If hip hop and acid house were Celtic, indie was Rangers... but Creation did both
Writer Paolo Hewitt says it was Mcgee’s passion for music that drove his success.
The former NME journalist, who wrote Alan Mcgee & The Story Of Creation Records, as well as two books on Oasis, said: “Alan’s always been about the music and he never became Johnny Big Shot like a lot do. “Music was always the focus, the driving force, and it kept him grounded. He wasn’t on an ego trip.” Mcgee partied as hard as he worked, and the
lifestyle caught up with him a decade later when he suffered a breakdown. “He took it to the extreme, and he said when they carried him out that he never ever wanted to feel like that again, and that’s what put him on the road to recovery,” said Paolo. “But he was also able to be self-deprecating about it, he saw the cliché in it and poked fun at himself for falling for it. He’d seen it happen to others and then it happened to him.” Paolo spent time on the road with Oasis as they toured America in the mid-90s and he says it wasn’t as out of control as was so often portrayed.
“However much was going on, they were never too wasted to play the gig. Things are always overstated, it’s like Chinese whispers.
“It did go on, obviously, no one is denying it, and I think Oasis were clever that they fronted up about it straight away, so when the tabloids did stories about them taking drugs, the rest of the country said, we know, they’ve been telling us for the past two years.” Paolo first came across Creation in the label’s early days while he was at NME.
“It wasn’t for me at that point,” Paolo said. “It was very polarised and antagonistic, with everyone vying for the magazine covers. It was like football rivalries.
“If what I was into, hip hop and acid house, were Celtic, then indie music was Rangers. But Creation went on to engage with the acid house scene, which led them out of indie and into something like Oasis. They were much more interesting to me in the ‘90s rather than the ‘80s.” Paolo believes Mcgee’s tense relationship with his father, played in the movie by Richard Jobson of The Skids, fed into his music obsession.
“If you’re listening to music then you’re not obsessing about whatever trauma you have. That’s why the arts become so important to so many people – they transport you out of the situation you’re in,” he added.