G-Flip performs at the Forum in Melbourne. Photo: Ian Laidlaw
History endlessly collides with banal everyday life in elusive, almost forgettable ways in Melbourne. When commuters rush from Flinders Street Station to catch an express train, they rarely take into account that a few floors above them is a 109-year-old ballroom. A block away, the imposing Nicholas Building could go unnoticed by lunch breakers waiting for their six inches and cookie at Subway.
Next door to them is Forum Melbourne, a live music venue that can inspire tourists and die-hard gig hogs alike. It heightens the experience of a stop at the cloakroom (upstairs, past the lampposts and nude sculptures bordering the mezzanine) or a mid-show trip to the cavernous, carpeted, subterranean bathrooms. When it came to showcasing the city's most beloved live music venue, the Forum was the obvious, first and only choice.
Every Melburnian has a specific relationship with the Forum. Mine starts when I can barely orient myself in the city, let alone consider myself a local. It was the place where I showed up - eager, alone and only 18 - just as the doors opened for a performance at a comedy festival, leaving me several silent hours to admire the twinkling, artificial sky and the carved sculptures on either side of the to admire on stage. It was where I saw one of my last gigs before lockdown (Hot Chip supported by Harvey Sutherland) and the first when we thought it was all over (Cable Ties, Little Ugly Girls and Mod Con). Last year I walked three times across the mosaic tiles at the entrance and emerged through the looming double doors onto Flinders Street, declaring the performance I had just seen among my top five of all time (Fontaines DC, Carly Rae Jepsen and Caroline Polachek, thanks for asking).
When Harry Styles, fresh from his years with One Direction, toured the world solo for the first time, he did a series of "underplays" - consciously chosen theaters with intimate (for him) capabilities that he could easily sell and that telegraph the kind artist that he would become alone. In Melbourne that meant just one place.
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"The size and style of the venue means you get the perfect amount of atmosphere, but it still feels intimate," says Emily Wright, marketing director at Marriner Group, which owns and operates theaters in Melbourne, including the Forum. Her own memories at the venue go back twenty years, when Jet played a headline show in her hometown; Other highlights include Gang of Youths' record run of eight sold-out shows in 2018 and Christine and the Queens in 2020 ("a highlight for me").
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Emily York, director of boutique tour promoter Penny Drop, which brought Christine and the Queens to Australia for that series of shows, is busy predicting how many tickets an artist can sell and choosing the right venues accordingly. But numbers are not the only deciding factor.
"The fact of being an artist could be Organizing bigger venues is sometimes not the reason to do it," she says, describing the kind of alchemy that comes from seeing an artist and a venue click together like pieces of a puzzle. "Doing a forum" means more than just playing in front of 2,000 people, she says: "It's definitely a statement venue."
The Forum is designed to do exactly that: make a statement. Leave a lasting impression. Turn your gaze up towards the sky.
Where the interior is an earthly delight with Greco-Roman columns and ravishing, classical architectural details, outside it's all crumbling stone, decorative cartouche panels, neo-Gothic gargoyles and crenellated parapets, standing strong as if facing an advancing enemy. The imposing bell tower is topped with a series of spiers and an onion dome, in a patinated verdigris, similar to that of the Statue of Liberty.
Maintaining these heritage protected features is an ongoing responsibility for the Marriner Group. After a meticulous, multi-million dollar restoration of the interior in 2017, attention has turned to the exterior. According to a condition survey carried out last year, waterproofing and repair work on the clock tower and surrounding balconies is "urgent" if they are to be preserved. (The weathered paint, on the other hand, "adds to the overall aesthetic"; rock hounds don't want their landmarks to be too shiny.)
It was designed in the 1920s by architect John Eberson, who was nicknamed 'Opera House John' as a nod to the more than 500 atmospheric theaters he designed around the world during his lifetime (including the Sydney State Theater). Also called the State Theater when it opened in 1929, the Forum bore the signature touches of Eberson, a former set designer and landscape painter.
The theater's opening night flyer called it a "national institution" and invited visitors to experience "an acre of seating in a garden of dreams," where they would be "transported on a magic carpet to a new world, where' under a magical, star-drenched sky, a lavish, jewel-studded palace unfolds before our eyes. At a time before international travel was common, Eberson's work imitated the feeling of sitting under a clear night sky in a European courtyard, surrounded by history.
What visitors experienced was much less extravagant; newsreels, silent films and short films would be played to an audience of more than 3,300 people, accompanied by the largest organ in the world outside the US (now in Moorabbin Town Hall).
Eventually, the single-screen theater was split in two and the programming switched to movies. Greater Union took over in 1981 and renamed the new cinema venue the Forum, but the popularity of multiplexes saw the theater close its doors just four years later. A Pentecostal church came for the next ten years. It was not until 1996, ten years after the renovation of the Princess Theatre, that David Marriner purchased the Forum and began its restoration, the same year he became owner of the Comedy Theater and celebrated the reopening of the Regent Theater on Collins Street.
For Sally Mather, the Forum's program director, the 500-capacity upstairs space (what was once the theater's dress circle) is packed with potential for bands who may not be ready for the main hall.
"We're constantly trying to work on how we can provide better opportunities for local and emerging artists," Mather says. This could include rewarding promoters and headliners for booking local support acts, she says, or for considering bringing the show upstairs: "It's a really special space to see people perform. We have just done an upgrade so that we can use the space better and offer more options for smaller acts"
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Last year, after merely stepping into the upstairs seated theater for screenings at the Melbourne International Film Festival, I was lucky enough to see American pop artist Ethel Cain perform one of her two sold-out shows in the intimate, velvet-adorned room.
York, who brought Cain to Melbourne for the Rising festival, says the "special, stately, majestic" energy of the location was the perfect backdrop for the artist, who draws heavily on Southern Gothic and Christian imagery. "She's such an otherworldly performer, and that space matched the spiritual gravitas of an Ethel Cain live experience," she says.
This was just one of countless international shows that made 2023 the busiest year the Forum has ever had. Despite this, Mather says the effects of the Covid-19 lockdowns will continue to be felt across the live events industry, especially for emerging acts.
"I'm really concerned about our next generation of developing artists," she says, noting that higher operating costs for all shows mean that instead of two or three support slots, headliners can now rarely offer more than one. "Five years from now, our next big headliners won't exist if we don't support that grassroots stuff at all stages of an artist's career."
Cable ties are proof of this. The Melbourne punk trio got their first chance to become a 'big room sounding band', says bassist Nick Brown, when they were hand-picked to open for the Kills at the Forum in 2016. It was barely a year ago that he, drummer Shauna Boyle and guitarist and singer Jenny McKechnie were first formed. "We were really kind of a first-on-the-Tote band back then," says Brown. "When you're a small band playing small punk shows in small venues, you have small ideas in your head about what you are."
But a driving, loud set that well and truly "hit the back wall" of the Forum - where they connected with a crowd of people who weren't (just) their friends - changed Brown's perspective on their potential. Years later they would headline there.
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"That was a pretty eye-opening moment for me, when I thought, 'Oh, maybe we're not this skittish little post-punk band,'" he says of that first show at the Forum. 'Maybe there's something more going on here. You stand behind yourself a little bit."
