A play based mostly on the story of a younger man who purchased a derelict cinema for only one pound and turned it into certainly one of London’s most prestigious music venues opens at Southwark Playhouse Borough on July 23.
Simon Parkes was simply 23 in 1983 when he stumped up a quid in an audacious deal that led to the start of Brixton Academy. What makes the story much more exceptional is that Parkes, a Thalidomide child born with just one arm, had no background in leisure nor any buyers behind him.
He spent 15 years painstakingly constructing the Academy, beforehand an previous Victorian beer corridor positioned in a tough, politically charged space of South London, right into a venue of legends, its stage welcoming the cream of the music world, together with Web page & Plant, Deep Purple, Iron Maiden, Brian Could and Ozzy Osbourne.
Parkes discovered most of what he achieved on the fly, and his memoir Dwell At The Brixton Academy: A Riotous Life In The Music Enterprise was filled with tales of brushes with gangsters, drug sellers, police stings and, on the different finish of the spectrum, tedious council bureaucrats.
Following publication in 2014 it turned a best-seller. When a duplicate fell into the palms of a author and producer named Alex Unwin, the seeds of the play, Brixton Calling, had been sown quickly. Inside months of a gathering with Parkes in a pub in Brixton – the place else? – Unwin had written the play, introduced within the Olivier-nominated director Bronagh Lagan and booked a run of performances on the Southwark Playhouse Borough, positioned simply quarter-hour from the Academy itself.
Speaking to Traditional Rock, Parkes, who left the Academy in 1997, is thrilled by the prospect of the manufacturing, in addition to being barely nervous at being thrust again into the highlight once more. He had simply met Max Runham, the actor and musician who performs him in Brixton Calling, though rehearsals had been nonetheless to begin. “Like me, Max has one arm,” he marvels. “I used to be shocked that moreover appearing he additionally performs guitar – I’m not even certain how he does that.”
The play consists of many songs by well-known bands that performed the Academy, and Parkes reveals that its content material is colored by the period’s political nature. “One of many occasions that first put us on the map was 5 nights from The Conflict, who had been elevating cash for [union leader] Arthur Scargill’s Christmas events for placing miners,” he explains. “Within the early days we booked plenty of reggae earlier than being able to interrupt into [the market for] rock bands. The play follows these adjustments.”
What adopted is what the press launch phrases a “white knuckle journey” that, alongside the best way, included Parkes having a gun thrust into his face. “I went in there very naively, however with an infinite quantity of enthusiasm,” Parkes admits. “I had no thought of what Brixton was like as a spot, and in a approach that helped. When gangsters hustled me, speaking in riddles, I confirmed no concern as a result of I used to be unaware of what was occurring.”
Amongst his biggest early coups was persuading the Purple Sizzling Chili Peppers to play the Academy throughout a time when no British companies would take Parkes severely. So he flew to Los Angeles and advised the band’s administration that his venue was 10 minutes away from Buckingham Palace (which technically is true, if calculated because the crow flies, throughout Victoria Park).
Recalling how he turned concerned with the Academy, Parkes tells of assembly with its homeowners, a brewery who sought £120,000 to signal it over. “The place had been shut for 2 years after reopening briefly as The Honest Deal, but it surely was in dangerous form,” he says. Armed with a spreadsheet that proposed utilizing beer gross sales to cowl the venue’s prices, he satisfied the brewery to simply accept a down cost of 1 pound, plus 10 for each barrel of beer offered.
“Over my tenure with the place, I believe we offered seven million kilos value of beer,” he says, including with a smile: “They liked me”.
Buying the venue’s lease allowed Parkes to placed on greater and larger exhibits, Nonetheless, there have been dips alongside the best way, together with a private chapter when the financial institution foreclosed on him across the time of the Gulf Conflict within the early 90s. “We misplaced plenty of bookings, they usually panicked,” he sighs. “I ended up shedding my home. However I used to be younger and single, and given the possibility I’d do all of it once more.”
Following a run that included Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen and the Rolling Stones, Parkes offered up in 1997. The Academy had moreover begun placing on raves, which wasn’t his cup of tea. When plans for a summer time music competition had been unexpectedly torpedoed by the suicide of Kurt Cobain, Parkes admits: “I had achieved every thing I may with the venue, and after the competition collapsed, so did my enthusiasm. I hung up my boots.”
Lengthy after Parkes had departed, the Academy made headlines for the entire improper causes. It was shut for 16 months after two folks died and others had been injured throughout a crush in December 2022. “The entire thing was tragic, as folks misplaced their lives, however I’m glad that the venue wasn’t closed down completely, as I consider that it modified Brixton for the higher,” he says. “And moreover, too many stay music venues are shutting their doorways.”
It has been reported that the UK now loses a grassroots venue each fortnight. “It’s all very shortsighted, as stay leisure generates a major sum of money for this nation, which can also be exported the world over,” Parkes factors out.
“The play is flattering, and there’s an actual hope that it’s going to do nicely,” Parkes concludes. “There’s even discuss of it being moved into the West Finish – even to Broadway, apparently.”
Brixton Calling runs from July 23 till August 16 at Southwark Playhouse, with exhibits Monday to Saturday at 7.30pm, and in addition Tuesday and Saturday at 3pm. Tickets will be booked on-line.