‘Creation Stories’ Review: The Man Behind a Raucous Record Label

There’s a poem in which the British writer and musician Martin Newell turns the name of a superstar 1960s guitarist into a verb. Like so:

I Hank Marvinned
we all did
with badminton rackets
in front of our mirrors.

No matter what country, if you grew up when rock ’n’ roll was king, you knew what he was talking about.

Alan McGee knew. In the early scenes of Nick Moran’s “Creation Stories,” a fiction movie based on the real man’s autobiography, we see him, a nerdy Glasgow teenager in the ’70s, whacking a racket while his stereo makes one. Dad doesn’t approve.

This bouncy, time-hopping biopic recounts McGee’s journey to rock legend — not as a performer but as a manager and the owner of a label that championed trailblazing artists like My Bloody Valentine. “I didn’t have any talent,” an older but not yet wiser McGee, played by Ewen Bremner, admits. The story of how McGee managed to conjure up the phenomenally successful label Creation — and, with its supernova band Oasis, shape the British pop zeitgeist — while conducting himself in a manner highly contrary to that embraced by highly effective businesspeople is hardly without interest.

But for much of its running time the movie’s reverb knob is set high, and what’s echoing are the movies “Trainspotting” (in which Bremner co-starred; its director Danny Boyle is a producer here) and “24 Hour Party People” (about another gonzo entrepreneur and his record label).

“Stories” does have a handful of funny and affecting scenes. But it’s most interesting when McGee, after sobering up, makes an ill-advised alliance with Tony Blair. The interesting times in which, as McGee puts it here, “corporate disguised itself as hipster,” could make a righteous stand-alone movie. Alas, “Creation Stories” only spends about 20 minutes on them.

Creation Stories
Not rated. Running time: 1 hour 45 minutes. Available to watch on AMC+, and to rent or buy on Amazon, Google Play and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators.