If you think rock’n’roll is all about swagger, a new film on the drink- and drug-fuelled years of Creation Records is for you
WHEN AN UNSIGNED Noel Gallagher took the train from Manchester to meet the bosses of Creation Records in 1993, he had little idea what to expect. But in a room above a sweatshop in the backstreets of east London, surrounded by self-confessed “misfits, drug addicts and sociopaths”, the Oasis songwriter found his spiritual home.
“He came to the Creation office and saw the words ‘Northern Ignorance’ scrawled in magic marker across the roof of the reception,” says former managing director Tim Abbott. “I’d done it the week before, when I was off my head on ecstasy, walking on the tables and drinking champagne. Noel saw it and went: ‘Fucking ’ell, I’m having that. I like it here.’”
Now, the full extent of the debauchery, precariousness and genius of the independent label is to be laid bare in the most revealing rock'n'roll film since 24 Hour Party People, the story of the "Madchester" scene. Upside Down,due out in spring, reveals Creation's unusual method of making sure new bands came on board, according to Abbott.
“We often used to drink and drug the bands into submission,” he says.
In Gallagher’s case, after the initial bond formed, he was frogmarched to the pub, according to Abbott, where, unsurprisingly, all involved got “stuck into a session”.
A decade after Creation closed, and 25 years since the release of its first single, Upside Downcharts the heady 15-year existence of the label that launched Primal Scream, Ride and My Bloody Valentine, as well as Oasis. It veered from one financial precipice to another, according to Abbott. Even after Primal Scream won the Mercury music prize in 1992, the resulting visibility did not translate into financial viability.
“We were always skint. It was like spinning plates, we were always trying to dodge the bailiffs,” Abbott says. “It was my job to go out and see them, probably because I was the smallest. [Co-founder Dick Green] would see to the manufacturers who we couldn’t pay and [co-founder Alan McGee] would just try to blag it. It couldn’t go on like that.”
Upside Down's director, Danny O'Connor, who admitted going through "near bankruptcy and dementia and all the other things that come with Creation" during the making of the film, says he was drawn to telling the story of the label that had provided the soundtrack to his life.
“No one does excess like Creation, no one does great records like Creation,” he says. “Creation was an indie, but it didn’t wear a cardigan, it didn’t apologise. There was a real power in its punch. If you think that rock’n’roll is all about swagger, this is your film.” And few do swagger like McGee. In a trailer for the film, he admits: “I was absolutely delusional. I actually thought I was up there with Beethoven and Shakespeare, creating metaphysical history by running Creation.”
Abbott agrees: “We were dysfunctional people working with dysfunctional bands, but somehow we still managed to function. We got results. ”
For Abbott, when Sony bought 49 per cent of the label in 1992, it spelled the end of its glory days. “When McGee sold creation to Sony, it was a curse. It took the pressure off financially, but it changed everything. Sony brought in accountants and a major label culture. The offices moved from Hackney to Primrose Hill and it got stupid.”
Abbott has few regrets about the closure of the label in 1999. “When the label folded, it was sad, but it had been consumed by a monster. It stopped being a vehicle for music and started being a vehicle for egos. Alan and Dick sold the soul of Creation to the devil, and the devil wanted it back with interest.”
– Guardian service
