Not Fade Away – The Rolling Stones in Soho.

“The streets of Soho were reserved for characters, cappuccino action, nerve, real verve and chat, most of it about music. The streets reeked of chutzpah and skiffle was dead – long live pop.” Andrew Loog Oldham, Stoned.

Although legend has it that Keith Richards and Mick Jagger hooked up on a station platform in Dartford, the Rolling Stones as we know them were born above a pub in Soho. 

The Bricklayers Arms in Edward Street (since renamed Broadwick Street) was where Brian Jones held auditions to form a rhythm and blues group in 1962. Some of the hopefuls replied to his ad in Jazz News, while others - including Mick and Keith - came from Alexis Korner’s Blues Incorporated sessions at the Marquee in Oxford Street. 

The Rollin’ Stones played their first gig at the Marquee in July ’62, and rehearsed different line-ups until Brian, Mick and Keith were joined by Bill Wyman on bass and Ian Stewart on piano. Drummer Charlie Watts climbed aboard last in January 1963. Another regular gig for the Stones in this period was at Studio 51 in Great Newport Street, where Ken Colyer ran his jazz nights.

De Hems.

Meanwhile, down the road apiece, journalists from the music papers in Denmark Street and Shaftesbury Avenue did their quaffing in De Hems bar in Macclesfield Street. It was here, in April ’63, that New Record Mirror editor Peter Jones tipped off pop publicist Andrew Loog Oldham about a certain group playing sensational R&B at the Crawdaddy club in Richmond. Over a vodka & tonic, the suave Mr Jones told Oldham that his paper was running a big piece on the Rollin’ Stones in the forthcoming issue, predicting they will “soon be the leading performers of R&B in the country” – incredible for a group that didn’t yet have a record out.

Those heady early days are captured in the photographs of Terry O’Neill and Gered Mankowitz in the book Breaking Stones, 1963-1965, A Band on the Brink of Superstardom.  O’Neill, who was then Fleet Street’s youngest photographer, walked the Rolling Stones around Soho carrying their brand new bags. They look every inch the travelling troubadours on their way to a recording session in Regent Sound studio (where the group cut their debut album and 1964 single Not Fade Away). 

Breaking Stones, 1963-1965, A Band on the Brink of Superstardom.  

The black-coated Stones lined up in front of Tin Pan Alley’s red and yellow Members’ Club is a quintessential snapshot of Soho in the early 60s, with the band already exuding locked-out cool. 

O’Neill’s half of the book is a reportage-style account showing the life of a typical pop group – where the boys had to thank their lucky stars for plates of egg and chips in the BBC canteen, and the makeshift dressing rooms where Keith ran his shaver from a light fitting, while Mick wears a hair net with a fag on the go. The fateful New Record Mirror article, written by Norman Jopling and titled Genuine R&B, is also reprinted inside.

The second half of Breaking Stones features the work of Gered Mankowitz, the son of writer Wolf Mankowitz (author of Expresso Bongo, based on the 2i’s coffee bar scene in Old Compton Street). Gered’s portraits have a strong sense of creative direction and image building – from the band looking through a cage in Ormond Yard (they were dubbed ‘animals’ by the Daily Mirror) to the cover of 1965 album Out Of Our Heads. By the closing frames of the book, when Gered joins the band on their ’65 US tour, the Rolling Stones can no longer walk the streets unmolested. 

The 2i's Coffee Bar. Now Poppie's Fish 'n' Chips.

Their view of the world is from the back of limousines, with cops struggling to control thousands of screaming teenagers causing pandemonium everywhere they go. One heart-stopping moment shows Keith out cold on stage, electrocuted by a microphone stand. We see the band taking control of their own destiny as Mick and Keith become songwriters. The irony is that, by writing their own hits, the Beatles and the Stones started a trend that took the shine off Tin Pan Alley’s song merchants and hastened the end of an era. But, when midnight comes around, the streets of Soho will always echo with the sound of pointy-booted footsteps. Claudia Elliott.

Claudia Elliott is a freelance journalist who has written for BBC's Sounds of the 60s, The Blues magazine and Classic Rock.
Website: https://claudiaelliott.contently.com/

Twitter: @Claudia_Elliott

Blogger for BBC Radio 2 Sounds Of The 60s http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006wqlv

Terry O’Neill’s photograph of the Stones walking in Soho can be seen at Exhibitionism, a retrospective show of the band’s history. Other Soho-related pieces include guitars and amps bought from Ivor Arbiter’s Sound City shops and gear from John Stephen boutique in Carnaby Street. Exhibitionism runs until 4 September at the Saatchi Gallery.

Ghosts of Soho Restaurants.

Soho Restaurants.

Restaurants. Do we regret the loss of Tomato when it turned into Barrafino? No.  L’Epicure when it turned into Waikkiki? Yes. Waikkiki when it turned into Bar Shu? An emphatic no!  In Soho we see them come and we see them go. Very few are mourned to tell the truth. It’s a hard place both physically and financially to run a restaurant.

We lived in Old Compton Street for ten years and could never quite get away from the smell of cooking.  We opened the window onto the street, and it was Opuz and Amalfi.  We opened the bedroom window one story up and it was Margot Henderson making trotters at the French House.  All of our household objects were covered in a very thin film of cooking oil.

A slice of Soho_Sunday Times Magazine 1968.

Below us then was Duke’s Bar, which changed hands several times before becoming Opuz Kitchen (now Pepe’s).  I was then a film critic on The Independent.  One evening I happened to see a Michael Winterbottom film called Wonderland (1999), and thought the location looked familiar. A large part of the film had been made twenty feet below us, without our ever noticing.  Such is Soho.

By 2008 I had become a restaurant critic for the Zagat Guides, the US equivalent of the Michelin Guides, now owned by Google.  Since then Soho has been reviving its foodie credentials, but there’s been a corresponding haemorrhage of good, cheap places to eat.   The area may have gained two or three Michelin stars and won restaurant of the year two years running in the Tatler, but where to the waifs and strays eat these days? Especially now that Stockpot is destined for the stockpot?

Soho dining originally was quite grand. Casanova’s mistress Teresa Cornelys first brought Venetian small plates to 18th century Soho (revived again by Polpo in St James bailiwick centuries later).  At the super exclusive and fashionable Carlisle House in Soho Square the food wasn’t just Venetian.  She had Brunswick pastry-cook Louis Weltje working in the kitchens; he later went to feed up the Prince Regent.  But cheap restaurants? The impoverished poets Rimbaud and Verlaine were able to dine cheaply on food that smelt of home in Old Compton St in the 1870’s.

This golden period of cheap dining was to last about 50 years. Here’s Thomas Burke in 1917 talking about Soho, bewailing to loss of bargain eateries. ‘Gone are the shilling tables-d’hote and their ravishing dishes…not in 1917 do you see Old Compton St as a line of warm and fragrant café-windows…gone are those exotic food which brought such zest to a jaded palate’.

Passport to Soho.

I rather miss L’Epicure with its fantastic gas-filled flaming torches, and its doddery waiters seemingly auditioning for a Victoria Wood sketch.  But there again Bar Shu with its Sichuan Fuschia Dunlop menu, in the same site, is one of my favourite restaurants. I remember that old-school 1950’s Italian family restaurant in Green Court, but it’s now replaced by Yalla Yalla, which is better.

L’Epicure 

A succession of awful restaurants on the site of Arbutus have been replaced by Arbutus (whose future is now sadly in doubt). One of the best new restaurants in London – Sri Lankan slice of happiness known as Hoppers – is on the site of the little-missed Alastair Little eaterie at 49 Frith St.  Bao offers brilliant cheap food but you have to queue for 40 minutes to get it.

One of the Italian restaurants I remember with particular fondness was Presto on Old Compton St, which was beloved by Derek Jarman, who lived nearby, and Sebastian Horsley.  You only ordered the ravioli, because that’s what Derek did.

Recently Young Cheung’s on Shaftesbury Avenue has closed, a particular sadness to me, not because it was the best restaurant in the world but because it was good and cheap and had the air of old Soho to it.  But it did help that I have a Chinese partner who could read all the special menus only in Chinese.

Also vanished, ECapital was a superb Shanghainese mid-priced restaurant at 8 Gerrard St, where the overpraised Haozhan is now.  Its chef David Tam is now at China Tang at the Dorchester – that’s how good it was.  Delicacies included pressed pig's ears, filleted duck's feet with celery, Lion's Head meatballs, Beggar's Chicken.  The actor Johnny Rhys Meyers was a regular after I took him there.

And we also loved China Experience on 118-120 Shaftesbury Avenue, and I remember the Swindon-based owner telling me he was spending £5,000 week in rent.  They had paper-lantern shadow beef and golden fried prawns.  The subsequent restaurant used the Zagat listed stickers for years afterwards, quite illegally.  Royal Dragon is still in Gerard St, but was ruined like Kettners by a revamp, and we followed our friend who manages it next door to Golden Dragon (her name is Jackie and we’ve known her 25 years).

Soho is full of ghosts, most especially, the ghosts of restaurants.

©Roger Clarke 2016 Twitter
Roger Clarke@Skionar

The Soho Food Feast, Sat/Sun 2-3 July 2016


Supporting Soho Parish a small primary school situated in the heart of London on Great Windmill St.