Music and the Mancunian Spirit

It was the summer of 1996 and I had just completed my first freelance commission which was to research biographical information on Mancunian indie music legends Oasis for a new interactive CD ROM. I was feeling pretty pleased with myself and was happy that my first assignment just happened to involve a band I already loved. The songs from 'Definitely Maybe' and 'What's the Story?' were playing on a gloriously swaggering loop in my head, as well as constantly pounding out from thousands of homes across the city.

I was sitting with my other half in the beer garden of a pub on Burton Road, in Withington, South Manchester, when a car pulled up on the adjacent kerb. Its stereo was on full-blast and it was playing 'Don't Look back in Anger,' the Oasis single which had been released earlier that year and had gone straight to number one.

Someone on the pub's benches began singing along, and was almost immediately joined by another. Without hesitation I added my own voice, and within seconds it seemed that everyone in the pub was joyously bellowing out the anthem, waving their arms high in the summer sunshine, pints in hand, and signing the song right to its end. In those minutes the punters gathered there were drawn together in a sense of camaraderie, despite most of us not knowing each other.  Everyone was smiling and laughing good-naturedly. Although I had only lived in the city for a few years, suddenly I felt like I belonged, and it was a good feeling. 

Twenty one years later the song took on a poignancy and power that no-one back then could have predicted when the pupils of Chetham's Music School sang it on May 23rd as a message of both peace and defiance following the shocking and horrific attack on the Manchester Arena the previous day. Carried on a tidal wave of positivity, the song was picked up and sung at a vigil in the city centre. It was performed again on the 27th as a tribute to the victims by another Mancunian indie rock band The Courteeners at their sold-out Old Trafford gig; with the capacity crowd of 50,000 music-lovers joining in.

Exactly one week on from the bombing, Oasis vocalist Liam Gallagher returned to his home town to play a solo gig at The Ritz. Twenty two candles - one for each of the dead - burned on the stage. Liam donated all the proceeds from the show to the victims' fund. He didn't need to sing 'Don't Look back in Anger' - the 1,400-strong audience spontaneously sang it for him at the very end of the night.

The track always was a joyous anthem, and it's typical of the people of Manchester that they have chosen this song to represent them and deliver a response to their darkest hour. Adopted into its new context, the title is a strong message that states clearly that the city will not be poisoned; it will not answer the call of hatred and be divided by fear and anger. It will meet violence and insanity with peace, kindness and humour, and with the indomitable community spirit which once united everyone in a small pub garden, in the very part of the city where lunatics would later plot to shatter democracy and humanity. They failed. Manchester is united.