Clitheroe Gigs

About 20 miles east of Preston down the A59 lies the town of Clitheroe. The name is purported to derive from the Anglo-Saxon for ‘Rocky Hill’ and the Battle of Clitheroe was fought there in 1138 during the Anarchy (a civil war that took place in England and Normandy).

I have always been fond of the place and visited many times and have memories in my youth of climbing up the steep hill to the castle and enjoying the view from the elevated position. I recall a bandstand being located on the slope, and I have probably seen musical acts there, but they were never recorded in the Jimmy annals so would unfortunately drop into the ‘Lost Gigs’ criteria.

Similar to travelling to Southport there are somewhat annoyingly no direct trains from Preston, the route requires one change at Blackburn. Clitheroe is the terminus station so the train heads onwards to turn around and come back the other way, though I do believe there is a linkage from there onto the famous Settle to Carlisle line. 

For a lengthy spell, Gill visited a hairdressers in Clitheroe and on occasions I would head over and meet her afterwards and have a sally around the many hostelries in the town. We once broke the routine and grabbed the opportunity to visit the town of Whalley which is a smidge earlier on the same line, and that transpired to be a fine place to spend a few hours at.  

My good friend Tony Dewhurst has for many years lived in a village just outside Clitheroe, and is a huge Killing Joke and music fan and began to become involved with press duties at the Clitheroe Grand.

The Grand’s first function when built in 1873-1874 was as Clitheroe Public Hall, before morphing into the Grand cinema in 1921 and remains now as a Grade II Listed building. In a change of direction in 2005, the Lancashire Foundation purchased the building and re-opened it in 2008 as a community family focused arts venue also including sponsorship of a skate park in the previously mentioned castle grounds.

They also regularly have live music on the roster and the driving force and promotor behind the musical element was a thoroughly decent chap called Matt Evans who suddenly and sadly passed away during covid. Matt was a huge muso, and his personal favourite band was the Chameleons. Amongst others to grace the stage there was Wishbone Ash, John Bramwell and New Model Army. They also reintroduced the annual Ribble Valley Jazz festival in 2010 after a gap of 40 years.

It lived up to its name as a ‘grand’ venue as it had a homely layout with a decent vantage point from all angles. It reminded me of a more inviting version of the old main hall venue at Preston 53 Degrees.

I attended two non-music events when a group pf us headed over in 2011 to see a Q&A with two Lancashire cricketers Mark Chilton and Ian Austin as a celebration of the county winning their first County Championship for 77 years. The other was to watch a woeful England draw 0-0 against Algeria in the 2010 World Cup where the best thing about the match was the very fine curry they laid on at half time. I also recall watching us beat Paraguay 1-0 in the 2006 World Cup in the Castle pub in the town centre.    

I have seen a total of three gigs here, the first was on 27/05/11 to witness an AC/DC tribute band called Livewire who featured both Bon Scott and Brian Johnson eras, the band were suitably thunderously loud. I must say have always struggled with the concept of tribute acts and not seen many and in the main when attending festivals. They on one hand serve their purpose, but they cannot feasibly lay a glove on the real band themselves. Having said all that, I saw them the same band there again on 11/03/16 where we subsequently missed the connection home at Blackburn and had to flag a taxi home!   

The other gig was a belter with The Beat in town and Rankin Roger and Junior Rankin in full flow and they topically transplanted the name David into their version of ‘Stand Down Margaret’. It was a very merry evening, and the train journeys home are a tad hazy!