Mad about Manchester, Man City and dance music, not necessarily in that order, Mike Pickering carved a life for himself that wasn’t in line with what his dad expected from him. He hit the jackpot eventually with M People, having learned how the music business worked the hard way, moving on up through Factory Records and the Hacienda nightclub from gopher to DJ to golden boy. Along the way he got into a few scrapes, befriended just about everyone who mattered in Manchester music and observed it all from a position slightly left of centre, enabling him to offer a refreshingly honest appraisal of the scene that produced Joy Division, New Order and Happy Mondays and, hovering just outside of his orbit, The Smiths, Stone Roses and Oasis.
Though uncredited on the front cover, the writer Paul Morley had a hand in fashioning Pickering’s story onto the page, presumably acting as a ghost-writer for the credited author who, as he readily admits, left school at the earliest opportunity with little in the way of academic credentials. Thankfully, Pickering’s down-to-earth temperament and highly-tuned bullshit antenna has reined in Morley’s tendency to bedazzle with words, and the result is a good-hearted book that rings true in every way.
Pickering was only nine when he saw The Beatles in Stockport on November 20, 1963, one month before I, aged 16, saw them, in Bradford but, like me, the sight and sound of the Fab Four at the height of Beatlemania, sound-tracked by screaming girls, seems to have done something to the wiring in his brain. Thereafter, conventional life wasn’t for him and, much to the regret of his conformist dad, he ingratiated himself amongst the Factory crowd, tagging along with his great pal Rob Gretton, who managed Joy Division and subsequently New Order, wryly observing the antics of visionary oddball Tony Wilson who introduced Manchester to the Sex Pistols. Punk liberated Pickering and, although he seems allergic to guitar groups, there was no turning back, nine-to-five jobs were off the agenda, travel – to Holland and Greece – beckoned and when he discovered dance music a new and better life was within his grasp.
Much of his book focuses on the inner workings of Factory Records and the Hacienda, all fascinating stuff, especially the idiosyncratic way in which Wilson runs his shop and the ways in which those who work for him react to his oddball decisions. The rise and fall of the Hacienda is a story in itself and up in his DJ booth, hands aloft, Pickering plays ‘Ride On Time’ by Black Box and sees it all, the joy of dancing, the lure of ecstasy, the gangland violence that accompanies it and the ham-fisted approach of Manchester’s police. It all makes for grim, albeit riveting, reading, not least the consequences when his fame as a DJ leads to his name being used to promote “illegal” raves of which he is completely unaware.
Woven throughout the book is Pickering’s long, close and occasionally combative relationship with fellow Man City fan Rob Gretton, which makes chapter 47 – A Rob By Any Other Name – a tribute to his great pal that tugs at the heart strings. The fortunes of Man City are similarly treated, their current standing as one of the world’s great football clubs treated with a measure of incredulity after the disappointments of earlier times. It ends, as you would expect, with the formation of M People and the discovery of Calvin Harris, by which time Pickering has become a roving A&R man for Sony, a role for which he is singularly well qualified, not that he’s really comfortable working for a major label. He’s left Manchester behind but his heart still belongs there.
Manchester Must Dance has 51 shortish chapters over 376 pages, and forewords from Martin Fry, Johnny Marr, Noel Gallagher and Calvin Harris, with additional chapters from Marr and Gallagher that extol Pickering’s integrity, 16 pages of colour photographs, playlists and a good index. It’s a must for anyone who was there and an illuminating read for those, like me, who weren’t.
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