A Manchester basement club which boasted a string of bars and six dancefloors has been described as looking like something out of the space horror movie, Aliens.
In the 1970s, extravagantly dressed clubbers would walk down stairs to the underground club in Fennel Street. Describing Pips in an interview with the MEN in 2017, ex-Stone Roses DJ Dave Booth said it looked like the set of the classic James Cameron movie.
Dave said: "It was like walking onto the set of James Cameron’s Aliens movie. It was like the lair from the end of that movie, with stalactites and caves hidden in corners. It was loved by a lot of people.”
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To access the basement club, you would walk through huge black double doors and down 20 or so perilous steps. Walking past the paying-in kiosk the club was split into two.
There was an upstairs room to the left, but on the right past the cloakroom were stairs down to the commercial room and past that lay the infamous Roxy room. Pips opened in 1972 - ten years before Tony Wilson’s Factory records opened Fac 51.
Some now regard Pips as being as influential on Manchester's music scene as the legendary Hacienda club which opened 10 years later. Not so much for dance music, but rather the goth, glam rock, new wave and new romantic scenes that came before.
Speaking to the MEN, Dave said: "Pips was the original club. It opened in '72, 10 years before the Hacienda. This is predating Blitz Club in London. The Blitz opened in 1980 so that’s eight years after."
The Blitz night in London was a meeting of New Romantics at numerous Roxy and David Bowie nights. Boy George, Billy Idol and Tony Hadley were faces of this scene.
Dave added: “Everybody talks about Boy George and the Blitz Club in London but nobody talks about Pips. Joy Division did their first gig there; there should be a blue plaque for that alone."
Joy Division went on to influence a generation of new wave and post punk bands that followed. This fact, along with Pips predating London's Blitz night, left MEN journalist Matthew Cooper in no doubt that "a decade before the iconic Hacienda, there was somewhere else just as important".
Dave's blue plaque comment might seem a little overboard but the truth is there's almost no physical proof that Pips ever even existed. Where Pips once stood is now Manchester's Corn Exchange.
Those who do remember Pips well, however, are those that used to call it a home-from-home. A Facebook group called Pips Disco - Manchester (Its behind the Cathedral) has been a place where ex-clubbers can post photos and share memories of the lost nightclub.
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This week, several of the Pips Facebook group shared their memories with the MEN. Phil Calvert said: "We used to travel by train from Stoke-on-Trent to Manchester Piccadilly about once a month.
"I got seriously into Bowie from the 1970s and Pips was the place we would head to for our fix. Many a time we headed back to Piccadilly (in some outrageous outfits) to get the 3am milk train back to Stoke or sometimes to Crewe.
"We always got plenty of stick on-route but never an issue once inside the Roxy Room. Great memories of a unique place."
Anne Guy shared vivid memories depicting the unique fashions that could be seen on the dancefloors. She said: "I was in Pips most Saturdays 76/77. It was a great experience nothing like it.
"We were always in the Bowie and Roxy Room. To me, in that Roxy room it was like being transported back into the era of Hollywood glam.
"Most of the girls wore clothes that were from that era bought at antique markets in town. Furs and diamanté jewellery was the in thing also the classic cigarette holder.
"Many looked like Garbo or Jean Harlowe. The men most of whom followed the Bryan Ferry trend hairstyle and tuxedo.
"Many Ferry look-a-likes in there. Bowie was popular you could hear Queen Bitch and Aladdin Sane (Bowie song and album) booming out frequently.
"Guys with orange hair, eyeliner etc stood around posing like Bowie. Many of Manchester's top hair stylists went in the Bowie Room as it was a very creative room.
Anne added: "Pips was the happiest days of my club life in Manchester. Everyone looked forward to Saturday night in Pips - it was literally the place to be."
Does Pips awaken any memories for you? Let us know in the comments section below.
Bob Gaunt told the MEN: "I went to Pip’s with my mates throughout 1974 and 1975. We were all about 17 and still at school so we didn’t have much money for all the right clothes, but it was, as they say, a formative experience.
"I remember the first time we got in I was totally in awe of the Bowie and Ferry lookalikes and the Roxy girls in satin pencil skirts and pill box hats. To us it all felt deliciously decadent."
Bob added: "In 1975 they played some Dr Feelgood, and introduced it as ‘punk rock’, by 1976 real punk had arrived and the glam era looked like it was gone for good. I left Pip’s and moved on to other things, but I made a point of visiting the Bowie shrine outside Pip’s when he died."
Pips closed at the beginning of the 1980s, but later reopened as Konspiracy nightclub. This lasted into the '90s before being closed by Manchester police due to drug and gang problems.
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