Mayfair Ballroom

If you were in a north east band in the mid to late sixties it is likely that that there would be two Newcastle venues on your wish list of places to play – the Club a’Gogo and the Mayfair Ballroom. If you did get a gig at either or both there was a good chance that you would be supporting a well known band . Both the Gogo and the Mayfair regularly booked the top touring or chart bands of the day. There the similarity ends. The Gogo was a small to medium sized venue, which appeared full when there were just a few hundred people inside. The Mayfair, however, had a capacity of a few thousand and, although lacking the intimate feel of the Gogo, had a great atmosphere on a good night.

Unlike the Club a’Gogo which had a life span of around a decade, the Mayfair was a popular venue from the sixties until it finally closed in 1999. It is reputed to have hosted Europe’s largest and longest-running rock club, spanning nearly four decades. Some of the biggest bands in the world played at the venue early in their career, such as Pink Floyd, U2 and Nirvana.

The material on this page is primarily about the Mayfair between 1966 and 1971. If you are interested in the Mayfair Rock Disco of the nineties then click on this link.

Entrance to the Mayfair Ballroom on Newgate Street

The entrance to the Mayfair was on the corner of Newgate Street and Low Friar Street (now the site of the Gate Leisure Complex). It had an oblong-shaped ballroom with a large balcony right around the room. There were several bars with seating areas on the balcony plus more bars downstairs in the areas surrounding the large dance floor.

In the sixties and seventies there was a circular revolving stage which enabled bands to set up on each side and follow on from each other without a break in the music. When a really popular band appeared there would often be a wooden barrier in front of the stage to stop over enthusiastic fans getting at their idols.

The revolving stage

Sneeze at the Mayfair in 1969 behind a fan proof barrier!

Pierre Pedersen, the organist with Sneeze, once told me an amusing anecdote about an incident involving his previous band Coloured Rain. It had occurred on 26th September 1968, several months before he joined Sneeze. Coloured Rain had played at the Mayfair on the same bill as Pink Floyd and the Nice (forerunners of Emerson, Lake and Palmer) plus another local band called the Sect. Coloured Rain had drawn the short straw and had to follow on from the Nice. The climax of the Nice’s set was their electrifying instrumental version of Leonard Bernstein’s ‘America’ (from West Side Story). As ‘America’ reached its crescendo with the extremely heavy sound of the Nice reverberating through the Mayfair, Keith Emerson was standing on his Hammond organ, feet on the keys, throwing big knives at his Lesley cabinet. The stage revolved with the last chords of ‘America’ still in the air and with the crowd shouting for more. As the Nice disappeared, Coloured Rain came into view playing a very weak version of the Drifters’ song – “Down at the Club”. The Mayfair floor cleared within seconds and Coloured Rain, in particular, Pierre the Hammond organist, learned the true meaning of the phrase – “a tough act to follow”!

Paul Kossoff appearing with Free at the Mayfair in March 1970 (photo kindly supplied by David Harding)

One of the hazards in playing at the Mayfair was that the balcony overlooked the rear of the stage and was a good place for people to stand and aim abuse or even missiles at the band if they didn’t like them. The Alan Bown Set appeared at the Mayfair in 1970 and during their opening number a glass was thrown onto the stage from the balcony area above. The band promptly left the stage and refused to return. When I appeared at the Mayfair quite regularly with Sneeze in 1969 and 1970 we used to strap our four PA (open backed) speaker columns to the balcony above the stage. After one gig we discovered that someone had methodically punctured each of the sixteen speakers with a knife. Luckily the cuts were clean and didn’t affect the sound too much.

The Mayfair stage with the balcony at the rear

The Mayfair Ballroom, which was run by the Mecca organisation, had a resident band called Jimmy Bence and his orchestra for formal dance nights. The venue was also hired out for corporate events (with or without the resident band) or to local promoters for a fee. A Newcastle booking agent called Ivan Birchall promoted a lot of gigs in the late sixties. He would book one or two top bands and fill the bill out with a couple of local bands that were on his books.

In 1970 the Sunderland promoter, Geoff Docherty began promoting concerts at the Mayfair in addition to the gigs he had been promoting at the Bay Hotel and Locarno in Sunderland. Geoff’s first promotion at the Mayfair on Thursday 9 April 1970 featured Rory Gallagher’s Taste and Black Sabbath.

Mayfair ticket

The first time I played at the Mayfair was with the Jazzboard in April 1966 supporting the Pretty Things. I particularly remember the night because our drummer, Nigel Olsson didn’t turn up. He had been picked up by the police earlier in the evening on a warrant for some trivial matter and they wouldn’t let him go to the gig. We had to persuade the Junco Partner’s drummer, John Woods to fill in for Nigel. I subsequently played at the Mayfair regularly with three other bands – Village, Sneeze and Scalliwag. I remember one gig at the Mayfair in December 1969 when Sneeze was supporting Love Affair. The Love Affair’s vocalist Steve Ellis surprisingly announced on stage that he was leaving the band. There were lots of tears from the band’s stunned fans. I suppose there’s one gig at the Mayfair I’ll never forget. That was on the 24th May 1968; the night I first met my wife!

Eddie Martin, the vocalist with popular Newcastle band the Sect remembers that the band used to play every Thursday with two different local bands and usually a top chart band. The bands that Eddie remembers being supported by the Sect were the Troggs, The Move, Humble Pie, T Rex and Dantalions Chariot (which was Zoot Money’s band when he moved away from the soul music).

Here’s list of some of the gigs at the Mayfair (compiled from various sources) for the period 1966 to 1971: -

25/02/1966 – The Animals
21/04/1966 – Pretty Things & Junco Partners
14/07/1966 – Alan Price & Chris Farlowe

05/02/1971 – Family & Dada
18/02/1971 – T. Rex
18/03/1971 – Led Zeppelin
26/03/1971 – John Peel introduces Mott The Hoople & Medicine Head
08/04/1971 – Skid Row
30/04/1971 – Quintessence & Stone The Crows
14/05/1971 – Buddy Miles, also Robin Ayers
28/05/1971 – The Faces, featuring Rod Stewart
18/06/1971 – Curved Air
25/06/1971 – Deep Purple & Quiver
03/07/1971 – Procul Harum, Stone The Crows & Chicken Shack
09/07/1971 – Groundhogs
16/07/1971 – Wishbone Ash
23/07/1971 – Coloseum & Osibisa
30/07/1971 – Rory Gallagher & The James Gang
06/08/1971 – Curved Air & Medicine Head
13/08/1971 – Mott The Hoople
20/08/1971 – Quintessence & East of Eden
2708/1971 – Faces
17/09/1971 – Curved Air
08/10/1971 – Wishbone Ash & Quiver
22/10/1971 – Quintessence & East of Eden
29/10/1971 – Stone The Crows
18/11/1971 – Edgar Broughton Band & Stray
17/12/1971 – Juicy Lucy & Fat Grapple

Sneeze at the Mayfair