The North Will Rise Again

The Buzzcocks. Joy Division. The Fall. The Smiths. The Stone Roses. The Happy Mondays. Oasis. Manchester has proved to be an endlessly rich seam of pop-music talent over the last 30 years. Highly opinionated and usually controversial, stars such as Mark E. Smith, Morrissey, Ian Brown, and the Gallagher brothers have always had plenty to say for themselves. Here, in John Robb's new compilation, Manchester's talkiest musicians tell the story of the city's thriving music scene in their own words. When the Buzzcocks put on the Sex Pistols at Lester Free Hall in 1976, they kickstarted a musical revolution and a fervent punk scene exploded. In 1979 the legendary Tony Wilson founded Factory Records, the home of Joy Division/New Order and later the Happy Mondays. The Hacienda, the Factory nightclub, became notorious in the late 1980s as a center of the influential Madchester scene, led by the Mondays and the Stone Roses, with a unique style and sound of its own. Then, from the ashes of Madchester rose uber-lads Oasis, the kings of Britpop and the biggest UK band of the 1990s.