Leeds Goth Hall of Fame update
26 April 2025
Looking back over the last year, ‘there’s no harm in asking’ seems to have been my guiding maxim, with the latest example concerning the sign on a Leeds building, which is particularly close to my heart.
The space once occupied by Joseph’s Well, one of Leeds’ most active and important live music venues, has just been refurbished for the first time since its doors closed more than a decade ago.
Passing it recently, I spotted the whitewashed windows and realised what was happening. Up until that point, you could still peer through the windows and see the original fittings – including the bar – preserved under thick layers of dust.
I never expected it would reopen, but as a physical manifestation of so many great memories, there was always going to be a sense of sadness when the inevitable eventually happened. But it’s a bit like Top of the Pops: you’d love it to come back, but you know it would never really work.
The original sign was still up, though, bracketed firmly to a corner of the building, and I wondered what would become of it.
It’s a strange thing watching your younger years transitioning into heritage, and I’m currently writing this in a café looking out at another place of my youth now considered so important to the story of our city that it was recently awarded a blue plaque.
Perhaps this is my own particular way of looking at it, but in my mind, the Duchess of York, the Cockpit and Joseph’s Well were all part of the same set. They were the city centre venues where new, local bands could perform on the same stage as nationally touring acts.
In a pre-arena time, the largest dedicated live music venue in Leeds was the Town & Country Club (now O2 Academy, though I still call it the T&C), and with a capacity of over 2,000, it would be a rare thing to play there if you were actually from the city.
Joseph’s Well (or ‘Josephs Well’, or later ‘The Well’) closed its doors as a venue for the last time on 22 December 2012.
Throughout the preceding 20 or so years, it had hosted many big names on a path to stardom, including a pre-stratospheric The Killers (in 2003) and our very own Kaiser Chiefs/Parva.
In May or June 1997, the band I was in (Blindfold) had been recording at the Billiard Room studios in West Park, making a ‘demo tape’. In the days before any realistic possibility of home recording, it’s what you did in the hope that an A&R person would somehow stumble upon it, realise its genius and instantly offer you a multimillion-pound contract to record it properly, preferably in Studio Two at Abbey Road.
Sadly, the contract never materialised, but I don’t give up easily. So, if you’re in A&R, here it is.
Carl, who was running the session, also ran the sound at Joseph’s Well and asked if we were interested in being on the guest list for a secret gig.
Two of us were, and my only real memory of that Tuesday night Sisters of Mercy set with our bassist Neil is of the dry ice billowing out of the doors of the building, like some sort of tech malfunction. I once saw this exact thing happen on the Pyramid Stage at Glastonbury. In that case, it was definitely faulty tech, in the case of the Sisters’ gig, I’d assume some planning was involved.
I know I saw the Sisters of Mercy that night, but it’s difficult to be sure.
Looking through our old band flyers, it seems our fairly average (apologies to my fellow bandmates) indie band played at Joseph’s Well more times than I remember.
A reply to my email enquiry came, and they were happy to let me have it. And so on a particularly icy Friday in November, I met my brother, who was providing the wheels, at Joseph’s Well, ready to collect it.
The Joseph’s Well complex was built as a huge clothing factory by ready-to-wear clothing pioneer John Barran at a time when Leeds’ textile economy was booming. It was turned into offices in the 1960s by Pullans and is still owned by the Pullan family. And while not architecturally as flamboyant as Barran’s St Paul’s House, it’s still an impressive complex.
We stuck our heads round the door and a lovely man called Cristophe, who I’d been liaising with, appeared and took the time to show us round the place as the refurb was underway. Some of the venue’s original features were being incorporated into the work, including stained glass panels and the sign from above the entrance.
It was an odd feeling seeing the gigging room for the first time in a few decades, now gleaming in fresh white paint and minus a stage, but still clearly recognisable as a space.
The sign was huge, but the wooden surround was too rotten to save, so Christophe got to work jimmying it out of its frame.
He’d already confirmed my suspicion that that an earlier sign might be hidden underneath the black and white 00s-era ‘The Well’ sign.
Sure enough, a more familiar (to me, at least) green and gold sign emerged as the work continued. As the sign was double-sided, this meant we now ended up with four signs on the floor in front of us.
Later, my brother found that Joseph’s Well had used another sign for a short time before the black and white one. I don’t know what happened to it, but I certainly don’t remember it.
All four signs currently dominate the space in my hallway.
When I first asked if I could have them, I hadn’t really thought about where they might go, I was just fearful they might not survive.
But a new home for them has now been found which will ensure they’re preserved for the future and can go on public display.
I’ll update this post in the new year when everything is in place, but for a little while longer, it’s nice to walk through my front door and be welcomed by such a distinctive memento of Leeds’ music heritage.
