POP & ROCK
See Also: THE
BEATLES; BRIDGES Waterloo Bridge, Waterloo Sunset; CARNABY STREET The Monster
Raving Loony Party; CLOTHES SHOPS, DISAPPEARED; THE COUNTERCULTURE;
ENTERTAINMENT, DISAPPEARED; FOLK MUSIC; FRUSTRATION's FRUIT; MUSIC VENUES;
MUSIC VENUES The Royal Albert Hall, Eric Clapton; ELVIS PRESLEY; SATURDAY NIGHT -PHRENIA; SOFT POWER SOUNDS
REBOUND
Archer Street
In the 1940s
Archer Street was where musicians used to hang out in the hope of securing
work.1
In the 1970s
and 1980s The Ship in Wardour Street had a reputation for being a pub
where jobbing rock musicians could be hired at short notice.
Location:
Archer Street, W1D 7BB (purple, blue)
The Ship,
116 Wardour Street, WIF 0TT (orange, red)
See Also:
MUSIC HALL Poverty Corner; STREETS, SPECIALISED
1. In taxi
slang Archer Street is known as 'Poverty Corner'.
Busking
The licensing
of buskers derives from organ grinders having created so much noise.
In 2003
London Underground launched a scheme for licensing buskers within its stations.
See Also:
UNDERGROUND STATIONS
Denmark Street
Denmark
Street is colloquially known as Tin Pan Alley. In 1926 the music paper Melody
Maker was founded at No. 19; the New Musical Express was launched at
No. 5 in 1952. Until the early 1960s the
street was the centre of the popular music industry. There are still instrument and music-related
shops on it and on the neighbouring portion of Charing Cross Road. It is a clich that Smoke On The
Water is the tune that aspirant guitarists are meant to try out on any
instrument they are allowed to play on.
In the 1960s
the music shops also ran down Charing Cross Road and Shaftesbury Avenue.
Location:
Denmark Street, WC2H 8LS (blue, yellow)
See Also:
STREETS, SPECIALISED
The Lord of Loud
Jim Marshall
(1923-2012) was an amateur musician and toolmaker. He developed his drumming skills to the point
where he was able to earn a living by teaching drumming. In 1960 he opened a music shop in Hanwell
that specialised in drums. Those who
worked in Marshall's shop included (John) Mitch Mitchell (1947-2008), whom
Marshall taught to drum and who was to go on to be the drummer in the Jimi
Hendrix Experience. At the time the
amplifiers that were available to guitarists produced a sound that was either
too clean or too tinny. Marshall learned
of this. In his own performing days he
had sung as well as drummed and had built an amplifier to stop his vocals being
drowned out by his own playing. With his
shop repairman Ken Bran and Dudley Craven, an E.M.I. employee, he created a
series of prototypes. In 1962 the trio
sold their first amp. It produced a
dirty distorted sound. In 1964 the
partners opened a dedicated factory in Hayes.
The following year they signed an international distribution deal.
Pete
Townshend of The Who was of the viewing that too much of his sound was being
drowned out by his bandmates. At his
request, Marshall started building stackable systems. Townshend onstage theatricals as well as
those of Hendrix - came to include the destruction of his amps. However, what he was doing was only tearing
the balling cloth.
Marshall was
dubbed The Lord of Loud .
Location:
76 Uxbridge Road, Hanwell, W7 3SU
Website:
www.marshall.com
Musical Instruments
Guitars
Following Rock
Island Line (1955) sales of guitars went from 5000 a year to 250,000.
Pianos
Abbey
Road
Mrs Mills
recorded for E.M.I.. The piano that she
played in Abbey Road Studios was also used by The Beatles.
Punk
See Also:
NIGHTCLUBS, DISAPPEARED The Roxy
Sex
Pistols
In 1971
Vivienne Westwood (n e Swire) (1941-2022) and Malcolm McLaren
(1946-2010) rented space in No. 430 Kings Road for their Fifties clothes
business Let It Rock. Two years later
the premises were renamed Too Fast To Live Too Young To Die which was a slogan
that they had seen written on a biker's leather jacket. The couple hired a former Whiteley s
employee, the fifteen-year-old Glen Matlock, as their Saturday boy. Paul Cook and Steve Jones were fans of the
band The Faces. Its members bought
clothes from Granny Takes A Trip, which was at No. 488. Curiosity prompted the Shepherds Bush
rapscallions to investigate the western reaches of The King's Road. While there, they wandered into No. 430 and
into McLaren's orbit.
In 1974
Westwood and McLaren decided that they had had enough of the Fifties and as an
alternative opted for sleaze. They
reopened the shop as SEX. It drew much
of its stock from an existing fetish ware industry that operated in a much less
brazen manner. Towards the year's end
McLaren moved to New York in order to involve himself in the management of the
American band The New York Dolls.
Six months
later McLaren returned to London with a plan for creating a rock band that
would be unmusical. He would try to sign
it to a major label to secure as large an advance as he could extract. His associate Bernie Rhodes,1
while walking along the Kings Road noticed a young man, one John Lydon, who was
wearing a T-shirt that stated I hate Pink Floyd . Rhodes invited Lydon to meet McLaren, Cook,
and Jones in The Roebuck pub that evening.
The encounter went well and Lydon was invited to become the band s
vocalist. In November 1975 the Sex
Pistols played their first ever gig at St Martins School of Art, where Matlock,
the band's bassist, was a student.
In October
1976 EMI signed the Sex Pistols. Later
that month The Damned became the first punk band to release a record, when the
Stiff Records label issued their New Rose single. A few weeks later the Sex Pistols Anarchy
In The U.K. was released.
Two months
later the Sex Pistols were interviewed by Bill Grundy on Thames TV's Today
show. The presenter's attempt at
flirting with the accompanying female punks led to his being called a dirty
old man by Jones. The seasoned
journalist did not back down and ended up being sworn at. The following day a media frenzy broke and
knowledge of the existence of punk entered the mainstream of British
society. The band embarked upon their Anarchy
Tour only to discover that a number of their dates had been cancelled as a
result of their newly established controversiality.
In February
1977 Rotten and Matlock fell out. The
latter was sacked from the band. He was
replaced by the former's friend Sid Vicious.
The following month A&M Records signed the Sex Pistols in a deal
that took place in front of Buckingham Palace.
A week later the label dropped the band.
Richard Branson's Virgin Records took them on. In June the single God Save The Queen
was released to coincide with the Silver Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth's accession
to the throne in 1952. The record was a de
facto No. 1 in the pop charts although according to the industry s
officialdom it only reached No.2. There
was considerable adverse coverage of punk in the media. This led to a number of Teddy Boys going to
the Kings Road to engage in punk bashing .
It became hard to find punks on the Road - it was hard to run away while
wearing bondage trousers that secured your legs close together. In October the album Never Mind The
Bollocks, Here's The Sex Pistols was released. Two months later the Sex Pistols played their
last UK gig. They went on a short tour
of the United States and then broke up.2
Nottinghamshire
Police arrested Chris Searle, the manager of the Nottingham branch of Virgin
Records, for displaying a copy of the Pistols Never Mind The Bollocks
(1977) in the shop's windows. He was
charged under the Indecent Advertisement Act of 1889. The case went before the city's magistrates
court. Virgin hired the barrister John
Mortimer to represent it. As an expert
witness, he deployed James Kinsley F.B.A., a Professor of English Studies at
Nottingham University. The academic
testified that the word bollocks had originally meant priest and
in the context of the album meant rubbish. Kinsley himself had been ordained as a priest
in 1963.
Location:
Wessex Sound Studios, 106a Highbury New Park, N5 2DW. The recording studio where God Save The
Queen was finished.
The
Roebuck, 354 The King's Road, SW3 5UZ.
The building is no longer a pub. (blue, red)
430 The
King's Road, SW10 0LJ. It nestles next
door to the local Conservative Club. (blue, turquoise)
Dryden
Chambers, 119 Oxford Street, W1D 2HP.
The office from which the Sex Pistols were managed. (orange, grey)
See Also:
CLOTHES DESIGNERS Vivienne Westwood; TAILORS Savile Row, Teddy Boys
Website:
www.sexpistolsofficial.com
1. Rhodes
was to adopt a parallel strategy for The Clash.
2. In 2010
it was Matlock - and not Cook or Jones - who went to perform with the reformed
The Faces.
Record Shops
In 2007 a
number of secondhand record shops disappeared from Berwick Street. Hanway Street had been another centre of the
trade.
Location:
Berwick Street, W1F 0PN (red, turquoise)
Hanway
Street, W1T 1UB (purple, red)
Website:
https://eraltd.org https://recordstoreday.co.uk
Rough
Trade
While
travelling in the United States, Geoff Travis bought hundreds of American
records. Following his return to Britain he decided to sell them off. In 1976 he opened The Rough Trade Records
record shop to import American and Jamaican records. Punk happened almost simultaneously. The shop became a focus of the punk and post
punk D.I.Y. records.
People
dropped off demo tapes at the shop. The
business became an Indy distributor. In
1978 the Rough Trade label was set up.
In 1983 the
shop was separated from the record label.
The business then moved from Kensington Park Road to Talbot Road.
In 2007 Rough
Trade opened Rough Trade East, a shop off Brick Lane.
Location:
Rough Trade East, Old Truman Brewery, 91 Brick Lane, E1 6QL (red, blue)
Rough Trade
West, 130 Talbot Road, W11 1JA (red, yellow)
Website:
www.roughtrade.com/events/store/rough-trade-east www.roughtrade.com/events/store/rough-trade-west
The Technicolor Dream
By 1966 a
collective had coalesced that included the record producer Joe Boyd, the
photographer John Hoppy Hopkins, the music entrepreneur David Howson, the
band managers Peter Jenner and Andrew King, and the writer Barry Miles. In January 1967 the First Human Be-In in San
Francisco launched the Summer of Love .
The London group decided to stage a similar event and to use it to raise
funds for the International Times, an underground newspaper. The fourteen-hour-long Technicolor Dream was
held at Alexandra Palace on 29 April 1967.1 10,000 people attended
the happening. The bands that performed
at it included: the Crazy World of Arthur Brown, the Creation, the Move, the
Pretty Things, the Social Deviants, and Soft Machine. Pink Floyd played one of their most noted
performances, doing so as the dawn broke through the east-facing windows. The event made a financial loss.
Location:
Alexandra Palace Way, Wood Green, N22 7AY
See Also:
ART DEALERS Indica Gallery; COUNTERCULTURAL MAGAZINES International Times;
NIGHTCLUBS, DISAPPEARED Middle Earth
Website:
www.alexandrapalace.com/blog/14-hour-memory
1. Howson
was a native of Muswell Hill.
West Indian Music
The
successive West Indian musical forms of ska, rocksteady, and reggae were
popular in Britain.
The Wreckers of Civilisation
In 1976 the Institute
of Contemporary Arts staged an event by the art band Throbbing Gristle. This prompted the Conservative M.P. Nicholas
Fairbairn (1933-1995) to refer to the group as the wreckers of civilisation . Its electronic music helped to create
Industrial music , which in turned spawned Techno.
Location:
12 Carlton House Terrace, SW1Y 5AH (red, white)
Website:
www.ica.art www.throbbing-gristle.com
David
Backhouse 2024