Liverpool’s legendary 051 club will open its doors for one last night before developers move in to the Mount Pleasant building.
The club is due to change hands from May 23 and the old venue will be lost forever, but before then DJ Lee Butler is planning a massive farewell reunion.
Although it’s currently a shell, with all its original fittings removed, Lee is confident that he can get it ready in a fortnight to bring back memories of its 90s clubbing heyday.
The 051 Reunion will happen on Saturday May 21, with Lee putting together a line-up of original DJs for the night.
Clubs and pubs
He explains: “This time last year we thought it was gone for good, but since then legal proceedings have gone on for so long. Then we got wind that the hand-over date was going to be May 23 and that after that there’d be no opportunity to do it ever again, so I spoke to the boss and we went in to have a look at it this week.
“It’s in a pretty bad way because everything was ripped out a while ago in readiness for the redevelopment, so there’s no sound system, no lighting, nothing. To be honest my first reaction was it was too big a job but he said he really wanted to do it and once we mentioned it so many people said they’d love a chance to go back in. Everyone’s been saying for the last six months, ‘it’s still there, why can’t we go in?’ so now they can.”
It’s had subsequent club incarnations, most recently as Aura from September 2013, but the Mount Pleasant basement closed as 051 back in 2005.
Lee was on the decks there for almost a decade from October 1996. “I left The State and went to the Buzz for a year in 1995 and then in 1996 I was approached to come over to the 051 and that’s when me and Dave Graham started off together. That was probably 051’s heyday, between 1996 and 2000 when we locked out every Saturday.
“But there isn’t that demand for big clubs anymore, the bar culture in Liverpool just wiped it out. The State’s closed, Cream’s knocked down, the Buzz is knocked down and so’s the Paradox, all the iconic ones aren’t there now.
“051’s got a 2,000 capacity, it’s huge, so it’s probably the last old school big basement industrial club that we’ve got left.
“At the reunion people can stand in exactly the same place they used to stand 20 years ago, and go down those stairs again, and they’re the memories everyone has. Then two days later it’ll be gone and by August the building probably won’t even be there anymore.”
- The 051 Reunion is on May 21, 9pm-4am , tickets are £25 from 3B Records .
