Courteeners: From humble Manchester roots to the world – and back

The street outside legendary indie club 42s, a front garden on Burnage Lane and a pub’s function room with a tiny stage – all locations in Manchester where you could have found Courteeners in their early days.

The four school friends from Middleton, near Rochdale, have certainly come a long way since they hit the Manchester indie scene in 2006.

While they have travelled around the world ever since, there is no place like home and they will take to the stage later for a huge homecoming gig at Wythenshawe Park.

From humble beginnings performing for friends in the garden of their shared house in Burnage, the Courteeners are now celebrating 20 years together.

Fresh from releasing a new best-of compilation album called God Bless The Band, lead singer and songwriter Liam Fray spoke to BBC North West Tonight at The Briton’s Protection pub on Deansgate, where he first performed as a solo artist back in 2005.

Sitting upstairs in the pub, Fray smiled at the 3ft (2m) stage and single spotlight on the ceiling while recalling the night he spent there more than two decades ago.

“It’s unusual to be in here and it’s exactly the same,” he said. “It is very small.”

Fray recalled the gig, the crowd of 80, and of how – determined to make it big – he had bought every ticket himself and went on to sell them to fellow indie fans.

“I went the morning the tickets went on sale and bought them all so that it said ‘Sold Out’,” Fray remembered.

“I took them to 42s and sold them all on the dance floor.”

The Not Nineteen Forever songwriter said he had played a few of his early gigs at the venue and was joined by drummer Michael Campbell, who would eventually his Courteeners bandmate.

“When I played here with Campbell I’m pretty sure we oversold it by about 100 people,” Fray said.

“The people who ran it at the time tried to get to the stage to stop us performing but they couldn’t get to us.

“Everyone who was with us now was in that room.”

He said despite now performing gigs across the globe, he still “feels close” to the old days.

“It’s mad that it’s been 20 years,” Fray said. “Because we still feel young.

“There are definitely moments where I’m playing Acrylic or Bide Your Time and I think we did that in my parents’ garage in 2004.

“It was a long time ago, and people are still discovering these songs… [I feel] blessed, absolutely blessed.”

On the release of the band’s greatest hits record, which features songs from each of their seven albums, Fray said he had found himself looking back over the years.

“It’s a lifetime since we started this band,” he explained. “The one thing we’ve got – that maybe people aren’t as lucky to have – is that we are all so close to each other.”

The original band members were Fray, Campbell, Daniel Moores and Mark Cuppello.

They have been described as friends from the age of 10, with later members Joe Cross and Elina Lin respectively joining the band in 2015 and 2019.

“We didn’t answer an advert in the paper. We’ve been friends so long and were friends before we were a band,” Fray said of the group’s chemistry. “You always felt dead safe in a unit.”

The gig at Wythenshawe Park will see Courteeners perform in front of up to 35,000 fans.

Support acts include Merseyside band The Coral and The Vaccines.

Fray said it would be his first visit to Wythenshawe Park and he was “more ready than ever”.

He added: “Just getting that many people together and singing songs, they’re not our songs anymore… they’re theirs.

“To be stood up there, it’s like I want to pat my mates on the back because they’ve done a great job.

“It’s not been a super smooth ride but I’m going to take in every second.”

Organisers of Wythenshawe Live said £1 from each ticket sold would be given to the Music Venue Trust, a charity which fights to improve and protect grassroots music venues in the UK.

Fray said he remained dedicated to helping such venues and upcoming artists.

“It didn’t happen to us overnight and one day we are playing Heaton Park,” he explained.

“There were lots of Dry Bars in there, lots of Night and Day [in Manchester], HiFi Club in Leeds, The Magnet in Liverpool.

“They make you who you are. They’re your scars, they’re your war wounds.

“Without them we wouldn’t exist.”

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