Drinks with Blair in No 10, a bust-up with Jimmy Savile at Chequers, the Clintons staying at my house... and why I turned down supper with Prince Charles 3 times
Record boss Alan McGee, who signed Oasis – ‘the biggest band since Led Zep’ – sees his rollercoaster life turned into rock biopic
IT’S one of the most remarkable moments in British rock music history. On May 31, 1993, Alan McGee, the boss of a small but influential record label, arrived early at a gig to hear one of his bands. Unexpectedly, he also found a group of lads from Manchester – unknowns who had driven up to Glasgow and threatened to smash up the venue unless they got to play.
Having bullied their way onto the stage, they performed four tracks – the snarling vocals of the lead singer backed by a blizzard of angry guitar. Blown away, the record boss immediately offered them a deal. And in that instant, Oasis were on their way to becoming one of the biggest bands in the world – and McGee was on his way to becoming a multi-millionaire.
Now, the extraordinary story of how a former British Rail store clerk from East Kilbride, Lanarkshire, became Scotland’s most successful music mogul is being turned into a movie, with a script by Irvine Welsh and the project produced by Danny Boyle.
McGee spoke to The Scottish Mail on Sunday about the highs and lows of a career that took him to 10 Downing Street as an ambassador for Cool Britannia but also saw him nearly die from a drugs overdose.
He told of his bemusement at having US President Bill Clinton staying over at his home – and revealed he almost came to blows with disgraced DJ Jimmy Savile at the Chequers residence of the Prime Minister.
McGee, now 58 and about to return to the music business after a period of retirement, admitted that his life story is all the more remarkable because that chance meeting with Oasis almost did not happen.
McGee said: ‘I walked into King Tut’s and I suppose it all came down to either sitting having a beer or walking upstairs and seeing this band who had just intimidated the bouncers.
‘If I hadn’t popped upstairs, Britpop wouldn’t have happened and I would have kept on trying to financially survive. Instead, I went upstairs to sign the biggest band since Led Zeppelin and sort out the 1990s for everybody else.’
Far from portraying a sanitised version of his life, the new film – Creation Stories – depicts beatings McGee received from his father.
HE said: ‘It starts with me being forlorn and getting thrown out of the house. I worked at British Rail as a store clerk and before that I had a job in a factory making collars, which was awful. I was an apprentice electrician for six months. I didn’t want that life so I moved to London, where I was homeless.
‘I slept on the roof of the chemist at Covent Garden for ten days and chatted up a girl with pink hair who I thought was attractive. Unbelievably, she let me move into her squat in Clapham and I got a foothold in London.’
It was not long before McGee had launched his label, Creation Records. He signed a number of bands including Teenage Fanclub, The Jesus And Mary Chain and Primal Scream, the members of which included McGee’s former King’s Park Secondary School friends Bobby Gillespie and Andrew Innes.
But as the rave scene took hold in the 1980s, so McGee’s recreational drug use escalated.
Initial success came with Primal Scream’s 1991 album Screamadelica, which tapped into the acid house music scene. Then, in February 1994, McGee almost died of a drug overdose, a scare which prompted him to clean up his act. He said:
‘I overdosed in Los Angeles. Some people are so addicted that they keep on going. Luckily, I got frightened after I nearly died and I stopped.’ His rehabilitation was timely. That August, Oasis released their debut album Definitely Maybe, which went straight to No1 in the UK charts. Featuring hit singles including Supersonic, Live Forever and Cigarettes & Alcohol, it went on to sell more than eight million copies around the world. As success rolled in, McGee was invited to 10 Downing Street and to Chequers by the then prime minister, Tony Blair. ‘At No 10, I thought, “Bloody hell, this is odd”,’ he recalled. ‘I liked Tony Blair up until Iraq. If he hadn’t invaded Iraq he’d have been a Labour legend.’ However, the Scot snubbed repeated requests to come to supper from the nation’s future King.
McGee said: ‘Prince Charles asked me to supper three times right after I was in 10 Downing Street, but I couldn’t go because I’m Scottish and I don’t like the Royal Family.
‘My missus was looking at the invite on the mantelpiece and she told me, “We’re going”, but I told her that I couldn’t.
‘She understood, but sometimes I think I should have gone because if you don’t go, you don’t know.
‘I don’t miss 10 Downing Street but I’m glad I went because that’s how you find out what’s going on.’
Oasis had gone on to sell 75 million records worldwide – including albums (What’s the Story) Morning Glory? and Be Here Now – by the time McGee sold Creation in 2000 to music giant Sony for a reported £40 million. He quit the music business and retired to the Welsh countryside for a life of seclusion with his wife and daughter.
Yet he soon found himself playing host to President Bill Clinton, who had been looking for somewhere to stay while in the UK in 2001 for a speaking engagement at the Hay literary festival.
McGee said: ‘Bill Clinton stayed at my place in Wales because he didn’t want to stay in a hotel.
‘We put him up and he spent the weekend there – along with 14 FBI agents – and he was into my vinyl.
‘The FBI bugged all the phones and my lesbian housekeeper thought she had died and gone to heaven because of all these hot female soldiers on alert.’
The Creation Stories film is based on McGee’s 2013 autobiography of the same name, with Trainspotting star Ewen Bremner in the lead role.
McGee expects his story, being made on a modest £2.5 million budget, to be far removed from recent money-spinning biopics such as Elton John’s Rocketman and Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody.
He said: ‘Irvine has told me that my biopic is the punk rock alternative to these movies. I was on set for the first time yesterday and Ewen Bremner has become me.
‘He’s an amazing actor. I didn’t expect him to get my mannerisms so easily. He looks like me. His acting is intense. The hair and make-up are great.’
There are also roles for Steven Berkoff as long-dead occultist Aleister Crowley, with whom McGee has had an ongoing fascination.
Other cast members include Jason Isaacs, best known as Lucius Malfoy in the Harry Potter series and for playing captain Gabriel Lorca in the TV series Star Trek: Discovery.
Peaky Blinders actress Charlie Murphy will play McGee’s wife, Kate. Regarding his relationship with his partner of 25 years, McGee said: ‘We have one of these modern marriages. I don’t live with my wife. I’m married, but I live on my own in London and she lives in Wales.
‘We see each other when we see each other. I suspect it’s the secret of a modern marriage and I suspect that, deep down, I’m very hard work to be with.
‘She can be hard work, too, but I think we get on much better when we don’t live with each other, and then when we do see each other it’s good.
‘I’m going on holiday with her next year to Thailand, so we still see each other, but we just don’t live with each other. We’ve just been together a long time.’
Glaswegian actress and former Miss Scotland Kirsty Mitchell will play McGee’s sister, Susan, in the film while actor Jason Flemyng is tipped to be portraying reviled former BBC DJ Savile – although this has yet to be confirmed.
McGee said: ‘We met Jimmy Savile at Chequers. That was mad. I knew he was wrong.
‘I did know he was a paedophile. Jimmy Savile was a gangster, basically. It was weird when he walked in. It’s a shocking scene when he appears in the film.
‘I’ve seen it and it is really lifelike. It is a funny part of the film and I hope people don’t fall out with us over it. He was a dirty old man hitting on Kate and kissing her. I wanted to punch him.’
McGee has recently returned to the music business and has just signed Kirkcaldy band The Shambolics to his latest record label, Creation 23.
He expects them to become famous, if not quite as famous as Oasis, within 18 months.
McGee said: ‘I retired but my daughter said she was bored of me taking her to school, so I started the label. Within the next 18 months The Shambolics will be pop stars.
‘I don’t know them that well but I can sense it. They are Scottish guys who all have little jobs, but they are married to rock ’n’ roll. They are going to blow up. I’ve got a good feeling about this.’
DESPITE his confidence, he does admit to a touch of ‘imposter syndrome’. He said: ‘I know I can manage bands, make records and make people money, but I have always felt that I was slightly chancing it.
‘Scots are a nation of chancers and we accept that, but the English all think they are entitled. That’s the subtle difference between Scotland and England.’
On the question of Oasis reforming, McGee doubts whether it could ever happen due to the continuing rift between the band’s warring brothers, Noel and Liam Gallagher.
He said: ‘I don’t think they will get back together again. There is too much personal stuff going on between them. They are at odds with each other. They won’t be getting back together, certainly not any time soon. I really don’t think so.’
Meanwhile, McGee admitted he had been struggling to come to terms with the involvement of Oscar winner Boyle – who had been hired to direct the upcoming James Bond movie, but walked away from the project.
He said: ‘I think they all fell out. So Danny Boyle walked out on James Bond to make a movie about me. I hadn’t thought the film about me was going to be successful – now I think it is since Danny came on board.’
McGee added: ‘They sent me to dress rehearsals of Ewen in Chequers with Tony Blair. Ewen is channelling me. He also goes into being me when I’m with him. It’s too weird. It freaks me out.
‘My whole life I haven’t cared about being famous. I have flirted with it before, but it’s only now that I have become the story, because of the film.
‘If my movie is successful I’m going to have to see a therapist because I will be famous for Ewen Bremner playing me. That’s something I will just have to live with.’
If I hadn’t popped upstairs at King Tut’s to see Oasis, Britpop would never have happened