Rock Shrines 41 - 46

Rock Shrine No. 41 – The Astoria [Nirvana, etc]

Welcome to one of London’s best rock venues: sweaty, dark, a bit seedy. Converted from a warehouse into a theatre and cinema in 1926, it became a live venue in 1986. Everyone has played here, from hardcore classic rock bands (The Rolling Stones, Deep Purple) to the kind of artists (Kylie, Madonna) who appeal to the clientele attending G.A.Y. on a Saturday night. Amy Winehouse showed she can be amazing shortly before she lost control. One of So Solid Crew shot himself in the leg trying to pull a gun out of his waistband in the middle of their set. But for Important Gigs, that honour must go to the debut show by The Raconteurs in 2007 and the UK debut of Nirvana in 1989. The doors closed for the last time last week to make way for a ventilation shaft and expanded Underground station being built as part of a new subway line.



Astoria Theatre, 157 Charing Cross Road, London WC2H 0EL


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Rock Shrine No. 42 – IBC Studios [The Who]


In the 1950s International Broadcasting Company Recording Studios (IBC) was the leading independent studio in London. In the 60s it became home to a roll-call of amazing artists, including The Beatles (who pre-recorded a live TV show), The Bee Gees, The Small Faces, Status Quo, Elton John, Rod Stewart, Jimmy Page (as a session guitarist), Golden Earring, Adam Faith, and Duane Eddy. Like Abbey Road Studio 2 and Trident it was noted for a room with a very high ceiling, creating great acoustics for rock bands. None tested this more than The Who, who recorded ‘My Generation’, ‘A Quick One’, ‘The Who Sell Out’, and ‘Tommy’.


Other era-defining music created here:
1. The Kinks – You Really Got Me
2. The Yardbirds – For Your Love, Happenings Ten Years Time Ago
3. The Easybeats – Friday on My Mind
4. Cream recorded their last studio album ‘Goodbye’ and parts of ‘Wheels Of Fire’.
5. Engineer/producer Glyn Johns recorded the Rolling Stones’ first demos in 1963.


In 1965 they were back in IBC to record “As Tears Go By”, either their own Italian version or the Marianne Faithfull version. Chas Chandler mastered several Jimi Hendrix records here and in the early 70s used it to record Slade. In the 80s, he bought IBC and renamed it Barn Studios. Situated in one of the most valuable real estate areas of central London, today it houses offices.

For more information, one of the studio’s engineers has created an extensive history web site: http://www.ibcstudio.co.uk/

IBC Studios, 35 Portland Place, London W1B 1QF


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Rock Shrine No. 43 – Central St. Martins School Of Art and Design [Joe Strummer]

Joe Strummer – or John Mellor as he was then known – began studying at Central in Sept 1970, one of over 400 applicants for the 60 available places. He wanted to be a cartoonist, though he told people he wanted to be in advertising. Joe later described the school as the “last resort of malingerers and bluffers and people who don’t want to work,” but it has long been one of the most prestigious art schools in Britain.

Graduates include a very long list of famous artists, actors, film makers and designers; musicians who went there include PJ Harvey, Jarvis Cocker, M.I.A., Vivian Stanshall and Neil Innes from The Bonzo Dog Band, Sex Pistol Glen Matlock and fellow Clash member Paul Simenon. It was where Malcolm McLaren and Bernard Rhodes went when they needed talented people to help when dreaming up The Sex Pistols.

One of these was Alex McDowell, who did all the silk screening of McLaren’s t-shirts and posters. He later designed album covers then co-founded The Oil Factory to make music videos. Moving to Los Angeles, he is now a production designer whose credits include Fight Club, Minority Report, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, The Terminal, and Watchmen.

Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design Southampton Row, London WC1B 4AP

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Rock Shrine No. 44 – Rehearsals Rehearsals [The Clash]


On the evening of August 13, 1976, The Clash invited some music journalists and friends to Rehearsals Rehearsals to see them play. Even in the hyper-small Punk world of the time they had gone unnoticed, quietly scheming, writing and rehearsing an arsenal of songs. The lucky few walked out of the balmy evening into a brick walled room with a rock and roll backline at the rear. Behind it was a painted mural of a cityscape, all tower blocks and car dumps. The 4 x 12 speaker cabinets in front of them were painted dayglo pink.

After a suitable wait the group entered, walking purposefully in single file, Joe Strummer at the head. The bassist wore black, paint spattered Jackson Pollock style acros the fabric. One of the guitarists had wide stripes painted on his shirt. There were three guitarists. Without a word they broke into a racket best desrcibed by Sounds critic Giovanni Dadomo, who called them “a runaway train”. The music moved on rails, straight ahead and full of purpose, with short explosive solos that finished before you fully heard them. They moved to match the music; third guitarist Keith Levene was literally running up the back wall as he played. They played about 14 songs in 30 minutes, the essence of Punk: a short, sharp shock.

Just down the road from The Roundhouse, Rehearsals Rehearsals was an old Gin House at the end of of a row of Victorian stables. It sat in a near-derelict yard in a near-derelict part of town, the rail lines from Kings Cross and St. Pancras running behind it on their way to the North. Manager Bernard Rhodes had found it as a place for the band to work. The name came from someone complaining that all they did was “reharsals rehearsals”.

Upstairs were a couple of rooms covered in old film posters. The photo of them standing in front of “Untamed Youth” was taken here. It’s in these rooms that the band plotted, schemed, and painted their clothes, in the days before they had their uniforms designed for them.

Paul Simenon outside Reharsals Rehearsals. The car belonged to manager Bernard Rhodes. (Image from Rock Archive)

The band’s first album cover photo was taken here. The notorious “pigeon-shooting” incident in 1978 happened on the roof, when Paul Simenon and Topper Headon shot at passing pigeons with an air rifle, not knowing they were valuable racing pigeons.

There was always something to do at Rehearsals Rehearsals

The Clash left in 1982. Since then it has served as a retail outlet for a number of boutiques. The interior is mostly gutted and modernised. A row of apartments is being built where the stables used to be.

By the railway tracks. The Roundhouse is in the background. Apartments are being built where they stand. (Image from Rock Archive)

Rehearsals Rehearsals - The Gin House, Stables Market London, NW1 8AH


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Rock Shrine No. 45 – The Apple Store [The Beatles]


The Beatles’ accountants had bought 94 Baker Street as a financial investment for the group and it became temporary headquarters for Apple whilst 3 Savile Row was being renovated. But what to do with it after that… Pattie Harrison was familiar with a Dutch group called The Fool, who had run a boutique in Amsterdam, so in September 1967, The Beatles gave them £100,000 to design and stock a new Apple Boutique. The concept was that absolutely everything was for sale. It was ‘a beautiful place where beautiful people can buy beautiful things’.

The Fool engaged several dozen art students to paint a huge psychedelic mural across the entire front and side of the store which garnered instant complaints from local merchants. The City of Westminster had refused planning permission and the mural was only present for three weeks before the council threatened to repaint it and charge Apple for the privilege.




Invitations to the grand opening on 5 December 1967 read 'Come at 7.46. Fashion Show at 8.16.' The only drink available was apple juice. John and George were the only Beatles that attended.

The Boutique was a financial disaster and closed just 8 months later. On Tuesday morning, 30 July 1968, the staff was told to give everything away. The ‘beautiful place’ was no more. Today, somewhat ironically, the building is home to an employment agency.

Opening Invitation

Clothing Label

Apple Boutique, 94 Baker Street, London W1U 6FZ

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Rock Shrine No. 46 – The Scene (The Who)

The Scene Club in Ham Yard, Soho was thought of by many as Mod Central. It wasn't a hugely popular place filled to bursting with people, but more of an underground club where only the top mods hung out, and the whole mod style was created. The club's decor didn't match the smart cut of their clothes, being a bizarre dingy basement catacomb where the walls were padded and the floor was littered with cushions, but it was ideal for the pilled lifestyle they led, where you were buzzing into the early hours of the morning and needed a club that stayed open as late as 5am on a Sunday. The Goldhawk may have been a club for drinkers, but the Scene was definitely designed for pills.

Pete Townshend - "The Scene was really where it was at, but there were only about fifteen people down there every night. It was a focal point for the mod movement. I don't think anyone who was a mod outside Soho realised the fashions and dances all began there."

Ham Yard, London W1D 7DT

Rock Shrine No. 47 – Kensington Hypermarket [Jimi Hendrix, Queen]

One of the best shopping experiences of the 60s and 70s, Kensington Hypermarket was a multi-floor building filled with tiny stalls owned by budding clothes designers and retail wannabes. It was popular because they moved quickly with the times, with groovy psychedelic gear in the 60s, Biba and velvet rockstar knockoffs in the early 70s and punk clobber in ‘76 and ‘77.

Freddy Mercury owned one such outlet and it is here that Roger Taylor first met him.

On September 17, 1970, the last afternoon of Jimi Hendrix’s life, he went shopping with girlfriend Monika Dannemann and spent a good part of the afternoon here.

Although closed for many years it was only recently torn down and replaced with this nondescript office block.

Kensington Hypermarket, 49 – 52 Kensington High Street, London W8 6NS

Rock Shrines 21 - 30

Rock Shrine No. 21 – Eurythmics


Judging by his space-age bachelor pad, Dave Stewart is the coolest playboy in London. Dave is the musical mastermind of Eurythmics, one of the Travelling Wilburys, a studio owner, a solo musician, a man whose life is so perfect that in Japan one year he had his appendix removed because he couldn’t believe there wasn’t something wrong with his life. He lived in this glass penthouse during the ‘90s. An article on it in the Sunday Times showed a place filled with ultra-cool technology and hot ‘70s vintage furniture. Imagine an updated Austin Powers shag palace and you get the idea. This a la mode temple is on Seven Dials, right in the middle of Covent Garden. At the time he was living with Siobahn Fahey of Shakespear’s Sister and you could see them circulating the streets, usually arguing with each other. Historic note: in Victorian times Seven Dials was considered so dangerous at night that it was said you were lucky if you got to the other side alive.


Dave Stewart's Bachelor Pad: Seven Dials, Covent Garden, London WC2


Rock Shrine No. 22 – The Scotch of St. James


The first London rock star club was the Ad Lib but by 1966 it was passe and everyone was on to the next club – The Scotch of St. James. The area of St. James has a long history as a discreet playground for the louche, moneyed, and landed and The Scotch of St. James was the ultimate in discretion – in a small yard off a side street, reached only by an easily missed driveway.

Andrew Loog Oldham described it in 2 Stoned: “You'd knock at the door and be auditioned through a peep-hole. Once in you'd travel downstairs via the twisting staircase... The Beatles, the Stones, the Yardbirds, Eric Clapton, Long John Baldry, Keith Moon, the Searchers all starred in the main room on their nights off... Lennon and McCartney, Jagger and Richards and I and our ladies would sit back in a dark corner and smoke and gloat.”

Here’s a photo from 1965, starring The Merseybeats and Pattie Boyd (the future Mrs. Harrison/Mrs. Clapton aka “Layla”).


Forty years later it’s still a club.


The Scotch of St. James, 13 Masons Yard, London SW1 6BU


Rock Shrine No. 23 – Indica Gallery


One of the key addresses in psychedelic London. Indica Bookshop and Gallery was opened in 1965 by Barry Miles, Peter Asher and John Dunbar. Dunbar was a friend of The Beatles and married to Marianne Faithfull. Asher was the brother of Paul McCartney’s girlfriend Jane Asher, half of Peter and Gordon, and in the ‘70s the producer of James Taylor and producer/manager of Linda Ronstadt. Most cultural movements seem to be the result of serendipity and a few crucial people. English psychedelia – and The Beatles’ music - would be very different without Barry Miles. I knew him reasonably well in the early 70s, when he wrote for the NME. Considering the pivotal role he had in shaping global culture he was one of the quietest, unassuming people I’ve met. It came as a real surprise to learn of his background.

L-R: Peter Asher, Barry Miles, John Dunbar

The bookshop was one of the first places in London to sell beat poetry, Burroughs and other “alternative” literature. McCartney was a regular customer. It was here that John Lennon bought a copy of The Tibetan Book of the Dead, which partly inspired “Tomorrow Never Knows”. McCartney put money into the premises and helped build it. The wood needed for the shelves and counter was picked up by Dunbar and Miles in McCartney's Aston Martin. McCartney wielded a saw. Jane Asher donated the shop's first cash till, an old Victorian one she had played with as a young girl. McCartney helped to draw the flyers advertising the opening and also designed the wrapping paper. In 1966, the bookshop was separated from the gallery and moved to 102 Southampton Row. The Gallery promoted radical art ideas and radical artists (in its life it never exhibited paintings). One of those was Yoko Ono, who exhibited in late ’66.


On November 9, 1966 John Lennon stumbled out of his Rolls, into the gallery and up a ladder where a magnifying glass on a string let him read a tiny message on the ceiling: “Yes”. Yoko, in attendance, handed him a card which read, ‘Breathe’; thus did The Beatles’ second double-act meet. A few years ago Miles and Dunbar were interviewed about this famous meeting as part of a BBC documentary and were in fine debunking form. Interestingly, both had different memories but agreed that: Lennon was quite stoned, reacted positively to Ono’s artistic playfulness and conceptual ingenuity, and that Yoko knew very much who Lennon was and manouevred for conquest, despite her subsequent high-art assertions that she didn’t know who The Beatles were. (Miles claimed that she tried to get in the Rolls with John when it left.) Today, it’s still a gallery. Indeed, the yard seems to be made up almost entirely of art-related businesses. English place names can be quite literal and Masons Yard was just that – a place full of stone masons, with a large central area for the stone. Today it’s filled with the newest gallery, the White Cube, one of London’s leading art spaces.


John Dunbar on Indica

Photos of recreated Indica installations

Indica Gallery: 6 Masons Yard, London SW1 6BU


Rock Shrine No. 24 – Eric Burdon (and the Animals)


Ending our tour around Masons Yard, Dalmeny Court is where Eric Burdon had a flat in the mid-‘60s. Eric was lead singer in The Animals, a group who dealt a global Number One in 1964 with their first single, ‘House Of The Rising Sun’. They had original compositions as well (including the hilarious ‘Story Of Bo Diddley’) and starting in ’65 produced a string of fabulous hard hitting singles that, criminally, don’t get modern recognition. According to Eric’s memoir, Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood, “I was right above the Indica Gallery" (see Rock Shrine 23). Which also puts him right above the Scotch Of St. James, the coolest night club in town (see Rock Shrine 22). Which made getting home a cinch. And this a bachelor pad supreme.

Dalmeny Court, 8 Duke St, Westminster, London SW1Y


Rock Shrine No. 25 – Trident Studios


You’ve heard of hiding in plain sight. Trident Studio does just that. St. Annes Court is a busy pedestrian alley in Soho connecting two of it’s main streets. I’ve walked through it for decades, right past the Trident doorway, and never noticed it. Spot the studio:


Imagine these people walking towards you on their way to the studios: carrot-top spaceman David Bowie, satin ‘n’ tat T. Rex, overproductive Beatles, innocent Queen, wild-side Lou Reed. Check these in your collection: Hunky Dory, Space Oddity, Ziggy Stardust and Aladdin Sane, Electric Warrior, Transformer, the first two Queen albums, ‘Hey Jude’, ‘Martha, My Dear’, ‘Dear Prudence’, ‘Honey Pie’. Created here.

The view from the control room: Peter Gabriel at work.

It goes on: Elton (‘Your Song’, Tumbleweed Connection, Goodbye Yellow Brick Road), Nilsson (‘Without You’), Carly Simon (‘You’re So Vain’), Billy Preston, Mary Hopkins, James Taylor, George Harrison (All Things Must Pass), Lennon (‘Cold Turkey’), Dusty Springfield, Mahavishnu Orchestra, Free (‘All Right Now’), Frank Zappa, Mott The Hoople (‘All The Young Dudes’), Yes, Genesis (with Peter Gabriel), Peter Gabriel (without Genesis), and The Jeff Beck Group. The Rolling Stones effectively auditioned Mick Taylor here, recording mostly unreleased tracks with titles like ‘Potted Shrimp’ and ‘Leather Jacket’ as well as ‘Brown Sugar’.

Three producers made it their home: Gus Dudgeon, Tony Visconti, and Richard Perry. Why? [1] It was the first studio in Britian to have eight-track recording. [2] A 100-year old Bechstein concert grand piano with resin on the hammers, renowned for its sound. [3] Engineer Ken Scott, who cut his teeth on many of the greatest Beatles records. [4] A warm sounding room and a great sounding drum area.

The studio bill and McCartney’s notes for ‘Let It Be’

The two brothers who owned the place started modifying the desk and developed a very successful business building mixing desks. They started a video company in 1973 and developed another very successful business. The piano was restrung in the mid-70s and lost its distinct sound. In 1981 the strudio was sold.

Today’s it’s used for audio post production in TV, film and multimedia. The original control room is still pretty much as it was, though the desk faces the other way. The basement studio has been broken up into more studios and overdubbing rooms.


Every Thursday at 6pm, the public can go on a “Magical History Tour” of the studio’s past. Part of the experience is hearing a selection of the hits on big monitors. Heard back to back it’s obvious that all these records came from the same room: a fantastic drum presence, beautiful percussive piano, evocative vocal sound and warm, round strings.

Stairway to the stars

Trident Studios, 17 St. Anne’s Court, London W1F 0BQ

Rock Shrine No. 26 – RCA: The Clash


The Royal College of Art is best known as a centre of British art [Hockney, Kitaj, Conran…] but on November 5, 1976 it hosted A Night Of Treason, starring The Clash. Punk was going overground and the place was full of punks, the interested and students. The stage door policy was loose and backstage was as crowded as out front. The dressing rooms and corridors were seething with talent. Siouxsie Sioux was gathering her tribe to follow up the Punk Festival appearance. Billy Idol and Tony James were about to leave Chelsea (one time on stage) and start a band called Generation X. Adrian Thrills was starting a fanzine. Mark P was working on the next issue of Sniffin’ Glue. If Punk was an attitude then Subway Sect was as Punk as it got. They didn’t look or sound like anything else on a stage [before or since]. Their complete lack of showmanship and off-centre music really made you feel you were seeing something new. Then The Jam came on, all two-tone shoes and Shepherds Bush riffs. Somehow the sharp suits and Rickenbackers were at odds with the homemade fashions and Fenders of the Pistols and the Clash and backstage they sat apart from the other bands.
The Clash were incendiary. The sound was big and loud and they climbed all over their brace of songs like kids on a building site, crashing guitars and a rabble-rousing Joe. Then a student threw a beer glass. [Depressingly, it was always students who threw glasses and bottles.] Joe threw his arms above his head and shouted ‘Under heavy manners!’ He sought out the perpetrator, who got on stage. Joe questioned him and the guy looked sheepish. Then Sid Vicious got on stage, muttering into the mic and looking well-named. A few minutes later and they got back to the wonderful racket.

People used to say their life changed the first time they saw The Clash. This was the night when that scenario began.

Royal College of Art, Kensington Gore, London SW7 2EU


Rock Shrine No. 27 – The Vortex


The summer of ’77 – hot and heaving. The Summer of Punk. The year of The Vortex. Every Tuesday night 1500 punks would cram themselves into the basement of this club to see a double bill of the best new bands. You knew when a fresh shipment of Punk’s drug of choice was in town because if you entered straight the atmosphere was unpleasantly electric. Amphetamine sulphate was a 1!2!3!4! drug for 1!2!3!4! music. It cost a measly £15 a gram and one nostril stripping snort would keep you alert and charging for ten or twelve hours. The unholy trinity of 1977 was punk, powder and price. The punk-reggae interface started here, when Generation X played with a band from Birmingham called Steel Pulse. On stage it was all Rasta patois but in the dressing room they sounded as Brummie as Ozzy Osbourne. Ex-Pistol Glen Matlock started The Rich Kids here; Mick Jones was getting tired of no drummer in his band and injected a big dose of is-he-quitting paranoia into Camp Clash by guesting with Glen. Malcolm McLaren was putting his Sex Pistols movie together and had hired titilation director Russ Meyer. As wonderfully strange as Meyer’s movies were, in punk he was a tourist in a very strange land. My favourite image of The Vortex was watching Meyer – slacks, jacket and very big cigar – wandering disturbed and confused through the sea of punkettes in dog collars, torn fishnets and bad makeup. Thirty years later it’s a disco.

The Vortex, 201 Wardour Street, London W1F 8ZH


Rock Shrine No. 28 – Ivor Court (The Who, Rolling Stones)


Variously and together, from the autumn of 1964 to 1967: Rolling Stones drummer Charlie Watts lived here. The Who manager Kit Lambert both lived and had an office at no. 113 as he navigated the group from guitar-smashing debt to rock-opera riches. It was Lambert, the youngest in a line of upper-class artistics, who suggested to Pete Townshend he should write an opera. The result was ‘A Quick One’, paving the way for the much more ambitious ‘Tommy’. Rolling Stones and Immediate Records visionary Andrew Loog Oldham ran his offices at 138 and 147. Oldham is rightly famous for inventing the Stones, but he also signed The Small Faces. Oldham defined his moment of arrival as the point when he could decide which telephone calls to accept.

Ivor Court, Gloucester Place, London NW1 6BJ


Rock Shrine No. 29 – The Lyceum


One of the best venues in London for live music: good acoustics, wonderful rococo design and a roof that rolls back.

The Rolling Stones were here in 1969; when they played the Chuck Berry song “Little Queenie” a spotlight was shone on the hall’s portrait of Queen Elizabeth, possibly the first post-modern moment in rock music. In the days before Ticketmaster, the ticket line for The Who was several blocks long, nearly everyone a young man. The Clash and Queen played intimate dates here. At an all-nighter in the summer of ’76 the Sex Pistols supported The Prettythings. Madness, The Selector and The Specials kicked off Two-Tone with a riotous celebration in 1980.

But the reason we really remember it is for the momentous live recording by Bob Marley and the Wailers in 1975. The two nights he played were fabulously warm and the roof was open so all the cigarette and spliff smoke disappeared. When you looked up you could see stars in the sky. The stage was low and while it was hard to see more than the band’s heads and shoulders it meant you could get close and really be part of the experience. These things I remember: the dipping and swaying of the multi-coloured I-Threes, the nimbleness of the Barrett brothers as they drove one fabulous song after another forward off the stage, and the righteous militancy of Bob as he stepped across the stage, sang with sweet conviction and shook dem locks as the weak hearts dropped.

The Lyceum, 21 Wellington St, London, WC2E 7RQ


Rock Shrine No. 30 – 57 Wimpole St. (The Beatles)


From 1963 – 1965 Paul McCartney lived in rooms on the top floor of the family home of his girlfriend Jane Asher.

Lennon and McCartney wrote “I Want To Hold Your Hand” in the basement, “one on one, eyeball to eyeball,” as Lennon put it. During the three years he lived here it’s fair to say many other famous songs were either conceived or worked on here.

When Paul wanted to dodge fans he would duck into Browning Mews, which backs on the house.


Wimpole Street is one block from Harley Street, famous for its doctors, including the Dr. Robert immortalised in The Beatles song. Architecture fans should spend some time walking around the neighbourhood, it has some of the best residential architecture in London.

57 Wimpole St., London W1G 8YW

The Sex Pistols First Interview

The Sex Pistols are four months old, so tuned in to the present that it's hard to find a place to play. Yet they already have a large, fanatical following. So their manager, who runs a rubber and leather shop called Sex, hired a strip club where the two sides could meet

By Jonh Ingham
Sounds. April 24, 1976 _______________________________________________

THE SMALL, sleazoid El Paradise Club in Soho is not one of the more obvious places for English rock to finally get to grips with the Seventies, but when you're trying to create the atmosphere of anarchy, rebellion and exclusiveness that's necessary as a breeding ground, what better place? Name one kid who will tell their parents they'll be home really late this Sunday because they're going to a strip club to see the Sex Pistols.

The shop front is the customary facade of garish, fluorescent lit plastic and enticing tit pix, gold-flocked wallpaper and a life-size gold framed lovely beckoning you within. Conditioning expects one to go down a hall or some stairs but the minute you turn the corner you're there. A small room 20 to 30 feet long, bare concrete floor, a bar at one end, three and a half rows of broken down cinema seats. The other rows seem to have been bodily ripped out. It's an unexpected, shocking sight at first, but after it gets comfortable the thought occurs that perhaps it's not sleazy enough. It needs more black paint peeling from the sweating walls, a stickier floor . . .

With luck the second gathering occurred there last Sunday (the Maltese landlords can be a little difficult to unearth). The first such gathering accumulated entirely by word of mouth, and by midnight the joint was jumping.

Flared jeans were out. Leather helped. All black was better. Folks in their late twenties, chopped and channelled teenagers, people who frequent Sex, King's Road avant leather, rubber and bondage clothing shop. People sick of nostalgia. People wanting forward motion. People wanting rock and roll that is relevant to 1976.

At the moment, that criteria is best embodied in the Sex Pistols. They fill the miniscule, mirror-backed stage, barely able to move in front of their amps. They are loud. They are fast. They are energetic. They are great.

Coming on like a Lockheed Starfighter is more important to them than virtuosity and sounding immaculate. This quartet has no time for a pretty song with a nice melody. Guitarist Steve Jones doesn't bother much with solos, preferring to just pick another chord and power on through. ("There's two reasons for that - I can't play solos and I hate them anyway." As he said that, 'I'm Mandy, Fly Me' came on the juke box and we agreed the only good thing in it was the solo.)

But imitating the roar of the Industrial Age doesn't mean they're sloppy. Although earlier reports reckoned their time keeping somewhat off, to the point of cultivating an ethic of them being so bad they were good, Glen Matlock (bass) and Paul Cook (drums) seem to have the beast on the rails and in this stripped down form the beat is where it's at. One also has to remember that the Sex Pistols has only existed professionally since Christmas and that Steve has only played guitar for five months.

With inaudible lyrics the music is very similar from song to song but a cranial trigger says, that song is great (applaud) but that one is just okay (don't applaud). Everyone else seems to think similarly. Which annoys singer John Rotten endlessly. "Clap you fuckers. Because I m wasting my time not hearing myself." He begins a slow handclap; about three people join in.

John is a man who likes to confront his audience, not to mention the rest of the band. It's this Stooges-like aura of complete unpredictability and violence that gives the Sex Pistols that extra edge. Paul reckons the broken glass attitude will only disappear when they get as old as Pete Townsend and just do it for the money.

The Pistols' roots lie with Paul and Steve who left school with a healthy desire to avoid work. The obvious alternative was rock even though neither could play an instrument. Their musical models were the Stones and the Who and the early Small Faces, which doesn't say much for Seventies rock, and was a reason for starting a band.

Out of the last six years, Steve rates the Stooges. Paul admits to being fooled by Roxy Music for three albums. Later he added Todd Rundgren. "Yeah, there's what acid does to you," retorted Steve, adding proudly, "There's no drugs in this group."




Glen joined and they staggered on for a year, learning a Who/Small Faces repertoire ("but that didn't get us anywhere"), buying their threads from Sex and bugging Malcolm, the owner, to manage them. Having already spent seven months in New York handling the New York Dolls he wasn't too interested but he helped them a bit and they kept bugging and, well, London could do with a Seventies rock band.

Malcolm decided that Steve was hopeless as a singer, got him to learn guitar and the search was on. Into Sex walks John, who couldn't sing but looked the part. They tried to audition in the conventional manner, but finally settled on standing him in front of the shop's jukebox, telling him to pretend he was on stage.

John had never even considered joining a band.

We're sitting in a tacky pub in Charing Cross Road. Until now John has been sitting politely, looking a bit bored while I talk to the others. He's wearing the ripped up red sweater he wears on stage, a safety pin dangles from a thin gold ring in his right ear lobe. So how come you're doing it John?

The intensity level immediately leaps about 300 percent. He looks manic. "I hate shit. I hate hippies and what they stand for. I hate long hair. I hate pub bands. I want to change it so there are rock bands like us."

This is delivered at full tirade, with a sneer to match the voice. He clocks my earring, the five weeks laziness straggling across my cheeks and chin and the sneer and the direct-eye blitz never stops. I'm inadvertently thinking 'Gosh, I'm not a hippie now - that was a childhood error,' and I never was one in the first place. The kid's got style. You know what end of a switchblade he would have been on in 1956. I'd love to be present when the middle-aged boogers who pass for rock critics on the national papers finally confront him.

But John's just warming up.

"I'm against people who just complain about Top Of The Pops and don't do anything. I want people to go out and start something, to see us and start something, or else I'm just wasting my time."

This last phrase is a favourite. He says it with just the right amount of studied boredom.

The Pistols found their first public by gatecrashing gigs, pulling up and posing as the support band. At the North East London Poly they succeeded in emptying the room, the same stylish feat being Shep Gordon's reason for signing up Alice Cooper. At St. Albans, where they supposedly played one of their worst gigs, they were asked back again.

In London they rapidly depleted themselves of potential venues. For a start they wouldn't play pubs.

Malcolm: "The trouble with pubs is that they're bigger than the bands. They're all full of people playing what a crowd wants rather than what they want because they can make a reasonable living from it. If you want to change things you can't play pubs. You don't have the freedom."

Paul: "The trouble with pubs is you have to please everybody If we wanted to please everybody we'd end up sounding like the Beatles."

That left the Marquee, 100 Club, and the Nashville. Eddie and the Hot Rods asked them to support at the Marquee. It was the first time they had ever used monitors and hearing themselves caused a slight o.d., John leaping into the audience and the others kicking the monitors about.

In the light of what the Pistols consider the Hot Rods' over-reaction to the incident, the group insist they did little damage to anything that wasn't theirs. They've also written a song on the matter.

I think the photos speak for the particular violence of the 100 Club gig, but the band and the Nashville seemed to enjoy each other. Allan Jones of the Melody Maker described it:

'Their dreadfully inept attempts to zero in on the kind of viciously blank intensity previously epitomised by the Stooges was rather endearing at first... The guitarist, another surrogate punk suffering from a surfeit of Sterling Morrison, played with a determined disregard for taste and intelligence.'

Taste. Intelligence.

"Who's Sterling Morrison?" asked Steve.

When last heard of he was a university professor in Santa Fe.

"Oh. That's alright then. What's 'surrogate' mean?"

They’re going to play the Nashville again, but their problem, apart from finding it impossible to find a band they're compatible with musically, is that it's still not the right environment.

Malcolm decided early on that France would understand much better and envisioned a couple of weeks in Paris. The French promoter saw the Marquee gig, and fired with visions of Gene Vincent and Vince Taylor has booked them across France and Switzerland for May. Meanwhile, El Paradise...If things work out, Malcolm will obtain the old UFO premises.

Apart from the difficulty of finding the El Paradise landlords, the police arrived about 2 a.m. the first night, what with the noise of the steel rolling door going up and down all the time as people left. And it's not really the right thing to have a minor pop band like Arrows spread-eagled against the wall being frisked as a nightcap to the evening's frivolities.

Basically, what Malcolm wants is a rumbling, anarchic, noisy energetic rock scene, the likes of which haven't been seen in this country since the mid 1960s. Any comparisons with New York rock/club scene are briskly brushed aside.

"Maybe it's because they're so close to the media, but they're all so scared by them. I used to talk to [journalist] Lisa Robinson and David Johanssen would pull me into the toilet and say, 'Don't you know who you're talking to? Don't say those things!' My God, if you worry about what you say to her...

"The trouble with the Dolls was that their hype was so much bigger than they were. They really had an opportunity to change it all around, but instead of ignoring all that bullshit about signing up with a company and a big advance, they got sucked in.

"They get dazzled by the process. Every time The Ramones have a picture of them published it lessens their mystique. There's no mystery about the New York scene. Pretty soon Richard Hell is going to leave the Heartbreakers and Sire Records will dangle a contract in front of him and he knows it won't help and won't do any good but he'll sign it because it's what's expected of him.

"The thing to do is just ignore all that. No-one came to sign up the Stones, no-one wanted to know. But when they saw a lot of bands sounding like that with a huge following they had to sign them. Create a scene and a lot of bands - because people want to hear it - and they'll have to sign them even though they don't understand it.

"The trouble with the pubs is that they’re free, and people come for that reason. If you're at a Sex Pistols gig you wanted to go, because you spent money to get in. I opened the shop because I wanted people to make a certain statement and they wore my clothes. The Sex Pistols are another extension of that."

As for what the band think of comparisons...

"The New York scene has absolutely nothing to do with us," sneers John. "It's a total waste of time. All anyone talks about is the image. No-one's ever mentioned the music."

But there's a remote connection with the aesthetic and they seem to be trying to get on with the future.

“I like that word, 'remote'” he says real blankly.

(Is he always like this? "No. He was rather polite tonight.")

Steve and Paul deliver the fatal blows.

"They're not like us. They all have long hair."

"Yeah, Anglophiles with Brian Jones mop heads."

So there they sit, waiting for a scene to build up around them, for the appearance of bands they can play with. They look rather glum at the prospect and, when you consider it, we can at least go and see the Sex Pistols.

"Yeah," sighs Steve. "I wish I could see us."