Alan McGee: How to Run an Indie Label

Alan McGee

Hardcover | 15.2 x 3 x 24.2 cm | 320 pp

Allen & Unwin | 2024 | 9781838957988

From founding Creation Records to discovering Oasis, How to Run an Indie Label offers a no-holds-barred rampage through gigs, clubs, boardrooms, drugs and booze that shows the wild spirit of the UK indie music scene.

Music is like no other business. It's about being at the right place at the right time, following your nose and diving in feet first. It's about being plugged into the mystical electricity and about surfing on the wild energy. It's about how to fuck up and how to survive and be sustained by the holy grail of the high decibel. It's about never being boring.

No-one captures this wild feral spirit better than Alan McGee whose helter-skelter career in music has made him a major force. His nose for danger and his ear for classic guitar rock'n'roll brought us The Jesus and Mary Chain, Primal Scream, My Bloody Valentine, Teenage Fanclub and Ride before topping out in the nineties with the biggest band in the world, Oasis. His ability to start a raw power ruckus brought the visceral danger back to a moribund mid-eighties music scene.

This book tells you everything you need to know about how to be a creative force.

'A true believer in the power of music and more importantly a believer in the people that make music' Noel Gallagher

'McGee was our Malcolm McLaren and Tony Wilson. An instigator and motivator, a born upsetter. I've never met anyone like him' Bobby Gillespie