To this day, it is remembered as Newcastle's "night of infamy": a Wednesday night, almost exactly 25 years ago, which started much like any other but ended in violent confrontation as about 40 police battled more than 4000 rioters angered by the closure of the Star Hotel in the city's West End. As dramatic pictures of the riot flashed round the world, putting the ugly face of Newcastle on front pages of newspapers everywhere, the then NSW premier, Neville Wran, called the events of September 19, 1979, un-Australian. "It was a shocking, disgraceful episode," he said.

Possibly. But that has not prevented the riot becoming part of Australian folklore. Newcastle City Council produced a lengthy report. The band Cold Chisel recorded a famous song about it (see above). A Hunter Valley theatre group staged a controversial musical about it. "From this distance it's easy to lose sight of what really happened, " Phillip McIntyre, a music writer and lecturer in communications at Newcastle University, explains. "There's been a lot of myth-making going on." Indeed, Cold Chisel frontman Jimmy Barnes recently said people still came up to him to say how f---ing great he was at that gig he played on the last night of the Star. The band never performed at the hotel. Doubts have even been raised about the authenticity of some of the pictures taken that night.

It's not surprising, then, that a quarter of a century on, the riot remains the subject of controversy. What sparked it? Was it a drunken rabble, a provocative band or heavy-handed police. Or was it the media, who were in place for hours, waiting for something to happen? Was it premeditated or largely spontaneous? And, most importantly, just what was its significance? Nothing more than a shocking show of drunken hooliganism, as Wran put it? Or a political demonstration by an alienated youth triggered into action by the loss of one of the few focuses of community expression? Like it or not, few would dispute that the Star Hotel was, if not salubrious, then special. Built in 1885 - its distinctive facade dated from 1925 - it was a huge, rambling place stretching a block between King and Hunter streets, and comprising three very different bars and clienteles.

As the National Times newspaper wrote at the time, the front bar "served sailors from around the world, RAAF men, petty criminals and pimps, parachutists and 'short back and sides' misfits who didn't fit into sophisticated taverns". The middle bar catered for local gays entertained by drag acts, such as that staged by the notorious "Stella the Fella". And the back bar was where the young people went, where the bands played for free almost every night of the week. Far from being at each others' throats, the different groups rubbed along peacefully. "There was a real sense of community, of belonging to the place," recalls Mark Tinson, of the Heroes, the band playing the last set at the Star on that memorable night. "Aesthetically though, it was a big toilet. But for the fact I was being paid to perform there, I don't think I'd have been seen dead in the place."

Unusually, bands played on a raised stage behind the bar, upon which young girls danced. Often they were semi-naked. Money and $1 cans of beer, dispensed from large ice-filled troughs, were traded across the boozing, cheering crowd. Most nights, drinkers at the Star could be counted in their hundreds. Estimates of the number of people present on September 19 to drink, to farewell the hotel - peacefully or forcefully - range from 3000 to 8000.

Though only one week's notice was given to the licensee Don Graham, the writing had been on the Star's white-brick walls for some time. For the same reasons that patrons loved it - for its rebelliousness, its rowdiness, its unruliness - licensing authorities loathed it. "The Star had a definite reputation," says McIntyre, with heavy emphasis. A few years earlier, a sailor had been stabbed to death at the hotel. There were regular reports of drugs and of underage drinking. Even Stella the Fella had been given her-his marching orders a few months earlier. As Tooths Brewery moved to close the Star, its regulars mobilised to defend it. "Save the Star" T-shirts were produced, a petition supported by several thousand names was started, and a group of tradespeople who used the pub even offered their services free to renovate the fallen Star. "People strongly believed it was 'their' pub and they weren't going to allow anybody take it off them," McIntyre recalls. Even without the offer of one happy hour's free beer, the scene was set for an emotional, potentially explosive closing night.

By the time the Heroes started their final number, shortly before the scheduled 10pm shutdown, the crowd had swelled to thousands. Many had been drinking heavily for several hours. "You could feel the electricity in the room," Tinson says. "But, really, more like a mardi gras or a street party." How the party turned into a riot remains unclear. Tinson says the "pivotal moment" occurred shortly before 10pm when police entered the bar and insisted they finish immediately. "I mean we'd 30 seconds to go. And everyone was, well, you've got to be kidding."

In the ensuing chaos, the Heroes stopped playing. There were cries, Tinson says, of "kill the cops, from a couple of idiots". As the mood turned ugly, the Heroes decided to play their final encore, as they had planned. "I mean we didn't want to cause a riot." Their choice of song, The Star and the Slaughter, led later to singer Peter de Jong being charged with the incitement to riot. One verse runs: "I want action, And I want fighting in the streets. Gonna take this town by storm, Gonna burn the buildings down ... " Prophetically, the chorus proclaimed, "They will remember the night of the Star and the Slaughter." Within minutes, the band were interrupted again, Tinson says. "One of the crew came in and said, 'you should see what's happening out there'." The infamous Star Hotel riot had begun.

Tinson, a lifelong teetotaller and still a respected member of the music industry, does not defend the behaviour of the rioters. "They behaved abominably," he says. And he was reluctant to do or say anything that might prompt people to celebrate - or recreate - the riot. But he insists that by their action, the police inflamed the situation. "I think if they'd given us a few more minutes, the situation could have been avoided," he says. He also defends the band's choice of song which, he insists, did not originally refer to the hotel, had been a regular item on their playlist and had been written many months previously - not, as some critics alleged, earlier that evening. "If only we had that sort of ability."

For their part, the police, supported by the politicians, insist they had no alternative but to act after the crowd started interfering with traffic and a difficult situation threatened to turn dangerous. Senior officer Cliff Love said at the time that there was no way a force of 40 would choose to confront a crowd of thousands, most of them out of control on alcohol, many of them at least prepared for trouble. "It's no exaggeration to say that police were in fear for their lives." As Mike Scanlon, a Newcastle Herald journalist and historian, recalled, it was also subsequently revealed that authorities were concerned a lost police firearm had been stolen by a rioter. It was later found away from the scene. Whoever was to blame, whatever the degree of premeditation involved, one thing does appear clear with hindsight: the riot was the product of booze and boredom. More, drunken rabble or not, the rioters - most of them young, many of them unemployed - were representatives of a bigger, nationwide group of boozed, bored people who felt increasingly at odds with the political system.

Over the next few years, similar riots, brawls, battles were to occur across Australia. As the Newcastle City Council report concluded, across the land there was a "general sense of anger and frustration".

Life has moved on. Tinson lectures at the local TAFE. He, de Jong and the other Heroes reunited last month to perform at a hospital fund-raiser. And the Star Hotel, after many incarnations, is scheduled to be demolished to make way for a swish, 12-storey apartment block. Perhaps the old facade will be retained. Perhaps a plaque recording the events of September 19, 1979 will be erected. Perhaps not. As Tinson says, "The idea of celebrating a riot is a bit off."