Metal on Merseyside
Text by Dr Nedim Hassan | 27.08.24
While the notion of young people ‘hanging around’ in public places has often been constructed in mass media as something that is problematic, this somewhat simplistic idea is complicated when we consider the value of public spaces for popular music culture. This collection of photographs by Rebecca Lewis that was submitted to the Museum of Youth Culture’s Subculture Archives is testimony to this.
These images of youths connected with what may loosely be termed the ‘alt scene’ – that is young people interested in heavy metal music, punk, emo, and skateboarding culture – were taken in the early 2000s in Liverpool, Merseyside, UK. Teenagers and young adults regularly congregated on weekends outside Liverpool’s law courts and Chavasse Park in the city centre, which was an expanse of grass behind the courts that was approximately half a mile in length and in front of the Albert Dock area.
From ‘the Courts’ as they became known, it was just a short walk to Quiggins, a large three storey alternative shopping centre that was located on the corner of School Lane, close to Paradise Street. Quiggins was also a hub for those from the alt scene, who, if not frequenting the premises, would typically gather outside in groups before sometimes wandering up to the area outside the law courts.
The photos by Lewis capture a moment lost to time. Ultimately, despite considerable opposition, the building on School Lane that housed the Quiggins shopping centre was compulsorily purchased and taken over by Grosvenor. The building has since been redeveloped and incorporated into the Liverpool ONE shopping centre, which opened in 2008. The original Chavasse Park was excavated and relocated 50 metres above the ground within the privately owned Liverpool ONE shopping complex. Consequently, within a few years of these photos being taken, these spaces were no longer focal points for youth culture.
When conducting research for my book, Metal on Merseyside (published in 2021), I interviewed musicians and other stakeholders involved with Liverpool’s metal music scenes. Several of them reflected on the importance of the communities that had formed around the law courts and Quiggins during the early 2000s.
Lawyer and musician Tom Ghannad, who is currently working with Tone artists and the Arch Recording studio in Southport, recalled how there would regularly be 200 to 300 people congregating near the courts, especially during the summer months. Tom stated that: “You’d get people from Southport and all the way over to the Wirral and St Helens. So, for example, some of the kids who were super into my first bands, they were from St Helens, but I’d have met them at the Courts and a couple of those guys actually formed a band in Liverpool around the time that Raging Speedhorn were getting pretty well known.”
For death metal musician and promoter, Joe Mortimer, the courts and Quiggins also became a vital means of connecting him with people who he would go on to form bands with. While hanging around in Quiggins he had initially become familiar with other people who were interested in performing metal music such as Matt Jones, who ended up playing guitar alongside Joe in Liverpool death metal band, Neuroma.
But more than providing him with the foundations of a music-related network that he has been part of for over twenty years, Joe remembers how the courts provided him with a strong sense of belonging.
“I'd go to the court and see these people and I'd be like, ‘these are my people, my people’. Yeah, that's kind of cheesy as it sounds. It'd be like, you know, I'd feel totally fine. You know, you could get people going turning up with tattoos and piercings and, you know, crazy hairstyles and crazy makeup. You know, people just experimenting with everything. Everybody would experiment with body modification, with sexuality, with dress sense, with makeup, with, you know, culture everything”.
That sense of camaraderie and that celebration of subcultural identity is prevalent throughout Lewis’ photos. T-shirts adorned with band logos from the likes of Slipknot, Offspring and Fear Factory, as well as braided hair styles and piercings popular with nu-metal artists such as Korn are commonplace. Indeed, Joe proposes that nu-metal was “more than a genre” in that the more serious topics it dealt with (such as mental health issues and bullying) “influenced the community spirit, kind of inspired a lot of people to find solace in groups to find people like them, to be surrounded by people like them.”
On top of that, Joe believes that nu-metal articulated “teen angst and rebellion and, you know, figuring out what's going on [at that time of your life]. A lot of the fashion which came along with all those bands, you know, included chain wallets, baggy jeans oversized, you know T-shirts, hoodies, backwards caps and stuff like that which similarly was all of the kind of clothing that you could buy in Quiggins, but you probably couldn't buy anywhere else.”
Another striking aspect of Lewis’ photograph collection is the sheer sense of solidarity and togetherness that is encapsulated. Many of those who posed for photographs clearly wanted to be seen as hugging each other, smiling and being close to one another. This sense of group solidarity may have been partly born out of feeling different and potentially vulnerable as young people who dressed and looked differently compared to many of their peers in school and college.
As Joe notes, this solidarity was also related to strength in numbers because there were sometimes tensions when “there was such a gathering of alternative people. It also meant that that was a good place for people who wanted to come and start trouble.” Occasionally, this led to people from the alt crowd being targeted by other groups of youths he termed “scallies” and the odd fight breaking out.
During the redevelopment of the area in preparation for the building of the Liverpool ONE shopping centre, Joe remembers how different entryways into Chavasse Park were boarded up. He also recalls how in this period there was an increased police presence near the courts and that changes to the handrails and walls in the area made it more difficult for skateboarders to skate. Such factors led to the fragmentation of the groups that used to frequent the spaces around the law courts.
In conjunction with these external factors, the generation of teens who first started congregating in these parts of Liverpool city centre began to grow up. Whereas Joe recounted how the initial “joy of the court was [that] you could go there without a phone and know that you'll likely bump into somebody that you know. And if you don't see anybody that you know, you'll probably be able to make a friend anyway,” later into the noughties this had changed. Popular mobile phone models were becoming more affordable for lower middle-class youth in particular and, consequently, they could now make arrangements “to meet friends in particular places, not just a generic place” as Joe put it.
Ultimately, then, these photos are not simply a snapshot of young people in Liverpool at a time when the city was on the precipice of major urban change. Aside from what they reveal about the significance of the ‘alternative’ scene and nu-metal culture in the late 90s and early 2000s, they are a striking insight into broader UK youth practices that have diminished.
With many children now starting secondary school with their own mobile phones and growing up with at the very least an awareness of social media, their opportunities for communicating with discrete friendship groups and family members have expanded. At the same time, for all their potential hazards, what appears to have been lost is the “joy” of the unpredictability of public spaces that youth claim as their own. Spaces that afford meeting new people, the thrill of meeting someone with similar interests (but not knowing if you will do so), the spontaneity involved with experimenting with fashion and other aspects of identity, have undoubtedly been replicated online.
Yet, the contemporary appeal of music festivals is that they perhaps remain one of the last sites where such practices take place in person on a mass scale. Where one can see someone with a t-shirt emblazoned with your favourite band and celebrate finding ‘your people’.
Dr Nedim Hassan is a Senior Lecturer in Media and Cultural Studies at Liverpool John Moores University.
He currently has an exhibition Promoting Metal on Merseyside at Dark Earth Records, 16 Seaview Road, Wallasey, Merseyside, until November 30th.
You can find out more or get involved with his ongoing project Metal in Merseyside here.
