Music made it the greatest place to be
We Are Manchester Manchester Arena
It was an ebullient, emotional and defiantly joyous reopening for the Manchester Arena after the devastating attack at an Ariana Grande concert on May 22. With mosh pits and singalongs, beers being tossed in the air and a minute’s noise instead of a minute’s silence, it was not a solemn affair, yet it had a certain kind of reverence, a genuine sense of ceremony. This was a very Mancunian response to attack, confronting hatred with humour, death with life.
Noel Gallagher, the one-time leader of Manchester’s biggest ever band, Oasis, spoke about how moved he was hearing crowds of people spontaneously sing Don’t Look Back
in the days after attack. “It became an anthem for defiance,” he said. “Every time you sing, we win.” And then, of course, Manchester Arena did sing it, loud and proud, their arms spread wide, voices raised to the rafters, singing to each other, singing to the world.
For what, after all, is a venue? It is just a space where people gather to be entertained. There is nothing very interesting about Manchester Arena in itself. Like most arenas, it’s a big concrete box of a room, with all the ambience of an empty warehouse. It was intriguing to see it fill up once more with people, 21,000 fans of all ages, whose presence – filled with anticipation and good cheer – softened the hard edges of the venue.
By the end of the night, with the crowd singing, shouting and applauding, looking around at one another to share in musical communion, it was as if the place had been filled with emotion, the very air thick with joy. It was then that you could feel the history of everyone who had ever performed here, the sense that we were occupying a sacred space.
In truth, it was Manchester rock band the Courteeners who really provided the spark. Before that, it was an odd bill, to say the least. Mayor Andy Burnham had made an upbeat speech about unity and remembrance, and local poet Tony Walsh had performed his proud, funny Manchester epic
This Is the Place, both effectively establishing a sense of purpose, but the music on offer seemed cheerfully irrelevant.
Perhaps out of deference to the tastes of the young Ariana Grande fans attending on that fateful night, there was some bouncy dance pop from London’s Pixie Lott and Newcastle’s Nadine Coyle (ex-girls Aloud) but even veteran Rick Astley seemed uncertain why he had been invited. “I’m not from Manchester,” he admitted. “I’m a distant cousin from Derby.” At least poppy guitar band Blossoms and thoughtful rapper Bugzy Malone had local connections, but the musical disparity of the acts and cheesy links by Essex comedian Russell Kane lent an odd sense of Saturday night variety to the occasion.
Then the Courteeners came on and the place erupted. The five-piece rock band are successful without being particularly highly regarded in the rest of the country, but their absolute commitment to Manchester has made them legends in their home town. They play a very basic, very passionate brand of indie rock, all loud guitars and shouty choruses, and their set turned the arena into a mosh pit, the audience on the floor seething with movement, arm-waving girls and shirtless boys sitting aloft their friends’ shoulders, plastic cups being thrown overhead and showering down like a beery rainstorm, leaving fans dripping wet. It was an eruption of real emotion that the occasion required.
There probably aren’t many artists who would have been keen to follow the Courteeners on stage, but Noel Gallagher’s songs have an unstoppable power of their own. His set was less explosive but even more unifying, with the audience singing from first to last with a warmth and gusto that demonstrated, once again, that the spirit of Manchester is bloodied but unbowed. It was a set that made this cavernous room feel like the greatest place on earth.