Tag: Ian Curtis

Manchester Venues 147 to 148 – Royal Northern College of Music

As you progress down Oxford Road towards the Academy venues you reach the traffic light junction with Booth Street West and on that very corner is the Manchester Royal Northern College of Music (RNCM). Just beyond there is a recently developed retail area containing a Brewdog outpost and a branch of the omnipresent fast food chain Five Guys.

Across the road from the RNCM for many years resided the Phoenix public house, previously Barney McGrews, situated under the precinct. I can find records of the Phoenix being around since the 1970’s and in those days, it was a punky biker venue where upstairs they held sweaty club nights under the Tangled or Acid Rock monikers.

Phoenix pub. Image Credit manchestersfinest.com

Live music was staged there from 1977 onwards on the Bass Charrington pub rock circuit roster. There are scant details of bands but can find evidence of Aqua, a Burnage High school band, (does that scenario sound familiar?) who played there the following year with Graham Massey of 808 State in their ranks. They are absolutely not to be confused with the other band with the same name who release ‘Barbie Girl’ a couple of decades later!  

It was a renowned student haunt due to its proximity to the universities. It became more of a drum and bass venue in the 1990’s and Clint Boon, Mani and Piccadilly Records used to undertake DJ nights there.  Around the time I visited, it had morphed into an ‘It’s a Scream’ chain pub with bright yellow frontage and was in a very tired state by then. It subsequently closed its doors for the final time in 2011.

The RNCM was officially opened in its current location on 28 June 1973 and was a fusion of the Royal Manchester College of Music (RMCM), which opened in 1893 with original principal being Sir Charles Halle and the Northern School of Music, founded in 1920.

Its remit encompasses musical education and contains two thriving public performance venues alongside a smaller recital room and theatre, the latter two spaces are utilised in the main for educational and conference events. The college was subject to a £7.1m refurbishment in November 2014 across all areas including a new lighting rig and sound equipment. Previous alumni naturally contains many illustrious conductors and composers and also Howard Jones!  

RNCM. Image Credit Royal Northern College of Music.

The first venue I will cover is the Royal Northern College of Music Concert Hall which has a fixed seating of either 443 or 598 with an additional balcony setting raising the maximum capacity to 710. The layout ensures that all of the seating encircles the stage in the middle of the room and ensures a good view from all vantage points. They have a constant diverse roster of performances and previous acts to play there include Adele, David Byrne, Hugh Laurie, Halle Orchestra and Jarvis Cocker. Filming has also taken place there for television shows Waterloo Road and Question Time.

My first attendance was in November 2013, and I had an unusual journey there. On the day I needed to attend a workshop in the glamorous location of Telford, thus caught a train from there direct to Manchester and met up with the rest of the crew in the Joshua Brooks public house. I recall we also visited the Sand Bar and naturally gravitated to our usual nearby noodle bar for some tea.

As you enter the RNCM building there is initially a bar and café area before you reach the venue hall at the end of the corridor. They adopt a similar policy to the Royal Albert Hall where you could not take drinks into the venue and if returning from a comfort break you had to wait until the current track finished before you can grab your seat again.

The act that day was the incomparable Mark Lanegan, personally one of my Top 5 favourite vocalists with his gravelly ‘lived in’ unique delivery. He was touring his recent album ‘Imitations’ which featured cover versions of tracks by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Nancy Sinatra and John Cale.

On the night he undertook an excellent version of Bobby Darin’s ‘Mack the Knife’ and Lou Reed’s ‘Satellite of Love’, the latter especially poignant as Lou had recently passed away. I have just read this week of a hugely emotional concert held with guest artists to celebrate what would have been Mark’s 60th birthday, he is sorely missed.

Mark Lanegan. Image Credit mubi.com

I had one other attendance there a couple of years later to see Mercury Rev and I spotted John Robb in the audience. The band were in a particularly noisy mode that evening with some guitar heavy tracks in the set, which suited me down to the ground!

The other venue is the Royal Northern College of Music Theatre which has fixed seating capacity of 600 plus the option to have additional removable pit seats. This is a more traditional ‘cinema style’ setting and I have visited there just the once in October 2023. We went to see a play called New Dawn Fades which chronicles the story of Joy Division which contain live songs with a full band. It is written and directed by Brian Gorman who also takes an acting role as Factory boss Tony Wilson.  It was pretty well made but the second half of it leading to Ian Curtis’s suicide was understandably very bleak viewing.

Manchester Venues 140 to 141

If you head out the back exit of Piccadilly station you drop initially to the metro level and then the escalator gravitates down again to Fairfield Street at ground level and the accompanying taxi rank. Just beyond the cabs is a lift that takes you up to Platform 12 and then onto the next level and into the waiting area outside Platform 13 and 14. For more unscrupulous punters it could be used as a ticket barrier avoidance route!

Piccadilly Station with the lift in the right of picture. Image Credit showmethejourney.com

There are a plethora of breweries near the station ensconced in back streets and railway sidings. If you walk down Baring Street, you reach the hidden oasis of Mayfield Park, the 6.5 acre environmental green space encompassing the River Medlock which is the city’s first green space for over 100 years. To illustrate the industrial heritage of the area, thirteen Victorian wells were discovered in the construction and three were identified as still functional thus were then utilised to provide 20 cubic metres of water each to maintain the vegetation.  

Heading back from the park you would find yourself at Mayfield Depot which contains Escape to Freight Island with all their food and drink stalls and is also the location for conferences and fashion shows alongside the immensely popular Warehouse Project dance events. When waiting for later trains home on the overhead vantage point of Platform 14 I have regularly borne witness to the most extraordinary queues of customers awaiting access.  

Mayfield Park. Image Credit placenorthwest.co.uk

There was previously a venue alongside the Depot called the Fairfield Social Club on the wonderfully named Temperance Street where I once had tickets for a gig but unfortunately, they upgraded the show to another venue, and I never managed to attend there prior to its subsequent closure. It does now appear they have reopened Fairfield but in a different location over in Ancoats, near the Blackjack brewery, and they hold regular comedy nights there.   

Back on Fairfield St, you find one of Manchester’s most distinctive institutions, namely Manchester Star and Garter, the name of the establishment derives from the insignia pertaining to the Order of the Garter. It was originally built in 1803 outside the train station which had several monikers, including London Road prior to the current Piccadilly name. The build of the rail link to Oxford Road station in 1849 necessitated a brick by brick 100-yard movement of the venue, with its subsequent reopening in 1877.

Its initial incarnation was as a hotel containing an in house brewery. In 1986, the closure of the adjacent Mayfield station caused a chain reaction of the hotel also ceasing trading, and the area morphed into a brief ‘Dirty Old Town’ period. The building gained Grade II listed status in 1988 and reopened in 1991 as a live music site with its current pub and upstairs club lay out and has thrived despite its unusual location. It currently has a large Ian Curtis mural on one of its side walls.

It was threatened with closure again in the last couple of decades with the potential Northern hub expansion of the railway station. Their future however was solidified in 2020 with a ten year lease being purchased under the auspices of Mayfield Partnership.

It has been used as a location for many TV series including Band of Gold, Cracker, Prime Suspect and most extensively the recent Russell T Davies scripted landmark drama ‘It’s A Sin’. The venue is renowned for indie nights, Smile running for 20 years from 1993 to 2013 and the famous Smiths night which has been running for an even longer period than that.

The Star and Garter. Image Credit NME

It has hosted many diverse groups including Anti-Nazi league meetings, the 30-strong WBA supporters club of Manchester, Vampire Society and a comic night called Anti-Hoot which included the semi-legendary Bolton poet Hovis Presley!  It has mainly a rock/metal roster and was once coined as the ‘Temple of Doom’. Bands that have played there including Half Man Half Biscuit, Discharge, Frank Carter and the Rattlesnakes, Low and remarkably Status Quo in 1999.

For many years I intended to visit but without success, until finally a gig was located, and a sabbatical trip was arranged in March 2015. It does look a little like a haunted house from the outside, evoking comparisons to the Buffy the Vampire Slayer ‘Fear Itself’ episode, but that was instantly dispelled by the warm welcome in the downstairs bar!  We then sallied up to the 200 capacity venue room and the first act on stage was You Want Fox, a noisy female two-piece from Nottingham.

The headline act was the East Town Pirates who travelled in from Ipswich to air their stompy sea shanties and have been referenced as sounding like ‘Motorhead meets the Pogues’. I returned once more in 2022 to see a band called the Reverbs.

In December 2021, local legend Tim Burgess put on a record fair themed event which had a novel set taking place on a Sunday lunchtime at the Manchester Piccadilly Station Mezzanine. The first challenge was actually finding this location and it transpired to be in the aforementioned metro entry level. By the time we found the spot, we only caught the last three tracks of an acoustic set from Starsailor’s James Walsh, who had an appropriate fine busker’s voice which matched the setting!