On the Sixth Day God Created Man…Chester: Part Three

“What Manchester does today, the rest of the world does tomorrow.”

See also: On the Sixth Day God Created Man…chester: Part 1 – and – On the Sixth Day God Created Man…chester: Part 2

Guy Debord defined psychogeography as “the study of the…specific effects of the geographical environment, consciously organized or not, on the emotions and behavior of individuals.” Encouraging citizens to bring a new awareness to their urban landscapes, Debord and his Situationist comrades sought to identify the values of these environments, whether expressed through the “soft ambience” of sound and ideas or through “hard” physical constructions. This critical apparatus—though largely subjective in nature—is both useful and applicable when one examines the distinguishing and enduring features of regional culture. As has been argued over the course of this four-part essay, the key innovators of Manchester’s rock history are those artists who—to paraphrase Debord—see their own image in the places and spaces around them.

Psychogeography has a historical component, too, as the legacy of place is passed on through time, incidents, developments, and influential players operating as stepping stones across generations, such that emerging traditions grow, morph, and transform in the process. The seeds of Manchester’s modern geography were planted in the early years of the industrial revolution, when the city provided early models of urban architecture, industry, and transportation. Its largely working class population showed the world that trade unions can resist authority when workers unite for a common cause.

Such solidarity and class consciousness were reflected in the city’s vibrant leisure outlets, also, where the music halls provided an earthy and often subversive humor befitting the gritty characters and conditions in residence. Such humor, pride, and militancy have lived on in Manchester culture, becoming staple traits of Mancunians and their representative artists. One can hear such characteristics in the arrogant vocal sneers of the Fall, the Stone Roses, and Oasis; one can hear them in the caustic satire of the Buzzcocks, Slaughter and the Dogs, and the Smiths; one can even envision them through the pictoral poetic profiles of John Cooper Clarke, Joy Division, and Elbow. In these (and other) Manchester bands, the city’s history and geography become animated, its traditions are redeployed, and its artistic reputation as a site of rock innovation and influence stands further concretized.

The previous installment of this project I profiled Joy Division and the Smiths, the two premier guiding lights of rock modernism during the post-punk period. The former’s musical explorations were as pioneering as the latter’s lyrical ones such that alternative rock reached intellectual and innovative zeniths theretofore not witnessed in contemporary rock culture.

In the process, however, these bands cast a deep but dark shadow over Manchester (and British) music, such that their introspective broodings and cul-de-sac fatalism ultimately offered few ways forward and little light at the end of their respective tunnels. Consequently, just as their serious-minded work had once served as reactions against the often simplistic (and simple-minded) formulas of three-chord (and three-word) punk, so reaction would subsequently beget reaction with the arrival of a slew of upstart Manchester acts—collectively tagged as “Madchester” bands—that arrived at the close of the ’80s.

The Stone Roses / Madchester

If Joy Division and the Smiths represented an era of high modernist innovations, then the Stone Roses ushered in the age of postmodernism in British alternative rock. Inspired by the bright melodies of the Byrds and the Hollies, by the vocal harmonies of Simon and Garfunkel and the Beach Boys, and by the psychedelic guitar work-outs of Jimi Hendrix and Love, the Stone Roses were the ultimate po-mo pilferers of ’60s rock. To this mélange they added the combative attitudes of the Clash and the Sex Pistols, thus establishing a ’60s-sound-meets-punk-image prototype that would serve both themselves and their fellow Mancunian successors, Oasis, so effectively over the next decade.

The Stone Roses represented the return of the “rock” band, complete with extended guitar solos, traditional song structures, sloganized lyrics, and messianic stage theatrics. Such conventional rock traits had been antithetical to the experimental principles espoused by Factory Records, the label that had helped define post-punk. Its roster of artists—Joy Division, New Order, A Certain Ratio, Durutti Column—had informed the nation that Manchester was the epicenter of alternative rock innovation.

The Roses’ nostalgic and melodic indulgences were regarded by the Factory culture and its guru/owner Tony Wilson as an affront to his experimental artistic mission, while to the Roses the Factory crowd came to represent a bunch of self-important (and self-indulgent) pseudo-intellectuals who had lost the rock plot. Thus, an uneasy tension existed between the band and its city’s by-then dominant alternative rock culture. Class conflict lay in the sub-text to these conflicts, with the Roses claiming that Wilson was using his power to deny the band access to the venues and outlets of the local scene.

As a result, the band had mixed feelings about their city identity. On the one hand they resented the command and control that post-punk “students” had on the local culture, while on the other hand they wore their working class Mancunian identity as an obvious badge-of-honor. Manchester city-scapes often featured in the band’s videos and, like so many predecessors, singer Ian Brown was never shy in accent-uating his Mancunian brogue. He even once quipped that the only thing the city lacked was a beach; instead, the band’s song “Mersey Paradise” offers a substitute tribute to the river that runs through Southern Manchester.

Such a “can’t live with it, can’t live without it” attitude to the city has been common to Manchester’s rock players, John Cooper Clarke, the Fall, the Smiths, and Elbow offering similarly ambivalent sentiments in their respective overtures about the city. The Stone Roses hated the local scene so much in their infancy that they actually traveled to London to play their first major show; yet, a few years later they organized their own Woodstock-like concert in Lancashire (on Spike Island on the Mersey), where they performed for 30,000 adoring fans.

Despite their mixed feelings towards their native city, and despite drawing from largely American musical sources, the Stone Roses were still very much a Manchester band composed of distinctively Mancunian personnel. When critic David Fricke described their much-beloved eponymous debut album as “a blast of magnificent arrogance” he succinctly captured the essence of the band. A cocky Manchester swagger that proclaims “we’re second best to no-one” pervades all facets of the Stone Roses, be it their music, lyrics, image, or personality.

Seemingly a by-product of some strange geographical genetics, many vocalists that hail from Manchester share a common singing style of which the Roses’ Ian Brown’s is no exception. This vocal resides somewhere between conversational speaking and limited range singing, and it comes with an in-built nasal sneer, a nonchalant detachment, and a part proud, part ironically exaggerated regional accent. Furthermore, with song titles like “I Wanna Be Adored” and “I Am the Resurrection” (bookends on The Stone Roses [1989]), and their second album title Second Coming (1994), one can assume that such self-aggrandizing swagger is as much a social affectation as a biological determinant of being born and bred within Manchester.

The success of the Stone Roses brought media attention to the city’s music scene and scrutiny to like-minded local bands such as the Happy Mondays, Inspiral Carpets, and the Chameleons, all of whom were united by their creative fusions of ’60s-inspired hooks, punk-inspired attitudes, and house-inspired rhythms. Soon, journalists noted how fans and followers of the new scene were coalescing into a subculture.

Mirroring the public images often eagerly projected by these bands, the so-called “Madchester” or “baggy” subculture was notable for its exaggerated parodies of ’60s clothing (extra-flared trousers, brightly-colored shirts), for its drug of choice (ecstasy), and (relatedly) for its love of the kind of house dance music that many of the new bands built their rhythms around. For a few brief years it appeared that the entire city of Manchester—and much of the nation—was mad for Madchester, enthusiastically adopting its cool grooves and coolly detached (or drugged-out) demeanor.

Like most subcultures, the Madchester scene fizzled out during the early ’90s, as did its centerpiece band, the Stone Roses. Celebrated as—but also a victim of being—a band very much of their time, 1994’s Second Coming came too late and offered too little of interest to the emerging Britpop generation. “Musically they could have been bigger than the Beatles because they had ‘it’,” Oasis’ Noel Gallagher once reflected, but it is apparent in retrospect that the Roses were built to be the Sex Pistols more than U2.

Their legacy, though, has been considerable within British alternative rock culture, while their legend continues to grow. Consistently ranked as one of the UK’s greatest records by the nation’s press, the Stone Roses has become a sonic Bible for subsequent generations, inspiring and influencing innumerable bands, none more so than Manchester’s own Oasis.

Oasis / Britpop

Oasis / Britpop

Noel Gallagher had been closely involved in the Madchester scene prior to taking over his brother’s band, Rain, and transforming it into what would become Oasis. A roadie for Inspiral Carpets while unemployed on the dole, Gallagher witnessed the Manchester scene—to his mind—degenerate into a dance club culture where the only guitars to be heard emanated from faceless, moody shoegazing acts. Intent on revitalizing guitar rock in Britain, Noel took the reigns of Rain and introduced his new band-mates to the self-penned songs that would make Oasis the biggest band in Britain and the most successful band to ever come from Manchester.

Early demo recordings for songs like “Colour My Life” give clear indication of the huge influence that the Stone Roses had on Noel’s new project, and it soon became apparent that this inspiration would be more than just musical. Like the Roses—and unlike their shoegazing peers—Oasis were unapologetic about their ambitions and unwaveringly confident that they could achieve them. However, whereas the Roses had set out to revolutionize the Manchester and British music cultures, Oasis proclaimed to all that they would settle for nothing less than world domination.

That they largely failed in this quest does not diminish the characteristically Mancunian swagger that they brought to everything they did. One can hear Ian Brown’s cocky nasal snarl in Liam Gallagher’s “spit ‘n’ vinegar” vocal delivery, while the Roses’ penchant for self-aggrandizing lyrical gestures is echoed in innumerable early Oasis songs. “There we were, now here we are,” Liam boasts on the band’s initial limited demo release, “Columbia”, celebrating a success that had yet to happen, while their debut album, Definitely Maybe (1994), kicks off with the blistering “Rock and Roll Star” with its pre-emptive “title” claim a fait accompli.

For Oasis and for so many Manchester bands, superiority and stardom were given assumptions, states of mind to be willed into realization. And when Definitely Maybe rocketed to number one on the British album charts as the fastest-selling debut album in the nation’s history, it became apparent that here was a Manchester band that had more than just provincial appeal.

Like so many of the historical transformers of rock history, the key feature of Oasis’ epoch-changing releases was their sheer simplicity. Shedding the psychedelic accouterments that had often muddied the Stone Roses’ sound, Noel Gallagher replaced the wah wah with a distortion pedal and created a solid wall of loud and elemental guitar chords, colored only by simple Buzzcocks-like lead motifs. Likewise, the complex funky rhythms that had come to define the Madchester sound were jettisoned in favor of simple and restrained rock beats. The result was a crystal clear pop-rock sound where the guitars and vocals were mixed front-and-center such that the hooks and melodies were prioritized.

The fact that those hooks were often brazenly lifted from prior recordings ironically served to offer the comfort of sing-along recognition for listeners. Indeed, much has been made of Oasis’ debt to the Beatles, but the band’s reactions to the constant charges of plagiarism are just as notable. Rather than downplaying these indictments, Noel Gallagher has consistently celebrated his creative thievery, turning the practice into an exercise of postmodern provocation. Wry Beatles references litter Oasis songs, as if Gallagher is intent more on teasing his critics than in finding ageless riffs.

To those who seek originality in their rock music, Oasis are often dismissed as retro-nostalgic, overly referential and reverential of the past. A listen through Definitely Maybe is like taking a journey through the history of guitar rock. Marc Bolan riffs pop up, played through Neil Young guitar tones, over songs that evoke the melodies of the Beatles. One song, “Shakermaker”, even cribs its melody from the old Coke advertising anthem, “I’d Like to Teach the World to Sing”, while the sounds and styles of the Kinks, the Who, the Rolling Stones, Slade, the Jam, the Smiths, and the Stone Roses seep through myriad tracks over the band’s career.

What critics of this shameless riff-lifting fail to recognize is that Oasis music is not made for such discerning critics. The typical Oasis fans are not rock aficionados but the everymen and women of mainstream British culture. They attend Oasis gigs for the bonding experience, as a (mostly male) ritual, where they can sing along in unison to recognizable anthems while—as Ricky Gervais’s character in Extras would say—“avin’ a larf”. The rock idols of “lad” culture, Oasis’ shows are the musical equivalent of soccer matches, where loyal fans go to bond, booze, and pay homage to their heroes. Indeed, it is perhaps less than coincidental that Noel Gallagher spends much of his time in interviews espousing the virtues (or lack thereof) of his beloved Manchester City Football Club.

This type of appeal and identity has, of course, a social class sub-text to it that returns us to the down-to-earth working class foundations of Manchester’s psychogeography. Asked why his band is so enduringly adored, Noel Gallagher once responded that it was because they were “the most honest band on the planet.” What he was referring to was the unpretentious character of the band, particularly their unwillingness to satisfy the demands of the media or the industry.

The Gallagher brothers, for all their bravado, are essentially “tell-it-like-it-is” working class boys; they will answer any questions posed, but will do so in their own raw vernacular and in their own “warts ‘n’ all” way. “F” bombs abound in their interviews (usually hurled at each other), and unlike most rock bands they will openly concede their own shortcomings: that much of their music is stolen, that the lyrics are mostly meaningless, and that their shows are largely unspectacular. Asked what Oasis’ songs are about, Noel once replied, “Shagging, drinking, and taking drugs”; asked about their live shows, Liam responded, “We’re actually quite a boring band, but it comes across kind of cool.”

In the summer of 1995 their “cool” appeal was put to the test as Oasis and Blur, Britpop’s two most successful representatives, went tête-à-tête in a High Noon-like showdown when Blur released “Country House” and Oasis put out “Roll With It” on the same day. This much ballyhooed “Battle of Britpop” brought to a climax months of sniping that had been on-going between the two bands regarded by many as symbolizing diametrically opposed sides of Britpop cool: Blur were southerners from London while Oasis were northerners from Manchester; Blur were middle class and college-educated while Oasis were working class with high school educations; Blur were perceived as cerebral intellectuals and artists while Oasis were typed as street kids who rocked.

Fans and media reveled in what seemed like a replay of the rivalry that had existed between the Rolling Stones and the Beatles during the ’60s, though this one was far less cordial and both bands appeared to be willing participants in the hype. Although Blur would win the singles battle at hand, Oasis would win the war as their soon-to-follow album, (What’s the Story) Morning Glory (1995), proceeded to become the third best-selling album of all time in the UK.

One keen observer of the rise of Britpop was Labour Party leader Tony Blair, who was quick to exploit the cool quotient that surrounded the charismatic cast of new British rockers. He invited various Britpoppers (including Noel Gallagher) to 10 Downing Street and proclaimed them all a part of the “Cool Britannia” cultural renaissance. And despite their differences, Oasis and Blur had, for some time, been united in their efforts to repel the on-going American invasion of grunge and nu metal bands and to establish a home-grown rock culture that would showcase artists’ national and regional traits. Such nationalistic self-consciousness reached self-parody proportions, though, as Blur’s Damon Albarn and Oasis’ Gallagher brothers began exaggerating their local accents, as though they were performing stand-up in a working men’s club.

Anti-Americanism was implicit during this period of patriotic flag-waving with Oasis even sending out a lyrical rebuttal to Nirvana, writing “Live Forever” as a rebuke to their popular pessimistic postures that ultimately culminated in Kurt Cobain’s suicide. When promoting the song in TV appearances, Noel Gallagher would invariably perform with his union jack-emblazoned electric guitar, symbolically suggesting that this rock—unlike that which was then overwhelming the nation’s charts—was “Made in Britain”.

Perhaps not surprisingly, Oasis’ trans-Atlantic sniping did little to endear them to American rock audiences, who, despite the band’s many visits there, neither fully embraced the band, nor understood why they were so beloved across the ocean. This inability to conquer America, as promised, reflected the essentially parochial limitations of Oasis’ regional identity. Like the Stone Roses before them, Oasis were just too Mancunian (with all the idiosyncrasies of local character that entails) to fully translate or appeal to mainstream American rock audiences.

Alongside Manchester predecessors Joy Division, the Smiths, and the Stone Roses, Oasis stand as one of the most influential bands in modern British rock culture. Besides encouraging a myriad of like-sounding Britpop acolytes throughout the ’90s, the impact of Oasis is also apparent in the current decade, as evidenced in the primal guitar attack and self-conscious northern personality of the nation’s most acclaimed recent upstarts, Arctic Monkeys. Critically, too, the band have enjoyed a positive reconsideration in recent years, such that their first two albums are often cited in the top tens of “Best British Albums” polls. In 2006, the NME writers rated Definitely Maybe as the third greatest album in British rock history, behind the Smiths’ The Queen Is Dead and the Stone Roses’ eponymous debut. Such ratings are clearly a testament not only to the influence and inspiration of Oasis but to that of Manchester rock in general.

Recently, Noel left Oasis for the nth time, informing fans that he could no longer suffer the torture of working with his brother Liam. Whether this latest round in their long-running sibling rivalry is resolved, or whether Oasis really are finished, the biggest and most controversial band in Manchester’s history will surely remain a key touchstone in the city’s cultural legacy. A fitting epitaph—which the band would surely savor—might read, “Loathed by millions, but loved by millions more.”