Creation, the label founded by working class Glaswegian firebrand McGee, began in the mid-80's as a pop-psychedelia imprint and went on to launch the careers of Primal Scream, The Jesus and Mary Chain, My Bloody Valentine, The Boo Radleys, Ride, The House of Love and Super Furry Animals. Creation also immersed itself in acid house and Ecstasy culture at the end of the 80's, achieving a critical and commercial breakthrough with Primal Scream's 1991 album, Screamadelica. Then came Oasis.

The extraordinary rise of the Manchester band, whom McGee discovered playing bottom of the bill in a Glasgow club in 1993, turned into a Beatlesque socio-cultural phenomenon that had, by, 1996, made What's The Story Morning Glory? One of the bestselling albums in history, and Creation one of the five most successful record labels in Britain. McGee, a millionaire many times over, was courted by Tony Blair's New Labour and, in 1998, was listed by the Observer and as one of the 300 most influential people in the country.

Yet reation's fall from grace was as startling as it was inevitable. Unable to adapt to a post Brit-pop world, it perished amid resentment and infighting, failure and disappointment, confusion and humiliation. McGee was left to plot his next move in an industry that had once embraced him as a maverick and a visionary, but which now shunned him as a troublemaker and a pariah.

'I hated the music business. I saw myself as an antagonist the whole way down the line' ALAN MCGEE, PRESIDENT, CREATION RECORDS

'Alan's just been telling me he started twelve years ago with a #1000 bank loan and now he's got #34 million turnover. Now that's New Labour' TONY BLAIR, ADDRESSING A CREATION-SPONSORED LABOUR RALLY, SEPTEMBER 1996

'Creation is what it always was: a label of misfits, drug addicts, dysfunctional human beings, and out-and-out losers' CREATION PRESS HANDOUT, SUMMER 1998

Three years in the researching, My Magpie Eyes Are Hungry For The Prize tells the remarkable story of the music that made Creation's name, the business deals that kept it alive while other indie labels dropped like flies, and the financial and personal crises that frequently threatened its existence. Drawing on numerous interviews with McGee and more than 170 other people, My Magpie Eyes Are Hungry For The Prize follows a generation of musicians, dreamers, winners and losers through 25 years of turbulent history, showing how they changed - and were changed by - the business of music. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Synopsis
Founded by Alan McGee in 1983, Creation Records achieved notoriety as the home of Primal Scream, the Jesus and Mary Chain and other anti-Establishment acts. During the Britpop boom of the mid-90s, the astonishing success of Oasis brought Creation fame on the world stage. In 1999, however, McGee announced his shock departure as his label's influence over a generation of British music came to a confusing and disappointing end. Containing interviews with Creation musicians, employees, supporters and detractors, this is the inside story of Creation Records - and of British music since the 1980s. It is written with the full co-operation censorship.