Having only been finished that very day, a packed cinema enthusiastically awaits the first showing of The Beat Is The Law, a feature-length independent documentary about the Sheffield music scene by director Eve Wood.
It’s the sequel to Wood’s film Made In Sheffield – another music documentary that lovingly depicts the rise of Sheffield’s post-punk scene in the 1970s, featuring rare archive footage of bands such as The Human League and Cabaret Voltaire. The film won four international film festival awards and was touted as one of the ‘Top 50 music films of all time’ by Time Out London.
Fittingly, The Beat Is The Law focuses on the 1980s/90s music scene in Sheffield and the innovative artists involved who at the time were themselves surrounded by Thatcherism, unemployment and poverty.
Sheffield was once considered as a left-wing political stronghold for the working class, who were battling against Thatcherite free market policies and the closure of the mines that provided work for a large majority of the city’s population.
Indeed, the industrial history of Sheffield weighs in heavily throughout The Beat Is The Law and flows as a wistful undercurrent to the cultural and musical events that are recounted in the narrative.
The story itself is illustrated through archive footage of live performances and the city during the 1980s. Music videos, photographs, posters and artwork, text and most intriguingly new interviews with the artists and musicians who were active at the time are also present.
Expect to see Jarvis Cocker talking about failure and being on the dole, Richard Hawley describing how most of his family worked in the mines and Russell Senior (ex-Pulp) revealing that he actively volunteered to help the miners and what he witnessed at the infamous Orgreave strikes of 1984.
It is impossible to overstate the importance that The Beat Is The Law places on the relationship between the political and social events in Sheffield during the 1980s and the deep impact this had on the art that was produced by the citizens of the city.
For example, in the film it’s revealed that many of the disused warehouses, factories and mills that were strewn around the city were used as band rehearsal spaces (and places to film music videos) with one particular building ending up as one of Sheffield’s most celebrated live venues – The Leadmill.
Despite its appearance nowadays, The Leadmill began life a low-key venue where artists, musicians and creative types could come together and create something original and exciting. Most local bands worthy of note were playing at The Leadmill at the time, including Cabaret Voltaire, Chakk, Hula, Pulp and ClockDVA.
The venue also played host to many ‘Coal Not Dole’ benefit gigs to raise money for the miners – a few interviewees in the film suggest that these types of gigs were impossible to avoid if you were in a band. Former in-house Leadmill musician, Martin Bedford, generously provided Wood with some of the posters he created for these gigs for the film which were, and still are, dazzling pieces of art in their own right.
The film also features some interesting interviews with the people who founded and ran Sheffield’s celebrated (and now defunct) FON Studios/Records. This includes Mark Brydon (Chakk/Moloko) and sound engineer Rob Gordon as well as Chakk manager/FON Records co-founder Dave Taylor. Excitingly, Amrik Rai, a music journalist who has worked for the NME but started out writing for The University of Sheffield’s student newspaper Darts (as it was known at the time) is also mentioned for his part in drawing the nation’s attention to the music of Sheffield.
Eve Wood is so exhausted she’s barely able to stand to thank her audience at the end of the premiere and the entire cinema bursts into animated applause for the third time in a row.
All in all, The Beat Is The Law is a wonderful treat and a definite must-see for anyone who lives in Sheffield and who likes music – it’s as simple as that.
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