I was just checking on Gary Numan’s birthplace — after Antony correctly challenged my Essex assertion (maybe it was his later association with Shakatak that confused me). I found that Gary Numan was yet another famous musician born in 1958. This year produced a pretty impressive collection of musical luminaries who came to prominence in the late 70s and dominated music well into the 90s between them. Most people will probably know that Michael Jackson was born in 1958 but so was Madonna — and, my favourite, Kate Bush. The rather nice Belinda Carlisle was also born then. A similarly disproportionate number of well known actors and rather nice actresses were also born in 1958: Annette Bening (American Beauty — the film with the best soundtrack ever?), Holly Hunter, Jamie Lee Curtis, Kevin Bacon, Michelle Pfieffer and Sharon Stone. There are bound to be a lot more but I can’t find anything better on the web that lists people by birth year than this. I suppose it was probably a big year demographically but that probably doesn’t fully explain the distibution. It’s a bit like the huge number of famous people that come from Rochdale — Cyril Smith, Gracie Fields, Anna Friel, Bill Oddie, Andy and Liz Kershaw, Steve Coogan (sort of — he comes from Middleton which is in the metropolitan borough), Don Estelle, Lisa Stansfield, Kieron Prendeville (of That’s Life), John Virgo — and plenty more. Bizarrely, I found on Wikipedia that there is a novelist called Nicholas Blincoe who apparently comes from Rochdale. This is a very unusual surname and so I think it must be someone whose family I knew of as a child — they lived about 200 yards from me next door to one of my friends. If it’s the same family then I didn’t know the children too well as they went to the private school. I may have to look his books up on Amazon.
Beer and sport and pubs and poetry is all a Mackle needs
No offense only one of these, the fivefor, is (was more accurately) a big star. Arguably Stone was famous for a year or so because she forgot to wear underwear but it’s not the same.
“Annette Bening… Holly Hunter, Jamie Lee Curtis, Kevin Bacon, Michelle Pfieffer and Sharon Stone”
Repected yes….
A lot of those people might be famous in Rochdale but… It includes people born elsewhere brought up there and vica versa so hardly an objectively compiled list.
Wacko and Madonna yah but Carlisle and Bush are footnotes. Did Bush’s music travel much? How many Emmy’s?
I’m not particularly expert on film icons but all those people have starred in their own films so that’s a reasonably objective measure. If you have a very tight definition of big star then you’ll never usually get more than one a year so to have two or three would be very remarkable. I like Holly Hunter as she was the voice of Mrs Incredible — a cartoon figure I’d like to, er, see in reality.
I don’t think Belinda Carlisle (lovely as she is) is on an equal footing with Kate Bush. Kate Bush was (is?) completely individual and innovative — and wrote almost all of the songs she’s recorded so far (the only covers I can remember is of Donovan’s ‘In the Reedy River’, which was a B-side and Elton John’s ‘Rocket Man’). Her music travelled further than you might imagine. The ‘Hounds of Love’ album was reasonably successful in the mid-80s in the U.S.
I think all the people mentioned were actually born in Rochdale. Some, like Bill Oddie, moved away young but not many. I was a contemporary of Lisa Stansfield. If you’ve ever been to Rochdale you might think there’s something about the geography of the place that makes it fairly unique.
I’ve been to Spotland…. I’ve had a pie and mushy peas there. Then again I do not remember the place much.
Stansfield was born in Manchester but the others seem born and bred.
I used to wonder in Maidenhead why no one famous came from there but the famous all moved to nearby Bray (Wogan, Parkinson, Heston) – because it’s just outside London and by the motorway and not Slough.
You maybe right about the uniqueness of the places getting the train and bus to Halifax a few times it’s an odd collection of valleys and windswept countryside heading north from Manchester.
Jon
I was a contemporary of Lisa Stansfield. I didn’t know she was born in Manchester but Stansfield is a very local Rochdale surname — there are lots of them about and there’s a council estate on the hills called Stansfield estate where a bus route terminates.
She went to Oulder Hill, which was the school in the posh part of Rochdale and had a theatre attached to it. She went in for all the talent shows as a schoolgirl and was well known locally. I even appeared on the same bill as her when I was in a concert performed by several local schools at the town hall when I was 16. I think I missed Lisa Stansfield’s top of the bill performance as we all left and went to the pub when we’d done our bit. I seem to remember she made a band with her boyfriend the son of the local funeral directors — the Devaneys (see http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1818631/bio and http://www.yell.com/b/Owen+Devaney+and+Son-Funeral+Directors-Rochdale-OL126PE-1767863/index.html )
At that time she had no street cred whatsoever with ‘the kids’ so it was fascinating how she re-invented herself a few years later to be this white soul diva. I have to give her a lot of credit as she shows what can be achieved through determination and perseverence. I always thought it quite funny that these two reasonably normal kids from Rochdale who I knew of had become world famous for a time (couldn’t say I knew them but I know that a certain friend of mine from Rochdale’s then girlfriend’s sister knew them pretty well).
That’s what I meant about the geography in that the Pennine towns — probably Rochdale and Halifax in particular — are dominated by the moors around them. I think that has a psychological effect on people and a physical one as it pushes people towards Manchester (or Leeds in Halifax’s case) and that’s only second to London as a cultural centre.
I notice a load of surname towns around there Ramsbottom, Whitworth, Heywood, Wardle, Clough, Shaw, Middleton, Birch, Balderstone, Radcliffe etc -> I wonder if in olden times that is where family names were taken or town names taken from geezers? Sure you’d know if anyone.
I could add Hyde but it’s west and according to it most famous, as opposed to infamous resident, has only previously produced two serial killers and if pints of Guinness count 3 serial killers with the aforementioned Mr R Hatton.
I was going to say born in 58 you’d miss early naive rock but catch the British invasion and Tamla Motown growing up but of course Jackson’s really creative period may not have overlapped with Madonna’s, dependent on how judgemental one is.
Do you think the 70s that butt of jokes in the 80s are under rated musically? Whereas most of the 80s seems like fluff pop on a quick survey of my memory. I know one man who differs of course.