‘Oasis should be proud to say they are giving something back to the grassroots’

As a Bristolian, I’m very proud to have owned The Fleece since 2010. I’ve also been a massive Oasis fan for most of my life, seeing them live more than 10 times including the iconic Knebworth event in 1996 and at Glastonbury twice!

I fronted my own band back in the 90s and was honoured to join my other favourite band, The Blue Aeroplanes, as bass player in 2007 and continue to gig with them to this day.

Sadly I was not at that legendary Oasis Fleece show back in March 1994. At that time I was living in London pursuing my own dreams of fame and fortune.

This did mean I actually got to play in many of the 34 grassroots music venues which were on that first Oasis tour. Unfortunately only 11 of them remain open to this day and The Fleece is fortunate to be one of them.

Keeping the venue sustainable has not been easy, and I’ve always believed the experience of getting out there and actually playing in so many diverse but strangely similar venues helped me gain some vital first hand knowledge which has helped me to be able to run The Fleece from a musician’s point of view – which in turn has helped us attract so many more great bands over the years.

Oasis are not the only high profile band to have played The Fleece. Others include Radiohead, IDLES, Muse, Kae Tempest, Suede, Jeff Buckley, Amy Winehouse, Frank Carter & Rattlesnakes, Queens of the Stone Age, Self Esteem, Killing Joke, The Darkness, Anne-Marie, The Hives, George Ezra and Ed Sheeran, to name a few.

The Fleece isn’t just about those bands though: it’s a place where the Bristol live music community comes together. Every night has the potential for something magical or unexpected to happen. People meet. Bands are formed. Memories are created. Venues like The Fleece are the hubs of our communities and they are disappearing all over the country.

As is proven by the demand for Oasis tickets, the reason so many are closing isn’t that people don’t love live music any more. It’s the cost of doing business that is just too high, making it too hard for venues, artists and promoters to remain sustainable.

The government needs step in to do a lot more to help venues that are at risk of drowning in taxes, licensing, planning, development and restrictive practices. That would help.

What would help even more, and is even more important, is that artists like Oasis, and the music industry teams that work with them, should be proud to say that they are giving something back to the grassroots that helped them get where they are.

£1 from each of the tickets sold would have raised £1.4million. In the case of Oasis, it raised nothing at all to support venues across the country like the Fleece. That amount of money would have literally been the difference between some of the venues we have lost still being open today and that’s just the potential income generated from one tour.

Investing back into the grassroots music venues which help and support artists get to where they are today should be welcomed as the minimum acceptable standard of investment into the next generation of UK talent.

This is an opinion piece by Chris Sharp, owner and director of the Fleece, an independent venue that has been operating in Bristol since 1982.

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