Were You There? Popular Music At Manchester's Free Trade Hall, 1951-1996
Richard Lysons - Empire Publishing
There is much to commend in Richard Lysons' account of Manchester's Free Trade Hall as the details of the main performers and their supporting acts are immaculately presented and it is a treasure trove of information.
However, the author hasn't asked himself the fundamental question, "Who am I writing for?" Although the book has 250 pages, over half of them are the sort of potted biographies that you find in theatre programmes and they could be transferred easily to a book about a theatre in Brighton or Edinburgh. On the other hand, readers surely want to know not only who appeared at the hall but what happened when they did. The Hall held 2,500 people and most of the productions would have been reviewed in national, regional and specialist newspapers.
The eccentric's eccentric Captain Beefheart played each year from 1972 to 1975: what drew him back and what were his performances like? The book doesn't tell us. I would love to know more about how the American humorist Tom Lehrer went down in 1960 - did the audience get it? They certainly loved the explosives expert Blaster Blates who regularly brought his one-man show to the hall.
When Lysons does share performing details, the book comes alive. Miles Davis only appeared once at the hall to mixed reviews. He didn't acknowledge the audience and he was apparently improvising. If he was improvising then surely that is the nature of jazz and why is it necessary to acknowledge the audience? There were classical concerts in the hall and its protocol is to concentrate on the music and not engage with the audience between programme items. Might not Miles Davis have thought of himself the same way?
The most controversial evening at the Free Trade Hall came from Bob Dylan on his 1966 UK tour. He had mixed receptions everywhere but at the FTH, someone shouted "Judas!" This merits a chapter in its own right but the author prefers to give us recommended books. However, he does reproduce a letter from the manager of the hall to the promoter Tito Burns asking for £65 in additional expenses. How was Dylan being paid that day and why didn't the manager simply withhold it from the box office receipts? My guess would be that Tito didn't pay it.
Lysons says that it is "amazing" that Dylan's manager Albert Grossman was only 38 years old in 1965? Why is that in any way amazing? Brian Epstein at the time was only 30.
The foreword for the book is written by the Dylan authority and rock writer, Clinton Heylin who calls the night "The second most important rock gig of 'em all". What's No.1? Dylan at Newport, Elvis or the Beatles on Ed Sullivan, or Hendrix at Woodstock?
Oddly enough, Dylan's concert is not the most notorious event that has happened here as the original Free Trade Hall was built on the site of the Peterloo massacre. The building suffered bomb damage during the Second World War: the inside was gutted and rebuilt so that a new concert hall was opened in 1951. It closed in 1996 and again the author refers us to other books. Surely, in this book, there should have been a history of the building itself.
Time and again, I was looking at the artists appearing at the hall and remembering when I saw the same tour at the Liverpool Empire. One of the oddest experiences of my youth was seeing he Temperance Seven in 1961. I wondered where the lead singer Paul McDowell was and then he came up through a trap door: a simple trick but it worked perfectly. What did he do at the Free Trade Hall?
You will feel sorry for the early British rock and rollers who had to contend with variety artists and were rocking amongst veteran comedians, trick cyclists and ventriloquists. Diana Dors was topping a show with Billy Fury in 1959 and as Fury was having an affair with her, he'd found a novel way to pass the time.
Johnny Cash's road show in 1968 played both Liverpool and Manchester when he was touring on the back of his hugely successful album at Folsom Prison. The Liverpool Empire audience was applauding loudly but it was nothing like his prison reception where they whooped and hollered as he "shot a man in Reno just to watch him die". What would have happened if he had performed at Walton Prison or Strangeways instead? The highlight was when all the artists gathered on stage for a gospel number 'Were You There', which gives the book its title.
The reviews in the book are often bland. Elvis Costello was "a very powerful live performer" and Gracie Fields "flawless and powerful". I find it hard to believe that both Costello and Fields were "powerful". We learnt that T Rex fans caused £1,000 of damage, but what did they do? The author does not appreciate that the Bonzo Dog Band and Scaffold merged their acts on their 1969 tour: surely someone could have told him what went on. At Liverpool for example, they came on very slowly in a line from the back of the Philharmonic Hall singing 'A Long Strong Black Pudding'. There was an explosion which led to several dry-cleaning claims to the Phil.
The listings are immaculately presented with an index and so it is easy to find who was touring and when. However, the Sex Pistols are not on the list and this is because their booking was at the much smaller performance space, the Lesser Free Trade Hall (strange name). Fair enough, Lysons does write a couple of paragraphs about it twice, but they share the same information and again he tells us to look in other books. Doesn't he realise how annoying this is?
There are some terrific photographs in the book, notably from the American Blues festival in October 1964. Mick Groves of the Spinners talks about the autographed wall, which is now to be found at the Radisson Edwardian Hotel, the new owner of the site. We should have had a photo of it.
Spencer Leigh
Were You There
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