Greater Manchester is the home of the industrial revolution, the city that split the atom, the birthplace of the computer, with the first stored-program computer, the location of the first railway station, the guardian newspaper, the suffragette movement, the free trade movement, the anti-corn law league, vegetarianism, the nation’s first free library, the co-operative movement, the world’s first inter-city railway and the engine room of rock ‘n’ roll that the country’s best bands of the past thirty years, from the Stone Roses, The Smiths and Joy Division to Oasis and Take That. This is not only where Morrissey met Marr at one of the most influential gigs of all time, when The Sex Pistols played at the Free Trade Hall, but where Jack met Vera, Bobby Charlton met George and Denis, Engels met Marx and Rolls met Royce.
Housing some of the world’s finest industrial towns and cities such as Manchester and Bolton, Greater Manchester is a county full of industrialists, engineers, businessmen, scientists and artists alike, attracting the innovative, entrepreneurial and the ambitious. Perhaps this is due to the strong emphasis on education.
Responsible for bands such as Oasis, New Order, Happy Mondays, The Stone Roses, Simply Red, The Buzzcocks, The 1975, Elbow and The Smiths, alongside the infamous Hacienda, Factory Records and Tony Wilson, Manchester has played a pivotal role in shaping the musical history of not just the UK but the rock ‘n’ roll scene across the world. Music attracts people to Manchester.
