Tag: Rod Stewart

Liverpool Venues 21 to 24

Liverpool Tess Riley’s is a hostelry that is situated on Great Charlotte Street. The history behind the naming of this boozer runs back to prior to the Second World War, so if you are sitting comfortably, I shall begin…

Back in the 1930’s an entrepreneurial lady called Tess Makin developed her initial business acumen when working on her mother’s market second hand clothes stall. On the occasional non-market days, she took it upon herself to travel over to the Wirral to pick up the stock. She became a dab hand at bartering with the affluent traders to obtain the best price before returning to the market and selling on the goods for a tidy profit. In 1947, she marries a chap called Joe Riley and they had four children together. Bear with me, I will get there eventually!

Tess Riley. Image Credit pubsgalore.co.uk

In 1970, when her kids had grown up, she retrained in the pub industry and undertook her apprenticeship at the Pig and Whistle and the Old Mona. She then took over the ropes as The Jester for five years before she bought the freehold of The Beehive in the Mount Pleasant area of the city in 1978.

Her novel approach of installed a free jukebox that only played songs from the 1940’s, 50’s and 60’s captured the zeitgeist of the era and the once quite pub was transformed into one of the busiest places in Liverpool. They also staged live music at quiet periods and on Sundays where Tess herself would step up alongside the resident organist to contribute a couple of ditties. She was reportedly very glamorous, and this provided the launching pad for her retirement on board cruise ships.

Her eldest child Joan also moved in the family trade and ran a couple of successful pubs using the same tried and tested template. In 1996 they purchased a unit in the former Blackler’s building and then decided to name the pub in honour of her mother. It remains a lively place to this day thankfully staying away from karaoke, but they do have live music and on my one visit I saw a local lass called Annie perform there.

Directly above Tess Rileys is the Liverpool Central Sports Bar, which is a very popular wall to wall sports viewing establishment, but they also stage live music, and I once saw a local fella called Edwin play there.     

Celtic Corner. Image tripadvisor.co.uk

Nearby to there on the intersection point of Lime Street and Ranelagh Street you would find the Liverpool Celtic Corner. As I am sure you can glean from its moniker, it is another Irish based hostelry. It initially opened in 2017 taking over from the old retail site of the Army and Navy stores. It is a very large establishment with an enormous room downstairs and a function room for hire situated in the upstairs area.

There is an abundance of seating at the front for the sunshine days. It also had a mechanical rodeo bull that kicked into life every Saturday from 3pm but I believe that has been retired and sent to pasture a couple of years ago. There is a sizeable standalone stage, and I saw a decent local singer Lochlan undertaking a gig on that very stage.

Nearer to the main train station on Lime Street is located the Liverpool McHales Irish American Bar. The establishment is a single room bar and when I visited, I saw a singer called Michael perform there. Its history runs back to 1830 and at that point in time it was positioned on the other side of the street. It was initially closely linked to the nearby Empire Theatre and then became a very popular haven for US naval men during the First World War and was known as the American Bar or more colloquially as the ‘Yankee Bar’.

One urban legend is that there was a local prostitute called Maggie May (or Maggie Mae) who used to frequent the bar, and she later featured in a skiffle folk song telling the tale of her robbing a ‘homeward bounder’. The latter term relating to a sailor coming home from a round trip. The song is potentially crafted from a similar 1856 American slave song called ‘Darling Nellie Gray’.

Maggie May songs EP with a picture of the old thriving Liverpool Docks. Image Credit ebay.co.uk

The 1950’s version referenced featured a direct reference to Liverpool in the lines ‘Oh, dirty Maggie Mae, they have taken her away, and she’ll never walk down Lime Street anymore’. The composer Lionel Bart used the tune and back story to devise a musical called Maggie May set in Liverpool Docks, which ran in a London theatre for two years.

The most well-known recorded version was by the Vipers Skiffle Group in 1957, but the BBC decided to ban it because of the lyrics ‘sexual content’. There were also covers by the Searchers, the Spinners and a 40 second edition by the Beatles which serves to curtail Side 1 of their final album ‘Let it Be’. Rod Stewart also stated this song was an inspiration for his No 1 hit of the same name.  

Glasgow Venue 10 – The Hydro

In my 25 years of Mogwai watching, I always thoroughly enjoy when I can catch them in their home city of Glasgow, the three times I have witnessed them at Barrowland have been particular special nights. Thus, in December 2017 another Avanti express was boarded for their latest Glasgow date and I was accompanied by the three Dewhurst boys, Uncle George and a rare appearance from the inimitable Ian McIver.  I had very recently relocated to Manchester and was in an initial marginal homesick phase, so the timing was opportune to have a communal gather incorporating obligatory noisy music.

Glasgow Hydro. Image Credit blogspot.com

Our initial port of call was booking into our rooms at the hotel where we encountered some shenanigans confirming our reservation but that was smoothed out eventually. In a public house directly opposite the digs, I reverted into my traditional ‘sherpa’ mode to glean information on the area around our venue that evening at Glasgow Hydro. There was an impressively helpful bar chap who provided lots of local gen on the Anderston area of town.

It was a fair trek on the next leg as we navigated a footbridge over the M8 motorway. Our destination of Anderston was the birthplace of Thomas Lipton, Sir Billy Connolly and Eddi Reader of Fairground Attraction fame.

There were a plethora of pubs, some of which were the busiest I have seen in years. It sparked recollections of the golden age of alehouses in the 1980’s/90’s when as a scrawny scamp I visited Wall Street and the Grey Horse (turned into Yates Wine House in 1988) on the old main drag of Church Street in Preston town centre on many Friday and Saturday nights out.

Yates Wine Lodge in Preston. Image Credit lep.co.uk

The venues were so busy back in the day you had to plan a loo visit by mapping the quickest optimum route, potentially after drinking Bluebols or the cheap but vile house wine in Yates which was called Volari. The slightly surreal tag line on their advertising at the time was ‘Volari, the wine where the fun begins (backwards)!

Back in 2017, in the second hostelry we visited I was astonished to see Mr ‘helpful bar chap’ who had finished his earlier shift and was now on his own night out, so I managed to purchase him a cold beverage.   

The Hydro has had several names, the latest reflecting the current sponsors as OVO Hydro. It is a large multi-purpose indoor venue with a futuristic design including outer pneumatic translucent cushions. It was built at a cost of £125m and the capacity is between 12306 and 14500 dependent on seating/standing ratios which makes it the fifth largest in the UK. It opened on schedule on 30th September 2013 despite having a roof fire three months earlier, the opening act was Rod Stewart.

It has hosted boxing, wrestling, UFC and Commonwealth games events alongside having the kudos of the BBC Sports Personality of the Year being staged there in 2014. During the Independence referendum period, it hosted Scotland’s largest ever televised debate and has also staged the MTV Europe Music Awards.  Elton John, Kylie Minogue, Nine Inch Nails and Nile Rodgers and Chic amongst others have played there.

After following Mogwai for 20 years and seeing them in some tiny venues back in the day it was gratifying to see them gaining the acclaim they had always deserved and performing to their largest ever audience. However, the corresponding downside to that in my view was that the place was cavernous and impersonal. The band were introduced by their long-time pal, Arab Strap’s Aidan Moffat who was decked out in Santa Claus garb!

Mogwai on stage at the Hydro. Image Credit theskinny.co.uk

They as ever were in fine form with the set list commencing with ‘Hunted By a Freak’ and ending with ‘We’re No Here’.  The night curtailed with a reverse laborious trog back to the hotel where we were very glad to able to rest our heads after another Mogwai adventure!