This weekend Def Leppard will perform at Wembley as the headline act for the first time. But the rock band started out playing in much humbler venues
For Def Leppard, deception was required, at least initially. The band would “turn up at a working men’s club promising thewe would play ‘Tie a Yellow Ribbon’,” the lead singer, Joe Elliott, has said. But instead of a set of soft-pop tunes familiar to the distracted drinkers, the group would play their own heavy-metal songs. There might be one pleased punter, Mr Elliott said, “but the rest of them just tolerated the noise.
The clubs’ role as incubators of rock music might have surprised their founders. The first club was opened in Reddish, a locale south-east of Manchester, in 1857; Henry Solly founded the Working Men’s Club and Institute Union in 1862. “The Club Rooms in every locality will form the strongest counter-action to the allurements of the Public House,” he wrote. Solly hoped the clubs would offer uplifting education for their members.
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