In 1979 Andy Spinoza moved to Manchester from London at eighteen and never looked back. An early member of the Haçienda, he reported on the city’s music scene for the NME and The Face.

He founded and edited alternative magazine City Life in 1983 and was for ten years the gossip columnist for the Manchester Evening News. As boss of his own PR company, he promoted the dynamic post-industrial Manchester throughout the 2000s and 2010s. He launched The Lowry arts centre and Spinningfields business district, over 30 city centre hotels, bars and restaurants, worked with Sir Alex Ferguson and Pep Guardiola, and for the city’s property developers and council leaders.

His archive of media and memorabilia has been acquired by the new British Pop Archive at John Rylands Library. His new book Manchester unspun: pop, property and power in the original modern city is an account of the city’s extraordinary reinvention – it examines the role of pop culture in building the new Manchester and asks, could a city really get high on music?

Andy’s talk

The city that got high on music – how pop culture built the new Manchester

Manchester was the original city of the modern world, but just 40 years ago it was a post-industrial basket case. Andy Spinoza arrived in 1979 as a wide-eyed witness to an empire in ruins, and since then has had a front row seat in the city’s extraordinary reinvention.

Thanks to his roles in pop, property and politics, he explains how their unique interaction built the foundations of the new Manchester. In his talk, he asks, could a city really get high on music?