LABELLED WITH LOVE CREATION76early signs of a broader
commercial potential in The
Loft’s Why Does The Rain?
from September 1984 and
the extreme noise pop of
The Jesus And Mary Chain’s
Upside Down from two
months later.
“They had the sound, the
image and the philosophy –
everything was intact,” saidGillespie of East Kilbride’s
feedback scions. McGee
was initially unimpressed, but
before long he was frothing
at the mouth and proclaiming
that, together, the Mary Chain
and Creation were “going to
make millions!”
“It was a brilliant, violent,
pop record,” McGee said of
Upside Down. He assumed it
would be “a big No.1 hit” in
the vein of The Ronettes’ Be
My Baby (the Mary Chain’s
Reid brothers’ avowed
intention was to combine
garage noise with girl group
harmony). And although it
didn’t quite manage that, it
did make the band arguably
the most notorious since the
Sex Pistols (give or take the
concurrent Frankie Goes To
Hollywood), helped not a little
by the riot at their incendiary
(and brief) performance at
North London Polytechnic.
“This is truly art as
terrorism,” declared McGee
afterwards, although the band
had to take refuge in their
dressing room as fi red-up
audience members pounded
on the door with hammers.
Suddenly, Creation offered
an alternative to the cosy
mainstream pop consensus
provided by Live Aid. From
their offi ce – little more
than a broom cupboard,
really – in Hatton Garden,
they set themselves up as
the standard bearers of
rock’n’roll degeneracy, their
ethos encapsulated by Primal
Scream, fronted by sometime
Mary Chain drummer“They were absolutely rock’n’roll animals who put
it on that they were mummies boys. I went on tour
with them and theirs was the worst behaviour.
They were shockingly out of control.”
ALAN MCGEE ON THE HOUSE OF LOVEQ
Were you the bridge
between shoegaze
Creation and
commercial Creation?
Yes, we were the fi rst lot to start
hitting the charts for them. When
we fi rst met Noel [Gallagher]
he told us he had [Ride track]
OX4 on his answerphone,
which was good.Q
Were Ride Creation’s
noise-pop boyband?
A little bit. In our mind we
were arty, like Sonic Youth. We
weren’t ashamed of the ”p”
word, but we felt awkward with
certain videos. There were forces
at work when we were younger
and prettier when these aspects
were played on and we were
uncomfortable with them.Q
Do you think Ride were
the darlings of the
music press?
Yeah, and for a while that was
great. We were so young –
19/20/21 – but also awarethat the tide would turn, which
it did... But it was an amazing
time. The parties at Creation
would last all weekend. I’d hang
out with Alan [McGee] a lot.
There were nights I’d be used as
“bait” [i.e. as a babe-magnet]
and we’d carry on the party at
Alan’s. But that was alright –
I was high at the time anyway.
If you were going to experiment
with pills, they weren’t bad
people to do it with.Q
Was Creation
essentially an auteur
record label?
A bit. Alan believed in the
people and got to know them.
He knew our band – he’d seen
me off my head, and I’d seen
him off his. There were no layers.
But what made Ride great and
Creation great was also what
made them crash – made them
unsustainable. But we created
something that stood the test of
time, and that’s all you can hope
for, really.RIDE
COMBINING TEEN PIN-UP APPEAL WITH
POST–MBV NOISE–POP EXPERIMENTALISM,
RIDE WERE CREATION’S ENTREE INTO THE
CHARTS. MARK GARDENER LOOKS BACK...Ride’s second EP, Play, became
Creation’s fi rst Top 40 entry
in April 1990Gillespie, who seemed to
embody, with his Roger
McGuinn fringe and pale,
skinny frame, every dissolute
leather-clad rocker there had
ever been.
Creation’s fi rst heyday
came with the gorgeous
Byrdsian jangle-pop of the
Primals’ All Fall Down/
It Happens and CrystalCrescent/ Velocity Girl, The
Bodines’ Therese/ I Feel, The
Loft’s Up The Hill And Down
The Slope, The Weather
Prophets’ Almost Prayed and
The Jasmine Minks’ What’s
Happening and Cold Heart –
together they were a beacon
of lustrous indie in that dead
zone between the demise of
new pop and emergence of
acid house.
But with the Mary Chain
signed to Warners subsidiary
Blanco Y Negro, Creation
didn’t yet have a hit act, one
that could sustain their mad
misadventures. Nor did they
have one that the press could
blazon as radically affecting
a break with the past – for all
the greatness of their releases
to date, they had mainly been
glorious upholders of rock
tradition rather than signposts
to a bold new future.
Enter, circa 1987-88,
The House Of Love and
My Bloody Valentine.
The debut House Of Love
album signalled a change
for Creation. It had that
inimitable hazy sound typical
of Creation, but it also had
well-formed, memorable songs
such as Christine and Man To
Child. Not surprisingly, that
self-titled debut gave Creation
their fi rst chart entry (albeit
at No.49) and caused the
phone to ring off the hook,
with major labels wanting in
on the action. More people
were employed at Creation
HQ, and there was more of
a party atmosphere, which
suited the band.© PhotoshotCP30.labelled_creation.print.indd 76 07/06/2017 17:05