Music web zine Zani sat down with Creation Records founder Alan McGee. Here's a small excerpt :


ZANI - The first ten years of Creation were exciting, with signings such as Primal Scream and Jesus and Mary Chain, who sold to Blanco Y Negro for £75,000. What were the first ten years like for Creation Records, I guess that is pretty hard to sum up?

Alan McGee - For the first four years, I saw it as a hobby. Then in 1988, The House Of Love went gold, and My Bloody Valentine went silver. Around the end of 1988, or the start of 1989, I then realised it was a prober job. As Creation was seen as being responsible of critical acclaimed albums during this period

ZANI – Like Screamadelica.

Alan McGee - That was 1991.

ZANI – I know, but I adore that album, but still in the first ten years.

Alan McGee - I signed Primal Scream but nobody liked them. But people liked a lot of the other acts on Creation. Like The Weather Prophets, My Bloody Valentine and The House of Love. During this period, I was getting a lot of respect from the public and the industry and I was enjoying that. Then we started to move into the bigger stuff and shift albums and I think at that point, is when Creation became a real business.

ZANI – Going back to Primal Scream, and the remark you made that no one really liked them. But it was the track Loaded in 1990 that put them on the map and won them a whole new audience, the Acid House generation. Do you think that the DJ Andy Weatherall was hugely instrumental in the success of this single and the album Screamadelica?

Alan McGee - To be honest before this point they weren’t very good. Primal Scream would be in denial about this. Andy Weatherall took one bit from their single Losing More Than I'll Ever Have, and mixed it.

Then Primal Scream suddenly reinvented themselves as this big dance rock band, but I think they were a little before their time. But I don’t listen to their singles anymore; I don't listen to their music anymore to be honest. I only listen to two bands from Creation in 2009.

ZANI – I know, Oasis and Teenage Fan club, why not the others?

Alan McGee - It’s nothing personal, I mean that about all the records I have put out over the years, I just don’t listen to them anymore. There only two bands, that I still listen to, for enjoyment, that is Teenage Fan Club and Oasis. Teenage Fan’s "Everything Flows" still gets me every time. It came out before I signed them and I signed them on the strength of this.

ZANI - I still love Oasis, and they seem to be back with vengeance. As we know, your meeting with Oasis on 18th May at 1993 Glasgow King Tut’s Wah Wah Hut is legendary. What was it that really turned you on about them, or is that unexplainable?

Alan McGee - They were just good, it that’s simple. Noel’s guitar playing was brilliant and Liam looked the part.

ZANI - Is it true before you signed Oasis, you thought they were fascists because of their use of the Union Jack?

Alan McGee - That was a year before I signed them, it was only because I was told that by Debbie Turner. I was in her office and I saw their poster with the swirling Union Jack on the wall, I asked if they were a fascist band, she said yes they are.

ZANI – There is one artist on the Creation label that hardly ever gets a mention, a very beautiful woman called Idha.

Alan McGee - Her second album Troublemaker is a fucking amazing record. She’s a house wife in Sweden now. But to her credit to if you make an album that good, you probably don’t need to do it again.

ZANI – True, one last question on Oasis, what it your favourite track by them and your fondest memory of the band ?

Alan McGee - Probably ‘Don’t Look Back In Anger’ is my favourite track. I have many fond memories of Oasis, but probably The Word in 1994 doing ‘Supersonic’. I was ill in a drug rehabilitant centre and seriously depressed as I was coming off the gear, but watching Oasis on TV for the first time made me forget all about that.

For full interview please visit here

via L4e / Zani.co.uk

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