Disco fever ruled in 1970s at Steely’s nights in Sheffield's Top Rank club

It features heavily in my book, Dirty Stop Out’s Guide to 1970s Sheffield.

The Arundel Gate venue – which years later became the Roxy and was more recently reborn as the Academy – was regularly pulling in anything up to 2,500 punters every Saturday night at its renowned Steely’s night in the heady days of the 1970s.

The chain was also running dance halls in Birmingham, Southampton, Swansea, Cardiff, Plymouth and Reading, but Sheffield dwarfed the lot in terms of size.

Running from 8pm until 2am, Steely’s’had a hardcore and loyal following from Sheffield and South Yorkshire but disco-goers would regularly travel from much further afield.

Even as far back as 1977 they were boasting £35,000 of sound and lighting equipment that created the pulsating carnage, turning the venue into a Pied Piper of seventies clubbing of garish and unrelenting proportions.

Joanna English, then 19 years of age and residing in Mosborough, was one of its biggest fans.

She said at the time: “You can lose yourself here, it’s so big. It’s a fantastic atmosphere.

“At other places they say you can’t do this and you can’t do that. But if you’re having a good time here, just enjoying yourself, other people will join in. Some nights you remember for ages afterwards.”

For the majority it was their first proper foray into nightclub land, with the average age being between 18 and 21 years old.

Redge Cliff said: “I DJed as a part-time job at the Top Rank for two years, early 1977 to April 1979, and did most of the Saturday nights which were billed as Steely's, together with another DJ, Stewart McEgan.

“I had previously DJed at Baileys on Bank Street where we had a go-go dancer who performed in a cage.

“She loved Wild Cherry's Play That Funky Music.

“I auditioned for the Rank and was told to play three records with introductions and a bit of chat.

“I remember playing Wings' Silly Love Songs'and Leo Sayer's You Make Me Feel Like Dancing. I can't remember the other one. I thought I did quite well.

“I didn't make any gaffes, the patter was short but sweet and I cued the 45s up and segued them pretty well. I got the job.

“At that time disco music was massive. It had started to take over the charts and the clubs from around '75 and during the time I was there we had Saturday Night Fever.”

You’d be lucky to find a nightclub that would even bother opening on a Christmas Eve in Sheffield in 2010.

It’s a fact that many northern cities turn into ghost towns whilst nearby towns – Chesterfield for example – are madder than the wild west.

Things were rather different in the seventies.

Redge Cliff: “The Rank could hold up to 2,500 people on a Saturday night and was always sold out at Christmas and New Year's Eve. For sheer numbers, no other club in the area could compete.

“It wasn't just a disco, though. We often put on special events such as dance competitions and also PA appearances by pop stars and groups who were in concert somewhere in the area - I remember The Dooleys being with us one Saturday night !

“We'd get them on stage for a quick interview, play their music a fair bit in the build-up before they came on and give away some of their records, or other goodies like badges and posters.

“We had big one-off promotional nights where the record companies would provide us with plenty of stuff to give away. I remember Saturday Night Fever and Grease as the two of the biggest Steely's nights we did.”

Unlike the meteoric rise of the DJ during the clubbing explosion of the mid-1990s, Redge Cliff is the first to admit that the DJ of the seventies was often thought of as one notch up from the cleaner in many cases.

Whilst a modern-day DJ would rather burn in hell rather than bowing to audience pressure to repeat a tune in any one set, it was common currency at Steely’s.

Redge said: “Stewart and I would play the most popular records sometimes five or six times in a single evening.”

The Dirty Stop Out’s Guide to 1970s Sheffield is available for £13.95 from www.dirtystopouts.com

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