Official Manchester Music Tours
We are working with various guiding bodies to offer a FREE (with tips, we hope!) Manchester music walking tour, focusing on the Hacienda Years era, every Saturday afternoons. The only problem is, we don’t have the guides.
We are looking for a small squad of guides. You don’t have to go on a course to get a coloured badge, but you do have to know your Manchester music history inside out, you do have to have a reasonable knowledge of modern music outside Manchester, you do need to know the difference between “Do The Du” and Husker Du, you do have to play the right sounds at the right location, you do have to be presentable, personable and entertaining, and yes, we will test you!
If you can get past our GCHQ-styled test, then you can earn a wodge by walking “through the city limits”, taking folk from the Hacienda (as was) to the Ritz (as is); from Tony Wilson’s city centre pad to the Lesser Free Trade Hall (well, almost the same spot). The better you perform, the more dosh you will trouser in tips. Simples! And once you’ve got your feet under the table metaphorically there could well be lucrative private work.
The tours are organised by Ed Glinert, Manchester’s leading historian and long-time music writer, co-author of Fodor’s Rock ‘n’ Roll Traveller books, and launch production editor for Mojo.
Right now, we’re only doing a few tours (2pm from HOME), but if you want to join us get in touch.
* Sat 16 October. Book on Eventbrite here.
Ed Glinert tells New Manchester Walks that he will be most happy to accept a few coins, or even better, a note, pressed into his hand at the end of the tour if you think he’s done a good job.
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Now here’s the set list
* Tony Wilson’s pad.
* The Boardwalk, where Oasis made their debut.
* The Hacienda.
* Elbow’s “hole in my neighbourhood”.
* The Free Trade Hall, where Bob Dylan was booed and the Sex Pistols invented the modern Manchester music scene.
* The basement record shop where Morrissey had a job – yes! – for about five minutes, resulting in a depression that inspired those great lines from “Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now”.
* The Ritz, where the first Smiths gig took place.
* The Hidden Gem church where Tony Wilson’s funeral took place.
What does it sound like?
Forget Memphis and Merseybeat, Manchester is music city, a venue to rank alongside New Orleans or Notting Hill, a factory of superior song-making and stirring soundscapes courtesy of Joy Division, the Fall, New Order, Buzzcocks, Happy Mondays, John Cooper Clarke, the Stone Roses, 808 State and, of course, the Smiths, all spinning around the legend of the Hacienda, the world’s hippest nightclub, chicer than the Copacabana, sexier than Studio 54, cooler than the Cavern or Cream.
At the centre of the city’s beat was Factory Records, a record label to rival Motown and Chess with a business model that could be compared only to British Leyland or the South Sea Bubble. But it’s not about Mammon or the man, it’s about the music, the songs, and what songs! – “Dead Souls”, “William, It was Really Nothing”, “Rowche Rumble”, “Time Goes By So Slow” – the list, like the road, goes on forever. (Jon the Postman’s versions of “Louie Louie” certainly did).
“Manchester, so much to answer for,” as the man sang.
