Mathers Bar Broughton Street

An unexpected page addition here.  Mathers Bar in Broughton Street, happens to be situated just round the corner from Forth Street, and the Radio Forth building, from which Jay Crawford broadcast his legendary “Edinburgh Rock Show”.  He interviewed and gave airplay to many acts, including an interview with a certain band called the Sex Pistols.  Thank you to Jay Crawford for the very interesting email below, and the list of patrons of Mathers Bar Broughton Street. Mathers is now known as The Empress.

Mather’s Bar, Broughton Street in the eighties.  Thank you to Michael G Jackson for this picture.

First of all the email regarding the Sex Pistols interview at Radio Forth, Forth Street, before they adjourned to Mathers Bar

“Hi Simon, thanks for getting in touch, I’m happy to help.

Yes I interviewed the Pistols when they came to Edinburgh, they were
absolute wankers. They were about two hours late, one of them took out a
knife and started carving the table in the studio and they had about 20
or 30 complete tossers following them about. After the recorded
interview we all went to Mathers Bar on Broughton St (there’s an
interesting list of people that had a beer in there!) and the crowd
followed us in. It was mobbed but when the Pistols left and all the
people had gone we noticed that they’d only bought three half pints
between them.

I was looking at the tickets on your site, I was at most of those gigs,
brings it all back. My first gig was called “Changes” it was at the
Usher hall in 1969. Humble Pie were headlining, Dave Edmond’s Love
Sculpture and a band called Griffin were supports but the show also
featured a young David Bowie sitting on a stool with acoustic guitar
doing his soon to be released single, Space Oddity.

Good luck and all the best

Jay”

Listen to that very same Sex Pistols Radio Forth interview via the player above.

Now the list of people Jay remembers having a pint with in Mathers. “Off the top of my head, here’s a random list of people I remember having a pint with in Mathers”.

  • Elton John
  • Whitesnake
  • Helen Shapiro
  • Desmond Dekker
  • Jim Diamond
  • The Average White Band
  • Gallagher and Lyle
  • Tom Robinson
  • Georgie Fame
  • Cliff Richard
  • Lulu
  • Elkie Brooks
  • Uriah Heep
  • Pilot
  • Andy Gibb
  • George Martin
  • Rick Wakeman
  • Alan Price
  • Tammy Wynette
  • Carlene Carter
  • Slim Whitman
  • Carl Perkins
  • Glen Campbell
  • Don McLean
  • Harry Chapin
  • Charlie Dore
  • Sheena Easton
  • Dennis Waterman
  • Billy Joel
  • Dr Hook
  • Tom Waits

Thank you again to Jay Crawford

Please hover the magnifying glass over the piece from City Lynx above to read.
The launch of Radio Forth 22nd January 1975 . The first presenter on air was the late great Steve Hamilton pictured above, with the breakfast show. In 1977 Steve joined STV, and was on our television sets nightly If my memory serves me correctly. A very weel kent face in the seventies and eighties. Thank you to Alan for this rare picture.