I lived in various areas of Preston for the first 49 years of my life and I will always be eternally proud of the place. Preston has a long history (over 800 years old) and was a central point of the industrial revolution with its dark satanic mills. Charles Dickens reportedly based Coketown in ‘Hard Times’ on Preston following an illuminating visit in the 1850’s.
Preston has been a city of missed opportunities, the docks in the 1960’s and latterly the Tithebarn redevelopment which due to city council prevarication never happened. It remains the hub for Butter Pies (sorely missed since I relocated) and I would argue is the home of football, and before you scoff the facts are that Preston North End were the first winners of the Football league and were the original Invincible’s over 100 years before Arsenal repeated the feat. Contrary to popular belief, there was a time before the Premier League!
The missed opportunities continued in the musical vein as a suite of decent venues opened but most of them after a period of time subsequently closed. I have frequented a total of 51 venues in Preston, the first of those being Clouds.
Clouds doubled up as a nightclub and a gig venue and was located on Fishergate and was accessed through the Odeon cinema (long since gone) via the old stalls stairs and foyer. I had some fine college do’s there in 1984 and first went to a gig there in 1985.
Thursday night was Rock Night and Rick Clegg and I witnessed a woeful band called Damascus who put a cherry on top with an execrable version of ‘Eleanor Rigby’.
My second visit promised more as Marc Riley and the Creepers were playing, however on arrival we were told they have been replaced by a young Manchester band who were planning to video the show. The band in question was Stone Roses in what I believe was their 4th only live gig. I would love to report I caught a seminal band at a legendary early gig, but I cannot as they lacked direction and were still formulating their sound which improved immensely in the corresponding 2 years. They had brought a minibus over from Manchester and that combined with some Preston ragamuffins generated a proper rough crowd that night. I had an opportunity to catch them at their breakthrough gig at Blackpool Empress Ballroom after that but declined based on their Clouds performance – je ne regrette rien!
My third and final visit on 6th September 1985 was to see a very early Jesus and Mary Chain show, they hadn’t even yet released Psychocandy. They were undertaking a three-date tour taking in Glasgow, North London Poly and somewhat bizarrely Clouds. The gig in London ended up in a near riot as the band could be somewhat abrasive at that stage. Pastels were the support and JAMC came on at the ungodly time of 1.10am and you could barely see them behind a wall of bouncers but by god you could hear them with their visceral squalls of feedback and a young Bobby Gillespie on drums. I recall them playing ‘You Trip Me Up’ and ‘Never Understand’. It was short and sweet as the set was measured at 25 minutes.
Clouds closed a couple of years later and became a fully-fledged nightclub called Tokyo Jo’s and its latest incarnation is now called Evoque.