A conversation with Alan McGee from 2001

The Creation Records founder explains why he killed his legendary label—and why he'd rather spin AC/DC and Destiny's Child records at his club night than search for the next Oasis

Aug 08, 2025

Welcome to stübermania, where I dig into my box of dust-covered interview cassettes from the 1990s, 2000s, and 2010s to present bygone conversations with your favourite alterna/indie semi-stars (and the occasional classic-rock icon). This is a newsletter in three parts: The Openers (links to recent writings, playlist updates, and/or other musical musings), The Headliner (your featured interview of the week), and Encores (random yet related links).

This is a free newsletter, but if you really like what you see, please consider a donation via paid subscription, or visit my PWYC tip jar!

THE OPENERS

This week on Commotion, I produced this roundtable discussion on how more and more musicians are speaking up about Gaza—and how the stakes, the rhetoric, and the consequences have changed over the past 22 months. Click the video below to hear our panelists—Palestinian-Canadian composer John Kameel Farah, Israeli-American writer Lux Alptraum, and Vassar College music professor Justin Patch—weighing in on everyone from Bob Vylan to Thom Yorke:
And on a substantially less serious note, I also co-produced this discussion with film critics Adam Nayman and Alison Willmore about The Naked Gun, Happy Gilmore 2, and the return of the screwball comedy. Welcome to Splat Summer:
The only thing I’ll add to this week’s “stomp-clap” discourse is that anyone dismissing jubilant old-timey folk-pop as a purely Obama-era phenonemon clearly was never in a Guelph student pub circa 1994 whenever this song came on.
Notes on this week’s additions to the stübermania 2025 jukebox:
Click here for the Apple Music version
- The New Eves, “New Eve”: In 2007, I got to see Patti Smith at Pop Montreal backed by Thee Silver Mt. Zion, and this Brighton band’s excellent debut, The New Eve Is Rising, is giving me intense "Horses, if it came out on Constellation Records" flashback vibes. If Black Sabbath taught us anything, it’s that you can’t go wrong dedicating the first song on your first album to yourself.
- Water From Your Eyes, “Playing Classics”: I’ll have a lot more to say about It’s a Beautiful Place when it comes out on Aug. 22, but in the meantime, give your serotonin levels a boost with this pawn-shop disco-house delight, which turns both more silly and strange with each passing minute.
- Snõõper, “Worldwide”: On the relentless title track from the Nashville robo-punks’ upcoming Third Man Records release, frontwoman Blair Tramel declares, “I’m not having any fun.” She’s lying.
- Žuto, “Javelin”: In other creatively accented indie-band news—this Hamilton, Ontario quintet just dropped their debut full-length, Kiss Before Make Up, which I highly recommend for fans of arty jangle-pop in the Horsegirl/Cate Le Bon/Flying Nun vein. But Žuto know how to jam with purpose, as they ride this song’s motorik rhythm into an eruption of nuclear-grade noodling. “Look alive/ the end is arriving,” Una di Gallo sings, and rarely has imminent apocalypse sounded so blissful.
- Ethel Cain, “Nettles”: The Twin Peaks-ian pop of “Fuck Me Eyes” may be Ethel’s most generous gesture to lure back “American Teenager” tourists scared off by the haunted dronescapes of last January’s Perverts, but this slow-burning eight-minute hymn actually makes for an even more welcoming gateway into the vast psychic terrain of Willoughby Tucker, I'll Always Love You (out today), landing somewhere between Lana Del Rey’s dreamstate Americana and Big Thief’s group-hug hootenannies.
- Orcutt Shelley Miller, “A Star Is Born”: Three seasoned avant guardians—Bill Orcutt of Harry Pussy, Steve Shelley of Sonic Youth, and Ethan Miller of Comets on Fire/Howlin Rain—team up for an improv-power trio that deftly balances easy-going groove and skull-splitting squall. More disjointed jams await on their self-titled debut, out Sept. 5 on Miller’s Silver Currents imprint.

THE HEADLINER:
A conversation with Alan McGee

The date: March 7, 2001

Publication: Eye Weekly

Location: I was at the Eye Weekly office in Toronto; Alan was calling in from London

Event being promoted: The Toronto debut of Radio 4, the club night McGee launched to promote his new label venture, Poptones.

The context: Over the course of a 17-year bender that began in 1983, Alan McGee went from silk-screening covers of Jesus and Mary Chain seven-inches in his tiny Glasgow flat to signing some of the most important bands from the British Isles—like My Bloody Valentine and Primal Scream—to his Creation Records imprint. McGee’s tastemaking track record would land him a lucrative partnership deal with Sony that set the stage for his discovery of Oasis, who, between 1994 and ‘97 at least, really were as big as The Beatles—if not Jesus—in the U.K. But while he had curbed his chemical intake by mid-decade, McGee would spend the late-'90s suffering from his most severe hangover yet, brought on by the slow realization that his beloved label was destined to become just another line item on Sony’s balance sheet.

And so, at the dawn of 2000, McGee brought Creation to its completion and launched Poptones, a new label that not only took its name from Public Image Limited, but its genre-bending attitude as well. In an attempt to recapture that anarchic early Creation spirit, McGee put his pounds behind unknown acts—like paisley-patterned Glaswegian honky-tonkers the Cosmic Rough Riders, mellow indie-pop duo The Montgolfier Brothers, post-punk pranksters Beachbuggy, and Lee Perry-collaborating dubsters Mission Control—with zero expectation that any of them would become the next Oasis, and no Sony suits around telling him to find one.

But the Poptones aesthetic extended far beyond its London offices. The label’s website featured everything from radio shows to Ian Svenonius-penned movie reviews to snooker reports. There were also plans for a Poptones production company, through which McGee planned to create “grainy, punk-rock” film and television. And then there was another PiL-inspired project, Radio 4, the prescient “post-indie” dance night McGee hosted with fellow Creation-to-Poptones exiles Ian Johnsen (hi Ian!) and Alan Hake at London’s Notting Hill Arts Club, where you were more likely to hear them spinning Guns N’ Roses than the Stone Roses.

This interview occurred on the eve of a North American mini-tour that brought Radio 4 to Toronto’s Barcode with an eye on establishing a local bimonthly franchise. It also happened at a time when McGee was making more headlines for slagging bands than signing them, as Poptones’ big breakthrough—and the resurgence of rock ‘n’ roll in general—were still several months away.

So I noticed on the Radio 4 playlist on the Poptones site, you’re spinning stuff like Guns N’ Roses and Led Zeppelin—is that stuff you’ve always been into, or have you embraced it more recently?

To be honest, I've only really started deejaying in the last year. I don’t know if you’d even call my deejaying “deejaying.” It’s hardly like, “let’s mix one record into another.” It’s more like, “let’s select Lee Perry and then go into Mirwais into Destiny’s Child into AC/DC.”

The name that really jumped out for me on the playlist was Bon Jovi…

Can I blame Ian Johnsen for that one? Although, slowly but surely, I must admit I’m actually starting to get turned on by it. So you could see me coming up with “You Give Love a Bad Name.” But I haven't yet managed to bring myself to put a Bon Jovi record on.

So does punk rock mean the same thing to you now as it did 20 years ago?

It’s just rock ‘n’ roll. I believe in rock ‘n’ roll. You call it what you want: You can call it acid house, you can call it punk rock—any music that has an underbelly attitude. I think Elvis was rock ‘n’ roll. And Jim Reid was rock ‘n’ roll. And I think Liam Gallagher is rock ‘n’ roll. And I think Joey Ramone’s rock ‘n’ roll. Eminem is rock ‘n’ roll. But none of them sound the same.

In light of your recent Coldplay comments, do you think you have to be working class to make good rock ‘n’ roll?

I don’t think you do, to be honest. Mick Jagger made some pretty great rock ‘n’ roll and was an art-school middle-class kid from Richmond. I don't think Coldplay are a rock ‘n’ roll band. I actually have nothing against them. I think they’re indicative of how bad British music is, but I don't actually personally have any gripe with them. They just sum up British music. They’re the biggest band in Britain at the moment, and what I’ve always stood for is the exact opposite of that. The kid that sings in that band might be 23, but he could be 45, do you know what I mean?

So it’s not a class issue—you just don’t like that band.

It’s not even that band, it’s all these bands… at least with American music in general, there's an edge to it. Whereas I just think it’s a really dull time for British music.

It’s funny, because over here, we look at mainstream North American rock music as being pretty awful, whereas in the UK, bands like Oasis and the Primals can be chart-topping acts…

But the Oasis moment was 1996—that was five years ago. And yeah, the Primals did get into the charts, but they still only sold 150,000 albums. It’s not as if they’re a major group. Whereas Coldplay and Travis and Stereophonics are the big British bands right now. I actually think Stereophonics, to be honest… I mean, I don't like them, but at least they’re into good music like AC/DC and Rod Stewart. But Coldplay, it’s really just undergraduates playing music. It’s a bit too nice for me, you know?

People are comparing Poptones to the original Creation aesthetic—does it feel that way to you, or are they completely different beasts?

I think there are a lot of similarities. It’s Creation, but it’s where Creation should’ve went, rather than what it was.

Are you trying to keep it deliberately small-scale or do you want another Oasis at this point?

I mean, I'm not deliberately keeping it small. I want to keep it as a small record company, but if a massive band comes along and explodes, we’ll take it!

Do you like the idea of having a flagship band that can pay for the more esoteric records on the label?

Yeah, I mean, inevitably that’s what happens. You sign one or two bands that sell a lot of records and you put out a lot of mad records. Unfortunately, what happened with Oasis is you find somebody so massive…

…and they’re not yours anymore.

We got taken over by the robots.

Was hooking up with Sony the beginning of the end for Creation?

From ’84 to ’94, I’d say it was my record company. And then after Oasis sold two million records, Sony brought in the robots and turned the marketing department into a covert record company. I wanted Creation to be what Poptones is now. I would be a lot easier to do an online magazine and a film company and a TV company and a radio show and an online shop and a club night with Oasis and the Primals on board and stuff like that. But with Sony, you get corrupted by it. I defy anybody to stand their ground at a corporation for eight years and not get sucked in eventually. But with Poptones, the weirdos have been let back into the building. Creation was slowly and surely taken over by robots and the weirdos were flushed out and dropped and not let back in the building by the robots. But now the weirdos are at large again—both the employees and the bands—and it’s all the healthier for it. What do you think of the Poptones stuff?

Ian actually just sent me a bunch of CDs, and I was struck by how mellow a lot of it is—like the Cosmic Rough Riders, January, and the Montgolfier Brothers. Is that a reflection of your state of mind these days?

No, no, no—we’ve got Ping Pong Bitches coming. That’s rockin’, man.

Would you consider bringing in bands like the Primals and the Super Furries over to Poptones or do you want to start fresh?

I would always have the Primals in a minute. The Super Furries, I'm sure, if they ever get free of the corporate shackles of Sony, they’d do their own label. But the Primals own, like, half a percent of Poptones anyway, so it’d be in their own interest to come to their own label. It’d probably send their share price up a bit.

Would you ever invest as much money and energy into a band again like you did with My Bloody Valentine?

I don't know if I’d put myself through that, I don’t know if I’d bankrupt myself. But I am investing a lot of time in Poptones. I'm going on a promo trip in North America and doing six parties around America and Canada.

So what’s your beef with the Boo Radleys all about?

I don’t have a beef with them. I just got fed up with Martin Carr slagging us off, so if he’s slagging me off and telling me "I'm this” and “I’m that,” I’m going to say what I think of you. I’m just evening the score. I actually have nothing against the group or Martin, I just got fed up with reading anti-Alan McGee bullshit on his website and in British pop magazines.

Is it easier to be working with younger bands now who are less jaded?

I think it’s nice to work with new people, to be honest. And I'm sure for the bands that used to be on Creation, it's good to work with new people, too. I mean, some work out, some won’t work out, but it’s just good working with new people.

Do you think good rock music will ever be mainstream again?

Of course it can! It's all cyclical anyway. I mean, it’s just shit at the moment, but people will get fed up with prefabricated rubbish and it will come ’round again. Rock ‘n’ roll might be out of fashion in 2001, but in 2011, people will probably be hailing me as some sort of fucking rock ‘n’ roll visionary. It’s just completely cyclical, you know?

It does feel like we’re back to where we were 10 years ago…

No, man, it’s worse than that, it’s 1974. No, man, it’s worse than that—it’s 1975.

Apparently, 1990 was the first year that a rock album didn’t top the Billboard charts, and then we got Nirvana… but, as good as they were, that also paved the way for a lot of shitty music, too.

Well, it’s always the same, isn’t it? All the shitty bands that came out after Nirvana and Oasis killed the scene, you know what I mean? Once you get Pearl Jam, you might as well die—and not in a good way.

It’s funny—when bands like Stone Temple Pilots came up, everyone slagged them off, but then we saw what came after, and suddenly it was like, “Stone Temple Pilots—not so bad!”

I agree. That’s what happened in Britain. I don’t want to get into the names of the bands, but it starts off with Oasis and you end up at fuckin’ Northern Uproar, you know what I mean?

And every band has shaggy hair and wears sunglasses indoors…

So do you think Toronto is ready to rock out to “Hell’s Bells”? Because you need to make sure, Stuart, that people understand Radio is 4 not a Britpop night. It’s going to be, like, hip-hop, dance, and a lot of metal. It’s post-indie. It’s not an indie club. I hope people don’t come thinking they’re going to get the Boo Radleys and Primal Scream. Basically, I’m going to be playing AC/DC, Fred “Sonic” Smith, Zodiac Mindwarp, plus Mirwais, Lee Perry, Destiny’s Child, Neneh Cherry, A Guy Called Gerald—that’s the mixture. We’re coming to rock, you know what I mean?

ENCORES

Alas, despite playing a key role in The Hives’ UK success in the early 2000s, Poptones never really found its footing in a rapidly shifting music industry, and McGee pulled the plug on the label in 2007. And much of its catalogue remains unavailable on streaming, which means one must resort to a YouTube fishing expedition to pull up Beachbuggy’s “Touch My Stuff (You Can Die),” a.k.a. the greatest song ever that’s based entirely on between-song banter from Surfer Rosa:
But if Poptones never acquired the cachet of Creation Records, then at the very least, the label’s late-stage acquisition of Hamilton noise-punk terrors Sailboats Are White qualifies for a Canadian Heritage Minute ad.
McGee may have been half-joking when he said he’d be recognized as a visionary in the future, but when you look out at the indie/alt-rock landscape today—Oasis’ record-breaking reunion tour, Hotline TNT’s Teenage Fanclub fandom, and every kid with a tremolo pedal and TikTok account trying to make their own lo-fi Loveless—we’re still very much living in the world Creation created.
And for the record, McGee has since changed his mind on Coldplay—a little bit.