The year the music might die: British clubs face closure

LONDON » When Keiron Marshall was 15, he found his way out of a desperate situation with help from an unexpected source: Eric Clapton. The guitar great was host at the first gig Marshall ever went to, and he was joined on stage by Gary Brooker of Procol Harum, The Who’s Pete Townshend and Beatle Ringo Starr.

Since then, London’s music scene has been a liferaft for Marshall, a musician who now runs a group of small concert venues with his wife. Growing up in south London, he’d endured racial slurs and regular beatings because of his Pakistani heritage. His uncle was killed in a racially motivated attack; his mother was a heroin addict.

“Music for us is a really personal thing,” said Hannah White, Marshall’s wife. “It’s been totally lifechanging.”

But the music scene they know and love may soon be unrecognizable because of the coronavirus pandemic, which has plunged the U.K. economy into its worst recession on record.

Live music venues have been forced to shut doors for nearly five months — and scores are at imminent risk of permanent closure. According to the charity Music Venue Trust, which represents 670 grassroots venues, more than 400 across the country are in crisis.

One of those is Marshall and White’s south London venue group, The Sound Lounge.

The British government announced that indoor and socially-distanced live music could resume on Saturday. But this doesn’t mean that the country’s vibrant live music scene will be immediately restored.

“The truth is that actually only 11% of venues will be able to open in a financially viable manner,” said Mark Davyd, founder and CEO of the Music Venue Trust.

Less than a third of venues have the physical space to house safe, socially-distanced gigs. And the majority of those would lose too much money on these reducedcapacity shows for it to be economically feasible.

Clubs have already amassed millions of pounds in debts since March, with more expected in the coming months.

“In total, these venues are going to be over 60 million pounds ($78.3 million) in debt” by the end of September, Davyd said.

The government announced in late July that 2.25 million pounds ($266 million) would be funneled to 150 grassroots venues that would otherwise have been out of cash by the end of September. The fund was the first slice of a 1.57 billion-pound ($1.86 billion) “culture recovery package” that was rolled out on Jul. 5.

Davyd welcomed the emergency fund, but cautioned that this was just a “short term fix,” one that was only aimed at helping “venues identified as being in crisis.”