Reverend and the Makers: Sheffield legend Jon McClure recalls wild early gigs with Arctic Monkeys
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But Sheffield legend Jon McClure has recalled some of the city’s other lost venues where he gigged alongside Alex Turner and co before they hit the big time.
The Reverend and the Makers frontman was part of the exciting early noughties music scene in Sheffield from which the Arctic Monkeys emerged.
Alex Turner and Matt Helders played in Jon’s first band, Judan Suki, and Jon and Alex lived together for a while and have written songs together.
Jon, who with his band Reverend and the Makers has notched up six top-20 albums over the last two decades, told The Star how his first ever gig took place in the loft of a building on John Street, during what he called a ‘little warehouse party’.
Boardwalk
Like Alex, Jon used to work at Sheffield’s famous Boardwalk music venue, where the Clash played their first ever gig.
He explained how they had a key to the cellar below Alfredo’s hairdresser, beneath the Boardwalk (the name given to the Arctic Monkeys demo which propelled them to fame), and they would throw impromptu gigs there, sometimes performing alongside the Monkeys.
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“We used to advertise on MySpace and put on these little illegal nights,” he said. “You’d never get away with that now.”
Jon and his band also shared a rehearsal room with the Arctic Monkeys, where they would occasionally put on gigs.
Fight inspired Arctic Monkeys song
The Arctic Monkeys song A Certain Romance, from their debut album Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not, includes a line about ‘kids who like to scrap with pool cues in their hands’.
Jon explains how this refers to one night at the rehearsal room where ‘these lads turned up and had a scrap with us’.
The Reverend, as he is known, described how his band and the Arctic Monkeys used to play too at the long-lost Club 60 venue on Shalesmoor, near the Ship Inn.
He compared the basement venue, which in the 1960s hosted the likes of Dave Berry, Joe Cocker and Rod Stewart, to Liverpool’s famous Cavern Club due to its influence on bands in the city.
Club 60
It was renovated in the noughties and used as a recording studio as well as hosting gigs before the building was demolished in 2018.
“That was before Kelham Island became cool and trendy,” he says. “It was one of the incubators of the music scene back then.”
Reverend and the Makers are headlining an all-day party at next year’s Rock N Roll Circus to celebrate the band’s 20th anniversary.
They will be supported by the likes of Groove Armada, The Libertines’ Peter Doherty and Carl Barat, and The Lottery Winners at the event on Saturday, August 30, 2025.
But Jon is also keep to support up-and-coming acts from around South Yorkshire, who he says don’t have the same opportunities he and the Arctic Monkeys had when they broke through.
‘More difficult for new bands’
He says the elder statespeople of Sheffield’s music scene, like Richard Hawley, Pulp drummer Nick Banks and Martyn Ware, of The Human League and Heaven 17, were a great source of support when he was starting out and he is keen to pay it forward.
“There were lots of music venues in Sheffield when I started performing, and MySpace had just started becoming popular. It was a very fertile time for new bands,” he says.
“There aren’t so many smaller venues now and it’s maybe more difficult for new bands, which is why we need to show them some love and pull them up a bit where we can.”
At the other end of the scale, Jon is looking forward to Oasis’ long-awaited reunion after brothers Noel and Liam Gallagher finally buried the hatchet.
Jon and his band supported Oasis on their last tour before breaking up and have also supported Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds.
Oasis reunion
He was a big fan of Oasis as a boy, and he and his younger brother Chris loved to play Stars in Their Eyes at home, with Jon being Noel and Chris as Bonehead.
Today, he counts Noel as a good friend, though he admits news of the reunion caught him by surprise.
“Noel’s quite cagey,” says Jon. “He’s a bit more measured in what he says to people than his brother, or than me. He’s a bit classier than I am.”
Jon says the Oasis reunion will ‘make a lot of people happy’.
“Lots of people are going to get absolutely plastered, have their arms around each other and tell their friends how much they love them,” he adds.
The Reverend and The Makers headlined date at Rock N Roll Circus will take place on Saturday, August 30, from 12 noon until 11pm.
Tickets are on general sale from 10am on Friday, October 4, via Ticketek UK at: https://premier.ticketek.co.uk/shows/show.aspx?sh=REVMAC25