Beyond the Big Names: The Birmingham Music Story Belongs to All of Us

When we talk about Birmingham and music, it is very easy to talk about the big names. Black Sabbath. Ozzy Osbourne. Duran Duran. UB40.

And we should.

These artists have played a huge part in Birmingham's musical history, and their stories deserve to be told and celebrated. But when I think about the Birmingham Music Museum, I don't want it to be a museum that only tells the stories of people who became famous.

Because Birmingham's music story is much bigger than that.

There is another part of this story that I think is really important too: the people who came before the artists we now think of as the big Birmingham names.

Before Duran Duran, before Ozzy Osbourne and Black Sabbath, before the Moody Blues and the Spencer Davis Group, there were already musicians, singers, bands, venues, promoters and audiences building Birmingham's music scene.

They might not all be names that we recognise today, but they were part of creating the environment that allowed the next generation of musicians to grow.

There were bands playing in small clubs and dance halls. There were musicians learning their trade in pubs and local venues. There were people running record shops, putting on gigs, booking bands and giving young performers somewhere to play. There were audiences turning up week after week, buying records and supporting local music.

Then another generation came along and built on what had been created before them.

That's how music scenes develop. They don't suddenly appear because one famous band arrives. They grow over time, with one generation influencing another.

When we celebrate someone like Ozzy Osbourne, Steel Pulse or Joan Armatrading, we should also remember that they didn't appear out of nowhere. They were part of a much longer Birmingham musical story.

And that is one of the things I want the Birmingham Music Museum to explore.

Who were the people before the famous names? Who were the bands playing Birmingham's venues before they became well known? Which musicians influenced the next generation? Which clubs, pubs, dance halls and music shops helped create the scene? And who were the people in the audience who helped keep it all going?

Some of those stories may be well documented. Others may only exist in someone's memory. I think we need to find them. Because if we only start the story when someone becomes famous, we miss everything that came before.

The Birmingham music story didn't begin with The Moody Blues or the Spencer Davis Group. They were part of a story that was already being written. And there were people before them who deserve to be remembered too.

It is also about the bands that never got a record deal. The singer who played every pub and club in Birmingham but never became a household name. The DJ who spent years playing records to a packed dancefloor. The promoter who took a chance on a local band. The person who worked behind the scenes making sure the gig happened.

It is about the music shops where people discovered new records and spent hours talking about music. It is about the record collectors, the photographers, the sound engineers, the people who put up posters and the people who ran the venues. And it is about the people who bought the records.

The people who went to the gigs.

The people who stood at the front of the stage.

The people who travelled across Birmingham on a Saturday night to hear a band they had never seen before.

Without those people, there is no music scene.

I think sometimes we look back at music history and only remember the people who made it big. We know the bands who sold millions of records and played huge venues. We remember the artists whose names ended up in books and on television.

But what about everybody else?

What about the band that played their first gig in a small Birmingham pub? What about the local record shop owner who introduced hundreds of people to music they would never otherwise have heard? What about the DJ who gave a young musician their first opportunity?

What about the venue that might have only held a few hundred people but gave thousands of people some of their best memories? And what about the person who went to every gig?

They are part of the story too.

Music is not just created on a stage. It is created in the relationship between the people performing and the people listening.

A music scene only becomes a scene when people come together. That is why I think we need to look at Birmingham's musical history differently.

Of course we want to celebrate the famous names. But alongside those stories, we want to discover the stories of the people who might not have made the history books. The bands who didn't make it.

The venues that have disappeared.

The music shops that have closed.

The promoters who have retired.

The DJs who have moved on.

The musicians who carried on making music even though it never became their career. The musicians who are out there now, trying to make a name for themselves and the venues who are helping them now.

And the fans who were there through it all. And are there now.

These stories matter.

In fact, some of them might be the stories that tell us the most about Birmingham. Because if you want to understand a city's music, you have to understand the people who listened to it.

You have to understand where they went, what they bought, who they followed, where they met their friends and what music meant to them at the time. For some people, a particular song might take them straight back to a club in Digbeth.

For someone else, it might remind them of buying their first record from a shop in Birmingham city centre.

For another person, it might be the memory of standing in a small venue watching a band that, at the time, nobody had heard of.

These might seem like small things. But add thousands of these memories together and you have something very important. You have the musical history of a city.

That is the Birmingham Music Museum we want to build.

A museum that celebrates the big names but doesn't stop there.

A museum that looks at the people, places, businesses, venues, bands, DJs, promoters and fans who have all played their part. Because Birmingham music doesn't belong only to the people who became famous.

It belongs to all of us.

So if you were part of Birmingham's music story, we want to hear from you. Maybe you were in a band. Maybe you ran a shop. Maybe you promoted gigs. Maybe you worked in a venue. Maybe you were a DJ. Or maybe you simply went to the gigs and bought the records.

Whatever your part was, however, big or small you think it was, you were part of the story.

And we want to remember it.