Jilly’s Rockworld and The Music Box in Manchester are to close. For those of you who don’t know of the club from it’s appearance (all be it as it’s previous incarnation Rafters) in the film Control it’s not hard to imagine. It was the kind of club you’d go drinking as an, ahem, certified 18 year old with ID to prove it (though not usually required). A bit dirty, perhaps a few people overdoing the EMO thing (or mosher thing as it was when I ventured there), but one hell of an atmosphere. If you grew up in London, the closest is Metro on Oxford street, in Liverpool, think a bit like Crazy House – but this is where my knowledge of UK nightlife stops.

The place had some history! The upstairs club had several faces, originally being a cabaret bar, but it eventually it had to move on from Tommy Cooper, Lulu, Cliff Richard and the name Fagans – so in 1990 it became Rockworld.

Downstairs was The Music Box, which was originally called Rafters. This had an equally illustrious past being best known for introducing Joy Division to Tony Wilson and Rob Gretton, later the bands manager. As their website recounts, Gretton said:

So they went on about ten to two and they were blazing madmen. And I just went and watched them. Great! Best band I’ve ever seen – and they sent a tingle up my spine. And I was dancing all over…I went up telling them – at the end – telling them how brilliant I thought it was…And I went raving about them all next day.

Rockworld definitely stood out in a city that is becoming increasingly homogenised and whose centre, as elsewhere, has become a shrine to shopping and whose bars cater for majority tastes.

“Legendary” status is always impossible to live up to though, and so it proved with Rockworld. Though the club gave a lot of memories to young Mancs, it eventually couldn’t keep its place in the city. My enduring memory is that it’s the only place in Manchester I didn’t get too much aggro for being a semi-scouser; and that’s good enough for me.

Picture Courtesy of joanamary