History collides with banal daily life in elusive, almost-forgettable ways endlessly in Melbourne. When running for an express train from Flinders Street Station, commuters rarely reckon with the fact that a few storeys above them there is a 109-year-old ballroom. A block away, the imposing Nicholas Building might go unnoticed by lunch-hour scavengers waiting for their six-inch and cookie at Subway.
Neighbouring them both is Forum Melbourne, a live music venue that can inspire double-takes from tourists and seasoned gig pigs alike. It elevates the experience of a stop at the cloak room (upstairs, past the lamp-posts and nude sculptures that border the mezzanine) or a mid-show trip down into its cavernous, carpeted, subterranean bathrooms. When it came to highlighting the city’s most beloved live music venue, the Forum was the obvious, first and only choice.
Every Melburnian has a specific relationship to the Forum. Mine begins when I could barely orient myself around the city, let alone consider myself a local. It was the place I showed up – eager, alone and freshly 18 – the moment doors opened for a comedy festival gig, leaving me with several silent hours to take in the twinkling, artificial sky and carved sculptures flanking the stage. It was the place I saw one of my last gigs before lockdown (Hot Chip supported by Harvey Sutherland) and the first when we thought it was all over (Cable Ties, Little Ugly Girls and Mod Con). Three times last year I walked over the mosaic tiles at the entrance and emerged through the looming double doors and on to Flinders Street, declaring the gig I’d just seen to be among my top five of all time (Fontaines D.C., Carly Rae Jepsen and Caroline Polachek, thanks for asking).
When Harry Styles, fresh off his years in One Direction, toured solo around the world for the first time, he did a string of “underplays” – deliberately chosen theatres with intimate (for him) capacities that he could easily sell out and which would telegraph the kind of artist he was going to be on his own. In Melbourne, that meant only one place.
“The size and style of the venue means that you get the perfect amount of atmosphere but it still feels intimate,” says Emily Wright, who is the director of marketing at Marriner Group, which owns and operates theatres across Melbourne, including the Forum. Her own memories at the venue stretch back 20 years to when Jet played a home town headline show; other highlights include Gang of Youths’ record-breaking run of eight sold out shows in 2018 and Christine and the Queens in 2020 (“a standout for me”).
Emily York, director of the boutique tour promoter Penny Drop, which brought Christine and the Queens to Australia for that run of shows, is in the business of predicting how many tickets an artist can sell and choosing the right venues accordingly. But numbers aren’t the sole deciding factor.
“The fact that an artist could do bigger venues is sometimes not the reason to do it,” she says, describing the kind of alchemy that comes from seeing an artist and venue click together like puzzle pieces. “Doing a Forum” means more than just playing to 2,000 people, she says: “It’s definitely a statement venue.”
The Forum was designed to do just that: make a statement. Leave a lasting impression. Draw your gaze up to the sky.
Where the interior is an earthly delight with Greco-Roman columns and delightful, classical architectural flourishes, outside it’s all crumbling stone, decorative cartouche panels, neo-Gothic gargoyles and crenellated parapets, standing strong as if facing an advancing enemy. Its imposing clock tower is topped with a family of spires and an onion dome, in a patinated verdigris similar to that on the Statue of Liberty.
Maintaining these heritage-protected features is an ongoing responsibility for Marriner Group. After a meticulous, multimillion dollar restoration of the interior in 2017, attention has turned to the exterior. According to a condition assessment prepared last year, waterproofing and repair work on the clock tower and surrounding balconies are “urgent” if they are to be preserved. (The distressed paint, on the other hand, “contributes to the overall aesthetic”; rock dogs don’t want their landmarks too shiny.)
It was designed in the 1920s by the architect John Eberson, who earned the nickname “Opera House John” as a nod to the 500-odd atmospheric theatres he designed around the world in his lifetime (including Sydney’s State Theatre). The Forum was also called the State Theatre when it opened its doors in 1929, bearing the trademark touches of Eberson, a former set designer and scenic painter.
The flyer for the theatre’s opening night already declared it “a national institution” and invited visitors to experience “an acre of seats in a garden of dreams”, where they would be “transported on a magic carpet to a new world, where, ‘neath magic, star-drenched skies, there unfolds before our eyes a lavish, jewel-studded palace.” In a time before international travel was commonplace, Eberson’s work emulated the feeling of sitting under a clear night sky in a European courtyard, surrounded by history.
What visitors experienced was far less extravagant; newsreels, silent features and shorts would play to an audience of more than 3,300 people, accompanied by the largest organ in the world outside the US (now in Moorabbin Town Hall).
Eventually, the single-screen theatre was split in two and programming switched to films. Greater Union took over in 1981 and renamed its new cinema venue the Forum, but the popularity of multiplexes saw the theatre close its doors just four years later. A Pentecostal church moved in for the next decade. It wasn’t until 1996 that, a decade after refurbishing the Princess Theatre, David Marriner purchased and began restoring the Forum, the same year he took ownership of the Comedy Theatre and celebrated the reopening of the Regent Theatre on Collins Street.
For Sally Mather, the Forum’s programming director, the 500-capacity space upstairs (what was once the theatre’s dress circle) is brimming with potential for bands who might not be ready for the main room – yet.
“We’re constantly trying to work on how we can better give opportunities for local and emerging artists,” Mather says. This might involve rewarding promoters and headliners for booking local support acts, she says, or for considering taking the show upstairs: “It’s quite a special space to see people perform. We’ve just done an upgrade so we can use the space better and offer some more options for smaller acts”
Last year, after only ever stepping into the seated upstairs theatrette for screenings at Melbourne international film festival, I was lucky enough to see the US pop artist Ethel Cain perform one of her two sold-out shows in the intimate, velvet-trimmed room.
York, who brought Cain to Melbourne for Rising festival, says the “special, stately, majestic” energy of the venue was the perfect backdrop for the artist, who draws heavily from Southern Gothic and Christian imagery. “She is such an otherworldly performer, and that space matched the spiritual gravity of an Ethel Cain live experience,” she says.
This was just one of countless international shows that made 2023 the busiest year the Forum has had. Despite this, Mather says the effects of Covid-19 lockdowns will continue to be felt in the live events industry, particularly for emerging acts.
“I’m really worried about our next generation of developing artists,” she says, noting that higher operating costs for all shows mean that instead of having two or three support slots headliners can now rarely offer more than one. “In five years’ time, our next big headliners aren’t going to exist if we don’t support that grassroots stuff at all stages of an artist’s career.”
Cable Ties are testament to that. The Melbourne punk trio got their first shot at being a “big room sounding band”, says bassist Nick Brown, when they were hand-picked to open for the Kills at the Forum in 2016. It was barely a year since he, drummer Shauna Boyle and guitarist and vocalist Jenny McKechnie first formed. “We were very much a first-on-at-the-Tote kind of band then,” Brown says. “When you’re a little band that plays little punk shows in little venues, you have small ideas in your mind of what you are.”
But a propulsive, loud set that well and truly “hit the back wall” of the Forum – where they connected with a crowd of people who weren’t (just) their friends – changed Brown’s perspective on their potential. Years later, they’d headline there.
“That was quite an eye-opening moment for me, of thinking, ‘Oh maybe we’re not this skittish little post-punk band’,” he says of that first show at the Forum. “Maybe there’s something a bit more going on here. You kind of back yourself.”
This is part of a new series turning the spotlight on the best live music venues around Australia. What’s your favourite? Let us know here and we’ll share your stories and memories.
