stunts David Bowie and My Bloody Valentine pulled at the start of the year?
“I loved the way that Kevin beat the system and Bowie… who else can still make it mysterious in 2013? Nowadays if you go to the toilet there’ll be some fucker tweeting, ‘McGee’s having a piss!’”
Bowie’s musical director, Gerry Leonard, made the point in Hot Press that the recording was done in Manhattan where anybody seeing David and the troops going in and out of the studio could have joined the dots.
“It was the same with Oasis at the height of the Britpop madness,” Alan reflects. “Some of the biggest things that happened never got reported while Liam getting a new haircut was the fucking front-page of The Sun, you know?”
Can he understand Kevin Shields being pissed off that m b v’s been excluded from the Mercurys because it was only made available through their own site?
“Kevin hates awards ceremonies, so complaining about not being able to go doesn’t make fucking sense! I suppose it’s the principle rather than getting to hang out with other rock stars.”
Another of his 2013 rock ‘n’ roll highlights is Good Vibrations.
“I fucking love Terri Hooley and was worried whether or not the film would do him justice, but they nailed it. I should’ve known they would with David Holmes on board. I remember him 20 years ago when he was a mod and now he’s just a northern Irish multi-millionaire. David’s a force of nature!”
It’s not only a soberer but also a far leaner Alan McGee who stands in front of me today. What’s his dieting secret?
“Get really sick,” he deadpans. “I was seriously ill around February/March this year and lost 29lbs. Having been 14st 11lbs and a fat bastard, I’m now 12st 10lbs and in the NHS ‘healthy zone’ for my height. I’m the svelte, skinny Alan McGee again.
“What was wrong with me? Ah, I won’t bore you with the details but I’m fine now.”
When not running a record label, writing a book, cameoing in a film – Svengali comes out in February with Carl Barât also making it into the credits – Alan can be found studying the writings of English occultist Aleister Crowley.
“He was like a prophet, really. Crowley went from being demonised to people living out his ‘Do what you fucking want to do, as long as you’re not hurting anybody’ mantra. I’m more into the Chaos Magick thing – Peter J. Carroll, Ray Sherwin, Austin Osman Spare and the like – but it pretty much all makes sense.”
As long as he doesn’t go the (alleged) Hank Williams/Jimmy Page selling their soul to the devil route.
“Well, Hank and Jimmy did okay,” he concludes. “Fucking hell, I wish I could play guitar like them!”

Creation Records: Riots, Raves & Running A Label is published by Sidgwick & Jackson on November 7. We’ll be talking to Alan shortly on hotpress.com