Leadmill: Music venue's incredible musical legacy and how earlier club helped launch Joe Cocker

Did you know – prior to its present guise that began in the early 1980s – it was a thriving teenage club that helped put a local gas fitter on the road to international fame and fortune?

His name was Vance Arnold and you’ll probably know him as Joe Cocker, the name that went on to sell millions of records worldwide.

He was the local resident act at the Esquire Club that used to be housed above where the Leadmill is now.

John C Haywood (better known as ‘Johnny Hotdogs’ way back then) worked behind the bar every Saturday night; waited patiently whilst Joe Cocker finished his tea before driving him down to the club and once ferried a bloodied Screaming Lord Sutch to the Hallamshire Hospital.

He said: “The Esquire Club in itself was quite unique, There was three levels, nothing much downstairs, then a very steep set of stairs with a flat section halfway. As you came around at the second level there was a pay desk and the girls’ toilet, then upward to the dance floor and stage, which was at the far end.

“The stage had a round roof support right in the centre, and it was this round support that Dave Berry crept around with his gloved hand.

“Around the dance floor was subdued lighting along with fluorescent lighting that showed up anything white. On the top floor, you could sit on a stool around a full-size beer barrel.

“People that went to the Esquire Club, consisted of rock and rollers/mods/rhythm and blues, and country. There was music for everybody. The club was a success right from the start, we had to turn people away a lot of nights. I don't think looking back there was that much rivalry between the Esquire and the Mojo [Peter Stringfellow’s popular teenage club in Burngreave]. The latter tended to go for more expensive entertainers. The Esquire had a lot of rhythm and blues acts straight from America.

“The relationship between the Esquire/Twisted Wheel and the Cavern was great, everybody was looked after at all three clubs.

“To work at the Esquire was great. I was known as 'Johnny Hotdogs' as I cooked the burgers in front of everybody and sold Coke. No beer, you had to go to the 'Rodney' just down the road for that.

“Joe Cocker was the resident band and he was still a gas fitter for the then Gas Board at that time. Sometimes he was late, and I had to go and pick him up. He would rush around to get changed as his mother shouted “Joe your tea is on the table” - he would wolf it down, and I would drive like billy oh to get back to the club.”

* You can read more about the Esquire in the ‘Dirty Stop Out’s Guide to 1960s Sheffield’ book from www.dirtystopouts.com that retails at £17.95

Words: Neil Anderson