The alarm bells started ringing, very loudly. I could see me spending ten years building up a business at the Robin, at the end of which Chelsfields would not renew the lease and would use the land to expand the Merry Hill Centre, leaving me without premises. And that’s pretty much how it turned out. I did manage to get an 18 month lease extension, but the Robin Hood still got demolished a year or two later.

At this point my mission was to find alternative premises that I could purchase freehold so as to ensure the long-term future of the business. I searched all around the Black Country and finally through a friend I found the Drill Hall in Bilston, which had a pretty bad reputation as the Rising Star nightclub amongst other uses in its lifetime (built in 1901).

It had been derelict and empty for years, looked as if someone had tried to burn it down, had pigeons flying around but as soon as I walked in it reminded me of a larger Robin 1. It would be a huge project but I was confident I could make it work, so I purchased it, got a huge loan from one of the breweries to do all the redevelopment work and spent the next twelve months working on that.

I designed pretty much all of the interior with the architect. It was a crazy time, I still ran Sub Zero Music PA and the Robin 1 but on 18th September 1998 we opened The Robin 2 Bilston with a 400 capacity. Roy Wood’s Big Band Army played and Noddy Holder kindly agreed to do the official opening.

It was a great night but I knew straight away that we had a major acoustic problem in the room. There was a huge reverberation that needed to be sorted out so within a couple of days of opening I found a company that sprayed an inch-thick acoustic material onto the venue walls and ceiling. It absorbed the unwanted ring unwanted ring but made quite a mess of my new pristine venue and cost about £7,000 that I had not budgeted for.

I only got permission from building control about an hour before they were due to spray on the treatment. It was a very stressful time, but all in the day of a venue owner and it solved the problem to the extent that the soubd at the Robin 2 always drew compliments from musicians and audiences alike.

I kept the two venues going in tandem for the next five years until the lease expired on the Robin 1, the final show featuring Ian Parker with Steve Gibbons, plus special guest Joanne Shaw Taylor on Saturday 21st June 2003. It really was the end of an era.

1998 onwards was spent gradually getting the Robin 2 established on the circuit and putting Bilston on the live music map. We had some incredible shows during that period, including John Mayall’s Blues Breakers, Mark King and Level 42, Stiff Little Fingers, Jaki Graham, Blue Oyster Cult, Steven Seagal, Paul Carrack, Jon Anderson and Rick Wakeman, Joe Bonamassa, Michael Schenker and Bill Wyman’s Rhythm Kings to name but a few, mixed together with all the regular bands we’d first featured at the original club.

It was a great time but by around 2003, some five years on from opening the Robin 2, I was beginning to realise I had taken the venue as far as I could and for it to flourish I needed a larger capacity and better facilities for both artists and customers. Quite by chance or fate, which I strongly believe in, the four derelict properties adjacent went up for sale and at the same time the local council were offering substantial grants to bring the buildings back to their original condition and the lease to a large industrial unit at the rear of the Robin 2 became available.

I sold my units in Dudley and Cradley Heath to raise some funds loaned more cash from the brewery, got substantial grants from the council and purchased the four derelict properties adjacent, Then I took on the lease of the industrial unit at the rear of the Robin 2 and moved Sub Zero PA Hire there so all my business was now in Bilston, in one place which made it all more manageable.

With the architect we drew up and submitted plans to link up all the adjacent derelict properties with the existing venue to increase capacity to 700, add new dressing rooms, new themed bars, a restaurant, box office, a manager’s apartment and a small hotel. With the plans passed all this work was put in motion and we opened it in stages from February 2005 to 2007.

In amongst all the chaos and scaffolding I met my now-wife and her son; we got married on the 18th September 2004 and I also adopted her son, who was then 13. We married at a beautiful church in Bewdley and the reception was at The Robin 2. At this point we were still mid-way through redevelopment and all the builders thought I was a bit mad! I had secretly booked Colin Blunstone and Rod Argent to perform at the reception, to everyone’s great delight. It was a wonderful day that I will never forget.

With all the new facilities, hotel and increased capacity the business was doing really well, then in 2008 out of the blue came the recession. I’d obviously loaned a lot of money from banks and the brewery which I was paying off gradually, then pretty much overnight our sales reduced by about 50%. Customers were being made redundant, not going out, cancelling their party Christmas bookings in the restaurant. It was a disaster for everyone. I had given personal guarantees with all the loans so if went under I would lose the lot including our house, so it was an an unbelievably stressful time.

We went through all our overheads and cut down on everything except the management and staff. The following four years were horrendous but with lots of very stressful ducking and diving we survived, just! It was all thanks to a lot of help from family, friends and even some of the staff loaned me money, which I eventually paid back to everyone.

2012 onwards saw things improve and we motored on, developing the business and booking wonderful acts from around the world. We built up a good international reputation for staging great prog, metal and blues gigs and mini-festivals, but for I never really got over the stress of those recession years. Ten or twelve hours a day, seven days a week dealing with booking and promoting all the shows, catering, hotels, health and safety, the work was all-consuming, not helped by the fact that I have always been hands on and not good at delegating. I seemed to never get out of the office.

2017 came around and out of the blue I was approached by a local businessman Fraser Tranter to buy the business. I was approaching retirement age, I needed to catch up on my life as the last quarter of a century had just flashed by, The Robin 2 needed a new lease of life to secure it and the staff’s long-term future so after much deliberation I finally sold the business on 31st August 2018. For me it was the end of another era.

Following the sale Imoved to rural Shropshire and have spent the last seven years catching up on my life, I can spend time with my family and our two wonderful dogs Bono and Winston and pursuing my second passion, woodwork and D.I.Y. I have have built extensions to the house and a large workshop for me plus a summerhouse and outbuildings, so I still keep very busy.

I recently came across an article in a local newspaper from 1985 about me handing in my notice at GKN to pursue a career in the music industry. This made me realise that 2025 marks the fortieth anniversary of that incredible journey. If anyone had said to me back then that I would go onto to opening and running two live music venues for over a quarter of a century plus all the other achievements and then write a book about it all I would have thought they were off their trolley, but it all came true.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank all the staff and colleagues, hundreds of artists, thousands of customers who played a part in that wonderful journey, THANK YOU ! And then in 2018 a journalist friend of mine, Andy Richardson, asked me if I had ever thought about writing a book about my exploits.

As the sale of the Robin 2 was fixed I thought it would be a good idea so then for the very first time i looked back at what I had done and spent several months putting the book together with Andy. All those wonderful memories came flooding back and I am very proud of what was achieved.