NORTHERN ROCK

While their London counterparts are struggling, bands from the North West are thriving. Michael Hann asks what makes this part of the country such a hotbed of guitar-based talent

- Michael Hann

There’s nowhere on Earth, perhaps, where you are reminded that rock music matters quite so much as the northwest of England. It’s there in Liverpool in the form of The Beatles, and the long mythology of scouse psychedelia. It’s there in Manchester in the way that the city’s musical and footballing successes have achieved a kind of global synonymity.

“If you go to Indonesia and say you’re from Manchester, they will say, ‘The Stone Roses, Oasis, The Smiths, David Beckham, Bobby Charlton, George Best,’” says Conrad Murray, an artist manager who has been at the centre of northwestern music for years – Courteeners, Blossoms and The Stone Roses are among the bands he has worked with. “It is such a big, interwoven thing, with music and football from Manchester.” The huge popularity of the recent Stone Roses and Manchester United collaboration with Adidas is a case in point.

The divide between the North West’s music industry and the London music industry has long been noted. Bands from the region, such as Courteeners, might play to tens of thousands at hometown shows in Manchester, but perform to dramatically smaller crowds elsewhere. Such bands, cynics would scoff, were local outfits on a grand scale, and they followed a pattern: they could be superstars at home, but little known in the capital. All of which rather misses the point. The question is, why do these bands seem to emerge from that particular region in such numbers?

The North West plays host to huge shows every summer. This month alone, Courteeners headlined Lytham Festival, which might not sound like a big deal until you note the other headliner is Shania Twain; and Jamie Webster (the scouse answer to Gerry Cinnamon) played Sefton Park in Liverpool alongside honorary northwesterners Catfish and the Bottlemen, who come from Wrexham, just across the Welsh border. In August, Blossoms will headline Wythenshawe Park.