This special session aims to explore the social and cultural changes that took place in Manchester and Britain during the 1980s and in particular the rise of the popular music scene recently portrayed in films including 24 Hour Party People and Control. Thanks to new bands (Joy Division/New Order, Smiths, Happy Mondays, amongst others) and the establishment of the Haçienda nightclub, Manchester came to occupy an important place in the international musical arena of the 1980s and 1990s at a time when the city’s social landscape was also changing considerably. ‘Cottonopolis’, the traditional birthplace of the Industrial Revolution, was about to become ‘Madchester’.

While this was about to happen, an invisible link seem to unite old and new, as social changes through the rise and availability of new technologies informed the music experience. And if many historians in the past have focussed on the technological determinants of the Industrial Revolution in Manchester and elsewhere, we know far less about more recent transformations.  

Somewhat unconventionally and experimentally, this session aims to explore these themes by moving away from Manchester’s warehouses and into the places where music was produced and consumed (recording studios, concert halls and clubs). We thus aim to reflect on two overlapping issues: firstly, how technological innovation in music-making was influential in shaping some of these changes and, secondly, how the music experience was informed by the availability of new recreational drugs.

Confirmed speakers:
Dave Haslam, Hacienda DJ and author of Manchester, England
Susan Schmidt Horning, History, St. John’s College, New York, author of Chasing Sound and contributor to H. J. Braun, ed., of Music and Technology in the Twentieth Century
Peter Hook, Joy Division/New Order, author of Haçienda: How not to run a club
James Mills, Centre for the Social History of Health and Healthcare Glasgow (CSHHH), University of Strathclyde, author of Cannabis Britannica: a social and political history of cannabis and British government, 1800-1928.