Invisible Thread

A guide to venues older than your Grandma and twice as noisy

Every country likes to claim it has the oldest music venue in the world. New Orleans points to Preservation Hall, Toronto shouts about the Horseshoe Tavern, Amsterdam nods toward Paradiso. There is always someone ready with a plaque, a date, and a half-remembered anecdote about a trumpet player. But if you want to look at where live music has been running the longest in the same physical space, you probably have to look at the UK. We have been at this for centuries. Venues, pubs, inns, cellars and clubs where musicians turned up, someone passed a hat or pulled a pint, and suddenly a tradition had started. This is one of the oldest music venue economies in the world, and the question of which is the oldest surviving grassroots music venue in Britain is not just a pub quiz, it is a chance to consider how long people have been turning up to small rooms to hear something new.

If you start with buildings rather than programmes then the winner looks pretty clear. Nottingham’s Ye Olde Salutation Inn has stones that date back to the thirteenth century. It is built into caves, its timber has survived more winters than it cares to count, and yet upstairs there is still a room where guitars are sometimes plugged in and sticks give skins a good bashing. Nobody built it as a venue, it was never meant to host amplified music, but the fact that a structure that predates most of modern Nottingham is still shaking to a rhythmic beat makes it a contender. It is part museum, part pub, part music space, and the oldest surviving fabric of any live music room still in use.

Travel north and Glasgow offers a different kind of claim. The Scotia Bar opened in 1792 and has played a huge role in the city’s folk tradition pretty much ever since. For most of those 200 plus years its role has not been as a ticketed stage with posters out front, it was a circle of chairs and a session that can last until morning. Generations of musicians have used it as a proving ground, and audiences have treated it as their own living room. If the question is where the oldest uninterrupted relationship between a pub and live music still exists, the Scotia is hard to beat.

London’s George Tavern, which I wrote about last week, has its own heritage, standing on a site that has housed inns for hundreds of years, its current nineteenth century building now a fortress against developers. Pauline Forster has fought to keep it alive for the last two decades and every night of live music there is proof that history is not just in the bricks but in the decisions to keep booking. The George is not as old as Nottingham or Glasgow in its structure, but it embodies something else that’s about the history of music in the UK; the long fight to keep historic buildings working as grassroots venues rather than curiosities.

If instead you prefer to measure from the earliest verifiable and documented live performance then Manchester takes centre stage. Band on the Wall can produce paperwork showing a music licence in 1932 and a landlord who, by 1937, had installed a stage literally on the wall so bands could play above the crowd. The pub had existed for over a century before that, but the documentation of music as a defining part of its existence is clear and early. It is hard to argue against a venue that can pin its music history to legal records rather than just myths, folklore.

London has its own answer, and it comes with a specific documented and detailed night. On 24 October 1942 the Feldman Swing Club held its first session in the basement of 100 Oxford Street, blackout curtains across the door, and a war still raging above ground. That basement became the 100 Club, and it has run live music ever since. If you want a moment to etch into a calendar, that is the one.

The question of continuity is less straightforward. Lockdown in 2020 shut every venue in the country. Does that mean nobody now has an uninterrupted run? Most of us are inclined to forgive a global pandemic. On that basis the 100 Club stands strong. It has booked live music since 1942 without changing its core purpose and continually adapting to the changing sounds and fashions of the city around it. Ownerships shifted, genres passed through, but the core habit of live performances and packed audiences never faltered. Even when audiences could not attend in person, the club found ways to broadcast music and keep the programme alive. Full declaration of possible conflict of interest in considering their right to claim the title.. I’m biased; it’s the first place I ever paid to get into and the pillar I leaned on my first night there all those years ago is still there. I leaned on it last week just to remind myself why I do what I do.

The Half Moon in Putney has its own proud record. Since 1963 it has offered live music almost every night. It is a suburban pub that became a national institution, where residencies, open mics and headliners all shared the same small stage. It has weathered threats of closure and changes in the industry but has held on to the nightly rhythm of live music. If you define continuity by frequency, the Half Moon deserves to stand alongside the Oxford Street basement.

Family stewardship is another way to judge longevity. The 100 Club again comes into play, run by the Horton family since 1958. Jeff Horton grew up in the club, worked in it, and eventually became its figurehead. It is still family run, with the amazing Ruby the latest Horton to guide it through the challenges of trying to do anything like this in central London. That continuity of care is part of why it survives. Family devotion does what corporate strategy never could.

Other cities can match that sense of family but not always in years. The Dublin Castle in Camden has been run by the same family for decades, giving it a stability that helped nurture countless bands. The Louisiana in Bristol has been kept in one family’s hands since the late eighties, quietly acting as a launchpad for artists who now fill arenas. They do not stretch back as far, but they prove the model.

By now you can see the problem. Ask the question in terms of buildings and Nottingham’s Salutation claims it. Ask it in terms of tradition and the Scotia Bar will shout louder than anyone. Ask it in terms of documented performance and Band on the Wall can wave its 1932 licence while the 100 Club holds up its wartime jazz debut. Ask it in terms of continuity and the 100 Club and the Half Moon wrestle for the title. Ask it in terms of family and the Hortons almost certainly take it, with Camden and Bristol nodding behind. Each answer is right depending on how you frame the question.

In the end it’s just another daft debate that I like to chat to people about as a way to fill the gap before the next band comes on. Nobody’s writing it into law, nobody’s chiselling it on a plaque. But if you’re going to argue about something, it might as well be about which damp old cellar/toilet/pub/venue first let a drummer through the door.

I’m sure I’ve forgotten someone, so don’t hesitate to let me know who that is.