Brixton Calling: the wild true story behind the new musical

Johnny Lawes and Simon Parkes backstage at Brixton Academy during the 1980s - (Justin Thomas)

Brixton Calling is currently rocking Southwark Playhouse Borough with a two-man theatrical music tour-de-force of a tremendous London tale: the story of how one man ‘bought’ an old cinema and turned it the Brixton Academy, one of the capital’s greatest music venues (now officially known as O2 Academy Brixton but who calls it that?).

That man is Simon Parkes, and the stage production is an adaptation of his memoir Live At the Brixton Academy by writer Alex Urwin, which features Max Runham and Tendai Humphrey Sitima playing Parkes, and his partner-in-(not quite)-crime Johnny Lawes. It is a riot of loud music and wild tales from his stint running the Academy from 1983 to 1997 but one that is giving the engaging Parkes some pause.

“Back in the day of the Academy, I was quite happy promoting an artist or the venue, but this is slightly more personal because it's more personal and slightly more nerve-wracking.

I mean, it's difficult for me to be objective, but from what I've seen it's very good and clever and funny. Because it was a comedy of errors when I was running it.”

How he came to run the Academy is somewhat comedic itself, though displaying an ability to hustle and use his wits that would serve him well over the years when dealing with bands, promoters and gangsters who wanted a piece of the action. Parkes is from Lincolnshire - “a very privileged background” - but moved down to London to studied accountancy at Southbank Polytechnic. In his Twenties, he became a big live music fan and says quite simply, “because I went to a fancy school, somebody approached me about whether I’d be interested in buying a music venue, as you do.”

He immediately loved the Academy due to its sloping floor, meaning people could see from anywhere and wouldn’t end up doing what he did at a Blondie gig at the Hammersmith Palais, when he left his seat at the back of the room to, “sprint down the aisle to the front to be near Debbie Harry… I was ejected and spent the rest of the evening begging to be let back in.”

So he bought the Academy for the sum of £1. Yes, really.

“The pound story is that the brewery actually wanted £120,000 pounds for it, and I was 23 years old, I didn't have £120,000 pounds; that was a lot of money in the 80s,” he says, “I did up a business plan based very loosely on if I did 100 concerts or 50 concerts or 25 concerts, I would sell this amount of beer. I had no experience in this world. I was just guessing based on how many pints of beer I would drink if I went to a gig x 5000.

I basically said, I'll give you a pound, but I'll commit to a 10 year beer deal and your £120,000 can be paid off at £10 pounds per barrel of beer I sell, and they said, ‘yeah, let's do it.’”

Simple as that. What Parkes wasn’t aware of were the negative connotations of Brixton at the time.

“Being from rural Lincolnshire, I didn't really have a grasp on Brixton having this bad reputation. It was a poor area and did have its problems, but what I found out once I got the Academy was that there was a very strong passionate community and very defensive of Brixton - and that's when I met up with Johnny Lawes.

Johnny Lawes was a Rastafarian friend of mine that I'd met and employed, and it's our story that the show talks about.”

Max Runham and Tendai Humphrey Sitima as Simon Parkes and Johnny Lawes (Danny Kaan)

Max Runham and Tendai Humphrey Sitima, who take on the two roles plus a whole host of others, are already winning plaudits for their performances, which includes live playing. All the more remarkable is that Parkes doesn’t have a left arm beneath the elbow, and Runham has a similar limb difference.

“I was born with one arm, which was a throwback from the days of Thalidomide, and Max has got one arm, which is almost identical. He's able to play the guitar really, really well, which actually makes me very jealous! I would love to play the guitar so I think when this is all over, I’m going to get guitar lessons off him.”

Parkes’ book came about after he became very ill and was in intensive care for a month. A friend suggested he write a book about all the incredible adventures he’d had running the Academy, and he dictated it to co-writer J. S. Rafaeli while undergoing chemotherapy.

The stories are legion. From their breakthroughs in putting on Arthur Scargill’s Christmas Party with The Clash and their Artists Against Apartheid concert with Public Enemy and speaker Winnie Mandela, to following the youth culture changes of scene from punk to rave to grunge to Britpop, and then of course, “fending off the underworld, because it was a cash business…certainly during the 90s we were probably worth a million pounds a month in ecstasy, so it attracts a very different type of people making themselves known. Apart from fending off banks, I had a fending off bad people.”

But all of the ups and downs of the business were worth it, with Brixton Academy voted venue of the year every year during his last decade at the venue, and with it having become a worldwide draw for artists and a key part of the community.

“I came across a video on YouTube, an interview with Snoop Dog and Dr. Dre, and they're talking they say about London and they went, ‘We love Brixton, and they were saying when they came in as NWA to Brixton Academy, they didn't know there were so many black people in London. They came from Compton and had an image of London, but they said the Brixton Academy was the place. They had very fond memories. It had a vibe.”

L-R Tendai Humphrey Sitima, Simon Parkes, Max Runham who plays Simon Parkes and Director Bronagh Lagan (Pr handout)

Parkes said the writer Alex badgered him for permission to turn it all into a musical and says, “it’s very very clever what they’ve done with it. I’m not used to this world of theatre but Alex and the two actors are so good. It’s flattering and extremely nerve-wracking but that’s a good place to be I think.”

With tickets reportedly selling like Nirvana tickets, you expect that this is only the start of the journey for Brixton Calling and you have to be pleased for Parkes, an unsung London legend who melded politics and music in way that was truly important, and also helped support countless bands as well as entertain thousands and thousands of fans.

But what is his own personal favourite story that has made it into the show?

“We hosted the Alternative Miss World contest, which was effectively the biggest trans night ever. They basically copy the Miss World contest to a T. It was huge and we did it in 1985 and 1986, long before the LGBTQ+ things today. It was amazing and it's a very funny sketch in the show.

We worked with the change in politics and society, with how life and music was changing throughout the 80s and 90s in a very positive way because it was a very free living then, you could virtually do anything. I think people will come away with a good insight into what it was like to be around at that time and how that venue got off the ground. It was a madhouse, but it was a great time to be alive.”

To 16 Aug, southwarkplayhouse.co.uk