Sweet sounds took me back to seventies
YOU know you must be ‘getting on a bit’ when you discover part of your youth on display in a museum!
Nostalgia for the 70s came flooding back when I stepped through the doors of the “Strawberry Studios I am in Love” exhibition at Stockport Museum and heard the yet familiar beat and lyrics of half forgotten melodies.
What conflicting emotions the sight and sound conjures up!
Here is a raunchy electric guitar used by 10cc, co-owners of the Waterloo Road recording studios. The exhibition also includes a wonderful moody shot of Joy Division, in cobbled Hopes Carr, with Yates’ garage and the cooling tower and power station chimney on the skyline, forever captured by iconic rock photographer Paul Slattery.
Joy Division were contributors to the melan- choly Manchester Sound, along with groups like The Smiths and Stone Roses, but just four skinny youths in ‘70s shirts, trying to say something through their music.
Visitors have come in their thousands to the exhibition on the Market Place, next door to Staircase House, but there were none on my two weekday visits, so I enjoyed the sounds and newsreels undisturbed.
Peter Tattersall and Eric Stewart opened the studio, named after a favourite Beatles song, 50 years ago, with egg boxes stuck to the walls to provide sound insulation and a control desk held together with string and sticky tape!
It quickly began to attract artistes outside London.
Neanderthal Man was their first hit recording in 1970 and with 10cc and artistes like Paul McCartney, The Buzzcocks, Neil Sedaka and Bay City Rollers the ‘70s was a creative time.
As a young reporter, I remember listening to a recording made there by the entire Manchester United team... (best stick to football lads).
From humble beginnings in a room above Nield and Hardy’s Underbank music store, the studio reached for the stars and found them, but ceased recording melodies in 1993.
Their music, however, lives on and you can hear it free until next January in the basement room at Stockport Museum every day (except Monday) from 11am-5pm.
More nostalgia is to be found in Stockport Heritage Magazine on sale at £2.80 in Newsagents, Coops, WH Smiths, Waterstones and Heritage outlets around Stockport and district, also browse our back copies pages on www.stockportheritagemagazine.co.uk.