JDIFF: 'Upside Down: The Creation Records Story' review
(pic: Bobby Gillespie of Primal Scream in Upside Down: The Creation Records Story)
DIR/PRO: Danny O’Connor • DOP: Daryl Chase• ED: Jonny Halifax • Featuring: Alan McGee, Bobby Gillespie, and Noel Gallagher
Cineworld, 8:30pm, Thursday, 24th February 2011
This is more like it. A rollicking documentary on the rise and fall of Creation Records, home to The Jesus and Mary Chain, Primal Scream, and Oasis, and their charasmatic, and self-detructive, co-founder Alan McGee.
Creation Records released some of the most influential music of the 1980s and 1990s before its demise in 1999. Co-founded by red haired Glaswegian Alan McGee they embodied the non-stop party lifestyle as rave and indie culture merged and went mainstream. Their success was founded on McGee’s uncanny knack of discovering new talent, signing them up and releasing their music which went onto become huge hits.
His story is in parallel to Tony Wilson of Factory Records whose life was brought to the screen in Michael Winterbottom’s 24 Hour Party People in 2002. Like Wilson, McGee’s word was his bond and after shaking hands on a deal to sign Oasis, Noel Gallagher rang around his music industry contacts asking if his McGee’s verbal agreement was good enough. He was assured it was.
The strength of the documentary lies in the searingly honest McGee, the archive material including some great home movie footage taken of what seemed to be a non-stop party in the Creation offices through the years, and interviews with two of Creation’s biggest stars, a still mad-for-it Noel Gallagher of Oasis and the simmering justbelow the surface anger of Bobby Gillespie of Primal Scream.
The contributions from the close knit team around McGee act as the tee total narrator of the story, recalling the madness and debaucery of the time matter-of-factly twenty years later, and of course the soundtrack from artists on the Creation Label is a knock out. But, what goes up must come down, and the demise of Creation and McGee’s personal breakdown are candidly recalled by the main players.
A must see for fans of the music of Creation Records and those who get misty eyed and nostalgic at 24 Hour Party People.
In the Q&A chaired by Alan Maher of the Irish Film Board, Donegal-born director Danny O’Connor and a suitably attired Alan McGee took to the stage to warm applause. O’Connor said he was inspried on so many levels by Creation Records but also by ‘how shite men are’ and that ‘Creation were the embodiment of that’.
McGee said he was asked in 2001/2002 to tell the Creation story but he felt that now was the right time to do it as we ‘are living in The X Factor culture’ and there is now a context to what they did. He went on to say that we are living in a completely different time and you can’t reach globally as a band now as you could 20 years ago, that people want to be Cliff Richard not Elvis and that the ‘major record labels kill you if you have a bad mid-week’.
A few notable absentees from the documentary were mentioned by O’Connor and McGee, Andrew Innes who co-wrote many of Primal Scream songs and Andrew Weatherall, the producer of Primal Scream’s Screamadelica twenty years ago this year, who we only get to see larging it up in archive clips.
When asked did he have any regrets McGee responded unsurprsingly that he had no professional ones and that you learn more from your mistakes than your successes.
Gordon Gaffney
