The Freewheeling the Fun and the Fight for Blackburn North
Up until the early years of the new millennium, Blackburn town centre was packed with Pubs, People, Night-clubs and Restaurants, backed up by a few strategically positioned Takeaways. After 8pm the streets were alive and abuzz. It was always sunny but on a rare bad night you could escape the rain and short-cut through the precinct and besides- the Taxis danced like wasps around the edge of town. There was a nervous dissent in the air if a month passed by without a 'front line' band on at KGH and the 'big cinema' sat majestically in the middle of it all. It was vibrant, varied (there was a pub for every personality) exciting, inexpensive, inspiring and sometimes a little lairy! It had edge and welcome, was never remotely dull and ultimately gave us a bar to match anything the world had to offer.
Barzooka was the Whiskey a Go Go, Pandora's Box and The Cafe de Paris but not on the Via Veneto, not Rome but Victoria St! It was Blackburn's and it was ours. It was the brain-child of two remarkable men, deserving of more than I can offer with the space available and in my suburban scrawl but it was certain they were charismatic and of high culture, irrepressible, urbane, enthusiastic, altruistic and accomplished raconteurs both. Mick you are sorely missed, may you rest in a way you choose to and Steve, you went way, way above and beyond. We owe you both but like the proud 'Fathers' you were, you'd much rather we talked about the bar!
Hemingway once described it in a national Sunday broadsheet as the 'best bar in the world'. It was Wayne, not Ernest but him being the founder of fashion house giant 'Red or Dead', the compliment, in the post-millennial North carried greater context, acknowledgement and glorious recognition. I'll try to describe the place in a style worthy of it but that truly would require Ernest, a man who knew world bars not unlike it!
It was blessed with a cinema-scopic picture window that offered views from the outside in! Of the like minds absorbing the multi-genre tunes and the movie projections, the Victorian log fire, the White Russians, meticulous Mojitos and skewed but spectacular seventies seating. The fashionably unfinished beer garden, the unofficial roof terrace and nights so unequivocally cool they should have been filmed and shown in split screen! It appeared to be a 'non-profit' organisation, busy but excessive, decadent and generous to a fault and a home to all who ventured in, be they poseurs, party-animals, pretty boys or crazy old Poles (Miss you too Stan!) It was a glorious time, it was there forever and then it wasn't!? In the malaise that enveloped the whole town in 2005, things just quietened down. Barzooka carried on whilst sadly many in the North side of the town centre at least, were to ultimately fall. There were still many good times ahead ,be they the random happenings we had always enjoyed, College parties, Birthday bashes or a parade of practising DJ's , young Turks honing their craft and top men one and all, we saluted you then and we do now boys, hope you found another `home`.
Sadly however both for the bar and the town centre`s North this moment proved to be the Rosetta stone and it finally closed its doors at the end of 2016. T and I never ceased going in, not out of loyalty but because we still loved it and the people we met in there.
The thrill, the welcome, the conversations, the sense of place (most of all) the music and the view. It was still the same in what it offered and whilst the happenings still happened they lost their frequency and it wasn’t enough.
Our passion for `Friday night` remains undiminished. Putting on the glad-rags and waiting for the taxi at ten to eight whilst blasting out music from two rooms of the house, checking your money, your look and always supporting your town. It still gives a rush, be it The Drummers, The Rock Box or one of the all-time great Blackburn pubs The Alex on Dukes Brow-but that’s a story for another day!
These posters and this work are reminders of a time, souvenirs of a struggle that still retained style and a salute to those still `hitting the town` in whatever part of the Centre.
A true Labour Of Love in the years 2005 to the present, of course it is not the same but different and still many good times.
Indie man!
This poster was a ‘last chance saloon’ commission! It was a final throw of the dice when it was becoming fast apparent, that even with the the best will in the world from the dedicated (Steve, Liam, Robbie, John and Tony to name a few) and without Steve's unflinching and continued largesse, we didn't have long to go. I placed some 'big hitters' front and centre and stuck it on the wall. None of us did social media or felt like begging friends, so that was the extent of the promotion.
On the first Saturday of the new and final era we made an effort. The bar was given the once over and well stocked, all surfaces polished, lighting tweaked and fire roaring from the off. I had the projector up and away with 'La Collectioneuse, a gloriously French, subtitled, Eric Rohmer classic from 1967. Pretentious? absolutely but in fairness, in a dismal East Lancashire Autumn, they were bright, primary coloured -sun soaked images, from late sixties South of France, telling the story of three beautiful people sitting around a remote country house and/or a St Tropez beach front bar, feeling neurotic, arrogant and confused. As a back-drop it beats a laser show surely? The bar looked stunning, we'd nailed it, it was perfect and then no-one turned up!! No self-aggrandisement here, we were to have later successes with it but on this, the 'first night' we'd failed. At 11 we all abandoned our posts, pulled the chairs around the fire, with a round of drinks, looked at each other and laughed!. We actually had a great night in the end, I'll never forget it, we'd tried but it wasn't enough! You called it when you chose to, Steve no one did more than you for the night time economy of this town in those years, you left with your self-respect, dignity intact and your head held high.
In the closing scene of La Collectioneuse, whilst driving on a secluded road, Patrick Bauchau (Adrien) pulls up to allow Haydee, a femme fatale and the object of his summer of unrequited 'interest', out of the car, ostensibly to chat to two passing boys in an Alfa Romeo convertible, to whom she was once acquainted. She is playing him and this is the moment he knows it. Adrien himself self-assured, hip and no fool sits there, waiting as the engine idles, looks in her direction, mulls things over and lights a cigarette, looks again and without so much as a word of goodbye, drives off and leaves her.
Or Blackburn Dies..,
The first print of this poster was ‘appropriated’ on the very first night we put it up! When I designed it I think i’d been feeling frustrated and it was time to issue threats!!
It was the Coen Brothers, the then film of the millennium and Javier Bardem’s character had a distinct style. He looked the kind of guy who’d fetch up in Barzooka…, maybe on a Saturday.., after 10?
This light fingered fan, completely in the style of the piece, at least had the class to un-screw the display cabinet, remove the poster and methodically return each individual screw into its rightful place.
It was a poster that seemed to work? Well at least two of us thought so.
Steve McQueen - Is Barzooka!
This was the first poster I tried and Steve McQueen is the coolest man who ever lived, so it was basically ‘route-one!’
Steve himself hailed from small town America, was ultra-hip, high on originality, walked his own path, liked a beer and didn’t do corporate. Barzooka was never shackled to a brewery.
He’d have been fine with this endorsement, in fact he’d have signed his name.., in blood!
Not a Cocktail Bar!
Barzooka was from another time - they made cocktails an art not a parody, never any neon nor overblown menu. A select few classics, made well and entirely at their own pace, however busy the night! Personally however I never thought of it as a ‘cocktail bar’. They sold beers and spirits in big glasses and a large amount of imported Latvian vodka. ‘Cocktail Bar’ somehow makes a place sound exclusive, limited, a one-trick pony, which Barzooka was never remotely!.., and I was thinking that, when I thought of this. The Cocktail Party - Alex Katz - 1965.
Alex Katz is my favourite Artist. I only know a few and his style is the easiest for me to understand. He’s 95 now, still active and articulate and in a recent interview said.., “I’m a New Yorker but I was never pretentious enough for New York. I made art that my bowling friends would get!”
An acknowledged genius, at the top of the Art world, talking straight. That made it work.
Bardot and Sachs
It could never hurt to associate with the ‘scene’ that was the burgeoning French film industry of the early 60’s. Brigitte Bardot was at once icon, iconoclast and style icon. ‘Boho chic’ was ‘Bardot-everyday’, 60 years ago! She consistently rejected Hollywood and ultimately dismissed her career in the fight for animal rights, not in an effort to enhance it! To many she was the ultimate woman.
Gunther Sachs von Opel wooed her with his looks, his friends, Ferrari’s and the fast life, with a thousand red roses dropped from a helicopter onto her St Tropez home for good measure!
Gunther was an Industrialist, Author, Art Collector, Sportsman, Photographer and a Billionaire Playboy of whom no-one had a bad word to say. He lived his life to the full and in his twilight years, upon receiving an early diagnosis of impending Alzheimers he ended it himself with a gun. He left a note:
“The loss of mental control over my life was an undignified condition which I decided to counter decisively”.., not pity, no victimhood, no delusion, the ultimate man?.., the ultimate woman and the ultimate bar?……If you’re that type!
Pre-Christmas Counterculture
This modest bill promoted a pre-Christmas Barzooka bash in 2013. It featured a felt tip, some handy scissor work and The Byrds. I was happy playing for drinks, I’d have refused money, if there’d even been any! We were trying to help the bar and the town and I always felt I owed!
On this night, in my head at least, the bar was destined to come as close as Blackburn ever would to revisiting the soundtrack of late 60’s, West Coast, American counterculture, this being an era I had always been ‘two thirds obsessed’ with! For me it was a time of innovative music and fashion, I was not so much taken by the rebellion. In Haight-Ashbury, the self-appointed epi-centre of the ‘movement’, the ‘Freaks’ would have labelled me a ‘weekend bohemian’, which ironically, around this time was the crowd we were chasing in Blackburn!
On this night it was hoped that the US Garage, 60’s beat, Psych-rock would entice, interest, intrigue or offend!? Different themes, however niche and challenging were always the order of the day in Barzooka. It was never about the money, it never sold out and it stubbornly devoted itself to its principles even in the most difficult years and on this night we got away with it!
