Liverpool Venue 1 – The Royal Court

Mainly due to unreliable transport links I have been an irregular visitor to Liverpool for gigs though I have visited many times with work. I have always found Liverpool to be a vibrant and interesting place to frequent.

My first visit on a train was a mistake as for only the second time in my life I boarded the wrong train, not my fault honestly guv, and of course this error was compounded on arrival at Lime St Station by the fact that I missed the hourly train back to Preston by a wafer-thin margin of 2 minutes!

Coincidentally I was on Lime St station yesterday travelling back after a dramatic day at the cricket watching Lancashire at the quaint Aigburth ground. I have once caught the ferry across the Mersey and yes, they do play that track but thankfully only a 10 second excerpt! I have also attended the Grand National twice without finding the winner.

I never attended the infamous Eric’s venue thus my first two Liverpool gigs were at the Royal Court Theatre in Roe Street in the city centre which is very close to Lime St station. The current Royal Court was built in 1938 in an Art Deco style, and it was fortunate to survive the subsequent blitz. It is noteworthy for being the home of the stage debuts of Richard Burton and Judi Dench in the 1950’s.

It gained Grade II status in 1990 and was taken over by Rawhide Comedy Club in 2005 and it is still operational today producing comedy skit performances with titles such as Little Scouse on the Prairie.

In the 1980’s it was utilised as a music venue and the likes of Rage Against the Machine and David Bowie graced the stage. The three levels of Stalls, Grand Circle and Balcony equated to a capacity of 1186, and it was a grand old venue. I unsurprisingly frequented the cheap ‘seats’ of standing in the mosh pit.

My first visit was on 2^nd May 1989, and we commuted there in John Dewhurst’s work van. I recall it was a scrum at the bar prior to the Pixies hitting the stage at 9.15pm. the place was about half full and they had just released their third album ‘Doolittle’.

As ever with the Pixies, it was a vibrant tropically hot mosh pit and I recall them playing ‘River Euphrates’, ‘Mr Grieves, ‘Debaser’ and ‘Monkey Goes to Heaven’. My two highlights were the contrasting ‘Hey’ and the primal ‘Tame’ replete with Black Francis screaming like a banshee! They did an hour set and we had a debrief in a pub in Ormskirk on the way home.

My second and final visit was 19 days later to see REM, and it was on a very warm Sunday evening. The daytime was a combination of sunbathing and of Uncle George and I buying some tickets for an upcoming PNE v Port Vale play off which we unsurprisingly lost! 

We travelled over in George’s trusty yellow Cavalier. On arrival in Liverpool, we landed in an Irish pub near the station and were subject to some sustained cadging from a fellow punter. This cadging theme continued in the next pub, and we made a sensible decision to head into the venue.

REM took to the stage at 9pm. It was an early tour for them, and they were a country mile away from the polished article you saw a decade later, as Michael Stipe was a particularly shy performer at that juncture, but he still oozed charisma. He resembled an eccentric David Byrne and at times was muttering away into a loudspeaker about diverse subjects of CND and Greenpeace.

They opened with ‘Pop Song 89’ and I recall them playing ‘Disturbance at the Heron House’, ‘Orange Crush’ and ‘World Leader Pretend’. He then somewhat ironically introduced ‘It’s the End of the World as we Know It (And I Feel Fine)’ as the best song ever written. They performed two encores encompassing eight tracks including ‘Stand’ and ‘Finest Worksong’ and finished with a cover of Velvet Underground ‘After Hours’.

On the commute out of the city, we were very nearly side swiped by a speeding cop car! I recall 5 Live had commentary on a Nigel Benn v Michael Watson boxing match prior to stopping to refuel in Ormskirk with a Chinese takeaway. Just around New Longton, outside Preston, an REM track came on the radio to top of a fine night.

A postscript here is that for the first 77 gigs I attended I used to write a full review of the entire minutiae of the night and these two Liverpool gigs have finally exhausted this archive.