by Dave Haslam
In the early years of the twenty-first century, across Manchester, in equally unprepossessing surroundings, a midweek cabaret-cum-muso carnival called ‘Club Suicide’ operated in a grotty pub on Withy Grove called the John Willie Lees. Generally the clientele had been old men, off-duty bus drivers, skiving workers from the nearby Co-operative offices and – back when the area was busy with publishing houses and printworks – newspaper workers too. Club Suicide also took place at Charlie’s on Harter Street, an odd Chinese karaoke bar. The club provided Patrick Wolf and M.I.A. with their first Manchester shows. Bill Campbell was a Suicide regular: ‘For me, the early Club Suicide nights at John Willie Lees reasserted a DIY, John Peel-esque spirit in Manchester, bringing together various generations of misfits, and giving them a new home. It reignited a sense of just-do-it in me personally and in the friends I made there.’
In addition to HomoElectric, other nights were also remaking and remodelling Manchester’s LGBT club scene, among them ‘Poptastic’ and ‘Club Brenda’. Poptastic mixed up the music – lots of indie – and Club Brenda incorporated eclectic music with stand-up, spoken-word and dramatic interventions from the likes of performance artists Fiona Bowker, Divine David and Chloe Poems. Jayne Compton, the driving force behind Club Brenda, went on to run the Switchflicker record label.
Boasting an eclectic music policy and a mix of performers, DJs, genders and sexualities, these nights challenged stereotypes but entertained too. On a mission, HomoElectric published a fanzine designed to complement the club night. It gave the people behind the night a chance to spread the word of their favourite music – anything from the New York Dolls to deep house – and their philosophy of avoiding airbrushed reality, fake tans and generic music. The HomoElectric Chronicle carried heartfelt polemics targeting personality-free celebrities and body fascism. Slogans adorned their flyers, including one in 2006: ‘Music is life, gym is the coffin, be ugly’.
From Club Suicide to Club Brenda, via HomoElectric – this was some of the most impressive activity from Manchester’s post-Haçienda generation, unencumbered by nostalgia, eclectic and uncommercial. That the venues they chose were out on the margins, in the underpopulated, undeveloped parts of the town, underlined their cultural distance from the mainstream, the distance too between their club and everything on Canal Street, or Paul Oakenfold on £20,000 a night, or the front covers of Ministry, or Annabel’s with its caviar tartare fingers for £450 and £550 bottles of champagne, or the celebrities and princes inside Boujis and the paparazzi outside. They were the sort of places Patrick Lilley was looking for in 1977 or like that Soho club in the 1920s described earlier in our history as a shrine of ‘anti-convention and the home of talented rebels’. Abigail Ward of the Manchester District Music Archive says that Club Brenda in particular welcomed ‘the outsiders, the strange ones’.
OUTRO
Michael Stipe’s shoe, the cocktail from Hull, worlds emerge
Hammersmith Palais, with a history going back to 1919, opened its doors for the last time in 2007. As the closure neared, two gigs were organised for the weekend of 31 March and 1 April; the first night featured Damon Albarn and Paul Simonon’s band – the Good, the Bad & the Queen – with the Fall headlining the next night. The only beer available was Foster’s. Mark E. Smith wore a suit and a crisp white shirt, and near the end of the Fall’s set the last stage invader at the Hammersmith Palais made his entrance when Joe Ashworth from the Macclesfield band the Hot Bananas clambered out of the audience and danced around near Mark and then jumped back into the crowd. Joe Ashworth later left the Hot Bananas and formed the Magic Otters.
Hammersmith Palais was demolished in 2012. Everything eventually becomes history. There’s no trace of Barbarella’s or the Rum Runner in Birmingham, the Dug Out in Bristol or the Reno in Manchester or the Club A Go Go in Newcastle. The Hotel Leofric, where Pete Waterman DJ’d the night Black Sabbath played, closed in 2008 and became a Travelodge. The hotel was sold by Travelodge just five years later and the new owners converted the property into student flats. A block of student flats also now stands on the site of the Limit in Sheffield, which closed in January 1991. Bristol Locarno’s ballroom was demolished in 1998 to make way for student accommodation, leaving only the ice-rink and the cinema. The cinema, though – which had closed in 1996 – was given a huge makeover and turned into a nightclub. It now houses the O2 Academy music venue. Of the original Bristol complex, only the ice-rink remains.
What of the clubs that have survived since opening in the early 1980s? The Leadmill has had to adapt, losing city council subsidies, dispensing with some of the artistic and cultural ideals it had when it was founded and, dictated by commercial pressures, now features a relatively straightforward programme of gigs and club nights with drinks promotions. Another survivor is the Escape in Brighton, although it’s now trading as Audio, with a bar below and a club above. The Zap Club turned into Digital, then the Coliseum (it’s now the Arch). In the 1980s, the Escape, along with the Zap, were two of a long line of important venues in Brighton, where the entertainments on offer were both a marker and a maker of cultural change.
Through many of the earlier chapters we’ve visited a number of major urban conurbations – with plenty of diversions to places including Stoke, Old Hill, St Albans and Wigan – and documented their range of nightlife, but for people in smaller towns life can seem restricted. There isn’t so much variety. Local bands may not have anywhere to play, acts on national tours don’t visit, and in the clubs it’s likely no one has the inclination to go beyond the obvious.
In their time, venues like TJ’s in Newport, Moles in Bath and the Forum in Tunbridge Wells have all been invaluable in their towns. Hull, City of Culture in 2017, has never had much of a reputation for its music scene; it’s on the almost-forgotten edge of the country. The work of venues and promoters to attract touring bands there, and also to provide a platform for local talent, has been against all odds, and usually on a shoestring – important, but precarious. In the summer of 2012, the Lamp in Norfolk Street in Hull closed, having lost the goodwill of its bank.
In the context of the city’s place economically and geographically, the ability of the Adelphi on De Grey Street to make things happen in Hull is worth celebrating. It began life as a working men’s club, which was then opened as a music venue by Paul Jackson in 1984. Relatively rough and ready, the Adelphi is unlikely to win design awards or attract a glitzy crowd, but Paul is proud of the diversity of its music programming policy and its friendly reputation. ‘We may not have the glossiest leaflets, or the biggest marketing budget,’ he says. ‘What we do have is far more important, and far more interesting than that. It was, and is, a meeting place for smart, talented and creative people, as well as being somewhere to see fantastic live performances from outside the mainstream.’
In the early 1990s, the Adelphi was one of several venues included on every half-decent emerging rock act’s tour itinerary (others included the Windsor Old Trout, the Boardwalk in Manchester, King Tut’s Wah Wah Hut in Glasgow, the Princess Charlotte in Leicester and John Keenan’s Duchess of York in Leeds). Radiohead appeared at the Adelphi three times in 1992 and 1993. Shows at the Adelphi in more recent years have featured the likes of Courtney Barnett, Holy Orders, Paper Aeroplanes and Las Kellies, with some veterans making return visits, including Attila the Stockbroker and the Nightingales. At the most recent Nightingales show Paul Jackson was down the front shouting out the words to ‘Real Gone Daddy’.
A thirty-minute walk from the Adelphi there’s a goth nightclub that dates back to 1982; it’s called Spiders, is open only on Saturday nights, sells cheap drinks – including an idiosyncratic range of cocktails (including their Tarantula: cider, Pernod, blackcurrant and ice) – and qualifies as one of Britain’s most singular nightclubs. It carries a useful warning on its unrepentantly primitive website: ‘WE DO NOT PLAY HOUSE — GARAGE — HIP-HOP — TRANCE. IF YOU LIKE THIS KIND OF MUSIC SPIDERS IS NOT FOR YOU’. On a Saturday at Spiders, the a
udience is treated to a rock disco featuring music from classic acts like the Rolling Stones, the Clash, Sisters of Mercy and the Doors.
Among the significant surviving clubs and venues with a thirty-year history, Rock City on Talbot Street in Nottingham is currently one of the most successful, hosting both live concerts and club nights. Among its celebrated gigs is an REM show at the venue in November 1984 that was broadcast on BBC Radio and later included in a list of the greatest hundred gigs of all time by Q magazine. Like the 100 Club, Rock City is something of a family affair; the current owner is George Akins who took over from his father (also called George). George Snr was relatively hands-off (he always employed a manager) but George Jnr is much more involved. Rock City has already made a few appearances in our history, notably when DJ Jonathan Woodliffe and others featured at hip hop and jazz funk nights and all-dayers. At the REM show, apparently the heel of one of Michael Stipe’s shoes came off and he asked the crowd if anyone would swap shoes with him. A member of the crowd obliged; the fan got a broken shoe and Stipe finished the show. In another shoe-related incident, Stuart Adamson from Big Country once borrowed a pair of laces from Jonathan Woodliffe and never returned them. On another occasion, Joan Jett was sick in a bucket at the side of the stage just before she went on. The sightlines at Rock City are great; there’s a balcony, and the one thing you learn to expect at a venue like this, with its layers of history – sticky floors.
Rock City, the Leadmill, the Adelphi and the 100 Club have survived downturns and recessions, but 2000 and 2001 witnessed the closure of a number of venues that had played a key role nurturing emerging music, including the Boardwalk in Manchester, Birmingham’s Edwards No. 8 and the Duchess of York in Leeds. Although these closures were for a variety of reasons – Edwards No. 8 was damaged in a fire, for example – a perception formed that the network of small music venues that had sustained postpunk and Britpop was in jeopardy.
All kinds of music industry business models were collapsing in the early years of the new millennium. As we’ve seen, there was a backlash against superstar DJs. Major labels were rarely signing new bands for large advances, and none were offering tour support to subsidise them on the road. Potential gig-goers were being drawn away by the counter-attractions of home entertainment, including video gaming. ‘In the past three years we have profiled fifty venues, twenty of them are now extinct,’ Crispin Parry of national pop-venues magazine Circuit told the Guardian in February 2000. He also suggested one of the reasons for this was that attending live music in small venues just wasn’t as cool as it once was. ‘Small gigs aren’t as sexy as they used to be,’ he said.
Live music since that time hasn’t died though. Venues have come and gone and some currently in use aren’t traditional pubtype venues (there’s been an increase in the use of churches, for example). For many people the live experience might be confined to a festival or other major event, but emerging and established acts haven’t been short of opportunities to play. Young bands get a foot on the ladder instigating their own shows, building an online presence, finding a local venue that might offer useful support slots or showcases, and hooking up with a sympathetic promoter.
A number of promoters in our current era have played integral roles in moving their local scene forward, including Arthur Tapp in Birmingham, John Rostron in Cardiff, Steve Revo at EVOL in Liverpool, Jason Dormon and Mark Davyd at the Forum in Tunbridge Wells, Phil Andrews at Moles in Bath, Mal Campbell at the Trades Club in Hebden Bridge, and Hey! Manchester and Now Wave in Manchester. Although they may end up as big as industry heavyweights like SJM, these promoters began, at least, as small, independent, under-capitalised companies, working with love and knowledge and providing a stage for bands who otherwise might have missed out. Where interest is minimal, they nurture an audience. Now Wave hosted a number of small-scale shows featuring the xx and Alt-J before they broke through; they’ve become a trusted brand, a signifier of a certain kind of taste.
Even if the talk in 2000 of gig-going not just dying but not being ‘cool’ was true, the situation started to change a little. One or two bands – definitely including the Strokes – created sparks that ignited renewed interest in guitar bands and gig-going. And the Libertines, before and after they signed to Rough Trade, played gigs galore with the Strokes and the Vines, but also became known for so-called ‘guerrilla gigs’. This was late 2002 and into 2003. They’d announce a gig just a few hours beforehand, often by mass text, giving instructions to fans to meet at a given location. From there, the lucky few would be escorted to the venue – often somebody’s home, their living room or basement. A number of performances took place at the flat bandmates Pete Doherty and Carl Barât rented together in Bethnal Green.
The determination to stage DIY gigs we witnessed on the 1950s jazz scene, and during and after punk, has never gone away, but the new millennium seemed to spur a younger generation to imagine and deliver new examples of self-organisation. Through 2002 a small collection of musicians and music fans calling themselves ‘Helpyourself Manchester’ began to build an informal network of ad hoc venues, enabling bands to play in people’s living rooms and basements. To their devotees, these guerrilla gigs – bypassing promoters, agents and established venues – were authentic and exciting. The Libertines’ shows would be crowded, chaotic, with no support act, no queues at the bar (in fact, no bar), and no ‘online credit card plus booking fee’ shenanigans. It was a development reminiscent of the chaotic excitement of early Jesus & Mary Chain gigs (I’m thinking particularly of a gig at the Ambulance Station, a squat, in November 1984), the audience packed tight, and a sense of history.
In June 2004, at almost the same time that at least one reviewer was complaining that ‘a lacklustre Oasis performance fails to ignite fans at Glastonbury’, a band called the Others hosted a gig on a Hammersmith & City line tube train. That month, NME featured the Libertines on the front cover. The Others played more guerrilla gigs, including one on the Abbey Road crossing made famous by the Beatles. The paper also picked up on an antiestablishment DIY scene in New Cross in southeast London headed by Art Brut, who were desperately seeking alternatives to arena bands and major-label ways of doing things. They were pissed off and iconoclastic, proclaiming, ‘Popular culture no longer applies to me’ in their song ‘Bad Weekend’.
New technology was an aid to this activity; the online messageboards hosted by Helpyourself Manchester were key to spreading the word about their events. Art Brut were one of those bands who picked up early on what is now standard practice – the use of instant messaging. Guitarist Chris Chinchilla would announce short-notice guerrilla gigs with a post on the forum on the band’s website and email information to fans. Chris later left the group, but in 2004 this was his take on things: ‘Sometimes the music industry doesn’t want to help, so you just do it any way you can. We use SMS, email, mailing lists, message boards, my Sony Ericsson T68i and technologies like MSN Messenger and iChat; then people pass details on to other people to spread the word.’
Those Libertines events appeared exciting, rebellious, different, vaguely or potentially illegal; all the key ingredients to create a sense of something new and, indeed, ‘cool’. A small but significant music audience was making their own scenes, rendering obsolete all those who aspired to superstardom – musicians and DJs. All this helped create a renaissance in live music and new bands, in an era when the possibilities of the internet were suggesting new ways to socialise and share music without the need to leave the house.
With so much to enjoy in the online world, you can understand why people might have predicted fifteen years ago that by now we’d never need to go out again, and we could live our lives via computer and TV screens. But event organisers of all kinds have evidence that the appetite for live experiences has increased during this period. As well as pleasure in the ability to view streamed or recorded events on screen in a personal space, at a convenient time, there’s also a demand for communal events that unfold in real time –
what might be called ‘primary experiences’. The huge growth in summer festivals reflects this. A festival weekend – or a week clubbing in Croatia or Ibiza – is an extreme going-out experience, a promise of a concentrated dose of sociability and good times.
In 2014 the Libertines reunited to play a Barclaycard-sponsored event in Hyde Park called British Summer Time. The band had first disbanded soon after their second album in 2004, and had briefly got back together for some shows in 2010. Hyde Park was a long way from the guerrilla gigs more than ten years earlier. Back then NME editor Conor McNicholas had declared, ‘I really feel something big will come out of this.’ The band had helped put life back into live music but it’s possible that the Libertines headlining an all-day gig in a royal park alongside the Enemy and the View, sponsored by a credit card company (34.9 per cent APR) wasn’t quite the revolution in music and culture NME had dreamed of.
Nurturing the next wave is important. Finding a way to encourage participation. Finding a space for something that’s never going to fill an arena. All these things are valuable to a town or city’s cultural life. Promoters like Chris Horkan from Hey! Manchester take a certain pride in getting in early on a band that goes on to break through but it’s not just about that, it’s also about seeing the significance of stuff that’s marginal. ‘Someone breaking through doesn’t make them any better musically,’ says Chris. ‘Some of the artists I’m most excited about doing shows will play, and probably always will play, to fifty or a hundred people.’
There’s a tendency to judge cultural significance only by scale, numbers, size or income generated, but this misses one of the lessons of the story of life after dark – how powerful a small and under-capitalised venture can be. It isn’t just about clubs and venues. Cultural change starts away from the establishment and the big art institutions; it starts at the margins, unheralded. It’s also clear that energised culture isn’t neat and tidy. In the late 1940s the hip place, Club Eleven, was just a ramshackle basement room with lightbulbs. Those ‘hokey’ Rolling Stones fans in baggy pullovers swinging from the rafters at the Crawdaddy could see the future. The attendees on and off stage at the first Factory nights in Hulme were a rum bunch, many of whom would make their mark in the world in a hundred ways. Eric’s helped trigger an explosion of bands in Liverpool, from a venue in a forgotten part of town.
