Well yes I was…  quite a lot during my college days in the mid-1970s!  

Were You There – Popular Music at Manchester’s Free Trade Hall 1951 – 1996 (to give this book it’s full title) sets out to document all the pop and rock concerts at this famous venue in detail.  I missed the book at the time but author Richard Lyons, who has been helping us with publicising Brian Smith’s new book (Boom Boom Boom Boom, The Blues Photographs of Brian Smith), kindly sent us a review copy.  The publishers have made good use of one of Brian’s sixties photographs of T-Bone Walker to make the wrap-round dust jacket (and there are a few more of Brian’s images inside). This is primarily a text book though and logs the concerts across the years from 1951 by date, set out in database form then followed by interesting commentary from Richard and others.  Naturally for those who did attend the venue it is the gig dates you check out first (happily I kept most of my tickets too) but it’s not long before you find yourself drawn into the mass of detail, even for artists you wouldn’t normally be too concerned about.  Richard also adds further context by listing some bands at other venues in the city the same year and an appendix of the bigger concert halls at the end too.  There are plenty of indexes to find pretty much anything you want with ease. It all comes to an ignominious end in 1996 with the venue flogged off to be gutted and turned into a hotel.  Clowns.

Pub by Empire. 2020. ISBN 9781909360815