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Our music critic Gary Crowley is on air every Wednesday
and Thursday between 8 - 10pm on 94.9FM
Find
out more
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For more
terrific information on London's music history, check out
Max Wooldridge's 'Rock n Roll London' (New Holland)
and Tony Bacon's excellent 'London Live' (Balafon).
Both "right rivetting reads" as they say...
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听 |
One of the things
I love most about this exciting city of ours (having been a fully
paid up, bona fide music nut since I can remember) are the many
historical music landmarks scattered across
the capital.
Ever since I caught
the pop bug and first walked across the famous zebra crossing at
Abbey Road studios, I've always kept my beady eyes out for a venue,
house or office with some significant rawk association, and probably
bored many a chum and girlfriend with a related anecdote.
In fact (talk
about a labour of love!) I'm currently working on a project where
I'm compiling a list of places with an important music connection.
Venue visits
So far we'll be
visiting a whole host of attractions, including THE hangout for
clued in, pilled-up mods in the early 60s, The Scene Club in
Soho's Ham Yard to The Speakeasy in Margaret Street, where
bands like the Jimi Hendrix Experience, Deep Purple
and Thin Lizzy were regular turns, and where The Who's
Pete Townshend famously met Sex Pistols Steve Jones and
Paul Cook in 1977, telling them they were the only hope for
rock.
One of my personal
favourites, which I bet has a few ghost-with-it stories to tell,
has to be the IN PLACE of the mid 60s, the Ad Lib Club, situated
at the top of 7 Leicester Place (the building also housed the offices
of the council refuse collectors apparently!), off Leicester Square.
Spiked
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Gary
Crowley: getting connected, musically-speaking, in London |
A regular haunt
with the pop glitterati of the day as well as fashion designers
like Mary Quant and Jean Muir and actresses like Hayley
Mills and Julie Christie, it was here that Beatles John
Lennon and George Harrison came with their respective
partners after having their drinks spiked with LSD while having
dinner with their dentist.
Now I would love
to have been a fly on the wall in the club that night!
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