Bolton-born BBC Radio 6 Music DJ Mark Radcliffe will front a new BBC 4 TV series, ‘The Story of Indie’.
The three-part programme – which starts its run in October – will chart its inception in the late 1970s with the explosion of independent record labels and their associated acts, to the boom of the genre in the ‘80s, onto its demise following the mainstream success of its Britpop successor in the ‘90s, and finally its legacy and influence in the current music scene.
It will also look at the rise of independent record labels across the UK such as Manchester’s Factory and Zoo in Liverpool; the Madchester scene, which spawned a new crop of bands such as The Stone Roses and Happy Mondays, and the subsequent rise of early 1990s heavyweights Blur and Oasis.
The series features exclusive interviews with performers including Factory Records’ designer Peter Saville, former Happy Mondays manager Nathan McGough, Happy Mondays’ Shaun Ryder, Holly Johnson of Frankie Goes To Hollywood, Buzzcocks’ frontman Pete Shelley and Joy Divison/New Order’s Stephen Morris.
Radcliffe said: “This is really a story that’s been waiting to be told. We’re always hearing about the seismic shifts the music business is undergoing, but in many ways, this was the first – when the egalitarian independent spirit of punk and DIY broke the stranglehold of the men in suits in the posh offices of the major labels in that there London creating the soundtrack of our lives along the way.”
The hour-long programmes will air on Fridays from early October. Radcliffe currently hosts the afternoon show on BBC Radio 6 Music with Stuart Maconie, which is broadcast from MediaCityUK in Salford.
