Product Description

Founded by Alan McGee in 1983, Creation Records achieved notoriety as the home of Primal Scream, the Jesus and Mary Chain and other anti-Establishment acts. During the Britpop boom of the mid-90s, the astonishing success of Oasis brought Creation fame on the world stage. In 1999, however, McGee announced his shock departure as his label's influence over a generation of British music came to a confusing and disappointing end. Containing interviews with Creation musicians, employees, supporters and detractors, this is the inside story of Creation Records - and of British music since the 1980s. It is written with the full co-operation censorship.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #449040 in Books
• Published on: 2001-10-04
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 795 pages

About the Author
David Cavanagh is one of the most respected and talented rock writers in Britain. Working for magazines like Q, Select, Sound and Mojo, he has proven himself a journalist of rare insight, style and integrity and conducted a huge number of entertaining and memorable interviews. He was also the chief researcher on the hit TV series Never Mind The Buzzcocks. His definitive account of the legendary Creation record label draws on three years extensive research, involving nearly 200 interviews with Alan McGee and other Creation luminaries.

Customer Reviews

Massive, but compulsively readable.
I bought this book thinking it would be your standard record label history. Beware: it's incredibly long, incredibly detailed, and fairly heavy. That said, it's incredibly readable. Cavanagh does a great job setting the scene, introducing the players, and establishing what happened. Not just a history of Creation, this is a great snapshot of a certain period in music and culture. If you're interested in any of these things, buy this book. Just know in advance that you'll spend a lot of time reading it.

A tale of success and excess
This is an excellent and compelling book. I managed to read it's 570 pages in 24 hours. A magnificent insight into the workings of one of the UK's most influential labels. An invaluable text to anyone who might be in a band themselves.

David Cavanagh kept up a thrilling narrative peopled with some truly amazing characters.

an astonishing survey of british indie from 1977 to 1999
dave cavanaugh has written what is easily the best-written non-fiction book about indie music ever. as a music obsessive myself, i've read them all (and most seem to have been written with some aplomb by the unofficial factory scribe mick middles) - the factory story, morrissey and marr, liverpool explodes - a shelf full. this one takes quite more than its share of cake.

starting with rough trade and postcard, it contains incredibly readable descriptions of the origins of most of the important british indie labels (of its time period - it rightly within context ignores such worthies as wurlitzer jukebox), even if only touching upon some of them, woven into a compelling, page-turning history. honestly, one tires of reading egregious errors, cobbeled-together pastiches of previously written pieces and self-important "i was there" dribble. cavanagh instead relies on solid research, reporting and, as the backbone of the story, the biography of one of the most frustrating and entertaining characters in indie music, alan mcgee.

in passing, we learn about geoff travis, alan horne, and even a little bit about those other two giants of frustratingly bizarre self-promotion, anthony h. wilson and bill drummond. in detail, you get histories of the creation bands, as their stories and particularly those of the young (and not so young) artists within frame mcgee's mad wanderings in a worthy context. we follow bobby gillespie from age 15 to the present, the reid brothers through their fame and subsequent infamy, kevin shields and guy chadwick and the gallaghers and all the rest of the creation madhouse. amazing.

its creation-focus necessarily means it won't go into detail on subjects such as the manchester and liverpool and bristol scenes - presumably cavanagh will treat those in due time? - but with writing like this, who cares! it's marvelous.

in short, a book so good it almost makes me want to give up writing - and certainly makes me want to encourage certain other music writers to put down their pens. cavanagh triumphs!