MUSIC VENUES, DISAPPEARED

The 2i s

In the 1950s The 2i's coffee bar was one of the crucibles of British rock'n'roll. The singers Cliff Richard and Tommy Steele were among the performers who were discovered while playing there.

Location: 59 Old Compton Street, W1D 6HR (turquoise, purple)

Expresso Bongo

Wolf Mankowitz's play Expresso Bongo (1958) was set in Soho's world of coffee bars, aspiring musicians, and questionable managers. Val Guest directed the movie version (1959). This starred the actor Laurence Harvey, whom the director instructed to model his performance upon the writer but not to tell him that he was doing so. The movie featured Cliff Richard & The Drifters. Guest renamed the band The Shadows. There was a tame version of the film that was made principally for home consumption and a spicier one that was shown in some overseas markets.

The Argyll Rooms

In 1825 the Argyll Rooms was the venue for the first performance of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony (1824) in Britain.

Location: Little Argyll Street, W1B 3BN (blue, blue)

The Bridge House

In 1975 Terence Murphy, a former light heavyweight boxer, succeeded his brother John as the landlord of The Bridge House pub in Canning Town. He turned the establishment into a music venue. He chose to rotate styles and genres. Both Iron Maiden and Depeche Mode started their performing careers there. The pub established its own record label. In 1982 it stopped being a music venue. Two decades later the building was demolished. The site disappeared underneath a flyover.

Location: 23 Barking Road, E6 1PW

Website: www.thebridgehousE16.com

Eel Pie Island

The Eel Pie Hotel was built in 1830. Charles Dickens mentioned it in Nicholas Nickleby (1839). In the 1890s the hotel acquired a sprung dance floor. In the 1920s it was a well-known venue for tea dances.

Arthur Chisnall (1925-2006) worked in a Kingston-upon-Thames junk shop that was owned by Michael Snapper. Mr Chisnall noticed that second-hand jazz and Blues records were popular with the students who attended the local art schools and that there was nowhere local for them to go to hear the music. He persuaded Mr Snapper, who was also the owner of the Eel Pie Island Hotel, to allow him to stage jazz events in its dance hall. The Eel Pie Island Jazz Club opened in April 1956.¹

The acts that initially played Eel Pie Island included the likes of Kenny Ball, Acker Bilk, Ken Colyer, Cy Laurie, George Melly, and the nine-member The Temperance Seven. In 1957 a narrow bridge was built that joined the ait to the Thames's Middlesex shore. The Club's membership cards were in the form of passports to the island. Chisnall progressed to booking American musicians such as Buddy Guy and Howlin Wolf. In the early 1960s the venue staged performances by British Blues players such as Long John Baldry, Alexis Korner, and John Mayall. During the summer of 1963 the Rolling Stones had a Wednesday night residency at the club for several weeks. Other Rhythm & Blues bands that played the venue included The Yardbirds.²

In 1967 the police raided the Club. They discovered that three teenagers there did not have membership cards. Chisnall was fined 10. The venue was closed. Squatters moved in. In 1969 the venue reopened as Colonel Barefoot's Rock Garden. Four years later the building burned down in mysterious circumstances.

In 2006 The Eel Pie Club was based at The Cabbage Patch pub in Twickenham.

Location: Eel Pie Island TW1 3DY

The Cabbage Patch, 67 London Road, Twickenham, TW1 3SZ

Website: www.eelpie.org www.eelpieclub.com www.cabbagepatch.co.uk

¹. Chisnall himself was indifferent to music.

². Pete Townsend of The Who named his record label after the island.

The Hammersmith Palais

Originally, the building that became The Hammersmith Palais was a tram shed. After being turned into a dance hall, the venue played a central role in many west Londoners courtships.

In early 2007 Hammersmith & Fulham Council stated that Hammersmith Palais could be demolished. Successive internal refurbishments meant that very few of the building's original features had survived.

Location: 242 Shepherds Bush Road, W6 7NL

Website: www.lbhf.gov.uk/hammersmith-palais

The Marquee Club

The Academy cinema in Oxford Street screened foreign language films. In 1958 The Marquee Club was opened underneath it by Harold Pendelton as a jazz club.¹ Previously, the room had been a ballroom that had been decorated by the photographer Angus McBean as though it were a marquee. The Club became a venue for Rhythm & Blues acts. In 1962 it hosted the Rolling Stones's first ever performance. Two years later the business moved to Wardour Street. There, it became London's rock showcase venue. In 1988 the site was acquired by a developer. The club moved to Charing Cross Road. It closed in 1990.

Location: 105-107 Charing Cross Road, WC2H 0DT (blue, orange)

165 Oxford Street, W1D 2JW (orange, turquoise)

90 Wardour Street, W1F 0TH (orange, grey)

Website: www.themarqueeclub.net

¹. Pendleton founded the National Jazz Festival. This metamorphosed into the Reading Festival.

The Queen's Hall

The Queen's Hall (1893) housed two concert halls. The larger one was able to accommodate orchestral performances. Initially, the Hall was not a success. The Queen's Hall Orchestra was set up in 1895 as the only permanent orchestra to be based in central London. Sir Henry Wood was appointed as its inaugural conductor. He resurrected the practice of promenade concerts. These proved to be a great success.

The orchestra's musicians proved to be fond of using the nearby The George pub during concert intermissions. Wood dubbed the establishment The Gluepot because some them had trouble detaching themselves from it in order to resume the second half of concerts.

The Hall was destroyed by aerial bombing in 1941. The Proms migrated to The Royal Albert Hall.

Location: 3-6 Langham Place, W1W 7FB. There is a plaque on the pillar of B.B.C. Henry Wood House that is nearest to Langham Place. (red, grey)

The George, 55 Great Portland Street, W1W 7LQ (red, pink)

Website: www.B.B.C.com/historyoftheB.B.C./anniversaries/may/queens-hall-destroyed

David Backhouse 2024