Dan Maiden has overseen music curation at The Fiddler’s Elbow for the last 30 years

ARCHWAY-BORN Wolf Alice lead singer Ellie Rowsell warned of the dire situation for grassroots venues across the country, as the band scooped the Best Group award at the Brit awards.

In a victory speech that blended gratitude with caution, Rowsell thanked the north London pubs where the band cut their teeth and “learnt to play their instruments”.

The Wolf Alice singer said: “It’s worth mentioning that despite the billions of pounds the live sector contributes to our economy, last year 30 independent venues closed down.

“Six-thousand jobs were lost, and over half of small venues reported making no profit at all. It shouldn’t be a battle to survive as a band or any artist.”

But what do north London’s grassroots pubs and clubs say about the state of the industry and the challenges facing independent music venues?

Over the years Holloway Road’s Nambucca has been an early-career venue for emerging bands, boasting headliners such as the Arctic Monkeys, Adele, the Kooks, and – in a sold-out 2016 show – Wolf Alice. In 2022 the legendary music venue was forced to close down.

Ellie Rowsell from Wolf Alice performing live at The Brits Awards

A new music-loving owner stepped in to preserve the venue’s long-standing history of platforming up-and-coming bands and artists. But since the new ownership took over, they have had to scale down from nightly music events to just weekend gigs, to save costs.

The venue’s general manager, Brandon Gaul, told the Tribune that grassroots music venues were a “neglected industry” and that the majority of venues are owned by people who “simply don’t care about music”.

He added: “There has been so much corporate takeover of spaces across London recently, they all churn out the same crap and the people who run them don’t put any thought into the music or the entertainment.

“To top it off, the rents for independent venues who don’t own their spot are absolutely extortionate – it’s so hard to just survive, let alone curate proper music line-ups or ticket events. The owners of the venues are ripping them off.”

Jude Bassil, the venue’s sound engineer who has been working in the industry for 15 years, said that independent grassroots venues were caught up in David vs Goliath battles against giant breweries and corporations.

He told the Tribune: “Real grassroots music venues are becoming a rarity. There’s a strange phenomenon at the moment where a lot of the live music industry is being picked up by corporate venues, which are leaning more towards bland, corporate covers.

Jude Bassil

“And that’s the thing as well, if there’s no place for new and up-and-coming bands to play, then we don’t get new and up-and-coming bands.

“They’ll die off and they’ll never get the chance to become the next Led Zeppelin or The Foo Fighters, if they don’t have a chance to grow and build their audience.”

The Fiddler’s Elbow pub has been a cornerstone of Camden’s music scene since it first opened in the mid-1800s, putting bands on every night of the week. Dan Maiden has overseen its music curation for the last 30 years.

He echoed Ms Rowsell’s claim that venues like Nambucca and the Fiddler’s Elbow need “protection” from the government, calling on the national government to “step in” and prioritise the saving of grassroots venues.

“There needs to be more done by the government to inject more money into these small venues, which if they’re not making money over the bar or on ticket sales then they can’t afford their ridiculously high rents and everyday costs,” he said. “Some sort of historic protection order for grassroot venues is extremely important, because what they give back to the community is priceless.

“You take venues like us away, there will be no Brit Awards.

“What’s the point of having a Brit Award when the artists have just streamed their music on TikTok, rather than learned their trade on a stage in a tiny venue like The Fiddler’s.”

This year, the pub was put up for and remains on sale, and Mr Maiden hopes that potential new owners will be able to continue the “brilliant” legacy of platforming community talent.