Mike Pickering Manchester Must Dance
Mike Pickering is one of the greatest musical pioneers to emerge from Manchester. A superstar DJ - he introduced House music into the legendary Hacienda nightclub, and while working for Factory records signed bands likes James and Happy Mondays and worked with Kasabian, and Calvin Harris while at Sony. He was also a founding member of the multi-million selling band M-People, winning a Mercury prize and transforming the music industries attitude to dance music. He played himself in the film 24 Hour Party People.
Mikes memoir Manchester Must Dance, re-lives the decades of music he has lived through, from seeing the Beatles live, as a child, in 1963, to the collaborations with some of the most important, and notorious figures in music history. Anyone interested in the music, clothes, gigs, record labels and bands of the past fifty years will enjoy first hand hearing the first-hand encounters from the man who was there and survived relatively intact from the Manchester music scene.
Forewords by Martin Fry, Johnny Marr, Calvin Harris and Noel Gallagher.
You can e-mail Mike questions in advance to [email protected], and he will be signing books after his talk, before heading off to DJ at our Last Word after-party at The Arena, Torquay.
Mike Pickering should be given a knighthood, for services to clubbing. Noel Gallagher
More information at www.torbayliteraryfestival.co.uk
18:00-20:00 Saturday 15 August 2026 (Main Stage) 28.00