Band on the Wall: serving Manchester for 200 years

Like many other music venues throughout the UK, Manchester’s legendary Band on the Wall is currently seeking public support due to the hard times brought on by the Covid pandemic. It’s running a crowdfunder as part of the #SaveOurVenues initiative that has been launched by the Music Venue Trust, which is attempting to stave off the closure of independent music venues.

While the government has announced further funding of £75million from its Culture Recovery Fund to help out theatres such as Manchester’s Royal Exchange, London’s Old Vic and the Sheffield Crucible, the amounts awarded to saving music venues have been significantly smaller, despite institutions like the Band on the Wall having a long and storied history, and having just as much if not more of a major contribution to the city’s cultural legacy than venues providing other forms of art and culture.

That being said, money has been available for restoration projects discrete from the Covid crisis. Inner City Music Limited, the charity that operates the venue, announced on 9th November that it has a contractor for its long-planned restoration project, which has received funding from Arts Council England and the National Lottery. The expansion of the venue involves the main venue’s capacity being increased from 350-500, a remodelling of the bar to include an external terrace, and a smaller space being built to hold 80.

With that in mind, this is a good time to have a look at the history, trials and tribulations of this wonderful place that has been central to the city’s music since it first opened in 1932.

The building dates back a further 129 years, beginning life as a pub called the George and Dragon in 1803, with the first landlady being a woman called Elizabeth Marsh, one of the first licensees in that part of town. It was bought by Irish brewers and publicans the McKenna Brothers in 1856 and served the nearby communities of Angel Meadow and New Cross. It remained in the McKenna family until 1910.

Swan St, where the venue stands, was densely populated as recently as the early 20th century, and nearby Smithfield Market ensured a lively areas of buskers and itinerant musicians, many of whom would have frequented the place to play music. Here is a wonderful description of the pub from the Visit Manchester site:

“The George & Dragon would have likely been a hub of entertainment during the industrial era. It is believed, for example, that between where the dance floor and sound desk are now located in Band on the Wall – this was potentially an area where informal entertainment took place during the early pub days. Broadside ballads were a popular form of such entertainment; songs typically written and performed in local dialect. The single-sheet lyrics would typically involve weird and wonderful anecdotes, themes including love, drinking songs and current events.”

As stated above, it is 1932 from which we can date the origin of the modern venue. On the 23rd June that year, its first official music licence was obtained by licensee Luke Mooney. Following that, 5 years later, perhaps the most important figure in the venue’s development took over the pub: Ernie Tyson – former soldier, labourer and boxer, and builder of the famous stage built into the wall that gave the place its name (though it wasn’t officially called Band on the Wall until 1975). Indeed, bare knuckle fights took place there during his tenure.

Band on the Wall. Photo: Pedro Mendes, Flickr/licensed under CC 2.0

It remained in his family’s hands until 1949, and kept pumping out music for Mancunians, visiting soldiers (the area was frequented by lots of US servicemen) and the like right through the Blitz in 1940. As the venue started to become colloquially known by its current name in the 1950s, the entertainment also started to change, with drag acts becoming popular during that period. In the sixties, it played host to local beat groups.

Unfortunately, the early 1970s saw a decline, with half a dozen different landlords in the space of three years, and even more importantly, changes in the local environment, with Smithfield Market closing in 1972. By this time, the venue found itself on the edge of the city in a neglected district with a redundant economy. It even closed for a while in 1974, with owners Wilsons Brewery offering the lease on the open market, with no takers for a while.

But 1975 thankfully saw a change in direction. Co-owners Steve Morris and Frank Cusick brought the jazz flavour for which it’s deservedly famous, including the Jazz Centre Society, plus there were rock nights and gigs from many of the city’s punk legends, such as Buzzcocks, Joy Division and the Fall. Poetry could be seen there from Carol Ann Duffy and John Cooper Clarke, and the venue had a ‘Women in Music’ feature.

After redevelopment work in 1982, the Dizzy Gillespie logo on the sign was brought in, which can still be seen today, and reggae nights from 1981 and later hip hop became a feature of its musical diet. In terms of jazz, performers who went on to have international careers got their break there, such as Mike Walker and Kenny Shaw. Others went on to become educators. Furthermore, it was awarded Best Regional Jazz Venue by The Wire in 1986. Visiting US musicians were a feature, too: Lester Bowie and Sam Rivers both played there.

The nineties saw visits from legends Leon Thomas and Roy Ayers, and a regular night from Graham Massey’s Toolshed. The noughties saw further success and a list of bands too numerous to name, until it was forced to close in 2005 due to the deteriorating state of the building. Inner City Music Limited took this opportunity to raise funds and the venue was relaunched in 2009, leading to another decade of success.

There is no doubt that its success since the 1990s has been helped by the changing face of the immediate environment, as the area around Oldham St and Tib St was rebranded as the Northern Quarter in the mid-1990s. This has led to investment and a growing community of residents, particularly those working in the creative industries, many of whom are attracted to the venue.

To return to the latest restoration project and its context, none of us know at present what kind of city we are going to have once we come out the other side of the Covid crisis, but it’s a reasonably safe bet that investment and its ability to survive will see Band on the Wall weather the storm. It’s survived the decline of Cottonopolis (the name given to the city when it was the biggest manufacturing centre on the planet), two world wars and the industrial decline of the Thatcher era. It can thrive again.