Brixton Academy reopened this evening first the first time since it was shut down following a crush at a gig on 15 December 2022. For 16 months, the venue has remained closed due to the incident at an Asake gig. That’s almost as long as it was closed, like so many other live entertainment venues, due to the coronavirus lockdown not that long before.

For a while there were fears that it would never reopen its doors to music fans again. In May last year, more than 50,000 people had signed a petition to support it reopening, and I’m sure many more are pleased to see that its license wasn’t permanently revoked.

I am one of those people. In my Brixton days in the mid-2000s I remember seeing many a gig at the venue – without a doubt one of the best music venues in London. My first gig there was seeing REM on a very hot summer’s night in 2003. My most recent was Frank Carter and the Rattlesnakes in December 2018. In between I went to many gigs there seeing the likes of Franz Ferdinand, Athlete, Keane and Blur as well as others that I must’ve forgotten. Not only was it a great venue, I was able to walk home afterwards while most people had to pile onto buses or the Victoria line.

I remember walking past during lockdown, sad to see the venue all boarded up. Least the artwork that had been done made it look less abandoned and gave hope for the future by saying “this is just an interval”.

I may not have been as much in the last ten years as I did in those first few years living in London, but I’d be so sad if I could never go back again. London has lost enough of its music venues over the years. The Academy is an icon of the London live music scene and of south London.

It was horrific to hear what happened on the night of that gig in December 2022. The venue operators were right to be investigated off the back of it, as I hope the headliner that night and the hundreds of people who turned up without tickets should’ve been, but it would’ve been a travesty if that one night had ended 40 years of live music since it opened as a music venue in 1983. Here’s to the next 40 years.