Nostalgia: From Cliff to Oasis, the Capital's stages have seen music styles and fashions come and go

Published on Saturday 20 June 2009 11:25

OASIS' visit to Murrayfield on Wednesday was just the latest in a long line of acts to grace the city's stages in the last 50 years.

Before Oasis staked their claim as the bad boys of Britpop there was . . . Cliff Richard. It's hard to believe now, but in the late 1950s young Cliff was seen as a corrupting influence on British teenagers. When he visited the Usher Hall in 1959 hordes of city teenagers turned out to get a glimpse of their hero.

The Gallagher brothers may revere The Beatles, but their shoulder-length haircuts and bad-boy image owe more to The Rolling Stones, who played the Usher Hall in June 1965.

Images of that gig reveal much about the dynamics of the band. Troubled guitarist Brian Jones stands at the very edge of the stage, peering out from under his angelic blond bob.

He would later be sidelined by the indestructible Mick 'n' Keef axis, but at the Usher Hall he was still – in his mind at least – the leader of the band.

By the 1970s hundreds of British bands had taken the Stones' template of long hair and flamboyant dress and glammed it up, as our pictures of The New Seekers visiting the Usher Hall for the Eurovision Song Contest in 1972 show.

However, by the 1980s there had been a seismic shift in music and fashion. Britain had come through glam and into punk, and was soon to launch into New Romantic miserablism.

Not that you'd have known it from the David Essex gig at the Usher Hall in May 1980, where the star looked like he'd just walked in off the builders' yard.

For anyone who attended U2's 1987 gig at Murrayfield it would have been prudent to wear as little as possible. Stewards were drafted in with buckets of water to keep fans cool in the sweltering heat.

Alice Cooper visited the Playhouse in 1991 with tight leather trousers, skull vest and a dominatrix's paddle. If parents warned their daughters not to date boys like Cliff Richard in 1959, what would they have made of Alice?