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

 

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Archer Street

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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'.

 

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Busking

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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

 

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Denmark Street

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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

 

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The Lord of Loud

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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

 

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Musical Instruments

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Guitars

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Following Rock Island Line (1955) sales of guitars went from 5000 a year to 250,000.

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Pianos

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Abbey Road

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Mrs Mills recorded for E.M.I.. The piano that she played in Abbey Road Studios was also used by The Beatles.

Website: www.abbeyroad.com/news/introducing-the-originals-mrs-mills-piano-from-abbey-road-studios-spitfire-audio-2944

 

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Punk

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See Also: NIGHTCLUBS, DISAPPEARED The Roxy

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Sex Pistols

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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.

 

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Record Shops

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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

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Rough Trade

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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

 

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The Technicolor Dream

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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.

 

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West Indian Music

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The successive West Indian musical forms of ska, rocksteady, and reggae were popular in Britain.

 

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The Wreckers of Civilisation

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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