Today, most music gigs take place in very specific places. A concert hall or an arts venue tends to be the main outlet, which scales up depending on the size of the audience. But it was not always that way. Back in the sixties, huge acts would play in venues that were mainly multi-purpose spaces. Below, we discuss three classic venue types used by bands in the sixties.
Social Clubs
Social clubs were really where it was in the sixties and well into the seventies. Workers piled out of the industry, as well as retail jobs, and needed a place to unwind. These clubs served that purpose, giving cheap drinks and entertainment after work and at weekends. Of course, a large proportion of this involved live music.
Today, most social clubs still have a healthy roster of live performances. However, their output has mainly shifted to cover bands and nostalgia acts. As their footfall has declined, the ability to put on contemporary music has fallen. However, there are some places which have been fully redesigned as live music venues, such as the Brudenell Social Club in Leeds.
Bingo Halls and Cinemas
The bingo hall is a classic example of a venue used for one purpose adapting to house the beat groups of the day. Many bingo halls also doubled up as cinemas, so they were used for a wide range of purposes. One example of this was the recently rediscovered Gaumont Cinema. It was a cinema, then a bingo hall and had gigs, even housing its built-in organ. A recent reopening even found setlists from former bands who had played there.
Today, bingo halls are rarely used for live concerts. This is because they have modern, well-designed layouts that are made for the singular purpose of bingo, and not as spaces that can be reconfigured for something else. They have also adapted to be an alternative to online live bingo, which is extremely popular and combines the convenience of online playing with the interactive elements of a real bingo hall. With attractive bonuses, physical spaces need to offer something else and making them as welcoming as possible has been one way of doing this, though it does not leave much room for change. However, you may still find some with the odd solo act or theme night on.
Music Halls
Music halls were much like today’s modern concert venues. They were used since the Victorian era to entertain the masses with song and dance extravaganzas. If they managed to survive the war, then they would probably have been alive and well in the booming era of the sixties.
The quality of acts you could see at music halls in the sixties was outstanding, though not everyone realised it. The famous Tamla-Motown Revue tour of 1965 was booked to play a lot of these halls across the country. Featuring Diana Ross and Stevie Wonder, apart from the London dates attendance was extremely poor. Even adding Georgie Fame to the roster failed to boost ticket sales.