It was the early to mid ’80s, prog rock was not progressing very well, American artistes were flooding the British charts, and the forefront of the British disco scene was Brechin!
The cream of Britain’s disco performers were taking the charts back for the UK, Stock, Aitken and Waterman were producing hit after hit and a nightclub at the bottom of Brechin High Street was attracting every major artist in the British charts.
When the history of Scottish popular music comes to be written, the name of Flicks will be etched in its memoirs.
So, how come Brechin, population around 7,000 and best known until then as being the birthplace of Sir Robert Watson Watt, who contributed significantly to the birth of radar, became such a pivotal place in the popular music history not only of Scotland but Britain?
The answer is quite simple.
Mike Swilinski, Stuart Aikenhead and Peter Barr put into place an unbeatable formula.
Taking over the town bingo hall, they realised that having a nurses’ home and a US air force base on their doorstep, not to mention several reasonably sized towns, and being within an hour of Perth, Dundee and Aberdeen, gave them a great catchment area.
So how did they catch their crowd? Simple. They made Flicks one of the best decorated clubs in history, set up a light and laser show way ahead of its time and brought big-name acts to Scotland’s smallest city.
Expensive? Yes it was. A gamble? Absolutely no doubt. A success? Breathtakingly so, to such an extent that a nationwide TV show, The Hitman And Her, was filmed live from its dancefloor.
Bananarama, Doctor And The Medics, Man 2 Man Meets Man Parish, Village People, Sabrina, Aswad, Amazulu, Bruno Brookes and the top three male draws in EastEnders, Nick Berry (Simon Wicks), Tom Watt (Lofty) and Leslie Grantham (Dirty Den) all appeared there. Then there was Page 3 girl Samantha Fox. And there were many others.
And probably the biggest draw of the lot Steve Wright. The wacky Radio 1 DJ was a regular at Flicks.
Signing off his show late afternoon Friday, he would fly up to Edinburgh and be driven to Brechin along with his sidekick Peter Dickson the man who did all the voices on his show.
Come 9.30pm Steve was on stage, Britain’s most famous and listened to disc jock enthralling a packed Flicks with his zany antics.
So, what made them come up to middle-of-nowhere Brechin to perform?
Steve Wright told me on umpteen occasions, and Pete Waterman reiterated his words: “We are always well looked after and the crowd is amazing.
“They are really up for it and it’s just one great night of entertainment. The crowd love the acts, and the acts love the crowd.”
Bus loads came from as far as Newcastle for Scotland’s best night-out.
Every performer won new fans and sold more records on the back of a Flicks visit and Brechin businesses made a small fortune.
Even Captain Sensible of Happy Talk fame who, in a previous incarnation was the bass player in The Damned, stopped off in Brechin to see Flicks on his way from a TV visit to Aberdeen.
In the words of one clubber standing in the foyer and gazing longingly at the pictures of the stars who had performed there: “Elvis must be deid right enough,” he said. “Cos if he was alive he would have been on stage at Flicks.”
Absolutely true.
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