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Author: McGee, Alan

The arts: general issues

Published on 5 September 2024 by ATLANTIC BOOKS in the United Kingdom.

Hardback | 320 pages
168 x 242 x 31 | 522g

A no-holds-barred rampage through gigs, clubs, boardrooms, drugs and booze, mad scenes, brilliant signings, machine gun quotes and a resilient wild spirit.

‘A true believer in the power of music and more importantly a believer in the people that make music’ Noel Gallagher’McGee was our Malcolm McLaren and Tony Wilson. An instigator and motivator, a born upsetter. I’ve never met anyone like him’ Bobby GillespieMusic is like no other business. It’s about being at the right place at the right time, following your nose and diving in feet first. It’s about being plugged into the mystical electricity and about surfing on the wild energy. It’s about how to fuck up and how to survive and be sustained by the holy grail of the high decibel.

No-one captures this wild feral spirit better than Alan McGee whose helter-skelter career through music has made him a major force. Wilder than his bands, more out of control than his most lunatic singer, more driven than his contemporaries and closer in spirit to the rock’n’roll star he could never be himself, McGee was always in a rush. Creation would sign people and not just the music. McGee understood that running an indie label is mainly about the charisma, the game changers, the iconography and the story. It’s about never being boring.

His ability to start a raw power ruckus brought the visceral danger back to a moribund mid-eighties music scene. His nose for danger and his ear for classic guitar rock’n’roll brought us The Jesus and Mary Chain, Primal Scream, My Bloody Valentine, Teenage Fanclub and Ride before topping out in the nineties with the biggest band in the world, Oasis.

By no means a conventional instruction manual or business book, How To Run an Indie Label tells you everything you need to know about how to be a creative force.