Creation Stories: Riots, Raves and Running a Label

'Essential reading for anyone interested in the heady, vulgar, marvellous miasma of British music and culture in the nineties,' notes Irvine Welsh. Noel Gallagher adds, 'A true believer in the power of music and more importantly a believer in the people that make music. He gave me and many more like me a chance to change my life.'

Alan McGee's Creation Stories offers a star-studded, outrageous, funny, and anarchic account of the record label he founded and the bands that came to define an era, including Primal Scream and Oasis. A charismatic Glaswegian who partied just as hard as any of the acts on his notoriously hedonistic label, Alan McGee became an infamous character in the world of music throughout the nineties.

In Creation Stories, he tells his story in depth for the very first time. From leaving school at sixteen to setting up the Living Room club in London, which showcased many emerging indie bands, and from managing The Jesus and Mary Chain to co-founding Creation Records when he was just twenty-three. His label brought us acts like My Bloody Valentine, House of Love, Ride, and, of course, Primal Scream. Embracing acid house, Alan relocated to Manchester and became a regular at the Hacienda. His drug-induced breakdown, when it arrived, was dramatic. But as he began his journey back to sobriety, he oversaw Oasis's ascent to become one of the biggest bands in the world, with Alan himself becoming one of the key figureheads of Britpop.

Having sold the label to Sony to stave off bankruptcy, he grew disenchanted with the increasingly corporate ethos and eventually left in 1999. Since then, he has continued to be an influential figure in the music industry, managing The Libertines and establishing a new label, 359 Music, with Cherry Red.

The NME states that the book is 'Studded with diamond anecdotes... From mixing sound for My Bloody Valentine on mushrooms, via driving motorists off the road by commissioning billboard posters of Kevin Rowland flashing his pants, to escorting Carl Barât to A&E with one eyeball hanging out of its socket, the book bursts with tall-but-true tales.'