Tablet Tunes: This Is England

From the Beatles, the Stones and the Who to Factory Records, Oasis and Radiohead, it’s a tour of four of England’s most musical cities: Liverpool, Manchester, Oxford and London.

LIVERPOOL

In the days of the British Empire Liverpool was one of the world’s busiest ports, handling the lion’s share of England’s imports and exports. In recent decades it’s famous for an export of a different sort. Of course we’re talking about the Beatles. Their music set the agenda for a half-century of rock and pop, and their legacy is inescapable — we’ll give you one guess as to what the Hard Days Night Hotel is all about.

It’s not all Beatles nostalgia, though. There may be a direct line from the Beatles to the La’s (which is “lads,” rendered in the local dialect), but Echo & the Bunnymen picked up the post-punk thread from nearby Manchester, rendering that city’s raw, dark sound with an extra measure of classic songcraft — whether inherited from the Beatles or not is anyone’s guess.

MANCHESTER

The Free Trade Hall, now the Radisson Edwardian, was witness to a bit of classic rock history: it was here that the newly electric Bob Dylan was called “Judas” by the ultra-traditionalist wing of his fan base.

It was upstairs, however, in the Lesser Free Trade Hall, that the ultimate course of Manchester music history was set: in 1976 the Sex Pistols played to an audience of around 40 people, nearly every one of whom went on to start a band or a record label: the Buzzcocks, Joy Division, New Order, the Smiths and the Fall were all born that night, as was Tony Wilson’s Factory Records, the label that became synonymous with Manchester in the ‘80s and ‘90s.

And every revolution has its counter-revolution. By the ‘90s, the danceable post-punk sound of New Order was the new Manchester mainstream, and when Oasis came on the scene their Sixties-derived classic-rock swagger was the ultimate form of rebellion.

OXFORD

This one’s a bit of a dark horse. They’re not about to rename it “Oxford Rock City,” we admit. But this university town, with its ancient college architecture and its generally studious atmosphere, has nurtured some of England’s brainier, less extroverted musical movements.

Shoegaze pioneers Ride called Oxford home, and their noisy, guitar-heavy sound set the stage for the psychedelic revival of the Nineties. The incomparable power-pop-meets-Pink-Floyd sounds of Supergrass were crafted here as well, and in a decade or two there may very well be Radiohead-themed pubs, in a Beatlemania-style tribute to Oxford’s most influential musical act.

The Old Parsonage Hotel gets you closest to the university’s hallowed halls, but the Old Bank and the Malmaison (housed in an ancient prison) are equally steeped in architectural history.

LONDON

It’s the capital, it’s England’s biggest city, and it’s the heart of the entertainment and media industries as well. Half the bands in England start here, and the other half find their way here sooner or later — so even a sketch of London’s rock history is beyond the scope of a blog post.

The Who made England and London cool again, in an era of postwar self-doubt — they were famously photographed literally draped in a Union Jack flag. The Kinks sang about England as well, their “Waterloo Sunset” depicting a scene set on a bridge over the Thames. And the Rolling Stones were London’s counterweight to the Beatles, Keith Richards spending a fair proportion of his extremely eventful biography living at Blakes.

Later the Clash would focus on the darker side of London during the deep malaise of the Seventies. And another Tablet hotel would earn a place in a footnote to rock history in 2005, when Pete Doherty managed to get himself arrested after an altercation at the Rookery in Clerkenwell.

With this much history, music lovers find themselves with the whole city to choose from. Everyone who was anyone eventually played at the Royal Albert Hall, which happens to have the Gore and the Baglioni more or less right on its doorstep. If you’re looking for today’s new sounds, though, the center has shifted a bit to the east; the Rookery is worth a look, if you promise to behave, as is Boundary, in Shoreditch, the current heart of the London arts scene.

Tablet Tunes: This Is England
The Beatles: “She Said She Said”
Echo & The Bunnymen: “Lips Like Sugar”
The La’s: “There She Goes”
Joy Division: “Love Will Tear Us Apart”
New Order: “Age of Consent”
Oasis: “Live Forever”
Ride: “Vapour Trail”
Supergrass: “Late in the Day”
Radiohead : “Let Down”
The Who: “I Can’t Explain”
The Rolling Stones: “Mother’s Little Helper”
The Kinks: “Waterloo Sunset”
The Clash: “London Calling”
Babyshambles: “Albion”

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