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Next walking tour, Mozarmy Weekend: Saturday 29 April 2023, 11am.
Meet: Outside the Mercure Hotel, Piccadilly Gardens/Portland Street.
Booking: Please press here to book with Eventbrite.

Yes, he’s a difficult bugger. Yes, he’s a handful. Yes, he makes statements Dave Haslam doesn’t like. Yes, he hasn’t made a decent record since, well, a long time, but as Des Taverner almost once said, he may be a git, but he’s our git. And now he’s 60 we’re still singing “This Charming Man”, “Piccadilly Palare” and the hauntingly beautiful “Jack the Ripper” (well, I am).

To commemorate the Mozster’s seventh decade, Ed Glinert, who used to play records for Mike Joyce at the Union disco, leads this tour around his old Manc haunts.

Where we go:
• The Hacienda, vilified in his most famous song.
• HOME cinema to hear recall The Smiths’ cinematic links.
• The building where Moz actually had a job!, which inspired…
• Central Station and its role in the Moors Murders that inspired the Smiths’ name.
• The building where the Smiths rehearsed relentlessly in 1983.
• The venue where they made their debut.
• The Lesser Free Trade Hall where Morrissey saw a music revolution and earned his first appearance in the media.
• Morrissey’s favourite pub.

and more. Read on…

***

They were Britain’s greatest ever group, more melodic than the Beatles, more powerful than the Stones, cleverer than the Who, catchier than U2, funnier than Madness and better-looking than Jesus & Mary Chain (okay, not hard).

They played music that lifted the soul with words that sharpened the mind.

They played both types of music: fast and slow, soft and loud, country and western (???), and they came from Manchester.

They were The Smiths.

They sang about the city and shot its sites for their sleeves: the Hacienda, Manchester Central, “a river the colour of lead”, Coronation Street, the Holy Name Church…

The Smiths’ Manchester walk takes a trip through their haunts and their dark underbelly. Unlike other Smiths’ tours, we don’t shirk from the difficult stories. We explain how the horrendous denouement of the Moors Murderers’ killing spree gave Morrissey the inspiration for the band’s name and affected much of his song-writing.

This is a music-driven tour. We play the relevant song at the relevant stop.

Here’s an extract
Morrissey’s stint in Yanks’ record shop, a dank and now defunct basement outlet in Chepstow Street’s Canada House early in 1979, partly inspired the line about jobs and misery in “Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now”. Yes, he could play records all day, but was still not satisfied. The contradiction of being unhappy with not having a job yet being depressed with job was a long running problem with Moz. As he once noted in his diary: “When I had no job I could pinpoint my depression. But when I did get a job I was still depressed.”

The gestation of the song itself, two minutes-plus of sumptuous sardonic cynicism, was typically Smithsonian. Converting the title of an obscure Sandie Shaw number, “Heaven Knows I’m Missing Him Now”, Morrissey recorded the vocals for the first verse in London. He then insisted on travelling to Manchester to do the vocals for the second verse. Consequently the producer, John Porter, booked a studio, packed the tapes and went North. There Morrissey recorded another verse but then announced he was popping out to the chip shop. 45 minutes later he still hadn’t returned. Porter phoned Moz’s mother who told him, “Oh he was here but he’s gone back to London.”

Watch Ed Glinert taking the Manchester Evening News on the tour here:

http://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/whats-on/arts-culture-news/smiths-walk-held-mark-shelagh-8158588

This tour: Sunday 2 April 2023, 2pm.
Meet: Outside the Mercure Hotel, Piccadilly Gardens/Portland Street.
Booking: Please press here to register with Eventbrite.

Sharper than the Beatles, funkier than the Stones, cleverer than the Who, funnier than Madness, more sensual than Kate Bush, better-looking than Jesus & Mary Chain (okay, not hard), they were the Smiths and they came from Manchester.

This is the full unremitting tour. No punches pulled. No hiding away from the difficult stories. No ignoring the Moors Murders and the dark connections between those horrific crimes and the themes that dominated the group’s early music.

It’s impossible to understand Manchester without understanding the Smiths, and it’s impossible to understand the Smiths without going on this tour. Accept yourself no substitute.

Watch Ed Glinert taking the Manchester Evening News on the tour here:

http://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/whats-on/arts-culture-news/smiths-walk-held-mark-shelagh-8158588

Next walking tours: Saturday 1 April at 11am and 2pm – 33 years to the day since the riots began.
Meet: Victoria Station wallmap.
Booking: If you’d like to go to Strangeways, the law will help you.
Alternatively, just follow the orders from the guv’nor below.
Oh, alright:
Please press here to register here for the 11am tour.
Please press here to register here for the 2pm tour.
Bring: Bucket for slopping out.
End: Somewhere near the guv’nor’s office.

***

Strangeways. The very name enough to send a frisson of fear down the spine of the most hardened felons.

Strangeways has been home to the most evil elements in existence – Ian Brady and Harold Shipman – and temporary refuge of political prisoners such as Christabel Pankhurst and Austin Stack, the Irish Republican who was one of the few to escape from its clutches.

Even Ian Brown, ex-Stone Roses, was briefly incarcerated within in 1998. No, not for inflicting his tuneless drone and inane lyrics on humanity but for getting into a strop on an aeroplane. 60 days. So what was it like in Strangeways, Ian? “Dirty. The food was like dog food.” He’s out now.

Ian Brady was sent here for stealing from Smithfield Market, where he worked in the late 1950s. John Robson Walby (alias Gwynne Owen Evans), was hanged at Strangeways on August 13, 1964 – the last person in England to suffer this punishment. (No, it wasn’t Ruth Ellis).

1 April 1990 three hundred prisoners filed into the chapel to attend the church service. During the sermon a prisoner, later identified as Paul Taylor, stood up and shouted: “I would just like to say, right, that this man has just talked about the blessing of the heart and how a hardened heart can be delivered. No it cannot, not with resentment, anger and bitterness and hatred being instilled in people.”

It all kicked off. Riot!

Prisoners took to the roof and began to dismantle the prison for 25 days. 147 staff and 47 prisoners were injured. One prisoner and one prison officer died. Your NMW guide, Ed Glinert, was ordered by his editor at the Sun to doorstep home secretary David Waddington. He never made it.

Later, Paul Taylor and Alan Lord faced a five-month trial as its ringleaders. Both were acquitted of murder. The riot resulted in the Woolfe Inquiry which ended the practice of slopping out and saw the jail rebuilt and euphemistically renamed as Her Majesty’s Prison, Manchester. But to everyone else it’s still good old Strangeways, or in Jim McDonald’s words: “The Big Hoise.”

Next tour:
* Date: Friday 31 March 2023, 5.30pm.
* Meet: Central Library, St Peter’s Square.
* Booking: Please press here to register with Eventbrite.

Forget Jack the Ripper and the dark corners of the East End, Manchester is gloomier, seedier and more atmospheric.

It is also the setting for some really nasty stories which you can hear about in the comfort that they happened many years ago and won’t happen again.

We’re talking about abductions, grave-robbing, cold-blooded murder from an axe-wielding maniac, cold-blooded murder from Britain’s worst serial killer (until another one came along) and the last “official” hangings on English soil.

We finish up where they used to hang folk and then you can go home.

* And if you think we shouldn’t be mentioning any of these things, as one daft guide (Ray Hoerty) claimed and a number of journalists (geezer from the Oldham Chron, geezer from the Sun) have intimated, think again. We believe in braving history, not hiding it away. It is precisely because people never said anything that many of these awful things happened. Consider this: Jimmy Savile was treated as a hero and a national treasure for many years and Harold Shipman was said to be a great family doctor. Someone has to explain these stories. Nobody else will.

Next walking tour: Friday 31st of March 2023, 12.30pm.
Meet: Cemetery Gates (opposite James Hilton Memorials of 245 Barlow Moor Road ).(Barlow Moor Road Metrolink stop, 10 minutes walk away).
Please don’t go to: The Crematorium, Nell Lane…
Booking: Please press here to book with Eventbrite.

We will see the graves and memories of Matt Busby, John Rylands, Joe Sunlight, Daniel Adamson, Tony Wilson and L. S. Lowry, as we explore Britain’s second biggest cemetery.

Next FREE tour: Thursday 30 March 2023, 11.30 a.m.
Meet: outside St Ann’s Church.
Booking: Please press here to book with Eventbrite.

The John Rylands Library is one of the world’s greatest libraries – Manchester’s No. 1 attraction on TripAdvisor – thanks to the astonishing collection that includes first editions of Shakespeare’s Sonnets, the largest number of works printed by William Caxton, Britain’s first publisher and many of the world’s most valuable bibles, including the 1631 Wicked Bible.

Why do we start the tour at St Ann’s Church? Well, the John Rylands Library was built out of the proceeds of John Rylands’ cotton empire to house his collection of religious works. Rylands and his wife, Enriqueta, were devout Protestants – Congregationalists – we start the tour at Manchester’s Protestant nerve centre, St Ann’s Church. We then nod to the nearby Royal Exchange, the Parliament of the cotton lords in Rylands day, pass the Catholic Hidden Gem before arriving at Rylands.

There, there’s a quick tour of the locale to set the library in context (it was purposely built in what was then the poorest and most violent part of town) before we enter to unveil the library’s history and riches, in particular the St John Fragment, the oldest piece of the New Testament ever found.

* For more information, please see Walks & Tours: John Rylands Library.

The Dark Corners of Angel Meadow, FREE Tour:
Next Tour Wednesday 29 March, 5.30pm
Meet: Victoria Station Wallmap.
Booking: Please press here to register with Eventbrite.

“The lowest, most filthy, most unhealthy, and most wicked locality in Manchester…full of cellars and inhabited by prostitutes, their bullies, thieves, cadgers, vagrants and tramps.”

Was this yesterday? No, journalist Angus Bethune Reach was writing in the 19th century when Angel Meadow was one of a number of notorious Manchester slums; probably the worst.

This is what proto-communist Friedrich Engels had to say about the locale in 1844. “The landlords are not ashamed to let dwellings like the six or seven cellars on the quay directly below Scotland Bridge, the floors of which stand at least two feet below the low water level of the Irk … utterly uninhabitable, [it] stands deprived of all fittings for doors and windows, a case by no means rare in this region, when an open ground-floor is used as a privy by the whole neighbourhood for want of other facilities. . . .”

A hundred yards on, at the end of Millow Street, stood “Gibraltar”. This was once described by the social commentator James Phillips Kay as the haunt of the “lowest” of the population. “The stranger, if he dare venture to explore its intricacies and recesses is sure to be watched with suspicion, on every side is heard the sound of the axe or knife…”

Okay, both those revered social commentators were writing many years ago, but go there now and it’s pretty grim, which is why we guide you around these atmospheric areas, converting the squalor and sordidness into scintillating stories. And we’ve not even entered Angel Meadow proper yet.

Have things improved? Yes, with much thanks to the Friends of Angel Meadow. When we’ve finished with all the terrible tales we deserve an ale or two at the Marble pub with its gorgeous tiles, magnificent ales and friendly atmosphere.

Next FREE tour: Saturday 25 March 2023.
Meet: Outside HOME, 2 Tony Wilson Place, 11am.
Booking: Please press here to book with Eventbrite.

Do you pay in advance? No. However Ed Glinert tells New Manchester Walks that he will be most happy to accept a few shekels, or even better, some folding paper pressed into his hand at the end of the tour if you think he’s done a good job. If you think he hasn’t, he might pay you! By the way, we’re not paid by the council, tourist board or any Russian oligarch.

***

Forget Memphis and the Mersey, Manchester is Music City, a factory of superior song-making and stirring soundscapes courtesy of The Smiths, Joy Division, The Fall, Buzzcocks, John Cooper Clarke, Oasis, New Order, Happy Mondays and Elbow – all spinning around the legend of the Hacienda, the world’s hippest nightclub, chicer than the Copacabana, sexier than Studio 54, cooler than the Cavern or Cream.

• Our Music walks are now starting from HOME, Manchester’s funky but chic (as David Johansen would say) new arts venue, appropriately based at 2 Tony Wilson Place, Whitworth Street West (opposite the Hacienda, natch).

Read on…
Despite no tradition of making memorable music, Manchester became the most feted music city in the world towards the end of the 20^th century, acclaimed for its role in nurturing groups such as The Smiths, Buzzcocks, the Fall, Joy Division, New Order and 808 State.

That Manchester would attain such elevated status looked unlikely in the 1960s when the city lived darkly in the long shadow cast 35 miles away in Liverpool by the Beatles, and it remained so in the 1970s with Manchester playing little part in prog or mainstream rock.

Those with local connections that were successful like 10cc and Roy Harper made music that had little to do with Manchester culturally.

The Manchester-based beat groups of the mid-60s were phenomenally successful in terms of sales. Herman’s Hermits and Freddie & the Dreamers cleaned up in America. But this was not exactly cutting edge quality music to rank alongside the greats of that era, such as the Yardbirds, Animals and Who.

So how did Manchester music become so important?

Amazingly we can trace this back to two chaotic Sex Pistols gigs at the Lesser Free Trade Hall in the summer of 1976.

Present that night were many of those who went on to dominate Manchester music for the next few decades, including Barney Sumner (Joy Division, New Order), Mick Hucknall (Simply Red) and Morrissey. Some formed groups, while others set up from scratch a music industry infrastructure of promoters, songwriters, agents, designers, journalists and record label owners.

We go to some of their haunts and venues on the various music walks.

That scene played a huge role in the general renaissance of the city in terms of media, design, architecture and culture. We can trace a development from the summer of ’76 to the opening of new venues such as HOME in 2015.

The music scene has attracted countless people to the city, some as students, some to work in attendant industries.

If you want to see how dull a similar city without a vibrant music scene is like, go to Leeds!

Next walking tour: Wednesday 22 March 2023, 1pm.
Marking the 60th anniversary of the release of “Please Please Me”, the Beatles’ first LP.
Meet: Ken Dodd statue, Lime Street station.
Booking: Please press here to register with Eventbrite.

Join the North’s most prolific tour guide, Ed Glinert, former Mojo Production editor and author of Fodor’s Rock ’n’ Roll Traveller books, on this “Beatles’ Liverpool” tour.

It’s been a long time. Now we’re coming back home, to…

* The Cavern.

* The Eleanor Rigby statue.

* The shabby flat where John Lennon dossed.

* Brian Epstein’s rather more comfortable apartment.

* The Inny where George and Paul went to school.

* Ye Cracke pub, haunt of John and Stu, where we will virtually order a “Creme tangerine and montelimar/A ginger sling with a pineapple heart” for our “coffee desert”.

Meanwhile, if there’s anything that you want or anything that you need…contact Ed Glinert, New Liverpool Walks, “You’ll Never Walk Alone”, on 07769 29 8068.