Elbow formed in Bury in 1990 when Guy Garvey, Mark Potter, Craig Potter, Pete Turner and Richard Jupp were at school together. They spent twelve years being consistently rejected by every major record label before Island Records signed them in 2001. Their third album The Seldom Seen Kid (2008) won the Mercury Prize, One Day Like This became one of the most played songs on Radio 2 in the subsequent decade, and they became a genuinely beloved mainstream act. The Bury origin – the specific Greater Manchester suburban working-class context – is integral to what Garvey writes about.
Guy Garvey and Bury
Guy Garvey is from Bury – the market town north of Manchester with the world’s best black pudding market stall (hyperbole, but contested by fewer people than you’d expect). The specific northern Englishness of Garvey’s lyrics – the emotional directness, the hymnal quality, the sense of landscape – comes from this particular geography. He has remained associated with Manchester and the north throughout Elbow’s career, living in the city and hosting a Radio 6 Music show.
Bridgewater Hall and the Hallé
Elbow’s most celebrated Manchester moment is the Hallé Orchestra collaboration – the band performing with the Hallé at Bridgewater Hall, which has since evolved into the Elbow and Hallé live format that tours and records together. The combination of the Hallé’s classical orchestration with Elbow’s anthemic songwriting is the thing Garvey was always building toward. Bridgewater Hall is also where they made the live recordings that captured the band at their best.
Heaton Park and the Live Shows
Elbow’s homecoming shows in Manchester – at Heaton Park, at the Manchester Arena – are significant events in the city’s musical calendar. One Day Like This at the end of a Manchester show, with 25,000 people singing it back in the specific way that song demands, is one of those experiences that justifies spending money on live music. Whether you’re an Elbow fan or not, standing in a Manchester crowd for that song is something.
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