Life was a Laff for Suzi Perry's dad during the heady days of Wolverhampton's famous nightspot

This week, Wolverhampton’s much loved historic music venue, Club Lafayette is being honoured with a blue plaque. The Wolverhampton Society has chosen the building on the corner of Thornley Street to mark the phenomenal energy, community and joy shared there between 1968 and 1982 and rightly so.

I was too young to revel in the delights of the Moody Blues, Led Zeppelin, Slade etc at ‘The Laff’, but if you’re over 60, I bet you’ve got a story to tell! 

I did however enjoy a couple of parties skipping around the infamous dance floor though, one was for my 10th birthday and the other, my friend Cheryl Maddocks’ fancy dress disco. Why? because our dads were two of the owners of the club, two of the seven-strong line-up that made up Astra, an agency which managed and promoted bands, venues, comedians and DJs. Their aim with the Lafayette was to bring live music into our town with 12 bands a week always the the goal. 

Stan and Pete Fielding, Len Rowe, Maurice Jones, George Maddocks, Alan Clayton and Tony Perry were Astra in the late 60s. Their vision and instinct created an unforgettable scene in Wolverhampton and changed the landscape of music in the Midlands. Before ‘The Laff’ everything was done and dusted by the witching hour. Before ‘The Laff’, artists would skip the delights of Wolverhampton if they’d played Birmingham thinking that we were just a suburb of Brum.

Over the years much has been documented about the Wolverhampton hotspot; from Stevie Wonder jamming during a late-night post gig drink to Keith Moon hanging upside down from the balcony and of course the Sex Pistols playing undercover as the Spots (Sex Pistols On Tour). They had been banned from live venues at the time so were being promoted under a pseudonym -  you didn’t need to be Sherlock Holmes really did you?

My dad, Tony Perry, remembers seeing Sid Vicious cutting himself during rehearsals with no-one batting an eyelid and although their sound didn’t float Dad’s boat, he did tell me that Johnny Rotten had the crowd eating out of the palm of his hand, which he described as ‘incredible to witness’

I used to visit my dad on a Saturday morning in the early 80s if he was working, Astra was based in the same building as the nightclub. I would hop on the 543 bus from Castlecroft with my mates and we would rock up for a Coca-Cola, having traversed the tacky carpet with the stale smell of beer and cigarettes coating our nostrils. I still have an strong affinity for venues where your feet stick to the floor, they usually ooze soul.

‘The Laff’ was more than a nightclub though. The heart beat outside the venue, too, through a football team, a stock car racing concern and endless friendships that have endured the test of time.