Barely a week after Magazine’s evocative set at The Bridgewater Hall and Manchester is invaded by more ghosts. This time they are clustered in a tiny art gallery – The Richard Goodhall – buried deep with the area now rather grandly referred to as ‘The Northern Quarter’. The positioning is apt, for the gallery currently houses a fine collection of rock’n’roll images frozen by the perceptive lens of Kevin Cummins, the one time NME man who captured Manchester’s rock glitterati as they dawdled beneath the city’s decayed grandeur.
Now this area is reborn. (The NQ enjoys a dense exotic heritage…once you could by a python or hire a murderer and, in later years, catch the embryonic noises of so many, from The Fall to Elbow within it’s tightly clasped streets). Of course, and somewhat controversially, there is sheen of contemporary elegance here, from lunchtime meetings to night time huddles of jazzers…and, of course, those who sip bad white wine and enjoy gallery openings.
It IS strangely unsettling, in truth, to drift around the gallery, glancing the oh-so familiar imagery on display. The iconic grimace of Mark E. Smith; the ugly mug braggadocio of the Gallaghers; Tony Wilson, Alan Erasmus and Peter Saville huddled outside The Factory Club; Sean Ryder’s Fagin leer, the winsome reserve of Vini Reilly…oh and Mozzer!
If you will forgive me, I need to state that I was indeed fortunate enough to be stood next to that camera as it snapped to such devastating effect. I am not trying to muscle clumsily into the magic here…just need to note how fascinating it has been to see the illusion unfold. That famous image of Wilson, Erasmus and Saville might seem to evoke an urban urgency…the very source, perhaps, of Factory’s inglorious empire. In truth it was merely one of a number of shots that accompanied a piece in ‘Sounds’ that focused tentatively on an unfolding Manchester scene. Believe me; it took weeks of phone bashing to prize that article and that picture within the pages of ‘Sounds’. As for the NME…with Paul Morley lost to the glamour of the capital, there was little interest in northern imagery at that point.
To be honest, the images that now affect me the most are not the most obvious. I would be a happy man if I knew that I would never again see Joy Division in the snow of Stockport and Hulme or a Pollockian paint splattered Stone Roses…oh and, again…Mozzer.
Far more refreshing are images of the lost faces of Manchester. The gloriously, painfully lost Distractions, perfectly posed in oikyness at Bell Vue or the frolicking ofThe Drones. The latter image transported me directly back to The Smithfield pub on Swan Street – next to the soon-to-be revived Band on the Wall. That evening, The Drones- with manager Morley gleefully igniting fuses – spoke with gushing naiveté into our fanzine’s (Ghast Up) cassette recorder. They were full of the verve and rush and promise of a new Manchester and no one really cared that, just a few months previously, they had been the sub-Slik Manc surf pop band, Rockslide. In the moment and for Kevin’s camera, all seemed possible. For Slaughter and the Dogs, too, the pre punk glam vision flickered thrillingly, if rather ineptly. It didn’t matter…the energy still drips from the photographs.
The exhibition is, in commercial reality, merely a launch for Kevin’s Faber and Faber book, ‘Looking at the Light Through the Pouring Rain’. An elegant affair, it must be noted, that sees the ocean of photos punctuated by blocks of prose; Morley eloquent on Manchester, Stuart Maconie and John Harris equally intriguing, if rather more perfunctory, as they spill their tales.
But to be honest, rather than leafing through the book, I prefer to look at the photos in-situ….slap bang, as they are, in the centre of Manchester regeneration. How amusing it is, to stare at Shaun Ryder’s cartoon vision while deflecting the faint but obvious disapproval of the gallery staff. Ha! How ironic too. I assume they wish me to purchase a book. I cannot, of course, for that would hardly be in the spirit that inspired these photographs in the first place. So I smile and think of the Distraction’s Mike Finney. I think of Slaughter’s Wayne Barrett, of MJ Drone and all of The Worst. I think of the scuttling shadows in Moss Side. Of the broken dreams. That is where the interest still lies. That is the heartbeat of old Manchester and, as Morrissey once reflected onstage – and reflects in his every single song- the past never dies.
Mick Middles
