Photograph
Nico, Illuminated Records, Nigel Bagley
Rafters, Russell Club
2023

picture from film by Rob Sellex

Nigel Bagley was a great find - the missing link in Alan Wise's story and a significant figure himself.

He worked with Alan 78-85, at Rafters and The Russell and then with Nico, and he founded an adventurous little label called Illuminated Records.

We caught up with him Xmas 2023, at Tom Donovan's studio in Colchester, when he was visiting an old mate, Phil Jones, manager of John Cooper Clarke, and all three of them recorded interviews which will be posted here eventually.

He moved into record production in London, and eventually into a straight business career with Unilever, after he got fed up with the relentless drugginess of the Manchester scene.

"I didn't want to be the man who fell asleep in his soup," he told us.
Another turning point was sharing a BBC lift with Alan Wise and Nico and Spandau Ballet and their manager - "and realising our time was gone".

He also has the definitive version of the night that shut The Russell. The fatal blow was a noise abatement order from the council - but Nigel is pretty sure the police were behind it.

"We were bringing all these middle-class kids, the sons and daughters of lawyers and so on, into a ghetto full of drugs," he sums up.