On Friday I arrived back in Devon for the Easter break. On leaving Manchester I reflected on how the next time I leave that city it may be for good. I have to say that it is a prospect I am not exactly relishing – it really feels like home now. Anyway it was in such a contemplative mood that, whilst idly channel hopping in front of the box late on Good Friday, I stumbled across a broadcast of the Manchester Passion, an event which had taken place in the city earlier that evening. The BBC website described it as a “contemporary retelling of the last few hours of Jesus’ life using popular music from the cream of Manchester bands from Joy Division to The Smiths and Oasis”. Having been somewhat dubious about this idea when I first heard about it a few weeks back, and despite my lack of religious conviction or what is often nowadays characterised as “spirituality”, I was surprised to find myself deeply moved by the spectacle. Against the odds this production of the story of the passion story centring on Keith Allen’s breezy narration, and featuring stripped down string arrangements of classic manc pop, worked a treat.
Cynics may accuse Manchester City Council of trading on the city’s illustrious pop past whilst ignoring the cloying homogenisation of its very fabric that has happened at break neck speed under this government. There are those that have misgivings about the manner in which the city has developed in the last ten years or so. I have to ask myself at times, when people are visiting for example, and also out of some sense of civic pride, what is so special about Manchester anymore? All these towns look the same these days do they not? But this event, in its presentation and sheer verve, served to underline just what made the city great in the first place – its indefatigability and bravado spirit, or at least it served to reinforce that particular myth. But one can say with some certainty that the endurance of this myth rest on the power of all the superlative music that has its origins in the city.
It is as though the music somehow reflects on the city as a whole. The spirit of the music, in this case, came through the limitations of the production. So the actor playing Jesus who sang Blue Monday, despite the rather hosh posh nature of the accompaniment, brought out something in the music that is constant – it’s essence if you like, it had a nobility and poise, and in this context it worked really very well. Similarly there was something quite marvellous about James’s sit down also which lent itself very well to this kind of re-rendering. It brought a lump to my throat (though the Gin and Tonics may have had something to do with that). Tim Booth played Judas incidentally and his hairdo and beard arrangement was very similar to the Judas type character in the first and only good Matrix film. Perhaps the most brilliant moment was Jesus singing form the very top the Manchester town hall – I am the resurrection by the Stone Roses though by this time the drink had really got to me, but nevertheless a really powerful moment.
Incumbent upon my present circumstances is a concern about which of my experiences of the city I will bring with me into the future, in short what will endure when all else is faded. And I now realise that it is music that has always been so central, my point of departure and arrival so to speak. Manchester Passion reaffirmed this idea. It has been a great pleasure and privilege to dance in the middle of the night to Blue Monday and the in the very city from which it originated – to buy into my own little piece of the myth.