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City that found a new musical heart as political reality hit home
In the early 1980s, Sheffield – or the Democratic Republic of South Yorkshire as it was widely known – was about to be crushed by a hammer blow more powerful than any of those heard beating out steel in the city's foundries.
By the end of that decade, Margaret Thatcher had cemented her position as public enemy number one, unemployment had soared and the divisions left by the miners' strike were still raw.
Change had been enforced and no one felt it more than a group of musicians who until the country's first female Prime Minster took an iron grip of the country and its unions had been happily claiming the dole without too many questions being asked.
"Sheffield was at the centre of everything important that was happening in the country," says Eve Wood, whose latest documentary The Beat is the Law looks at the relationship between the city's politics and its music. "The National Union of Miners had its base there and it was the home of steel, an industry which was about to be shaken to its very foundations.
"Overnight, factories across the city stood empty and there was a real sense of loss, but at the same time these empty buildings gave bands somewhere to rehearse."
Eve's film, which is having its first screenings as part of this year's Sheffield Documentary Festival, includes interviews with the likes of Jarvis Cocker, Richard Hawley and Pulp guitarist and violinist Russell Senior. While Cocker admits he was largely unaffected by the incendiary political climate and now feels guilty about his lack of involvement in the year-long miners' dispute, his band mate was much more active.
Senior walked into the NUM offices on the first day the miners walked out to register as a volunteer and was a regular presence on the picket lines.
"When you're making a documentary like this, you can't simply splice a lot of old footage together, you need a narrative arc," says Eve, whose earlier film Made in Sheffield looked at how the late 1970s and early 1980s saw an explosion of live venues in the city. "Russell's story gave us that. He straddled the worlds of music and politics. What was happening to Sheffield gave musicians something to kick against, it brought people together in a way that might not have happened otherwise."
It wasn't long before South Yorkshire bands were attracting the attention of the big London record companies and many like Chakk had a self-confidence bordering on bloody mindedness. Refusing to leave their home city, they persuaded MCA to not only give them enough money to build their own studio but also allow them complete control over their
first album.
It was the kind of artistic freedom few bands enjoyed, but the music bosses ultimately wielded all the power and fearing it was not commercial enough, refused to release the finished album. While Chakk were denied mainstream success, their efforts left Sheffield with the 24-track Fon recording studio which, along with the Leadmill, became a melting pot of musical talent.
"Having made its name as the Steel City, Sheffield was not only an industrial heartland, but it was also an incredibly dynamic and creative place to be and that inevitably fed into the music," adds Eve. "A lot of the bands sampled the sounds of industry on their tracks and they talk of how the foundries nearby would cause the floors to shake when they were in the studio."
The Beat is the Law – the title is taken from the first single recorded in Sheffield by dance outfit Krush who ushered in a whole new genre of music – ends in 1987, the year Cocker had to make one of the most difficult decisions of his life. Disillusioned with music, he called time on Pulp and left Sheffield to study fine art and film at Central St Martin's in London.
"It was like admitting the last five years of my life had been a failure," he says in the film, as others remember how record labels repeatedly refused to sign Pulp, saying the band would never get anywhere with a frontman who looked as odd as Cocker.
They would, of course, eventually have to eat their words, but the rise of the Common People and Cocker's role as a Britpop icon, will have to wait until Eve's next instalment in the sounds of a very special city.
n The Beat is the Law is being screened now until November 12 at the Showroom Cinema as part of this year's Sheffield Documentary Festival.
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Saturday 26 May 2012
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