Time for Manchester to Quit Its Dull and Damaging Addiction to Nostalgia
The city needs a moratorium on endlessly pining for the era of New Order, Happy Mondays and the Haçienda, says 90degrees’ Joe Madden
I’m sat in the 90degrees office just off St. Peter’s Square in Manchester, and if I gaze out of the sixth-floor window at Manchester Art Gallery across the street I’m greeted by a massive banner depicting Ian Curtis*, smokin’ a fag. The image is an advertisement for an exhibition entitled True Faith, which “explores the ongoing significance and legacy of New Order and Joy Division through the wealth of visual art their music has inspired”.
To which I say, with all due respect – holy gentle Jesus, we can change the record now?
Over the last 15 years or so, Manchester has become numbly addicted to comforting nostalgia over its perceived ‘golden age’ – an era that, roughly speaking, runs from Tony Wilson setting up Factory Records in 1978, through to the release of Stone Roses’ 1990 single ‘One Love’, with an encore in the form of Oasis’ 1993–1995 run.
You doubtless already know everyone and everything involved in this endlessly revisited, unceasingly celebrated period: Happy Mondays, The Smiths, New Order, Stone Roses, 808 State, the Haçienda, baggy jeans, bucket hats, blah dee blah. There are undiscovered tribes living deep in the Amazon rainforest who could reel off a list of culturally anointed Man-chyes-taaah anthems: ‘Step On’, ‘Fool’s Gold’, ‘Live Forever’, ‘Blue Monday’, etcetera, etcetera.
Now, let’s be clear: I’m definitely not knocking any of the above. I’m 40, so the Roses, the Mondays and the dance-music culture that blossomed out of the Haçienda were a huge, and hugely formative, part of my early teens. The Manchester music scene of yesteryear literally changed my life.
But continuously returning to that same well over and over again is starting to result in diminishing returns. We’re damaging not only Manchester’s heritage – diluting the very things that made those bands, those songs, that scene special – but also the city’s image as a forward-looking and culturally relevant place to be. We’re steadily turning into Liverpool, endlessly banging on – and on, and on – about the Beatles as if nothing of interest or value has occurred locally since.
We’re becoming that tragicomic old duffer you see propping up the bar of a cheap pub at 3pm, drunkenly slurring on to anyone who’ll listen about his long-gone glory days. And nobody wants to be that guy.
Most of the current nostalgia is driven by 40-, 50- and 60-somethings, and it’s no coincidence that that’s the age group in charge of the nation’s newspapers, magazines, telly shows and – yep – gallery exhibitions. Imagine how eye-rolling it must be for Manchester-born teenagers and 20-somethings to be constantly fed the message that their city peaked some 20, 30, 40 years in the past. Remember how annoying it was when you were a kid and older people insisted that everything was loads better back in ‘their day’?
In 2010, young Manchester band Delphic were asked, in an interview, about their connection with their hometown’s heritage. “We’re very proud of Manchester,” came their response, “but we are also inspired by what we don’t like in Manchester, and that’s Manchester refusing to move on. We feel it’s in danger of drowning under its heritage. We want to help it look forward, because we’re sick of the Madchester stereotypes.”
That was seven years ago. If anything, the navel-gazing and nostalgia has become even more overpowering since then. It’s 2017, and the Stone Roses are playing Wembley to a sea of 51-year-old men in bucket hats; tickets to see New Order crank out the same old songs are going for £100 a pop; Haçienda Classical just opened Glastonbury Festival, fronted by Bez, Rowetta and Peter Hook; and the Gallaghers – who, let’s be honest, haven’t released a truly great song between them this century – continue to dominate the pop-culture news cycle every time they open their mouths to slag someone, or each other, off.
“The past was yours but the future’s mine – you’re all out of time,” sang Ian Brown on ‘She Bangs The Drums’, a glorious paean to the energy and inventiveness of youth, and to oldsters getting out of the way so that the next generation can have their moment in the sun. Some 28 years on, maybe it’s time for Ian – and for all of Manchester’s cultural gatekeepers – to heed those righteous, rousing words.
*It’s not actually Ian Curtis, it’s some guy who looks a lot like Ian Curtis. Not entirely sure why. Art, innit.
UPDATE 7/7/2017: In response to criticism that the above piece doesn’t offer any viable alternative to endlessly revisiting the Manchester anthems of decades past, we’ve compiled this killer playlist of all-new MCR music.
Joe Madden is head copywriter at 90degrees, an independent creative communications agency based in Manchester
