It’s Only Rock and Roll (but I like it)
In recent weeks I’ve noticed (judging by the reviews we’ve received) that we’ve had a few guests for whom the soundtrack to our dining experience didn’t work. It’s not the first time, and I am sure it won’t be the last, that comment is passed on our musical choices. The “throbbing” music – as Harden’s recently and inexplicably dubbed it – is certainly intentional, noticeable, and divisive. Here’s why I won’t be turning the volume down. (Spoiler alert – it's not just because I’m stubborn and thoroughly dislikeable).
I didn’t always have such a recognisable soundtrack in the restaurant. When we first opened we played a lot of gentle folk, a lot of emotionally distraught young men with a guitar, or, occasionally (and regrettably), a ukele. It was only when we moved to the Jewellery Quarter – reborn, as it were – that I wanted to bring my personal taste to the stereo.
That is, of course, part of it. I am unashamedly a product of an adolescence fuelled by rock and roll. I was wearing nail varnish well before Harry Styles, and (pre-hospitality) a regular cigarette wielding drunk in improbably skinny jeans at Subculture, Eddie’s and Subway City. Though my testicles, one suspects, will never recover from years of said bondage, there is a great sentimentality here for me. I am not alone in the restaurant with my enthusiasm for our sonic choices – as Loubie would kill me if I didn’t say, she manages and created our playlist. The restaurant is where we spend the largest amount of our time, and it makes sense to me that the environment is one that speaks to the personalities and wants of those who spend near every waking hour here. I reckon we’d last a week on easy listening before cannibalism kicked in.
It does, however, go beyond that. The longer I’ve run restaurants for, the more I believe that all great restaurants must have a reason to exist. The Wilderness exists because younger me needed it to exist – a space navigating a new luxury that had fun, inclusivity, and humour at the core. My old man is salt of the earth Birmingham and I think often of how there are some “faynnn-dinin’” restaurants that would make him feel uncomfortable, or worse, somehow less. Myself? I personally still enjoy (in a sort of ironic way) the grande dames of fine-dining; the ceremony, five sommeliers, white gloves – even if as the only goths in the room Rach and I get treated as a pair of exotic birds that somehow flew in by mistake. But I am very aware that for many, all these said trappings are intimidating. What little I’ve learnt of the new luxury, is that luxury experiences should make people feel more themselves, more alive and – to be less of a waffle-y wanker – just make you feel fucking great.
Music was my first love because of its ability to make you feel – much like good food. Music – without hyperbole – saved me and, as a gawky adolescent, it was (pre-racist) Morrissey, Joey Ramone and Ian Curtis that first made me feel like I belonged, anywhere. When not in work, you’ll always find me with headphones on listening obsessively to my latest musical crush – Rach enforced the headphones after I inadvertedly ruined The National for her. Apparently, “some” people have a limit to listening to “Pink Rabbits” on loop.
As someone who knowingly and wilfully blurs the lines of his various loves and draws such parallels, it is then hardly surprising that to me the restaurant playlist is a powerful tool in our founding principles. We want to be a place that people feel they belong – a coming home, as it were. There is an exhilarating joy in watching guests who join us for their maiden tasting menu experience let go of their trepidation. So very often it starts with a toe tap, a dodgy lip synch, or (on the most memorable occasions) some genuinely world-class air-guitaring. We have tracks on our playlist that first earned their place as a guest request of DJ Loubie for engagements, anniversaries and all manner of special days.
Our playlist is an invitation down memory lane, a familiar friend in a sometimes unfamiliar environment, a reason to smile, permission to let our your wild side. The restaurant’s soundtrack is, I think, the easiest shorthand available to remind our guests, and us, of our raison d’etre. It’s not just music, it’s a manifesto for our approach to everything. So, to the occasional detractor I’m afraid that I know to you it’s only rock and roll, but to me it’s a lot more and, do you know what, I like it.