“If you want something a bit different, something that isn’t your generic bar that’s going to try and rinse you for a rubbish cocktail and a dead atmosphere; if you want to actually come somewhere with a bit more heart and a bit more soul, [Big Hands] is a good place to stop in for one beer… and then realise you’ve had ten beers and you just don’t want to go home yet”.
Manchester’s grunge music scene, past and present, pulsates through the city’s fabric— from the post-punk alternative music scene of The Smiths to the electronic, psychedelic dance music that manifested through New Order and Happy Mondays in the days of ‘Madchester’. These eras can be found mushed up and spat out again in a renowned, dimly lit dive bar whose reputation is almost as blaring as its very loud speakers: Big Hands.
Big Hands was founded in 2001 by Scott Alexander, Australian lead of the folk-blues band Indigo Jones, and its imprint on the Manchester bar scene has been stark. Close friends with Mark Potter from Elbow, Alexander’s musical influences led to the creation of this gritty, rock ‘n’ roll bar bursting with creative madness. This same ethos has also manifested in Big Hands’ sister, The Temple; a Victorian underground toilet converted into a bar boasting continental beers and a jukebox.
I arrived at the bar around midday, just after it opened its graffitied shutters. Stepping through the front door, I was immediately transported into the city’s eclectic musical history; no matter the time of day, Big Hands’ dark red, poster-crammed walls encase a dimly lamp-lit cavern of worn leather sofas, guitars, records, vintage mannequins, and an alluring piano.
Sitting in her plant haven, Jazz told me that Big Hands’ magic lies in the fact that it is unlike the “generic, soulless ‘one size fits nobody’ bars” scattered across the city’s centre. Big Hands urges a proudly weird, inclusive, easy-going but magnetically energetic atmosphere. Despite its uniqueness, the bar remains a complete stranger to pretension, instead holding plenty of exclusive events that are far from exclusionary.
As Jazz emphasised, “You can [go] in wearing a crazy hat or that leather jacket you never quite dared to wear, or just doing something a bit different… [you can talk] to somebody a bit out there”. She wasn’t lying: as I walked in, a man dressed as a seagull sat nonchalantly at the bar, pint in hand, seemingly unbothered by the clump of feathers balanced on his head.
This welcoming space for the eccentric characters of Manchester has attracted many artists over the years to have a drink at this watering hole before or after performing at the Manchester Academy. These artists include Gary Numan, The Killers, I am Kloot, and Elbow, whose frontman Guy Garvey “is a good friend” of the bar and drinks there “regularly”, often shouting out the bar on his Radio 6 music show. Frank Black of the Pixies even performed in front of Big Hands after a power cut at the Academy. The MTV Jackass crew “partied with [the Big Hands staff] for a few days” after having performed in the Academy next door, in their band F*ckface Unstoppable.
Jazz described performing at Big Hands as “a transitional stage between playing in your bedroom and playing big gigs”.
“This is where people can experiment a bit. See what works and see what doesn’t… some nights customers and staff are up dancing on the tables”, she added.
The bar attracts all things weird and wonderful, including the Mancunian harmonica maestro Robin Sunflower, whose harmonica is the size of his arm and whose braided beard is almost as long as the amount of time he has spent performing at Big Hands: roughly 20+ years. Jazz informed me that he is the longest-running resident gig in Manchester, playing the last Wednesday of every month.
When I asked him why he always returns to Big Hands, he responded, “It is good to be around people that have got energy… and this place has energy”. He noted that his rendition of the song ‘Night Birds’ by Shakatak immediately reminds him of Big Hands, and the lyric “flying through the night” reminds him of the countless nights he has sung and drank the night away there.
“This place is about leaving your cares behind, coming out and relaxing. Because it is a relaxing place. You can’t do the wrong thing: well, you can but…you know what I mean”, he chuckled.
Robin told me that he started playing harmonica in the 1980s after he received a £1.50 harmonica for Christmas. From 1984-93, he owned a vegan café in Ashton-under-Lyne, followed by a vegan food trailer which he took to Glastonbury festival, protests, and rallies.
A regular customer at Robin’s café, Victor Brox, was a singer, keyboard player, cornet player, and saxophonist (to name a few), who had played with Jimi Hendrix and Jimmy Page. Robin played harmonica with Brox at Band on the Wall just two weeks after starting to learn the instrument, alongside Clive (blues boy) Miller who had just won the National Blues Harmonica championship that year. From then onwards they travelled up and down the country, playing 500 gigs.
The reggae, dance, groove-playing harmonicist is full of stories, from having dinner with football royalty Bobby Charlton in the director’s box at Old Trafford, to performing in a bilingual folk duo in front of “roughly eight people” at Castlefield Arena the day after the IRA Corn Exchange bombing in 1996. He has played with Dan Broad of Happy Mondays, and has been invited to play with John Helliwell of Supertramp, amongst many others. One of Robin’s latest bands is Baked a la Ska, a “supercharged 11-headed ska monster on a rampage through UK dance floors … assembled of oddballs and pranksters”.
It is acts like the Robin Sunflower Band that make Big Hands the hotspot it is. The place is crammed with oddballs every night of the week, offering an intimate, quirky feel that cannot be matched elsewhere.
The experimental space is more than a music venue though— it serves as a hub for art, film, and comedy too. Jazz runs her own three-day art, film and music festival: Festival Povera, inspired by the “Arte Povera” (poor art) movement. Its creation was a “lock-down bedroom project” which has only got “a bit bigger and a bit weirder” every year. This year’s festival involved an open gallery showcasing local artists’ work, three film screenings in one day, a live audio-visual psychedelia performance, a “monster life drawing” session, and lots of music.
The bar’s name was inspired by Scott Alexander’s favourite song ‘Blister in the Sun’ by the Violent Femmes, specifically the lyric “Big hands I know you’re the one”. It certainly lives up to this namesake: Big Hands is the ‘one’ for students to get a true sense of Manchester’s mad, fun, and gritty music and arts scene.
