OH, MANCHESTER:
SO MUCH TO THANK YOU FOR!
This year ByLarm is graced with the presence of two of Manchester’s finest, musician Peter Hook and photographer Kevin Cummins. There is still a light that will never go out…
According to academic and writer Professor Richard Florida, flourishing creative communities often give birth to thriving and prosperous urban environments, bringing business and money into a region. There are few places where this is truer than Manchester: once a grim industrial hub, this Northern English city has increasingly flourished since the late 1980s, with its endless stream of great music helping to capture people’s imagination. Whatever your tastes, the chances are you have at least a handful of records by acts that grew up there: The Stone Roses, Oasis, Happy Mondays, Take That, The Smiths, Doves or even The Bee Gees, who spent their childhood in its Chorlton suburbs.
Nowadays Manchester is vibrant, with much of the dilapidated environment that initially inspired artists now ‘regenerated’ to become bars, apartments, shopping centres and the like. Music may no longer represent one of the few escape routes from the city – indeed such is its dramatic growth that perhaps there no longer needs to be an escape route – but its spirit lives on, giving birth to a new generation of bands such as The Ting Tings, hotly tipped Delphic or BBC Sound of 2010 nominees Everything Everything.
Peter Hook and Kevin Cummins were both caught up in the Mancunian musical revolution. As bassist for Joy Division and then New Order, Hook was central to two of the most influential English bands to cross over to international success, and they - and indeed Hook himself – remain synonymous with the city. Cummins, meanwhile, is the photographer whose iconic shots of Hook’s two bands, as well as countless other local acts, helped define the way that they were viewed by the world at large. In so doing he has documented the growth of a city and its culture, shaping people’s perspective on a place so damaged by the downturn in heavy industry that between 1961 and 1983 it lost 150,000 jobs, but which now hosts more visitors than any other English city apart from London. If proof were needed for Professor Florida’s theories – that the existence of a ‘creative class’ helps provoke urban recovery – then Manchester could provide a model example.
Peter Hook has just published his recollections of his time helping to run The Haçienda club, a potent symbol of Manchester musical culture. The Haçienda: How Not To Run A Club is an unflinching and often hilarious memoir that details the chaotic organisation and financial mismanagement of this legendary venue. Kevin Cummins, meanwhile, has just released a collection, Looking for the Light Through the Pouring Rain, which contains a selection of over 300 of his photographs documenting Manchester music over the last 30 years. Both men will be presenting talks based around their books as well as answering questions about their work and Manchester itself. These two talks will provide an unmissable opportunity to find out if it’s really true that, as The Stone Roses’ Ian Brown put it, "Manchester's got everything except a beach".
(Photo of "the author" interviewing Kevin Cummins for his by:Larm seminar taken by Maria Jefferis)
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