Live forever? Why the future of Brit pop depends on pubs
Bands like Oasis honed their craft playing on sticky carpets in pubs, but with the sector struggling the future of live music is in peril too, says Mick Forster
The recent rush for Oasis tickets proved one thing – Britain’s love for live music is as strong as ever. It’s woven into our culture and puts the UK on global maps. British artists dominate global charts, our festivals and stadiums attract the world’s leading artists and the music industry contributes billions of pounds every year in tax receipts.
But go back 34 years and Noel and Liam weren’t selling out stadiums – they were bottom of the bill, playing on sticky carpets and a wooden stage at pubs in Manchester. Without venues like The Boardwalk allowing them to hone their craft, there would be no Oasis, no eight-hour ticket queues, no Wembley.
And they aren’t alone – Sam Fender, The 1975 and The Rolling Stones all built their careers in these spaces. Every stadium-filling act starts somewhere and for many, that’s in a pub on a damp, Friday night playing to punters who’ll go on to be life-long fans.
But these vital first steps are disappearing. The UK’s nightlife and cultural economy are in sharp decline and it’s not just underground clubs and grassroots music venues shutting their doors – pubs are in crisis too.
9,000 pubs could close this year
The UK Spirits Alliance has warned that over 9,000 pubs could close in 2025 due to rising costs and tax pressures coming into play this April, a figure backed by evidence that hospitality is now the third-highest sector for business administrations.
We simply can’t be blind to the fact that when these venues disappear, so do the opportunities for artists, promoters and the entire ecosystem of live music. A crucial driver of spending, footfall and community engagement, the two sectors are intrinsically linked, where live music fuels hospitality, and hospitality fuels music. Not only do venues give thousands of emerging artists the chance to learn their stagecraft and develop their live persona to give them the opportunity to break into the bigtime, but the benefits for pubs are also huge. We know customers are more likely to stay and spend more when artists are playing, and three in four actively choose to visit a venue if it has live entertainment over a venue that doesn’t. At a time when venues are fighting for survival, these numbers are impossible to ignore.
Nothing will highlight the sector’s desperate position more starkly than the upcoming BRIT Awards in March. The annual spotlight on the UK’s biggest music stars is also the night that propels the careers of the next generation. The Rising Star Award, which has previously launched the likes of Adele and Florence + The Machine, celebrates the future of British music, but the majority of these artists got their start performing in small, local pubs before moving onto pure grassroot venues and then the dizzying heights of the Brit stage.
With thousands of these sites on the precipice of closure, industry leaders around those tables at the O2 must now wake up to the very real fact that the pipeline for future BRIT winners – and future global stars – is shrinking.
Furthermore, the Treasury, the culture secretary, and the wider government must now accept the value of live music to both the economy and British culture is critical, and better support those first stage venues hosting live music in next month’s Spring Statement.
If the UK wants to keep nurturing world-class music talent, and as music fans, we don’t want a future where the UK produces only recording artists over true live performers, we must protect the very venues where these artists take their first steps. Without support, the UK risks not only losing a key part of its hospitality sector, but its music pipeline and ultimately, losing global cultural influence too.
The question is: will we listen before the music stops?
Mick Forster is CEO of Gigpig