FOR generations of Newcastle music fans, the Cambridge Hotel is the place.
Everyone has a story. Everyone has a memory.
It's ingrained in your psyche, much like that stale smell of sweat and alcohol that seems perpetually entrenched in the Cambridge's band room, despite fortnightly carpet cleaning.
There's the old saying, "if the walls could talk, the stories they would tell", and in the Cambo's case, that's literally true.
In the toilets and the green rooms there's a collage of scrawled graffiti and torn band posters, each depicting a moment in time. A kind of grungy beauty that can only be accumulated through the fullness of time.
Sadly, just like the infamous Star Hotel, the old Newcastle Workers Club, the Palais Royale and the Ambassador, the Cambridge Hotel after this weekend will join a long list of beloved music venues that have succumbed to the wrecking ball in the name of progress.
But it wouldn't be the Cambridge if it went quietly.
Starting on Friday, the Cambridge is hosting a three-day music festival inside the venue and outside in Wood Street. A crowd of 10,000 punters are expected to witness what will be one of the most historic moments in Newcastle's music history.
THE INSIDER
"It's sad to see it go. It's been a long time and a lot of shows," Cambridge co-owner and licensee Dru Russell says while looking up at a list of famous gigs written above the front bar.
Russell started his career at the Cambridge in 2004 as a glassy when he did "a favour" for a girl.
"I said, 'I'd do it for you once', and I'm still here," he says.
From there Russell worked his way to bar manager, licensee and then eventually co-owner in 2014.
During that time he's literally seen, and booked, thousands of gigs - everyone from international stars like US rock bands The Black Keys and Everclear and rapper Childish Gambino, to local bands in the embryonic stages of their development.
"The Cambridge has its own feel and when you come here you know it's the Cambridge because the memorabilia is around and the feel of the shows," he says.
"You can't copy another venue or it isn't authentic then. It's what this venue is about. It's one of a kind. There's no other venue in town that's like it."
The Cambridge's not-so-salubrious green rooms are renown in Australian music circles. They've been the site of countless nights of debauchery.
However, Russell says they've never had to blacklist an act as the majority were highly professional.
"Gone are the days of trashing band rooms and carrying on," he says.
Bands also often speak about Dennis, a ghost of a long-time resident said to haunt the corridors.
"It's one of those old wives' tales that gets more embellished each time it's told," Russell says with a smirk.
"Dennis the ghost apparently can be found upstairs or in the cellar or the green rooms or at night when you turn the lights off."
LOWLIGHTS
That's not to say there haven't been times when the show has almost been derailed. It is the live music industry, after all.
"If you were to ask what gives us the biggest headaches it would be American hip-hop acts," Russell says.
The one concert readily cited to be the Cambridge's most shambolic is Childish Gambino's October 2015 show, which made international headlines in the music press.
The one-hour set ended with a sold-out crowd booing and screaming obscenities at the Redbone and This Is America star, when he spent the majority of the gig seated behind his support act, The Royalty.
Russell attempted to speak with Childish Gambino straight after the gig but he immediately fled the stage and jumped into his van.
"It had a feeling in the air," Russell says. "I knew the fall out wasn't going to be good."
Another problem-maker was '90s US hip-hop group Bone Thugs-n-Harmony, who played at the Cambridge in 2012.
As is usual practice the group were paid 50 per cent before the show, but prior to hitting the stage they demanded the remaining 50 per cent or they wouldn't perform in front of the packed crowd.
"This was before electronic transfers and so on, so I had to race around to get $10,000 together in cash to say, 'here it is' before they'd go on," Russell says.
PUNTER MEMORIES
What makes the Cambridge special is the people who love live music.
Whether it be turning up early to catch a little-known Perth psych-rock band in 2008 called Tame Impala, who supported You Am I and blew your mind, or watching Gang Of Youths in 2015 knowing you'll never see them in a room this small again, the memories are vivid.
New Lambton's Jon Olsen remembers arriving at the Cambridge one afternoon in 2005 to visit a mate who was a chef at the venue.
"I heard some music in the band room and wandered around to find [The Black Keys'] Dan [Auerbach] and Patrick [Carney] sound-checking their song 10am Automatic," Olsen says.
"Just myself, a schooner and The Black Keys in the band room. I'll never forget it. I've still got the signed ticket."
For Mel Gallagher, of Stockton, getting into the Cambridge was half the fun.
[My favourite memory would be] me and my pal Bianca wearing black pants and a white shirt pretending to be glassies to sneak into a sold-out Royal Crown Revue gig," Gallagher says.
"The bar staff were shaking their heads at us because it worked."
THE MUSICIANS
For more than 50 years Newcastle musicians and entertainers have been plying their trade at the Cambridge.
On "the long way to the top if you wanna rock'n'roll" you had to pass through the Cambo's stages.
Maynard of legendary Newcastle vaudeville troupe, the Castanet Club, remembers first performing at the front bar around 1980 with his first group The Musical Flags.
"The stage was so small, that often when I was playing my trombone, I had to be outside on the foot path and play my trombone through the window," Maynard laughs.
Later the Castanet Club would regularly perform on the main stage, pulling large crowds.
"As the Cambridge progressed, the dressing rooms got slightly bigger but most of the time it was 12 or 13 of us crammed into one room," he says.
"It was a crush back stage. You had to get dressed and get out and stand in the audience until there was time to get on stage."
In more recent years the Cambridge has provided a breeding ground for the next generation of Hunter stars.
One of Newcastle's most popular young bands, Trophy Eyes, have regularly performed at the venue in the past decade as they've built an international following in the pop-punk and melodic hardcore scenes.
"Live venues are where you share a lot of emotional things," Trophy Eyes frontman John Floreani says.
"A lot of people go there for music because it's therapeutic for them, or to see their favourite band and you leave elated.
"You connect that feeling with that building.
"It's a shame to see it go and I really wish we could have played the last show because it means a lot to us as people and as a band."
Forster-raised indie singer-songwriter Holly Rankin, best known as Jack River, is performing at the Cambridge on Saturday. She says the loss will be felt, not just in Newcastle, but within music communities throughout the Hunter and northern NSW who often flock there for shows.
Rankin identifies her Sugar Mountain album launch show in 2018 at the Cambridge as being one of the most memorable of her career.
"At that time it was my first major tour and playing at the Cambridge hit home for me what had happened with the album and Jack River, because I could feel all my friends and family in the room and all these strangers," Rankin says.
When Newcastle DJ Jayteehazard finishes his set on the inside stage at 12am on Monday, a building that's reverberated for more than half century with music will fall silent.
It's unknown when the demolition of the site will begin. The City Of Newcastle are yet to receive a final development application from the developer Linkcity.
In the meantime the Cambridge appears likely to be left to the pigeons and Dennis the ghost.
RE-LIVE CLASSIC CAMBRIDGE GIG REVIEWS
- Grinspoon - August 31, 2017
- Jack River - September 26, 2018
- Holy Holy - November 15, 2018
- Gang Of Youths - August 12, 2015
- Stella Donnelly - Sunday October 20, 2019
- Waax - August 23, 2019
- The Beards - June 27, 2013
- Julia Jacklin - March 16, 2019
- Caitlin Harnett & The Pony Boys - May 19, 2022
- The Living End - March 10, 2017
- San Cisco - June 4, 2017
- The Gooch Palms - September 10, 2016
- From The Jam - September 8, 2016
- Adam Newling - January 13, 2023
- Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever - March 16, 2023
