EVERY CITY, EVERY TOWN, HAS A VENUE OF SUCH CULTURAL IMPORTANCE THAT HAD IT NOT EXISTED THE LIVES OF MANY WOULD BE SEVERELY DIFFERENT – DIMINISHED, IN FACT, IN SOME WAY.

For Hull, that place of immeasurable worth is the unassumingly brilliant New Adelphi. Since 1984 the modest music club (housed within the shell of a terraced house on a long street bombed by the Luftwaffe during the Second World War) has given the East Yorkshire city’s homegrown alternative scene and its annual incoming University students an offbeat place they can call home. A long succession of the most important bands of the last three decades has graced its stage; Radiohead, The Stone Roses, The Fall, The Wedding Present, Pulp, Oasis, Inspiral Carpets, My Bloody Valentine, Happy Mondays, local heroes The Housemartins… the list is virtually endless.
This week – and seemingly against all possible odds – the club reaches its thirtieth birthday. Special celebratory events include prestige gigs featuring Kaiser Chiefs, Paul Heaton, Richard Hawley and the city’s own Fonda 500 (click the picture below to visit the club’s website for more details).
In this new edition of The Mouthcast, Paul Jackson – the quietly visionary driving force behind the Adelphi – sits down at the club’s bus bar (so named because it’s fashioned from the front end of a vintage bus) to talk to The Mouth Magazine about the origins of his nationally respected venue, its fluctuating fortunes and its cultural legacy… 

Paul Jackson portrait courtesy of Anna Bean