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On Friday 21st October 1994, Richard Todd launched a new clubnight - Brighton Beach - at The Cockpit in Leeds. The ethos of the club was simple: To celebrate the best of British music, new and old, with attitude and sharp suited style. It was an instant success. Within months Britpop was born, and Brighton Beach rapidly gained wide-spread national press attention as its reputation grew as being one of the key locations where the new Britpop phenomena was emerging. Alongside the Britpop and Indie bands, DJ Dan Guest played the 60’s mod and soul acts which influenced these new bands, the night could not have been better timed. After just a few successful weeks, Richard was looking for an idea to expand the club to include a second room. A friend suggested he talk to Mark Ellis, a well known DJ with an astonishing record collection. At the meeting, Mark played Richard just one record, ’98 Cents Plus Tax’ by The Detroit City Limits (Okeh). The second room DJ & music policy was immediately secured. This combination of classic 60s records and new British pop music in the main room with Northern Soul, R&B, Jazz & Freakbeat in room two set the club apart from all other nights happening, not just in Leeds but around the UK. By now, up and coming bands like Supergrass and The Bluetones were hanging out at the club, the next step seemed obvious: Get ’em on stage! Legendary performances ensued from the likes of JTQ, Menswear, The Bluetones, Cast, Shed 7 and a frenzied secret Supergrass gig in August 1995. On the dancefloor, Mods from the local Scooter clubs were teaching the new Britpop scenesters how to dress and dance, with tight ties and perfect hair. And somewhere in the club, Nick Hodgeson introduced the rest of the Kaiser Chiefs to Ricky Wilson “He was dancing on his own in a cricket jumper and cowboy boots… I thought ‘He’s a great frontman’” Whitey (speaking to the NME in March 2005). Meanwhile, the queues to get into the club were becoming famous in their own right, people were travelling from all over the UK, minibuses full of clubbers from London, Nottingham, Glasgow and Manchester would arrive, a few people even made the trip over from Sweden, Germany and other parts of Europe to attend the night. DJ Gav Needham remembers, “We’d get the taxi to stop further down the street, so that we could walk past the queue with all our record boxes, the anticipation and excitement was just incredible.” By now the popularity of the club was sealed and new nights followed in 1996, at Sheffield City Hall in the February and Leicester University in the October. Both nights were soon just as exciting as the Leeds night and as Blur and Oasis battled for Number 1 and Pulp headlined Glastonbury, Brighton Beach was creating a new benchmark for multitudes of clubs to follow. It’s now over ten years since the club was launched, and there’s been plenty of changes. Britpops’ backlash had a significant effect on the club during the latter part of the 90’s and turn of the Millennium, Coldplay and Radiohead had become megastars, music with real Rock’n’Roll spirit was thin on the ground and in early 2001 the original Cockpit night ended. Luckily The Strokes and White Stripes were about to come to the rescue, both bands creating classic guitar records that can actually be danced to in nightclubs. 29th September 2001 Brighton Beach was launched at Newcastle Student Union, and just a few months after Brighton Beach left the Cockpit, it was re-launched at the newly refurbished Leeds University Stylus venue on Saturday 13th October 2001. The night was a monumental success, with the gathering of so many old faces, our great DJ team Helen Baron, Tony Leighton and Gav Needham, and of course, plenty of new faces were there too. Even though many of the bands, which helped provide the club’s initial identity, have disappeared, Brighton Beach remains as strong today. The unifying factor has always been a love of classic music. It is on this notion of providing something ‘classic’ that the Beach has sealed its reputation. “You’ll still hear a lot of new music at Brighton Beach,” says Richard Todd, “but we mostly play uplifting classic tunes, timeless tunes; that are immune to fashion and trends. That’s why at Brighton Beach you’ll hear an Aretha Franklin or Rolling Stones record played alongside a White Stripes or Supergrass record, and of course, all the great Modern British bands, the classics of the future.” |
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