Wednesday, March 11, 2020

The closing of the club that created the new Liverpool scene


Teardrop Explodes : Poppies

[Purchase]

In March of 1980, after police raided Eric's Club during a Psychedelic Furs/ Wah! Heat show resulting in a dozen arrests including two Furs, owner Roger Eagle announced the place was closing. 

The club hosted all the great acts of the time like Elvis Costello, Buzzcocks, The Clash, Joy Division, Ramones, Sex Pistols, Iggy Pop, Ultravox, Wire, and XTC. What happened inside the club helped Liverpool recreate an incestuous music scene that would involve Wah!Heat, Teardrop Explodes, Echo + The Bunnymen, Frankie Goes to Hollywood, Dead or Alive and many others.



When bands weren't onstage, Eagle played great music in the club, from American bands like Love, The Doors, Captain Beefheart and the Electric Prunes as well as Krautrock. It would be difficult to overestimate the impact this had on the up and coming musicians like Julian Cope and Ian McCulloch who gathered there.

Said DJ Greg Wilson to BBC Radio's Sounds of A City

Without Eric's I think there'd be no Kilimanjaro, no Teardrop Explodes, no Echo and the Bunnymen. The two of those bands are totally intertwined. They're almost the same band, cut in half into two separate things, produced by the same people. Eric's is fundamental to the whole thing.



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