CityLife

Robb in the hood

PUNK SURVIVOR: Robb

PUNK-rocker about town John Robb has harvested his extensive list of contacts for the latest in what feels like a very long line of books about Manchester’s musical history.

Where Robb’s book differs, however, is that he was able to gain quick and easy access to more than 150 of the luminary legends who have helped make this city great.

It helps that many of the people named in the index were friends long before they became faces on the cover of NME and that Robb’s night job at the helm of his band Goldblade means he’s likely to enjoy more trust and respect than your common-or-garden muck-raking music writer.

Many of our most famous musical sons are simply numbers in John Robb’s mobile phone.

And so it was that Morrissey provided his first ever interview in a book of this type and that Noel Gallagher was delighted to squeeze Robb in for a cosy chat while Oasis were performing in Liverpool.

There were conversations with Shaun Ryder, Pete Shelley, Johnny Marr, Peter Hook and Howard Devoto.

Ian Brown, whose song provides the book with its title, invited Robb along for a cosy chat in a city centre café while spending time in Manchester.

Even the late and great Tony Wilson granted Robb enough time before he died for the writer to get a handle on his thoughts about Manchester.

“I’ve spoken to just about everybody,” Robb confirms when we speak ahead of publication of The North Will Rise Again… Manchester Music City 1978-2008.

“In fact, the biggest problem has been keeping it all down to a manageable size. The book is around 155,000 words long as it is and it could have been double that. It’s been quite a job. Ian Brown gave me 30,000 words to work with!

Foolish

“But I’m not going to tell you what anybody has said. That would be foolish. Nobody would buy the book if I did that!”

While Robb’s story officially starts with The Buzzcocks hosting the Sex Pistols at that famous 1976 gig, the pop culture pundit decided to turn back the clock still further in order to establish some kind of context. It was the right thing to do.

Many contemporary projects have practically ignored what happened here in the 1960s and 70s even though they were some of the city’s most fertile times.

“The '60s had a really good music scene and in the '70s the city was really on it’s a***, so we got that whole movement related to the transformation from old industrial Manchester to the modern city.”

The book follows a quote-by-quote chronological path, helping to set the scene with Peter Noone and Herman’s Hermits before hitting punk, the early days of Factory, The Smiths, Madchester and Oasis, before concluding with the rag-tag latter-day scene embodied by the likes of Badly Drawn Boy.

“All of the interviews I was granted were transcribed and are presented in the order that the events actually happened,” Robb adds.

Robb says another challenge was differentiate between history available to be told and the stories that are still being written.

While Elbow and The Ting Tings are perhaps the most prominent acts to emerge from the Manchester (and Salford) scenes in recent years, Robb made an executive decision to exclude them from this volume.

“Those stories aren’t told yet,” he says. “Elbow are half-way through their story and the Ting Tings are just starting theirs.”

By contrast, he is only too well aware that that Lesser Free Trade Hall gig is a story which has been told and retold many times, making cameo appearances in numerous books and featuring in within the films artistic musings of both Closer and 24 Hour Party People.

“That gig is not the whole story,” he adds. “But it is an important starting point. You have to recognise your own history but you don’t have to wallow in it.

“If you are now turning 18, it’s fantastic to discover what went before.”

The North Will Rise Again: Manchester Music City 1978-2008 is written by John Robb and will be published by Aurum Press on March 31. John Robb will be signing copies of the book at the Deansgate branch of Waterstone’s at 7pm on Tuesday, April 21. Tickets £3, are redeemable against one purchase of the promoted book on the night. Call 0161 837 3000.