Nick Moorbath - Venue Owner, Oxford Zodiac, Winter 2001
By: Toby L
Think of some of the classic concerts of recent history:
The Beatles at the Cavern Club;
Jimi Hendrix at the Isle of Wight Festival;
Radiohead at South Park.
Now, what do all of these gigs have in common, aside from featuring great acts? Simply - it's the way that the artists all performed special sets in a special place, which too becomes as immortalised as the music actually played.
Thus, as soon as you enter the doors of The Zodiac in Oxford, United Kingdom, an unusual feeling comes over you: the idea that this place has contained some stunning shows in the past, from all manner of acts, whether they're on their way to their top, or whilst they're at the peak of their powers, creates an atmosphere before you've even made your way into the room where you'll be watching your desired act.
The strength of such a notion that you're entering a building so full of an exciting past ensures you're not able to help but contemplate why other venues aren't like this... Although the Oxford Zodiac hasn't been open as long as other rock-houses up and down the country, it's certainly made its name as an essential stop for bands to play when they stride up and down UK shores.
One of the two men behind its opening and development is Nick Moorbath. Aside from a musical past - having played in cult bands, Ride and Hurricane #1 - it has been his prerogative to host club-nights of immense interest to countless students (remember, this is Oxford - the place with the University), as well as entice the greatest and finest up-and-coming groups to plug in their amps within the building, in order to provide an evening's entertainment.
Today, he sits in his office behind The Zodiac; a large room of high dimensions, it's not so much an office as it is a pleasure-dome, filled with guitars to strum and pianos to tinkle, not to mention endless shelves of stacked CD's and various memorabilia - including a rather impressive Star Trek magazine-collection. He lights cigarettes and smokes comfortingly when he's not answering a never-ending stream of phone-calls from booking-agents and promoters who are all interested in hiring his place for the night. For a man that seems so busy, he looks surprisingly well. 'Yeah, well,' he utters, smiling. 'I've stopped drinking for the second week.'
A venue-owner becoming teetotal? It sounds unlikely - and that's because it is; he's only quitting the booze for a short time until he feels it necessary to start again. And that's a good summary of his character, to be honest: in control, open to ideas, and not afraid to try out things deemed to be unconventional for a man in his position.
However, how did such a prominent role within the industry originally form?
'Well, I started off as a musician, but I always wanted to be in bands and stuff,' Nick recalls, looking back. 'My dad kicked me out of the house when I was 18, which was quite good I suppose, because it made me stand on my own two feet!
'Anyway, I dossed around, lived in a shared house with a few friends, and didn't really do anything. But I soon hated being skint so much that I got a job as a van-driver, driving frozen fish around! This company then gave me a job as a sales-rep. but I didn't really like the company, so I moved to another one to sell frozen food! Then, after this, me and the area-manager started our own company up, selling food once again, and being around 21 at the time, I just really hated it and said to myself one day, 'Why am I doing this?!' So I sold my shares back to him for the company as it was going quite well and - with all the money - just bought loads of synthesizers, played for the best band I've ever been in - Frank Fish & The Fins - and went off touring round Europe; I haven't really looked back!'
Irony doesn't appear to be more prime than in Nick's case: selling fish and then performing with a guy called Frank Fish is certainly an experience most aren't lucky (is that the right word?) to behold. Yet, this somehow doesn't feel like the full story.
'We had loads of fun in the band, but I kept coming home completely skint,' he laughs to himself. 'I had to get loads of stupid jobs to get money, like the way me and my mates planted around 70,000 trees around the M25 (UK Motorway/Freeway)! But, it was quite nice 'cos it sorted out my oxygen - and thousands of other people's obviously!
'The first way I made money out of music, though was through starting sound-engineering... I bullshitted my way into my first job by saying I knew what I was doing when I really didn't; it was lucky I learnt really quickly! I then came to work for The Zodiac - before it was called that - with Adrian, who's now my business partner, and I started as a monitor-engineer, before ending up taking on more and more (job). I then managed to buy half the PA, and then we both managed to take over the whole place altogether.
'We set up the venue in '95, and it went from strength to strength, starting off originally just upstairs with a capacity of only 200 and - although it still looks quite rock 'n' roll - we've turned it from a complete dump into quite a good venue. The toilets, air-conditioning - you name it - we've had to change it! We even had to dig down six feet into the ground to work on all the Victorian plumbing - and that was just the upstairs venue to sort out! The downstairs, on the other hand, came about around three years ago.
'We originally set this place up on a shoestring, as we had no money! But Radiohead, Supergrass and Ride - who were share-holders at the time - helped us out, which was great. We're not like some big corporation that's got loads of money, so we had to make some money - and then throw it back into it.'
Bearing in mind that Oxford - although a large town - didn't really have any major alternative music-venues, what made you so confident working on The Zodiac would ensure it to be a success?
'Well,' he muses, responding simply, but surely. 'Adrian and I are both big fans of live music and we wanted to see the Oxford music-scene continuing. We'll put on anything that's good music, really...'
That's certainly true; rather than living within the confines of merely putting on shows of a guitar nature, in recent times, jazz legend Humphrey Lyttleton has filled the room with his brand of traditional big-band numbers, making it seem almost surreal to think this was the same place that earlier in 2001 hosted shows from Elbow and Starsailor.
However, live music has always been a notoriously tumultuous business to be associated with - where does The Zodiac's best guaranteed financial intake derive from?
'At first, the income really comes from the bar; there's no way we could survive on being just a venue - even if we didn't do club-nights, we couldn't support it,' truthfully states Nick. 'We also put everyone that works here on full-time wages, so there's a bit of commitment from their end.
'We always lose money in the summer, because there are no students here! On gigs, you don't make that much money from them, because - if you do make a lot - you're giving the band back a percentage; club-nights are best for us. Sometimes it's good when we put a gig on and then follow it by a club, because - at the end of a day - I want to run a live-music venue, not a nightclub.'
Let's jump back a bit, though, to experiences on the road. Some successful musicians decide to work within some aspect of the industry following a 'career', yet this is a rare instance where Nick balanced his music with the original starting-up of the venue. A band already mentioned in the article is Ride - their relevance will probably become a lot clearer as you read on...
'For years, I played in bands when I travelled for ages in the back of a Transit and slept on people's floors,' reminisces Nick, igniting another rod of tobacco. 'And then - all of a sudden - after doing engineering, I set up some rehearsal studios and Ride came and rehearsed there... I kind of did this on purpose, though, but, one day, when they were just coming out of their cars and stuff, I sat there playing my best licks on a Fender Rhodes; they walked in and said, 'Carry on!' Two weeks later, Andy Bell rang me up and said, 'Do you wanna play a gig with us?'
'So, I'd gone from playing with all these bands in really horrible places, to playing my second gig with Ride at the Glastonbury Festival to over 30,000 people! From then, I had not known luxury like it: amazing hotels - especially in Japan - and everything that goes with it. There are even too many experiences to recount... Being in a band like that was like being in the boy-scouts... Only with the sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll!
'We all got on really well and, towards the end, there was no big thing, but they'd just been doing it a long time and got fed up. After that, obviously, Andy got together Hurricane #1 and I worked with him on that... It didn't really bother me too much about Ride ending, though, because I had The Zodiac to come back to and - by then - there was plenty to be getting on with...'
'Plenty to be getting on with' could be an understatement; even currently, Nick Moorbath is up to his neck in things to achieve - though only by choice. Thanks to what he admittedly describes as a 'good work-ethic', the last couple of years in particular have seen a flurry of outer-Zodiac activities.
'I'm the director of a company called Oomph - which is Oxfordshire's own Millennium Festival,' he clarifies. 'It's a charity thing, and featured a big parade, people making and doing things, a huge choir - and, luckily, 30,000 people came down to that. That actually led on to how I promoted the Radiohead thing...'
Yes; the Radiohead thing became what many described as the pinnacle of the Oxford band's career. The concept was simple: due to the fact that the band wanted to make limited the number of shows they were performing in Europe, their only UK date of 2001 had to be special. The end-result: a classic performance in South Park, which Nick co-arranged and originated the idea for.
'I've known Radiohead for a long time,' he informs. 'They were one of the first bands I put on in the early days of promoting, and they also used the rehearsal studios, so I knew them well.
'I always wanted to do something big in Oxford - and I knew that they had also really wanted to do something like that too. So, basically, because I'd done this Oomph thing and it had worked, I went straight afterwards to the police, etc. who I worked with on it, and said, 'Off the record, what if I wanted to put on a big concert in South Park: what do you think?' All of them said, 'Why not?!' So, following this, I went to Radiohead and said to them, 'What do you think,' and they said, 'Yeah!'
'We did it with SJM (top concert promoters), because they have good experience in putting on big shows like that, and it was great, worked out really well. I knew I couldn't do it by myself; it's too big - we're talking over 40,000 people!
'Radiohead picked the other bands that played, but I said that we had got to put on a couple of local Oxford bands and they agreed, but I said I want you to choose, so I gave them a bunch of demos which they listened to and two were chosen to support them.
Following all the organisation, the hype and anticipation, Radiohead came out and performed a two-hour set that shall never be forgotten by fans and media alike - even when it rained down, it made the emotional intensity even greater in volume and allowed the group to shine like they had never done before. Helping to produce such an important event must have been a unique experience...
'It was a huge success and I loved working on it... However, I'm writing my own music now, and playing with Frigid Vinegar - with John and Brett who were in The Candyskins - and I'm really enjoying it, because they're a great band. So, I wouldn't really wanna organise something else like that again this summer, but next summer... Well, who knows?!'
Yeah - why not? But, whilst we're on the topic of future developments, finally, what do the coming days have in store for Nick's primary interest?
'We've got planning-permission to make it a lot bigger; there's a flat roof at the back, which we've got permission to build on top of. We're not in a mad rush to do it, but we'll probably do it next summer. I reckon the capacity will change - upstairs - to about 800. At the moment, the whole building is 750, but, with that, we'd be looking at hopefully over 1,000...'
And - once again - why not? If it means that more people are able to spend time in such a fine establishment, then the more the merrier, eh?
With shows in the last couple of years from Rage Against The Machine and The Strokes and hundreds others, plus a new rock-night gaining a hot popularity - The Club That Cannot Be Named - it seems like The Zodiac and Nick's efforts are at the height of their strength... Mind you - if the way his and the venue's history are anything to go by - give it a couple of months and The Zodiac and Moorbath's successful output will have bettered itself yet again.
Artists in this article: Nick Moorbath