CityLife

Salford: Music city

BACK HOME: Tim Burgess in Boothstown

SAVVY souls who know something about songs will be aware that Salford and its musicians haven’t always struck a positive chord.

Among the earliest ditties to set a period of the city’s history in aspic was Ewan MacColl’s story of romance amid the gasometers … which went by the title of Dirty Old Town. That’s hardly the kind of sentiment to give a city a glowing reputation across the globe.

And then there was the funkadelic-tinged inverted snobbery of a group of lairy lads from Little Hulton, calling themselves The Happy Mondays. Their music might have been fantastic, but on an intellectual level, it was worse than if East 17 had been officially appointed as culture ambassadors for Walthamstow.

Yet there’s no denying the power of music to reinforce positive images in the mind’s ear and eye, and a new project by Salford city council seeks to do just that.

The Salford Music Map is a fold-out photograph of a properly impressive pop-up map forming part of a new exhibition at Salford Museum And Art Gallery (Quiffs, Riffs and Tiffs: The Story of Popular Music In Salford from 1950 to today) and features a geographical guide to some of the things you might already know about the city’s musical heritage … and some you probably won’t.

Part tourist-guide, part-promotional tool, the aim is to make people think warm and tingly things about Salford at a time when the city is fighting a multi-fronted battle to step out of the shadow of its close neighbour across the Irwell.

Investment

Just as Manchester has claimed much of the investment in recent years, it has also purloined much of the region’s musical glory.
Even the aforementioned Happy Mondays – anti-heroes of the Madchester days – became victims of this birthplace realignment once the headline writers got involved.

Recent times have seen Salford snatch the mediacity:UK project from Manchester and now they want their music back, too. David Nolan, a broadcaster and Salford University lecturer with many music-related projects under his belt, was hired by Salford council to research the map, and has agreed to be my guide.

We first unfurl the map outside Salford Lads Club, number eight on the map and arguably the most famous landmark Salford Music Map as a result of its totemic association with The Smiths.

What you perhaps didn’t know is that it was somewhere around here (map reference 14) that Graham Nash – former member of The Hollies and still part of Crosby, Stills And Nash – first started performing.

It’s a quick dart across Regent Road to a building known as Islington Mill, home to Salford’s most recent musical success, The Ting Tings.

World tour

I want to be totally original and sing “That’s not my name” at Katie White, but it seems that she’s got a world tour to keep her away from the James Street address. From there, we head to somewhere more glamorous.

But Nolan tells me that Salford Quays, home to the Lowry – scene of more recent performances by the likes of Morrissey, Elkie Brooks and The Gossip – has a more mundane past, providing a location for a pre-Fall Mark E Smith’s job as a dock office worker.

We only have an hour or two, but you could spend a full day wandering around the 27 locations on the map.

Don’t be disappointed if Tim Burgess isn’t sitting on the corner of Linkfield Drive and if the ‘Wellie’ on the Top Road – as it is known locally – is now Pendlebury Evangelical Church, and unlikely to provide a performance space to the city’s most famous outfit, The Salford Jets.

And be warned: while Salford council hopes that the map will show the city in a good light, it does come with the type of disclaimer that you probably wouldn’t get on a tour of the “homes of the rich and famous in sunny Hollywood”.

“Please respect the buildings, businesses and homes featured on the map and the people who work and live in them,” it warns. “If using the map to travel around the city, please make sure someone knows where you are going and when you plan to return. Salford City Council accepts no liability.”

But Nolan hopes that people will use the map, available online and at tourist information centres, and points out the way that music’s power has sometimes been downplayed.

“It is important,” he insists. “It tells you everything about a city and its cultural and creative potential. I don’t think people have traditionally used Salford in the right way. This tells them where to go and what to do.”

You can sign up for your free copy of the map to the right.