Manchester: It Never Rains - A City Primed for Punk Rock

Manchester:It Never Rains…

A City Primed for Punk Rock

Gareth Ashton

Published by Empire Publications – MANCHESTER

SMASHWORDS EDITION

disclaimer

"We do not know the past in chronological sequence. It may be convenient to lay it out anaesthetised on the table with dates pasted on here and there, but what we know, we know by ripples and spirals eddying out from us and from our own time." –

Ezra Pound.

The thing about memory is that it self-curates. We’re not dealing with facts here. The brain sieves out certain moments in time, compartmentalises events, perhaps it unconsciously preserves a ‘best bits’ compilation. Some people have ‘photographic’ memories whilst other’s recollections are muddied and muddled. During the time spent interviewing the people for this book, I have encountered a number of contradictions to the same events and places, along with varying degrees of lucidity. Those contradictions aren’t through some personal act of self-promotion or ego, or a chance to embellish their own part in the birth of punk in Manchester. I believe that they were genuine recollections, remembered fondly or otherwise, but always honestly, which is why I have left them in. After all it was a long time ago; Manchester in the 1970’s was a very different city, in a completely different world.

Also, this book isn’t anti-London, anti-Liverpool, anti-Sheffield, or anti any other city or town which played it’s part in the growth of punk rock in the UK, I just wanted to celebrate the role that Manchester and it’s people played in punk’s infancy; The Sex Pistols’ first television appearance happened in Manchester; the Spiral Scratch EP by Buzzcocks, the first truly independent D.I.Y. Punk record, was recorded and released in Manchester; Pips pre-dates Blitz Club by 7 years; The Electric Circus pre-dates The Roxy by a couple of months. Also, the standard torch bearer of popular music Top Of The Pops, was first aired in the city. But just as important to punk’s impact were the people who embraced it, braving the ‘beer boys’ and the knuckle-draggers who couldn’t handle anyone who was different to the norm. Manchester’s situation was by no means unique, some of these accounts could have been told by people from all over the United Kingdom, albeit perhaps at a later date, so may I suggest that someone takes up the mantle to celebrate their own environment. Some of the subject matter here will be familiar from other books that have been written over the years, but it would be churlish not to include them on that basis, although I feel that I’ve managed to find a different slant on them. This is primarily a tale told by the people who were there; punters, band members, and promoters. I want to thank everyone who gave up their time to let a complete stranger into their lives, and in some cases into their homes. Some of my requests for interviews or a contribution to the book were politely turned down or never acted upon, so in their absence I hope that I’ve done justice to their memories.

biographical notes - interviewees

Una Baines Original keyboard player with The Fall.

Interview; 29th August 2017.

Location; Manchester Vegan Cafe. Oldham St.

Manchester.

Andy Blade Founding member and guitarist with Eater.

Interview: 3rd May 2018 via email.

Dawn Bradbury Attended the first Sex Pistols Lesser Free

Trade Hall gig.

Interview: October 2nd 2016.

Location: Gullivers Pub, Oldham St, Manchester.

June Buchan Former Production Assistant at Granada TV.

Interview; 15th July 2017.

Location: Cafe Nero, Piccadilly Approach,

Manchester.

Fred Carr Bowie fan, in and around the early Manchester

scene.

Interview; 19th January 2017.

Location: The Waldorf Pub, Gore St. Manchester.

Mickey Carr Younger brother of Fred. Football punk, and

early ‘Ranch-ite’.

Interview: 16th October 2016.

Location: Lymm Services, M6.

Gail Egan Friend of Paul Morley, and former girlfriend of

Pete Shelley.

Interview: 23rd November 2017.

Location: The Blacksmith’s Arms, Henbury.

Ian Fawkes Attended the second Pistols gig as well as The

Electric Circus.

Interview: 9th September 2016.

Location: Buxton Conservative Club.

Brian Grantham ‘Mad Muffett’; Original drummer with

Slaughter and the Dogs.

Interviews: 27th Nov & 30th Dec 2016.

Locations: Unit 26 Recording Studio,

Trafford Park and The Sawyers Arms,

Deansgate, Manchester.

Chris Hewitt Promoter of Deeply Vale Festival, P.A. Provider

for Electric Circus.

Interview: 13th February 2018.

Location: At his home in Cheshire.

Brian Johnson Pips/Ranch Bar attendee. American Bowie

fanatic relocated to Bolton.

Interview: 9th October 2018 via email.

Alan Keogh In and around the very early Manchester punk

scene.

Interview: 23rd October 2016.

Location: Gullivers Pub, Oldham St. Manchester.

Mike Keogh Frequent attendee of The Ranch Bar 1976-1977.

Interview: 1st December 2016.

Location: Macclesfield.

Chris Lambert Lead singer with Physical Wrecks.

Interview: 22nd October 2016.

Location: Gullivers Pub, Oldham St. Manchester.

Steve McGarry Designed SATD logo plus sleeves

for Rabid Records.

Interview: 18th January 2018 via FaceTime.

Sarah Mee Bowie fan, early Ranch attendee.

Interview; 15th November 2016 via email.

Geoff Moore Producer of So It Goes 2nd Series.

Interview; 17th September 2017

Location: Stretton, Cheshire.

Ian Moss Attended the first Sex Pistols gig

at The Lesser Free Trade Hall.

Interview: 5th January 2017.

Location: Mossley

Steve Nuttall Member of the gay community in 1970’s

Manchester.

Interview: 27th November 2017 via email.

Ian Hodges ‘Odgie’ ‘Drummer’ with The Worst.

Interview: 19th January 2017.

Location: Odgie’s workshop in Leyland,

Lancashire.

Carol O’Donnell Early on the scene. Lived with Pete Shelley.

Interview: 8th April 2017

Location: Dry Bar, Oldham St. Manchester.

Daniel O’Sullivan DJ at Rafters, early on the scene.

Interview: 17th November 2016

Location: Jam Street Cafe, Whalley Range.

Ken Park Guitarist with Physical Wrecks.

Interview: 22nd October 2016

Location: Gullivers pub, Oldham St. Manchester.

Stephen Perrin Founder member and guitarist

of The Distractions

Interview: 23rd April 2018 via email.

Martin Ryan Produced Manchester fanzine ‘Ghast Up!’

Interview;

Location: Rams Head, Disley.

Denise Shaw Manchester punk icon, much photographed.

Interviews: 2nd Oct 2016 & 2nd Nov 2017

Locations: Gullivers Pub, Oldham St. Manchester

& Denise’s house, Rochdale.

Steve Shy Produced ‘Shy Talk’. Manchester Punk fanzine.

Interview: 27th November 2016

Location: Unit 26 recording studio,

Trafford Park.

Terry Slater Worked in The Ranch Bar.

Interview; 21st November 2016

Location: Terry and Joanne’s house

in Heaton Norris, Stockport.

Fran Taylor Early gig goer, worked for Buzzcocks

as a roadie/Drum Tech.

Interview: 4th February 2017

Location: The Glasshouse Stores,

Brewer St. London.

Michael Tait Early on the scene, Vocalist

for Nervous Breakdown

Interview: 2nd November 2016

Location: Michael’s house in Urmston.

Andy T Went to The Electric Circus, The Oaks.

Early on the scene.

Interview: 20th July 2017

Location: Andy’s house in Todmorden,

Lancashire.

Stanley Vegas Bass player with V2. Early on the scene

via Slaughter And The Dogs.

Interview; 12th April 2018 via FaceTime.

Peter Walker So It Goes Director when Sex Pistols

made their TV debut.

Interview; 15th July 2017

Location: Cafè Nero, Piccadilly Approach,

Manchester.

Juliette Williams Bass player in The Shock,

Manchester’s first all female punk band

Interview: 29th August 2017

Location: Manchester Vegan Cafe.

Oldham St. Manchester.

Steve Cundall Bass player with The Drones

Interviews: 27th Nov and 30th Dec 2016

Locations: Unit 26 Recording Studio,

Trafford Park & The Sawyers Arms,

Deansgate, Manchester.

Deb Zee Early on the scene at a young age,

went to The Electric Circus.

Interviews: 22nd Oct 2016 and 8th April 2017

Locations: Gullivers Pub &

Dry Bar, Oldham St. Manchester.

This book is dedicated to the memories of Pete, Mark, and Joan.

introduction

The UK Punk scene started in London, that’s not under dispute. The embryonic scene was limited to a few like-minded souls, it was a movement formed around art and design, Situationist theory and fashion. It lasted in its purest form for just over 12 months, when it self-combusted into the national consciousness via a short tea time television interview with an inebriated television presenter goading for a fight. But before the implosion was the explosion, and the fallout of the blast was felt strongest some 200 miles further north, with life-changing consequences. The adolescents of Manchester were already primed for punk through David Bowie, Marc Bolan, Roxy Music, Iggy Pop, and Lou Reed - Punk was just a natural progression for them, there was no fanfare needed, and no hysterical headlines heeded. Whilst some of the boys and girls had been colourising their monochrome worlds with clothes and music via the nightclubs in the city, others were instigating a private revolution in their heads and homes through their ever-growing, eclectic record collections. They were looking for a musical epiphany that they could call their own, one which would take them on that next step to independence and individuality.

This is a story of how Manchester became such a critical city in the development of Punk, as told through the eyes of those early protagonists, the foot soldiers if you like, the ones who had the courage to confront conformity not with violence but with an attitude, as well as a healthy helping of curiosity; although sometimes the only option was to fight back physically, because there were no shrinking violets here. This was Manchester.

1. urban damnation

"Study the past if you would divine the future" – Confucius

Manchester was at the heart of the Industrial Revolution, gaining its position predominantly through the textile industries, creating an unprecedented, unplanned urbanisation, which led to cramped, lugubrious living conditions. Coal smoke and cloth dyes from the factories polluted the air and water, and the life expectancy of the inhabitants of the slum dwellings was low. The medieval squalor continued on into the 20th century, and it took a global human catastrophe to start the process of alleviating the problem. But it would take years to improve things, and the situation is still unresolved to this day, as the recent Grenfell Tower tragedy has proved.

Social housing problems in Britain had been escalating since the end of the First World War when the then Prime Minister, David Lloyd George, pledged to give soldiers returning from the battlefields ‘homes fit for heroes’. This promise eventually led to the Housing Act of 1919. Seventy-five years earlier, before any policies on housing conditions existed, Friedrich Engels concluded in his book ‘The Condition Of The Working Class in England 1844’, that the notorious, and inaptly named area of Manchester, Angel Meadow was a ‘Hell upon Earth’. In 1931, just over a decade after The Housing Act was introduced, and approaching a century after Engel’s damning verdict, the Angel Meadow district on the Northern edge of the city was once again being described by the Manchester and Salford Better Housing Council as unfit for habitation. Its report went on to state that all the houses suffered from dampness, leaking roofs, crumbling plaster work, badly fitted doors and another army of rats and beetles. In another area of the city, the New Cross district of Ancoats received a similar incriminating indictment which recounted that almost all of the houses were worn out completely. The acute lack of basic human necessities such as water and food storage were highlighted and the area was depicted as being without a vestige of beauty, and with little beauty and constant noise. Nothing had changed since Engel’s report but Manchester was merely a microcosm of the wider social deprivation in Britain as a whole. This time there was no north/south divide.

Following the Second World War local councils were left with cities that had endured bombing raids and as a consequence, huge urban areas had been turned into rubble. The 1942 Housing Committee Report concluded that over 76,000 houses would need to be built to satisfy the need of the slum clearances, as well as meeting the long term increase in demand. This meant looking further afield, beyond city boundary lines. ‘Overspill’ estates were built but the projects were met with hostile resistance from the relevant local authorities, who were opposed to the prospect of having thousands of inner city slum families being dumped on their doorstep. The families who moved were stigmatised by their social environment and became associated with crime and grime and it was generally agreed that they would drag respectable areas down. In Bredbury near Stockport, local residents even went as far as to build a 6ft ‘iron curtain’ between themselves and the council houses. But in reality many of those moving from the slum clearances were proud people and took great pride in making their houses into homes. Una Baines, a founder member and keyboard player with The Fall, recalls the pride they took they used to call them ‘little palaces’, they kept their houses really beautiful.

Although the council provided affordable, subsidised housing to a certain extent, they couldn’t transcend the class divide due to the mismanagement of their ‘housing regeneration’ project. In 1954 the council drew up a five-year slum clearance plan but although approximately 70,000 homes were identified as being unfit for human habitation, the clearance plan had earmarked only 7.500 homes to be demolished. At the end of those five years, in 1962, with completion rates nowhere near high enough, the council hatched another more radical plan to get things back on track by projecting to build 4,000 houses per year. This ambitious plan only resulted in the same low quality housing inhabited by the same low income tenants, which, when added to the national economic situation, meant that the skilled workforce and ambitious locals moved out of the area. Essentially all they had done was to provide houses for the people who had been left behind, or the ones who had stayed because nobody wanted them in their neighbourhood.

In some areas of the city relocating was at first quite exciting, with the prospect of a better standard of living and an enhanced environment.

Una Baines: You got a choice of three places… a lot of people went out to Wythenshawe. They called it the slum clearance. Me and my mum watched our house get knocked down. I grew up in Collyhurst, all my childhood was in Collyhurst, and then [we went to] Monsall estate, where we had baths and under floor heating. We were a big family; there was my mum and dad and five kids. We moved into a house, literally they knocked down the house and moved us 200 yards onto the new estate. It was wonderful at first, I had my own bedroom, we had a bath, two toilets; one upstairs and one downstairs, under floor heating so you could put your feet under the carpet in the winter and toast your feet. My dad, when we first moved there, said, ‘it’s wonderful now, but it will be a slum in 2 years’.

The under floor heating was indeed a luxurious highlight of the new houses, but it was expensive to run, and winters in Manchester could last from November until March. The community didn’t need luxuries; neither had they asked for them, they just needed a home fit to live in, with the basic essentials to allow some self respect.

Una Baines: That community in Collyhurst, was tight knit and it seems like a lost world now. Consumerism is massive now, whereas back then it wasn’t… people didn’t have anything. But we had a brilliant childhood, all the games we played outside. You’d go out after your breakfast and you’d come back at teatime, and you had to come back then because if you missed it you’d be in trouble. The older ones always watched out for the younger ones, it was the natural thing to do, that’s what human beings do when they’re left to be real, human beings.

The principle of elevating people from their decaying houses, which possessed outside toilets but no indoor bathrooms, was a well intentioned one but there were logistical barriers. By the mid 60’s the architects and town planners in Manchester began to voice opinions on a different style of housing scheme; tower blocks and ‘deck access’ systems. There were a lot of people keen to move but a lack of ground space meant that the new flats and homes would have to be built upwards, although they stopped short of building ‘high rise’ towers, preferring the design of the ‘deck access’ developments. The architect’s vision of a Utopia in the sky was acutely short sighted, their bombastic rhetoric dazzled and mesmerised the councillors into believing that the future was literally looking up. The slum clearance programme was meant to solve the housing problems, building nice new flats all over the city, but still nothing had been learned from previous decades, or indeed since Engel’s report over a century earlier.

Design flaws in the deck access system were there from the start; flat roofs in a rainy city; the Bison concrete structures, designed in a Lego style that would begin to erode, corrode, and eventually breakaway little more than a decade after they had been erected. But the biggest failing was afforded to the inhabitants, who, after being used to living side by side, now found themselves living on top of each other. Tower blocks began to blight the already gloomy landscape in Beswick, Ardwick, Harpurhey, and Hulme, where the jewel in the council’s crown would be built – the Crescents.

The Hulme Crescents was a £20 million redevelopment described as unique and a fascinating concept that should make not only the planners but the citizens proud. The final cost was estimated at £4 million and the final topping out ceremony took place on 14th January 1971. Inspired by Georgian buildings in London and Bath, the council claimed they would bring a touch of eighteenth century grace and dignity to the area. It didn’t take too long for residents to realise that there was nothing dignified nor graceful or indeed Utopian about the place. To add insult to irony the four crescents were named after the architects of the structures on which they were modelled; Charles Barry, John Nash, Robert Adam, and William Kent. The plan to replicate the community spirit from the terraces backfired and as the sheen of the contemporary design soon began to fade, the cosmetics were soon in need of a makeover. The buildings may have been new but the social problems remained the same. Social segregation was compounded by the architectural follies of the new buildings, isolating the residents even further. The planners thought that planting a few trees would help but human beings also need roots to grow, and the younger generation growing up in these monolithic Soviet style fortresses wanted something better. One of those youngsters was Fred Carr, and this environment in which he was living would have a profound effect on his adolescent life. A self confessed low level mischief maker, Fred would find escapism through music and clothes, whilst developing a fierce political attitude to his, and many other’s situation.

Fred Carr: They ethnically cleansed us. They took the old 2 up 2 down terraces, the old culture, and wiped it out and what they put up in its place were these fucking estates. I can tell you what was on them as well; a load of houses all facing different ways, our kitchen was facing a block of flats which was ten yards away, all you could see was a brick wall. At the back there was another brick wall with a two foot garden. They brought people in from all over the place, you never knew who anybody was. They were all mustard coloured brick, they’ve all got a square with a hairdressers, a bookies, a post office and a pub. Every estate was the same: Fort Beswick, Fort Ardwick. We had one in Harpurhey which was knocked down after two years, the rest got knocked down after 5 to 10 years and people made a lot of money out of it. From that estate… a lot of people didn’t come out the other side.

These new estates were usually on the outskirts of the city centre, one of which, Fort Ardwick, was finished in 1972 and consisted of 500 available ‘homes’ for the slum clearance evacuees.

Mickey Tait: I grew up on Coverdale Crescent which is Fort Ardwick, a big block of flats about a mile outside the city centre.

Mickey was another one of the kids who would eventually find an outlet in punk with the band Nervous Breakdown. He would be the youngest of his peers when the group formed and had the nous and the demeanour that was needed to fit in with the older crowd. That confidence would have been fostered from his time spent on Fort Ardwick.

Fort Ardwick was built in the deck access style, also using the Bison concrete material. Only a few years after they were completed, the council had to bring in a team of consultants to make emergency repairs at a cost of £60,000. This included the re-bolting of concrete panels, as well as addressing the design fault of the leaking roofs. The late Gerald Kaufman was the constituency MP for the area at the time and said this of Fort Ardwick in the House of Commons in 1974,

"The scale of the buildings is often daunting. I have in mind Fort Beswick and Fort Ardwick in my own constituency. The design is frequently all too forbidding. That is why the two estates are called Forts. I am on the Fort, constituents tell me. Such developments are often unsightly. The approaches are not attractively landscaped and are often strewn with litter and debris. Refuse disposal is too often haphazard and infrequent, and this can lead to the proliferation of insects and vermin which are already fostered by design defects. A few weeks ago, on one of my visits to see the estate, I had a long discussion with a number of the residents. One of them said to me, If Labour wins the election, it ought to do two things: abolish the House of Lords, and demolish Fort Ardwick.

But it wasn’t just the physical structures that were crumbling, the economic climate of the country was also eroding people’s quality of life. The progressiveness of the 1960’s was, like the trains and the factories, slowing to a halt by the beginning of the new decade. On the outskirts of the city, a few miles south along the A6 was Stockport, where Paul Morley worked for a time at a book shop on Great Underbank which would also sell a small selection of records, which included Spiral Scratch, and early punk fanzines. Stockport was also home to Stephen Perrin, co founder and guitarist with The Distractions, a band who, like so many of the Manchester bands that formed around 1975-1977, ploughed their own individual furrow, and found an allegiance with the punk crowd.

Stephen Perrin: It is difficult to convey to anybody who has only experienced Manchester during the 21st century exactly how grey it was in the 1970s. By the time myself and my peers came of age, we had gone through the Gulf crisis of 1973. There were power cuts, the three-day week, raging inflation and the beginnings of mass unemployment. I had three O levels and a clerical job with Stockport council where, some of the time, I was working by candle light due to the power cuts. It felt like history had punched me in the stomach.

The ripples of austerity, exacerbating the potential breeding ground for violence, fanned out to reach communities just beyond the inner city and further out into Greater Manchester. North, south, east and west, the circumference of Manchester riddled with people on a mini migration to a supposedly better life. The community that had been built between the families and their children was disrupted and not everyone wanted to move.

Fran Taylor: They moved us out to Brindle Heath which was a right fucking shit hole. We got compulsory purchased out. All my neighbours got moved out to Ordsall in Salford, which is down near the docks towards town, but my dad wouldn’t go. It wasn’t until years later when I realised why…

Fran’s role in the story of punk in Manchester was significant due to his involvement with Buzzcocks. He was first and foremost an avid fan, after attending the early gigs in the city he then progressed to working for the band. Further afield to the east of the city in Tameside, future musician and non-conformist Kevin Stanfield was having to grow up pretty quickly.

Kevin Stanfield: I was from a completely working class background, secondary school education, no qualifications, dragged through school and fell out the other side and went carrying the hod on building sites. I was born in Mossley, and my father was a traveller so we moved all over, I could write a book about my father. I did my Secondary school education in Ashton-Under-Lyne. People used to say that if arseholes could fly then Ashton would have its own airport. You could go into any pub and buy the shittiest drugs in the world, or you could get shot, one or the other.

The satellite towns which lay just north of the city limits, which were once the heartbeat of the Industrial Revolution, providing the world with the finest cotton and textiles, were now littered with the decaying husks of the once noisy, throbbing mills. Poet Andy Thorley, whose eclectic musical tastes saw punk as the next logical step, remembers the landscape he grew up in.

Andy T.: Rochdale had its fair share of deprivation. They knocked a load of houses down and moved everybody into blocks of flats. We ended up living on the tenth floor of a block of flats, after having a nice house with a garden and fields all around. Our playground growing up in the 60’s was derelict houses and bomb sites. You’d find guns and all sorts under the floorboards. It was a dirty, horrible time.

Una Baines: We were playing in abandoned buildings, climbing about. We moved into Monsall estate when it was only half built, so we’d be playing on the scaffolding.

As a result of being raised in such abject conditions, the youth on these estates grew up very quickly and they were as sharp as needles. The antagonistic attitude that came a few years later, with punk initially manifesting itself with kids looking like the casualties of the grim surroundings that enveloped them, actually took root in completely the opposite direction. Some of them may not have had much pride or respect for where they lived, but they could at least colourise their world with clothes and culture, not only as a fashion statement, but also as a statement of intent.

Fred Carr: I’m a political animal. You don’t grow up where we grew up and not become political. If you had any sense about you, you’d have to have asked ‘What’s going on?’ Growing up it was grey, monochrome. You couldn’t wear anything that wasn’t brown or black, you had to have a white shirt or a blue shirt, you had to have grey trousers or black trousers, there was nothing else. The estate was just fucking deadly. The telly’s on all the time and it’s the same old shit so you’ve got to get out, you’ve got to go out, you can’t sit in front of that. You’re on The Croft, your mates are on The Croft, and you’re up to no good. It’s just mind numbingly, exceedingly fucking boring.

Mickey Tait: Where I grew up (Fort Ardwick) it was pretty mixed, and it was pretty cool. I had a lot of black friends. You see the trendy punks wouldn’t have been in that sort of environment, whereas we were from the inner city, and a few of the black kids we used to mess about with were punks as well. We were walking around, pre-punk, in drainpipes when the majority of people had flares.

But it wasn’t just the inner city kids who were inquisitive and looking for something more. A short journey out of the city, in any direction, would take you to a disparate landscape of clean air and wide open spaces; to the south-east the reservoirs and idyllic splendour of the Peak District National Park; to the north-east you find the bleak, expansive moors of Saddleworth, which would forever be tainted by the heinous depravity of Myra Hindley and Ian Brady; northwards, westwards, and beyond lie the Pennines; ’the backbone of Britain’. Growing up out here the kids were close enough to feel part of the city, but far enough away to escape its menacing undertones and a different kind of boredom. Juliette Williams was one of a small group of women who would defy her parents and dismiss the sexist attitudes to how girls were expected to dress and act. She would also go on to form the only all female Manchester punk band.

Juliette J. Williams: My childhood was completely different, I grew up on the north side of Bolton, in what was then, I suppose, the countryside. From my bedroom window I could see nothing but fields and cows. It was quite idyllic really, looking back I have to say that my childhood was one of the happiest times of my life. So compared to an inner city childhood, mine was completely the opposite. We used to make ‘dens’ and we’d have our own adventure playground in our big garden. Just down the road was Moss Bank Park, which was literally 5 minutes walk with no roads to cross, plus we also had Barrow Bridge, a local beauty spot, with waterfalls. It was quite pastoral really. We weren’t well off. My dad was a junior manager at Burton’s the tailors, which is actually where he met my mum. I had a best friend who lived in a grand house that would have belonged to the landowners, with a summer house. They kept chickens and I’d call for her sometimes and she’d be having piano lessons.

Stephen Perrin: My parents were working class Labour voters but they were extremely socially conservative. They had grown up knowing war and economic hardship and they didn’t want any more trouble. Nor did they want their kids making a show of themselves in front of the neighbours.

Despite the prodigious contrast in circumstances, and growing up in individual communities, there was a common thread that would stitch together these disaffected youths who felt disenfranchised, or just restless within their respective communities. That thread was music, which in turn for some led to clothes and fashion as a means of self-expression. Whether it was used as a therapeutic antidote to acute shyness, an escape from the hum drum, the inspiration to build up the courage to stand up and defy whatever other people’s preconceptions of them were, or simply as just an excuse to dress up - music would give them their own identity as well as the voice to say, Fuck you, this is me!

2. i just want to be myself

"Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself"

George Bernard Shaw

Part of growing up is finding your own identity. The most obvious ways of gaining individuality was through music and clothes, and the two have been inextricably linked since the ‘Teddy Boys’ of the 50’s. Given the dramatic title of being ‘Juvenile Delinquents’ they were the original menacing and moral threat to decent society and the antidote to the ‘Crooners’ of the time, propagating the first ‘generation gap’ between youths and their parents. They were the first to really benefit from the new found freedom of peacetime and the beginning of consumerism. They had money in their pocket for music, fashion and going out. The young upstarts were starting to find their voice and as the 60’s began the splinter groups of Mods, Rockers, and Beatniks all came under one banner - Teenagers.

Ian Moss, along with his younger brother Neil devoured music, nothing was off limits, from McCartney to The Stooges to King Crimson and Reggae, they consumed everything that suited their pallets. But the main criteria was honesty, as long as the artist ‘meant it’, it was absorbed into their musical consciousness. It was no accident that Ian would be one of the small number (delete as applicable) of inquisitive minds at the Sex Pistol’s infamous Lesser Free Trade Hall gig.

Ian Moss: I remember being in Manchester, along Oxford Road on a Saturday afternoon, and The Beatles were playing at night, and there were these gangs of people - teenagers - that were like aliens. When you’re 6 or 7 you know? Looking at these people with their skinny jeans; they’re not people that I’d seen before, this was amazing. If you remember back, a bit later on all your teachers wore flares and had collar length hair and everybody up to the age of 70 seemed to be in this uniform.

Stephen Perrin: I subscribe to the view that what has come to be known as the 1960s in the UK was basically about two hundred people in London having a pretty amazing time. My generation only witnessed this via black and white TV but these people appeared to be living their lives in colour and gave us something to aspire to rather than emulating our parents. I was sent to an extremely dull technical school to be groomed to be a BT engineer or minor civil servant. The experience was mind numbing but that was okay as I was clearly going to escape to London where I would hang out with Paul McCartney and David Bailey and probably marry Twiggy.

It’s hard to believe in these times of the iPod, Smart Phone, and the World Wide Web that in the late 1960’s just having access to the most basic item of home entertainment equipment would be regarded as a hard-earned luxury and something to be cherished. The television set would be, more often than not, on loan from the local Radio Rentals or Rumbelows shop and even access to a record player became a precious commodity which took more than a little effort to achieve, so when the opportunity arose it was gratefully accepted.

Una Baines: We had a borrowed record player. It was an elderly lady’s who was in hospital and we gave it back to her when she came out of hospital. It was someone my mother was looking after. One of the local shops used to sell records and the first record that I can remember buying was ‘Love Grows Where My Rosemary Goes’ by Edison Lighthouse. We used to listen to the radio quite a lot; Radio 1 mainly but there was also Radio Luxembourg.

Juliette J. Williams: We had a radiogram and my mum and dad were into the ‘big bands’ as well as the crooners like Bing Crosby and people like that.

Stephen Perrin: My mum used to have the radio on all the time and like most kids my age I was crazy about The Beatles and The Rolling Stones. I mithered my dad into taking me to see ‘A Hard Day’s Night’ and girls were screaming at the screen. That and The Monkees TV show pretty much convinced me that I’d better get a guitar and start practicing.

Once the music bug bites you, there’s no going back. The pursuit for new sounds required a lot of time and concerted effort, the frequent pilgrimages to record shops, which were goldmines full of undiscovered musical gems waiting to be plundered, places which held more treasures than could ever have been afforded, meant that monetary constraints added to the dilemma of making a cognisant choice but it was all worth it. Or as Tony Wilson once pronounced, Manchester kids have the best record collections.

Andy T.: I had three or four paper rounds when I was a kid, and I’d take pop bottles back to shops just to buy records. I used to go through boxes of singles on Tib Street. I got into Marc Bolan, and I started collecting his singles on his T Rex/EMI label, and because he was also on Fly Records I’d collect Fly stuff. They were about 10p a time.

You could also buy to the Top 75 singles from a variety of outlets in the city, not only from the local record shops. Places such as the Post Office, Kendall’s department store, Woolworths, and Boots the chemist would also stock singles and albums. Many small towns all over the country would have a multitude of record shops, some specialising in certain genres including Jazz, Blues, and Classical. Picture sleeves weren’t issued in great numbers due to the record companies wanting to reduce the costs in production, so the 7 inch single would be housed in sleeves depicting the relevant, iconic record company logos that would soon become instantly recognisable to the discerning listener. This meant that certain labels could be quickly visually counted or discounted; Silver Bell, Purple Pye, Blue Decca, Green Harvest, RAK rocket, Polydor Red, plus the concentric circles of Vertigo and the Mad Hatter of Charisma. For instance RCA usually meant Elvis or Bowie, Bell could be Gary Glitter, and T Rex had their own logo on the EMI label. Every weekend and school holidays would be spent building up a collection. The all consuming obsession to collect as many releases by whoever was your artist of choice is an addiction which carries on throughout the rest of your life.

Ian Moss: "It just built up and I suppose I was probably 12 or 13 before a record player appeared in the house, which would have been 1970. I immediately started buying stuff. The first record I ever bought was either ‘Another Day’ by Paul McCartney or ‘My Sweet Lord’ by George Harrison, I can’t remember which