I have a talk coming up with the Sohemian Society on Thursday December 5, where I will be in conversation with writer and musician Max Décharné about Denmark Street: London’s Street Of Sound. The event will be held upstairs at the Wheatsheaf pub on Rathbone Place in Fitzrovia – tickets can be purchased here.
The Sohemian Society was founded in 2003 to celebrate Soho Bohemia and is organised by the cream of London nerdery, with input from the likes of Travis Elborough, John King and Paul Willetts – authors and speakers of great repute in the London-obsessed world.
I am really looking forward to talking to Max, who has written brilliant books about the Kings Road and Teddy Boys. Max is a musician with Gallon Drunk and Flaming Stars, so will have plenty of first-hand memories of Denmark Street from his career. The talk is at the Wheatsheaf, one of the classic London pubs and a short stroll across Oxford Street to Denmark Street itself.
It should be a great evening. Please do come along and say hello.
When I wrote my history of Denmark Street – Denmark Street: London’s Street Of Sound – I delivered what some felt was an overly optimistic conclusion. This commercial makeover might not be all bad, I said, citing one example: “Might Denmark Street even finally get a record shop like…. the new Rough Trade hidden inside a clothe’s shop… in west Soho?”
And so it has come to pass with the news that Rough Trade will be taking a lease at No 24, the former HQ of Noel Gay Music. This will be the first record shop for the street, which has been home to every other business related to music over the past 100-plus years but, as far as I could tell, never had a record shop.
While most observers painted the street’s future in apocalyptic terms seeing only a complete obliteration of history and tradition by evil developers, I was cautiously upbeat. Of course, when the scaffolding was removed Denmark Street would not be the same as it had been, but the history of the street had always been one of adaptation, as the shops and businesses that populated Denmark Street moved with the changing rhythms of the music industry. The publishers of the 20s and 30s had given way to the bands and managers of the 60s and 70s, who were then replaced by the guitar-purchasing amateurs of the 80s and 90s. Things change. They have to.
Music today occupies a different, less culturally vital role, but it’s still big business and Rough Trade’s stock of expensive coloured vinyl and related merch will be exactly what a younger audience is looking for. Add the continued survival of the instrument shops and the excellent work being done round the corner at Meanwhile where a new 500-capacity grassroots venue is taking shape, and you have a recipe for something genuinely interesting. The next step is improved programming at the developers own two venues, Here and The Lower Third, neither of which have really managed to take full advantage of their location.
This feels like something close to a homecoming for Rough Trade, whose old Covent Garden store was a favourite haunt of mine in the 1990s – something I wrote about here. But let’s not wallow in nostalgia. This isn’t about me. As I wrote in my book, “Denmark Street’s story is not done yet and there is still the possibility that future generations will visit Tin Pan Alley and leave with treasured memories of their own.”
Flitcroft Street is the short street at the east end of Denmark Street. You might know it from its most famous building – the one with the huge door (theatre backdrops were painted here – hence the big door to get them out on to the street).
Flitcroft Street used to be known as Little Denmark Street. Readers of my book, Denmark Street: London’s Street Of Sound, might recall it was the location of Billie’s, a legendary London gay club populated by musicians in the 1930s that was the subject of a homophobic police raid.
Flitcroft Street is now home to Meanwhile, a gallery run by the Farsight Collective. Walk down Denmark Street, turn right and it’s right there. The Farsight Collective have huge plans for this site. The gallery will be on the ground floor. A couple of floors below, almost directly below Regent Sounds at No 4, that will be a cabaret bar – modeled partly on Billie’s. In the floor between there is space for a live music venue that will hold around 300 people. The Farsight Collective have considerable experience running both clubs and galleries in London so they know their stuff.
This is, in my view, the most exciting thing to happen in the West End for decades. It has the potential of confirming Denmark Street as an essential location for live music, particularly if it encourages the Lower Third (once the 12 Bar) and Here to up their game. Other new arrivals for the street – as yet unconfirmed – will add to this experience by filling in other gaps that are currently lacking in the street’s offering.
Meanwhile is open weekdays 12-6pm. It is currently hosting an exhibition that celebrates the musical history of Denmark Street and Soho. This includes photographs of great London nightspots from the past, covering everything from jazz to Trash. There’s a video timeline showing London clubs from 1900 to today – apparently there were more nightspots open in Soho during the Blitz than there are today – and some drawings of famous Denmark Street locations including Lawrence Wright House at No 19, Bowie and Bolan at La Gioconda and The Sex Pistols outside their outhouse at No 6.
No 4 Denmark Street could be the most important single address on Tin Pan Alley. It’s housed Regent Sound, the studio where the Rolling Stones recorded their debut album, the Helter Skelter bookshop that specialised in books about music, and is now home to Regent Sounds, London’s best guitar shop. Other residents include Johnny Dankworth and Essex Music, publishers of the Rolling Stones among others. There might even be a connection to the Krays.
I will be giving a talk about the general history of Denmark Street amid the Fenders at No 4 on Friday December 15 at 7.30pm, and then signing copies of the second edition of Denmark Street: London’s Street Sound. Crispin Weir, who owns Regent Sounds, will be talking about the history of No 4 in particular, having done extensive research into the building over the years. It should be a great event for anybody who loves music, books, history and guitars. Hope to see you there.
Denmark Street talk – at No 4 Denmark Street, WC1, on Dec 15, 7.30pm.
I have three events coming up in the next four weeks.
On Monday October 23, I will be talking to counterculture guru Carl Williams about the LSD Library. This is a free event organised by TANK magazine at their base on Great Portland Street but tickets must be booked. The LSD Library was the incredible collection put together by Julio Santo Domingo that contained thousands of books and items related to drugs, sex, magic, alternative politics and rock n roll. It is the subject of my book, Altered States.
On Thursday November 23, I will be at the Horse Hospital to talk about music in London for the London Salon. I will talk about some of London’s lost venues, focusing on those around Soho and Covent Garden within walking distance of Denmark Street.
On Thursday November 30, I will be at Battersea Bookshop at Battersea Power Station to talk about Denmark Street. Tickets aren’t available for that yet, but should be soon.
Here’s an interview I did with Matt Brown at Londonist that I think gives a good overview of the topics covered in the book. If you’ve bought, read and enjoyed the book, please do consider leaving a review on Amazon as it makes a big difference.
My new book, Denmark Street: London’s Street Of Sound, is out now. But why is Denmark Street so interesting anyway? Here are ten (mostly) music-related things that emerged from Denmark Street since the 1910s.
1 The charts
The first UK singles chart was compiled in 1952 by the NME from their office on Denmark Street. It’s arguably the single greatest innovation to come from the street’s long association with music.
2 The Rolling Stones
The Rolling Stones’ debut album was recorded at a pokey little Denmark Street studio, Regent Sound, in 1964.
3 Northern Songs
The Beatles’ publishing company was formed in 1963 at the office of music publisher Dick James, on the corner of Denmark Street and Charing Cross Road. It was a then revolutionary deal, which recognised that the Beatles were both performers and songwriters.
4 “South Of The Border”
Perhaps the best of the pre-rock ‘n’ roll songs published on Tin Pan Alley, “South Of The Border” was the work of Jimmy Kennedy and Michael Carr, two prolific pre-war Denmark Street songwriters.
5 Dark Side Of The Moon
One of the world’s best known album covers was conceived by designers Hipgnosis at No 6 Denmark Street.
6 Forbidden Planet
Denmark Street wasn’t just about music – the nerd emporium began life on Denmark Street, ensuring the street was briefly a mecca for comic lovers as well as music fans.
7 Live At The 12 Bar
Bert Jansch was one of many great musicians to perform at the tiny 12 Bar – this 1996 concert was officially released in 2015.
8 Cerberus
Cerberus was a pioneering internet-streaming music site that was located at No 21 Denmark Street in 1994 – years ahead of its time.
9 Theme to “News At Ten“
One of many famous theme tunes to emerge from the studio on Denmark Street owned by KPM – home to one of the largest music libraries in the world.
10 Spunk
The Sex Pistols had a rehearsal space at No 6 Denmark Street, where they recorded several songs that appeared on this legendary bootleg.
My new book, Denmark Street: London’s Street Of Sound, is now available for pre-order with publisher Paradise Road – link here. It will be available from the week of September 11.
There is surely no other street in London that can pack so much history into such a small area. There are numerous significant buildings in London – the British Library say, or Abbey Road – but there’s nowhere quite like Denmark Street, which connects musicians such as The Beatles, Rolling Stones, Lionel Bart, Joe Meek, Gracie Fields, The Kinks, The Sex Pistols, Pink Floyd, Bananarama, Elton John, Jimi Hendrix, Jimmy Page, David Bowie and Jeff Buckley in so many different ways.
Some recorded here, some performed, some lived, some worked in office jobs, some scavenged for session work, some bought or sold instruments – and many were ripped off by the managers and booking agents that occupied the offices of Denmark Street before they were told into shops that sold guitars.
I trace the story of this street from the moment the first music publisher arrived on Denmark Street before the First World War, and follow the way it has changed and developed alongside the needs of the music industry itself, right up to the present day. The text is enlivened by Rob Telford’s amazing photographs.
As with the Mona Lisa, I’ve no idea when I first saw the cover of Dark Side Of The Moon, so ubiquitous is its presence in popular culture. The Floyd prism is one of the most recognisable record sleeves in the world and was the work of designers Hipgnosis, who are now the subject of a new book, Us And Them by Mark Blake. I’ve written about Hipgnosis before – in a feature for Uncut, in my book on Battersea Power Station, and in my next book too, a forthcoming musical history of Denmark Street as Hipgnosis’s office was at No 6, a space they shared with the Sex Pistols.
One of the reasons the Hipgnosis story is so interesting is that the company – founded by Floyd associate Storm Thorgersen and Aubrey Powell – came from exactly the same 60s scene as the bands they worked with. They loved rock and roll and Beat poetry, went to the UFO and the Technicolour Dream, watched the Beatles change music and saw first-hand as their friends in Floyd developed from a blues band into a psychedelic all-conquering world-making powerhouse. They were flatmates with Syd Barrett, took drugs, dated models and had huge ambitions – so when Paul McCartney wanted to take a photo of an Egyptian statue on top of a mountain for a Wings compilation, that’s exactly what they did, flying to Switzerland and hiring a helicopter rather than simply mock it all up in the studio – even if the final cover did actually look like a studio mock-up.
You can’t get them all right.
That thinking is what led to so many memorable covers from Presence to Ummagumma, including Led Zeppelin’s Houses Of The Holy – which I write about in more detail in my Led Zeppelin cover story for this month’s Uncut. It also meant rock stars enjoyed the process, particularly the likes of 10cc and Peter Gabriel, who really embraced the debate about art and commerce and meaning and surrealism. Not everybody was happy. Storm was a difficult customer and fell out with several of his clients, including heavy-hitters like the McCartneys, Zep manager Peter Grant and Roger Waters. But all of them kept coming back to Hipgnosis because they knew they had the best ideas and the chutzpah to carry them out.
Like all great bands – Floyd especially – the key figures in this story had an epic falling out. When I interviewed Suede in 2015, Mat Osman took a moment to reflect on his band’s journey: “I always thought we had such an interesting story – what we’d done was so different,” he said. “But then I looked at the shape of the story and it was every band ever: hard work, success, hubris, drugs, fights, coming back together a bit wiser. It’s been done a million times, it’s almost Shakespearean, but every generation has to go through it.”
The Hipgnosis story has exactly this shape, and it is one that naturally lends itself to biography. The 70s yarns are all well told but Blake’s book is particularly helpful in exploring Storm and Po’s origins in the Cambridge/London counterculture, as well as extending the gaze beyond the Hipgnosis era and looking at what happened when they stepped away from cover art and began to make pop videos and adverts in the 1980s. He also diligently explores their eventually falling out and reconciliation. Storm died in 2013 but Powell continues to work with Pink Floyd – he designed the new cover for the remixed Animals – and is surely one of the only human beings who has the confidence of both Roger Waters and Dave Gilmour.
Us And Them: The Authorised Story Of Hipgnosis by Mark Blake.
I’ve written about Denmark Streetbefore – that strangely old-fashioned almost Brooklyn-style street on the border of Soho and Covent Garden that for decades has been home to various aspects of the music industry in the UK.
Tin Pan Alley Tales is a film that plans to tell the story of this small but vitally important street but it needs funding. Made by campaigner Henry Scott-Irvine, the film will tell the stories of the 22 buildings that make up Denmark Street and trace its progression from home of pre-war publishers and songwriters, through skiffle, pop and rock, punk and to the present day.
It will provide an important and fascinating document of a London street that has been at the forefront of popular culture for decades but which is now under threat from London’s rampant development.
The Great Wen 