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Stairway to rock's heaven now a ruin
Oct 18 2004
By Neil Elkes, Evening Mail
The Queen's Head may now be a burnt-out shell of a pub, but it rocked to the cream of Birmingham's music industry during the Sixties and Seventies.
Led Zeppelin's Robert Plant, Jimmy Page and John Bonham, Slade, The Move, Ozzy Osbourne and Black Sabbath all cut their teeth at Erdington's premier rock'n'roll venue.
But whereas the pub was once at the epicentre of Birmingham's youth culture, in recent years it has become a blight on the community, home only to squatters, vandals, fly-tippers and travellers.
And the bulldozers could soon move in after Birmingham Labour MP Sion Simon added his voice to calls from residents for the eyesore to be torn down.
Two years ago the site was almost sold to supermarket chain Lidl, but planners decided it was an unsuitable site for a food store and the building has stayed derelict ever since.
"I was shocked at the state of it. It is soul destroying," said Les Cole who ran the nightclub from 1964 to 1978, working for the licensee Bob Thomas.
"I lived there for 14 years and now my old bedroom is burnt out."
Les, aged 62, of Salisbury Tower, Ladywood, has been in the Birmingham club trade all his life and is now manager of the Broad Street Rocket Club.
But his fondest memories are of the Queen's Head, which also welcomed the young Elton John and Rod Stewart, before it became the psychedelic Pepper's Disco - named after the Beatles' Sgt Pepper LP.
Les said: "It was the heyday of the music scene in Birmingham.
"The pub was pretty much a regular bar. Then we had the club, and we could get 800 people in. Two bands a night would play and they would fight over who could stand on stage and who got the pile of beer crates," he added.
But Les realises that today live music is no longer as popular as it was and teenagers flock to the city centre rather than venues out in the suburbs.
He said: "I blame the big breweries, they allow these big pubs to become run down rather than invest in them. Then they close them down."
Mr Simon, Erdington's MP, has called for the Government to give the local authority powers to pull down derelict buildings like the Queen's Head and other eyesores.
