Fifty years after Eric's first opened its doors in Liverpool, the pioneering venue is still remembered fondly for its role in transforming the city's music scene. The club, which operated for just four years before closing in March 1980, became a key stop on the UK touring circuit and helped launch bands including Echo and the Bunnymen and the Teardrop Explodes. Its stage also hosted acts such as Joy Division, The Sex Pistols, Talking Heads, and the Ramones.
The birth of Eric's
By the mid-1970s, the Merseybeat scene that had produced the Beatles and Cilla Black was waning, while punk and new wave were taking off in Manchester and London. Ken Testi, who had been tour manager for the Liverpool band Deaf School, and Roger Eagle, a caretaker at the Liverpool Stadium who oversaw its music events, joined forces to create Liverpool's answer.
Speaking to the ECHO, Ken Testi recalled: "Come the summer of 76, we were both looking for something else to do because the Stadium had closed and I'd stopped working for Deaf School at that time. So you had two mavericks loose, looking for something to do. And Roger suggested going into a sort of club-sized operation, which I was interested in."
He added: "There were very many clubs in Liverpool at that time that were doing very, very sad business. The model from the 60s wasn't translating into the 70s very well. It was tired and worn out. But I'd been all over the country looking at successful operations."
Ken Testi noted that new music was not reaching Liverpool at the time: "If you were to look at any of the music papers at that time, the classified ads at the back were full of venues all over the country with really interesting-looking acts, and you could read about the acts in the reviews section. But none of them were coming to Liverpool. So it seemed that there was an obvious gap in the market."
Opening night and early success
On October 1 1976, Ken and Roger opened Eric's, hosting The Stranglers on the opening night. A week later, the Runaways played to queues stretching round the street. The club's quick success attracted promoters, and soon Ken and Roger were flooded with acts wanting to play.
Roy White, lead singer of the short-lived Liverpool band Berlin, remembered Eric's in its earliest days: "Eric's came along, and it just attracted like-minded people, for about six months. And then, it got famous, because of the bands that were playing there. The tabloids got hold of punk, and were turning punk into something that was a little more savage than it actually was."
Roy White described the atmosphere inside the club: "You used to go down those stairs into Eric's, and you'd get that waft of stale beer on the carpets, but then you'd just hear this most incredible music. It just opened your soul. As a young Liverpool lad, you just didn't get to hear that kind of stuff."
He added: "Eric's felt like a safe haven, you didn't feel threatened at all. Like-minded people just gravitated to that club. After seeing the Pistols, and then we got gigs, I would invite friends. I invited my friend, Paul, he came down to see us play there, and then he said it changed his life. I think Eric's was life-changing. I'm sure the Haçienda, Manchester, was life-changing for those people. I think, these sort of clubs popped up all over the country. You had all of the clubs in London, like The Marquee, The Roxy, all of those kind of clubs, I'm sure they were all life-changing for Londoners. But Eric's was ours."
A deliberate look and personal memories
Ken Testi said the club's distinct look and feel was deliberate: "All the club operators, by and large, historically, always tried to make their venue special in some kind of a way, but we just rode right back against that with a very mundane name, no expectations of the name, it didn't give away any clue about what you might find inside. Historically, they'd been feminine, aspirational names: Cinderella's, Tiffany's, Rebecca's. So I took it back to Anglo-Saxon male, and let the music do the talking. Let the show define the crowd."
For Berlin's guitarist, John Reynolds, Eric's holds a personal place in his heart, as he met his wife Gail there. He recalled: "I always remember that I met my missus there. My mate Jeff was celebrating his first week working at Ford's, so we had his wage packet to spend. And we went into Eric's, and Gail [his now wife] was in there with her mate Irene."
Reflecting on his time at Eric's in light of a terminal cancer diagnosis, John Reynolds said: "When you know something's finite, you go through a lot of phases, one of the phases I went through was, about my legacy. I want to leave some kind of a legacy, documented history, of my life, and that very much includes the Eric's days. People won't be able to ask me, so at least, maybe one day my grandkids will go and have a little listen to their old granddad's music, and maybe hear all the old tales, of what we used to get up to when we were their age."
