ALAN McGee meets me in the foyer of Jury's Inn in Glasgow at the decidedly unrock 'n' roll hour of nine in the morning.
"It's only because I've got to jump on a train," he protests when I bring it up. "If I was going to do an interview it would normally two or three."
Even so, it’s the morning after the night before and the night before was a hometown gig. And yet here he is, bright-eyed and bushy-bearded, and looking good on it.
Of course, the days of booze and drugs are long behind him, but it’s more than that. The one-time head of Creation records, the man who managed the Mary Chain, gave us Primal Scream's Screamadelica and discovered Oasis up the road in King Tut's, says he's had "some sort of rebirth" in the last couple of years.
"I got ill about two-and-a-half years ago, and I got colitis and I changed my diet away from meat, stopped drinking coffee and I got off loads of meds as well. I'm in a really good place, really calm."
Some people will find that rather disappointing. McGee’s USP was always his big-mouthed self-belief (some unkind souls might call it arrogance). He was loud, he was opinionated, but he was always amusing.
He still is. Calm or not, there's enough of the old Alan McGee in the new one. At one point he tells me Oasis were as big as the Beatles. Not quite the case perhaps, but the huckster in him can’t help himself.
And the fact is Oasis were – are – huge. And as a result, McGee became famous by association. It led him to be courted by New Labour and co-opted onto the Creative Industries Task Force (“being part of the British government was pretty psychedelic,” he says now).
That was then, though. And yet, more than two decades later and now in his late fifties, he’s having another moment. Part of that is nostalgia of course. The day before we meet was the 25th anniversary of the release of the band's first single Supersonic. And so, the tour, An Evening with Alan McGee, which will run to nearly 40 shows, is a chance for fans to hear about his gilded, gutter life – the bands, the drugs, the parties – from the horse’s mouth.
He is also prepping for a movie of his life to be made by Danny Boyle and Irvine Welsh. Ewen Bremner will play McGee. And he is still in the music business. He does a radio show for fun and he’s managing a portfolio of acts who you will know: The Happy Mondays, Cast, the Bluetones, Glasvegas.
"The groups I manage are all quite old,” he admits. “Bluetones are in their forties. The Mondays in their fifties. They're all calm. Back in the day they were all crazy." As was he, of course.
Read More: Shaun Ryder on life in the Happy Mondays
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These days McGee divides his time between London and Wales. What I wonder does Glasgow mean to him now?
"I don't know really. I've got a lot of people that I really love here, like my sisters and Glasvegas and a lot of good pals.
"Glasgow informed the way that I reacted to the world, Teddy. I was total factory fodder. If I hadn't done it in music, I was never going to do it. I'd have been like that bus driver."
He nods his head to the bus he can see out of the window driving down Jamaica Street. "Or probably unemployed by now because I'm 58. Maybe building sites and stuff like that. I was never going anywhere, man."
He returns to the original question. “What does Glasgow mean? It definitely informed me as a person, I suppose. To be emotionally hardy. Resilient. Totally resilient."
Well yes. But then he had to be. The last time we met, when he was promoting his memoir Creation Stories in 2013, he talked about the violence he suffered at the hands of his abusive father. No wonder, perhaps, that he says the city has too many ghosts for him these days. He can’t imagine living here again.
"But I'm not anti-Glasgow,” he adds. “I love the spirit of Glasgow and I've still got the Primal Scream connection, so Glasgow runs through my life in a big way and I think I'm probably typical of Glasgow people in some ways. I don't know how to give in."
He certainly has retained that bolshy Weegie chutzpah that made him so quotable back in the day.
McGee and Oasis are forever linked in a hazy Britpop-flavoured vision of the 1990s. Britpop, though, was really just a cartoony take on the sixties youthquake, retaining the casual sexism and sense of superiority of the original (can you tell I was more of a trip-hop fan?) But what lingers now, all these years on, is how optimistic it was.
"I think the world has changed,” McGee agrees. “I've not been back to America since Trump got in. Brexit's the worst. The sad thing is I manage the Happy Mondays and we're huge in all these mad towns like Sunderland and Hartlepool and you go to these towns and there's nothing going on. And for those people to be bitter about London and wanting to go ..." He sticks two fingers into the air, "...to the establishment. I think that's why it happened."
McGee's own story is itself a two-fingered salute, you could argue. He grew up in a Glasgow that was "so drab" and a family that was dysfunctional. Music was one of the few bright spots. He loved glam and punk, the glitter and the pose. "Music when I was a kid was definitely a way out,” he says. “Everybody was dreaming of being a pop star."
In 1980 he left for London, where he lived in squats for a time. Within five years, at the age of 23, he was managing the Jesus and Mary Chain. His career in music had begun.
He grew out of wanting to be a musician quite early. "It was more unique trying to run a record label when you're 22, 23. And it's cooler as well."
Cool doesn’t pay the rent, of course, and the 1980s were rather hand to mouth for Creation. But that was OK, he says.
"When things were bad, I used to look back and think, 'Yeah, but it's better than what I was doing. I was literally making tea and getting bullied on a building site when I was 16.
"As bad as it was it wasn’t as bad as Glasgow. It wasn't as bad as what I was doing back in the day when I had no f****** future."
What was the worst selling record on Creation? "There have been a few. The first record we put out, The Legend, was a particularly shocking record. The only thing I can say is I thought it was good at the time. I don't think it even sold 700 copies back in the day."
But you can learn from failure. "I've always learned more from defeat than I have from success, because you don't learn anything from success. Everybody just goes, 'You're f****** great.' And that's quite addictive as well."
Ah yes. McGee famously led as dissolute and rock ’n’ roll lifestyle as his charges. And that was fun. Until it wasn't. But what else was it, I wonder? He once said, I remind him, that, "The first time I took Ecstasy was the first time I felt emotionally complete."
That suggests at the height of his success he was still dealing with the damage of childhood. Was he simply self-medicating?
"Big time. I think, Teddy. I've always had mental health issues that I've medicated myself down.
"I was a street addict with street drugs up to February 94 when I got clean. And then I had a relapse on booze 2002/2003, but then got clean again.
"In 95 they put me on Valium and anti-depressants, and I was on them for years and I only got off them in December. And that's one of the reasons I've changed. I've got rid of everything."
Inevitably, we talk about Oasis. The ongoing feud between Noel and Liam is something of a soap opera these days. Everyone asks McGee if Oasis will ever reform. Maybe the better question is, should they?
"Personally, I would like it, but I don't think it's going to happen anytime soon. Everyone asks me the question, ‘Is the feud real?’ It's so real you've got to be careful what you say. They can take offence. Not so much Liam, but Noel.
“I don't have a favourite. People are always going, 'Liam or Noel?' I don't have a favourite. I like them both. Over the years I've been closer to Noel, but I like Liam a lot. I DJed for Liam last year. They're both good guys.
"F*** the band. It would be lovely if they got on as family. That would be nice."
The music business is much changed now. Is it harder now for bands like Oasis to break through? Is the industry more middle class?
"The music business was always middle class, man, but the bands used to be working class. The bands aren't working class anymore. Maybe in Grime, but in the indie thing it's all middle-class kids. It's been like that for a long time. Maybe 20 years.
"I think the business is only middle class because the parents can afford to keep the kids in the music game. Working-class kids can give it about five years maximum and then they've got to go and get a career. Do you not think so?"
And maybe it doesn't matter anymore. Music is not at the centre of the culture that it once was. "Music's a side issue now. People are more interested in their phone."
What about him? He’s got money. He has homes in Wales and London. That sounds suspiciously middle class. Fess up, Alan, what is your guilty middle-class pleasure? Are you a Dobbies Garden centre kind of guy? An Antiques Roadshow watcher?
"I'm not that. What do I do that's quite old? I don't go to nightclubs. I don't go to pubs. I'm officially boring. But then I'm always doing music. I'm always in clubs with bands."
Actually, he's not sure he is even middle class. "I'm not going to be a hypocrite about it. My missus is a nice middle-class girl from Wales,” he points out.
"I don't think I'm middle class. I might have a lot of toys that are middle class, but I don't think middle class."
We all turn into our parents, Alan.
"Hopefully I won't."
An Evening with Alan McGee is on at Queen’s Hall, Dunoon on Friday, The Old Dr Bells Baths in Edinburgh on June 28 and Café Drummond in Aberdeen on June 29.
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