Discover the vibrant Manchester music history of Pips Disco
“9 Beautiful Bars, 11 Crowded Dance Floors. Pips (It’s Behind The Cathedral!)”
Relive the iconic Roxy Room era and Joy Division’s first gig when you dive into the heart of Manchester’s music scene.
Ask anyone of a certain age who was into their music, about their memories of the Corn Exchange and the likelihood is, you will find out about the popular basement nightclub, Pips. A melting pot of music sub-cultures where New Romantic met Punk and Goth met Electronica, with multiple rooms including the legendary Roxy Room with the sounds of Bowie, Bryan Ferry, Blondie and more.
We recently reached out to members of the club via the Pips Disco Facebook page and welcomed a group of ‘Pipsters’ back to discover any parts of Pips which could still be seen. We weren’t too successful in finding the Roxy Room, but they did manage to reminisce over being in the same space where many memories were made and felt a particular affinity with the lower bar of Sixes Social Cricket. Not that we believe in higher powers but whilst visiting, Mick Ronson’s ‘Billy Porter’ randomly came on the playlist which was played almost every club night back in the day.
Opening in 1972 – a decade before Tony Wilson’s Fac 51 The Hacienda opened – Pips was the place that would shape the city’s culture. Head through huge black double doors and down 20 plus steps to the paying in kiosk where the club then split in to two. Many stayed to dance in the room upstairs, but head left down a maze of corridors, stairs and papier-mâché walls (yes really) and you would find the commercial room and beyond that, the famous Roxy Room.
Left to right: Pipsters Debra Madden, Amanda Gray, Sixes General Manager Dimitrios Bachatouris, Janice Pugh & Lily Laina Munster.
Known for playing the latest music plus launching new tunes as they were coming out, it had a character all of its own. Starting with punk rock in the 70’s to Goth and then Electronica in the 1980’s. One of its main claims to fame was being the place where Joy Division played their first gig on January 25th, 1978.
Click here to get a sneak peek in to Pips Nightclub from 1977 and scroll to the bottom of the page for some fantastic photos donated by the Pips Disco Facebook page.
The DJ’s at Pips played a pivotal role in progressing the alternative music scene in Manchester. Becoming well known for laying the foundations of Goth music in the city, they were playing the likes of Siouxsie and the Banshees, The Cramps, Killing Joke, Bauhaus and more.
We recently sat down with resident Roxy Room DJ, Alan Maskell, and I Love Manchester for a chat about his time at Pips.
(Alan Maskell behind the decs at Pips Disco. Courtesy of Alan Maskell)
I Love Manchester sat down with Alan Maskell, DJ at Pips Nightclub to discuss his involvement with the club, his memories from that time and how he got into music.
He said: “I became an avid collector of records, the first record I ever brought was Space Oddity by David Bowie. At my peak, I had about 30,000 records, but that’s been skimmed down to about 3,000 now.”
Alan said his favourite record is the first Velvet Underground and Nico record – as it was so far ahead of its time.
“I got involved with Pips after a friend of mine at school in Bury came to the club and was like, you’ve got to come down and try it, they play all the music we like! For the time that was very rare, almost unheard of so we came down one weekend and it blew me away. It was fabulous.”
Alan recalls that the club played all different types of music with the first room playing commercial tunes and a couple of rooms beyond it, playing rock and roll, electronica, punk and eventually goth.
“It was unlike anywhere else in the city at the time.”
After a few years away to study photography, he returned to the city and back to Pips. Visiting the Roxy Room which at that time was in the cave, he started talking to John Richmond, the DJ at the time who later went on to become a famous fashion designer.
“We got talking and became good friends. I’d occasionally fill in for him when he went to the toilet or whatever, and in the end, I did a night with him. The manager was impressed, so gave me my nights then the owner Gerald Summers, who was at Rotters as well, signed me up to play.”
Founded in 1972, a decade before the groundbreaking phenomenon of The Hacienda, Pips was the brainchild of visionary individuals who sought to create a space that transcended the ordinary. Tucked away behind the Cathedral, accessed through massive black double doors and down a hidden staircase of around 20 steps, Pips immediately transported visitors into an alternate realm. The labyrinthine design of the club defied convention, with its four rooms becoming crucibles for musical experimentation and cultural convergence.
Alan continued: “It was rammed every weekend, the music coming out at the time was Killing Joke, Bauhaus and Siouxsie and the Banshees just came out, and we were just riding the wave. The fashion and the culture were all changing pretty fast. All the cool punk gear, leather stuff, ginormous hair. It captured the spirit of the times. What was amazing, was the club was run on about a 400w speaker. Hilarious really, I reckon most people have a bigger one in their house.”
Pips also used to have live music and was famously home to Joy Division’s first-ever gig. Still named Warsaw at the time, they decided on the name change just before hitting the stage at the club.
Alan continued: “It was very, very sweaty. At the high point of the club, 80, or 81, there was condensation dripping from the ceiling, there were a lot of drooping hairstyles by the end of the night. It was like a cave inside, they paper mache the walls so it looked like a cave! You can imagine how long that lasted, not sure why they decided that.”
“It was very much dressed to impress. The fashion at the time was great, the more outrageous the better. People dressed as mime artists, brides, and all sorts of amazing outfits. People used to make matching outfits, blue velour jumpsuits and sensational hair, it goes without saying really. Massive, massive hairspray going on, it must have been a fire risk down there, you could see a newcomer, because they’d be fairly normal, then a month later, they were the full monty, all the gear on. In that period, music and fashion were one and the same.”
Alan explained that people’s attitudes to fashion weren’t as liberal as they were back in the early 80s, and people had to be careful travelling around in full goth gear.
He said: “It was very dangerous travelling through Manchester in all the gear, getting a bus to Bolton Station, then the train. There’s a lad there with latex trousers and make-up on. You can imagine what that was like at the time, people must have thought we’d landed from Mars. Today, people don’t care do they, especially in MCR. Punks, Goths, they just wear what they want. It’s awesome.”
It was a time of musical insurgency, where Pips was revered for its willingness to cast aside the familiar in favour of the avant-garde. The Roxy Room, one of the most iconic spaces within Pips, epitomised this ethos. From punk rock in 1976 to the blossoming of goth in ’79 and the electronica surge in the ’80s, the Roxy Room was a chameleon-like space that adapted to the shifting tides of music. Bands like Siouxsie and the Banshees, Bauhaus, and The Cramps echoed through its cavernous walls, setting the stage for the goth and alternative revolution that was yet to come.
“Joanne Walley used to rock up all the time, Van Kilmer’s ex-wife – she used to play in a band called the Slowguns. It was all very trendy. Morrissey, Johnny Marr used to come. All the lads out of a certain ratio and Joy Division. Tony Wilson came too. I think it was so popular, just because it was unique. It was the only place you could go and listen to this music live, we also played alternative music that people wanted to hear. The music was out there, it was great, we used to get people coming in and miming, the full David Bowie cracked Actor. It was awesome.”
“They would come in dressed like Mimes and put on the full dance routine, 7 minutes of absolute mayhem with the whole mime routine to Width of a Circle. There was one guy who used to do it, miming, and you’d get the Perry Boys coming in and taking the Mickey out of him – but they didn’t realise he was a champion kickboxer. So they came up to him and tried to throw him off, and just ended up getting seven bells kicked out of them, three lads lying on the floor sparked out by a lad in make-up after 30 seconds.”
I asked Alan why the club was so popular. He said: “I think it broke the mould. It was the first place that was playing that kind of music. Like the Twisted Wheel in the ’60s, playing Northern Soul. People talk about the Hacienda, and I don’t mean to sound bitter – but we were equally as important as the Hacienda in Manchester’s clubbing history, if not more.. The Hacienda wouldn’t have existed without Pips.”
(Alan Maskell outside the site of the former Pips entrance in 2023.)
“People didn’t dress to impress like they did at Pips it was very innocent. Very few drugs, The only time I did them was when I got spiked! People were there for the music and fashion, and to be with kindred spirits, I would say it’s one of the most important clubs in Manchester’s history, definitely the most iconic. Twisted Wheel, Hacienda, yeah of course, for individuality, it has to be number one.”
A decade before The Hacienda, Pips stood as a pulsating testament to the power of music to transcend time and create communities.
Beneath the bustling Corn Exchange, the echoes of Pips’ beats remind us that the spirit of Manchester and its constant innovation and evolution continues.
Extracts taken from an interview by Thom Bamford, I Love Manchester on behalf of the Corn Exchange.
Images with thanks and courtesy of Pips Disco Facebook Page members: Amanda Gray, Debra Madden, Janice Pugh, Lily Laina Munster, Maxine Smith, Pamela Walsh Billington, Yvonne Ratcliffe and Terry Forshew.
