Manchester Unspun: Pop, Property and Power in the Original Modern City: How a City Got High on Music

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Publication dates are subject to change (although this is an extremely uncommon occurrence overall).

I gave, what I thought at the time, was a pretty balanced account, lots of positives but also a few negatives.Andy Spinoza came to Manchester as a student in the late 1970s and has lived in the city ever since.

Nor does he take sides (although there will probably be some names in there smarting) and mercifully avoids the nostalgia and over-sentimentality associated with certain bandwagoning ‘I was there’ accounts of the city (thankfully for the reader, the author hadn’t yet arrived in Manchester when the Sex Pistols played the Lesser Free Trade Hall). When the author first arrived came to the city over 40 years ago, just 500 people lived in the city centre ('town'); now 75,000 do. When the article came out each of the positive points made by the other contributors was juxtaposed with a negative repost from myself.

Photograph: Universal Images Group/Getty Images View image in fullscreen The Haçienda in 1989: ‘Gave the kiss of life to a dying city and sparked a chain reaction of hubris, scandal, money and power politics still playing out today. A city of big characters like Tony Wilson, Alex Ferguson, Mick Hucknall (who played a surprisingly important role), Peter Saville, Tom Bloxham, Eamonn Boylan and more recently Andy Burnham. Spinoza gives due space to the critics of a gentrification process that has transformed the feel of the city centre.

Manchester unspun sorts the truth from the spin of the city’s stories to reveal a remarkable journey, describing the hubris, scandal, money and politics which played out during its remarkable reinvention. Together, these case studies and the theoretical framework proposed in the book’s Introduction offer a more nuanced, cross-cultural appreciation of the role of rules in moral life than those currently prevalent in both the anthropology of ethics and the history of morality. He would leave the practice not long after, and his fellow directors, Stephen O’Malley, Julian Broster and Paul Morris rebranded as Civic Engineers.

Andy Spinoza's participation in Manchester's story from the punk era to the pandemic is set out brilliantly in this masterpiece. As boss of his own PR company, he promoted the dynamic post-industrial Manchester throughout the 2000s and 2010s.

Andy ended up writing for its diary page, detailing the goings on of the city’s nightlife, including a heady mix of footballers, council officials, musicians, Coronation Street actors, property developers and politicians. In 2022, the University of Manchester's John Rylands Library acquired his collection of print and memorabilia as part of its launch of the British Pop Archive.R eaders will enjoy the joyous mix of the author’s encounters with a who’s who of famous Mancunians, from Morrissey to Bernard Manning, Shaun Ryder to Sir Alex Ferguson, Frank Sidebottom to Andy Burnham, with walk-on parts from Muhammad Ali, George Foreman, Anna Friel, Lemn Sissay, Caroline Aherne, Mick Hucknall and Jonathan Ross. First as observer, then as participant, Andy has enjoyed a ring-side seat in the renaissance and development of Britain's most exciting city. Hélène (now my wife) and I were mortified, the coop was furious, and it took weeks to undo the damage to our reputation with the city council. After university, he founded the arts and listings magazine City Life, before becoming a hyperactively connected diary editor for the Manchester Evening News.