Independent
music venues are under threat, with 35% lost in the last decade, but Leeds’ Brudenell Social Club is thriving. Between Bosnian tango and Laurence Fox, we find out why
Regulars at the Brudenell Social Club in Leeds have all sorts of favourite memories of the venue. For some, it is the night Thee Oh Sees played in the games room and had people dancing on the pool tables. For Lyndsay “Lins” Wilson – who used to live opposite and wheeled her amplifier over to play in bands such as Grammatics and Mother Vulpine – it is the time that the
Israeli punks Monotonix “set
fire to the drum kit, wrapped the drummer up in a rug and carried him outside on a stool while the audience formed a conga line around the car park”. Licensee and promoter Nathan Clark laughs as he recalls how a cab driver once got onstage during a gig and grabbed the microphone to yell: “Taxi for Cooper!”
The 107-year old venue encourages colourful things to happen. To walk through the old wooden doors of this innocuous looking concrete building is to enter a Tardis. It reveals two 400-capacity live rooms (one an amphitheatre shape, the second – square – added recently), a games room laden with historic plaques of former club presidents and a bustling bar that reflects its origins as a working men’s club. Johnny Marr calls it a “special place”. Evening drinker Martin Trippet, 59, who has been coming here for 20 years, describes the “Brude” as “the best local in the world. Where else can you come for a few pints after work, and walk into another room and see Sebadoh?”