Electric London

A rock ’n’ roll map of London. Turn on JavaScript to see the map; here is every place as a list.

The 2i’s Coffee Bar (1956–1970), 59 Old Compton Street, W1. A cramped espresso bar whose tiny basement stage became the launch pad for British rock ’n’ roll. Two Australian wrestlers, Paul Lincoln and Ray Hunter, opened it as a coffee bar in April 1956; the name came from the Irani brothers who had run the premises before them. Tommy Steele was spotted here that summer and was a star within months, and Cliff Richard, Hank Marvin and Bruce Welch of the Shadows, Adam Faith and a stream of hopefuls followed. The BBC broadcast Six-Five Special from here in 1957. It closed in 1970; a green plaque has marked the site since 2006.
The Trocadero, Elephant & Castle (1956), New Kent Road, SE1. Britain’s first rock ’n’ roll moral panic broke out here. In 1956 teenage Teddy Boys jived in the aisles of this 3,000-seat cinema to Bill Haley’s “Rock Around the Clock”, seats were slashed, and scuffles with the police spilled into the street. Newspapers ran stories of rock riots across the country, and some towns banned the film. The Trocadero was demolished in the 1960s.
The Clissold Arms (December 1960), 105 Fortis Green, N2. Ray and Dave Davies grew up across the road at 6 Denmark Terrace, and in December 1960, aged 16 and 13, the brothers gave their first public performance in this pub. A few years later they were the Kinks. The pub keeps a Kinks room and a plaque, and their Muswell Hill childhood runs all through the 1971 album Muswell Hillbillies.
The first Marquee: the Stones’ first gig (12 July 1962), 165 Oxford Street, W1. Before Wardour Street, the Marquee was a jazz club in the basement of the Academy Cinema here. On Thursday 12 July 1962 a stand-in band billed as the Rollin’ Stones (Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Brian Jones, pianist Ian Stewart and bassist Dick Taylor) played their first ever gig, filling the slot left when Alexis Korner’s Blues Incorporated went off to do a BBC radio broadcast. Charlie Watts and Bill Wyman were still months away.
The Flamingo Club (From 1957), 33–37 Wardour Street, W1. A basement club famous for weekend all-nighters where modern jazz turned into rhythm and blues. Georgie Fame and the Blue Flames were the house band in the early 1960s, and the crowd (mods, musicians, West Indian Londoners and off-duty American servicemen) made it one of the most mixed nights out in the city. It’s also a footnote to the Profumo affair: a 1962 fight here involving two of Christine Keeler’s acquaintances fed into the scandal.
HMV, 363 Oxford Street (8 February 1962), 363 Oxford Street, W1. On 8 February 1962, fresh from Decca’s rejection, Brian Epstein brought the Beatles’ audition tape to HMV’s flagship store to have it cut onto disc. The disc-cutter, Jim Foy, liked what he heard and introduced him to Sid Colman of the publisher Ardmore & Beechwood upstairs, who put him in touch with George Martin at Parlophone: the chain that led the band to Abbey Road. George Martin unveiled a plaque here in 2000, and HMV moved back into the building in 2023.
Abbey Road Studios (From 1931), 3 Abbey Road, NW8. EMI’s studios opened here in 1931 and became the most famous in the world. The Beatles had their first EMI session in June 1962 and recorded almost all their music in these rooms with producer George Martin; the studios were renamed after their 1969 album. Pink Floyd made The Dark Side of the Moon here in 1972–73. It’s still a working studio, the building is listed, and its front wall is covered in fans’ messages.
The Water Rats (the Pindar of Wakefield) (December 1962), 328 Gray’s Inn Road, WC1. In December 1962 a 21-year-old Bob Dylan, on his first trip to Britain, sang at the Singers Club Christmas party upstairs in this pub, then called the Pindar of Wakefield; it’s usually counted as his first proper UK performance. The Pogues played their first gig here in 1982, and on 27 January 1994 Oasis made their London debut on the same small stage.
Joe Meek’s studio (1960–1967), 304 Holloway Road, N7. In a flat above a leather-goods shop, the visionary producer Joe Meek built a home studio and made records nobody else could. “Telstar” by the Tornados, recorded here in 1962, became the first record by a British group to reach No. 1 in America, and his echo-drenched, space-age sound has influenced producers ever since. Meek’s life ended in tragedy at the flat in February 1967.
Decca Studios: the Beatles’ failed audition (1 January 1962), 165 Broadhurst Gardens, NW6. On New Year’s Day 1962 the Beatles, with Pete Best on drums, drove down from Liverpool and recorded fifteen songs here in about an hour for a Decca audition. Decca turned them down and signed Brian Poole and the Tremeloes instead. The same studios had cut Lonnie Donegan’s “Rock Island Line”, and later made early records for Decca and its Deram label, including David Bowie’s 1967 debut album.
The Ealing Club (From March 1962), 42a The Broadway, W5. A damp basement opposite Ealing Broadway station where, from 17 March 1962, Alexis Korner and Cyril Davies’s Blues Incorporated ran London’s first regular rhythm-and-blues night. It became a magnet for would-be bluesmen: Mick Jagger sang with Korner’s band, Charlie Watts drummed for it, and Jagger and Keith Richards met Brian Jones here. Its regulars read like the first wave of British rock.
The London Palladium (1963 and 1967), 8 Argyll Street, W1. On 13 October 1963 the Beatles topped the bill on ITV’s Sunday Night at the London Palladium, watched by millions at home while screaming fans besieged the stage door. The next day’s papers made the scenes front-page news, and Beatlemania soon had a name. In January 1967 the Rolling Stones played the same show and caused a row by refusing to wave goodbye from its famous revolving stage.
Prince of Wales Theatre: “rattle your jewellery” (4 November 1963), Coventry Street, W1. At the Royal Variety Performance on 4 November 1963, with the Queen Mother in the royal box, John Lennon introduced “Twist and Shout” by asking the people in the cheaper seats to clap their hands, and the rest of the audience to “rattle your jewellery”. The cheeky line, broadcast to the nation days later, did as much as any record to make the Beatles everybody’s band.
EMI House: the Please Please Me stairwell (1963 and 1969), 20 Manchester Square, W1. EMI’s head office, where photographer Angus McBean shot the four Beatles grinning down over the stairwell balcony for the cover of Please Please Me in 1963. In 1969 they came back to restage the picture for their abandoned Get Back album; the two photos later became the covers of the “red” and “blue” greatest-hits albums. EMI has long since moved out and the building has been redeveloped.
Eel Pie Island Hotel (1956–1971), Eel Pie Island, Twickenham, TW1. A rambling Victorian hotel on a Thames island, reached by a footbridge, where trad-jazz dances turned into rhythm-and-blues nights in the early 1960s. The Rolling Stones, the Who, the Yardbirds and Long John Baldry all played its ballroom. The story goes that Baldry heard a young Rod Stewart playing harmonica on Twickenham station after a show and took him into his band. The hotel burned down in 1971.
The Crawdaddy Club (1963), Station Hotel, Kew Road, TW9. Giorgio Gomelsky’s Sunday-night rhythm-and-blues club in the back room of the Station Hotel, opposite Richmond station, gave the Rolling Stones their first residency from February 1963. The crowds, and a visit from all four Beatles on 14 April 1963, spread the Stones’ name fast. When they moved on, the Yardbirds, soon featuring a teenage Eric Clapton, took over the night.
The Marquee Club (1964–1988), 90 Wardour Street, W1. For a quarter of a century this was the most important small rock club in Britain. It moved here from Oxford Street in March 1964. The Who’s Tuesday-night “Maximum R&B” residency made their name; David Bowie, Jimi Hendrix, Pink Floyd, Yes, Jethro Tull, Genesis and countless others played it on the way up; and on 12 February 1976 the Sex Pistols, supporting Eddie and the Hot Rods, smashed up the night and earned one of their first music-press mentions. The building is now flats, with a plaque to the Who’s Keith Moon.
Denmark Street: Tin Pan Alley (1926–1977), Denmark Street, WC2. Britain’s Tin Pan Alley: one short 17th-century street of song publishers that became the nerve centre of the pop business. Melody Maker was founded here in 1926. At No. 4, Regent Sound is where the Rolling Stones recorded their first album; Elton John worked for a publisher at No. 20 and wrote “Your Song” on the street; and from about 1975 to 1977 the Sex Pistols lived and rehearsed in the outbuilding behind No. 6, where John Lydon’s graffiti and caricatures survive. In 2016 that house was upgraded to Grade II* listing.
Marylebone Station: A Hard Day’s Night (1964), Melcombe Place, NW1. The opening chase of A Hard Day’s Night, with John, George and Ringo sprinting from screaming fans to catch their train, was filmed here in spring 1964. Richard Lester’s film caught the Beatles’ wit and speed on screen and set the template for decades of music films and videos.
The Railway Hotel: the first smashed guitar (September 1964), High Street, Wealdstone, HA3. A Victorian pub on the bridge by Harrow & Wealdstone station where the Who played every Tuesday from mid-1964. One night that September Pete Townshend jabbed his guitar into the low ceiling and cracked its neck, then, hearing laughter, smashed it to pieces. The crowd expected it every week after that. Their future manager Kit Lambert first saw them here. The hotel burned down in 2000, and flats on the site are named after members of the Who.
Les Cousins (1964–1972), 49 Greek Street, W1. An unlicensed basement folk and blues club beneath a family restaurant, open from October 1964 until April 1972 and famous for its all-nighters. Bert Jansch, John Renbourn, Davy Graham, Sandy Denny, John Martyn, Al Stewart, Nick Drake and a young Paul Simon all honed their songs down here, and the intricate guitar music it nurtured flowed straight into British folk-rock. In the late 1950s the same cellar had been the Skiffle Cellar.
The Bag O’Nails (1966–1967), 9 Kingly Street, W1. A late-night musicians’ hangout tucked behind Carnaby Street. On 25 November 1966 the newly formed Jimi Hendrix Experience played an early showcase here for the music press and business, the night the London industry realised what had arrived. On 15 May 1967 Paul McCartney met the American photographer Linda Eastman here during a Georgie Fame set; they married in 1969. The building is now a private members’ club.
Carnaby Street (1960s), Carnaby Street, W1. A back street of workshops that became the shop window of Swinging London. From the late 1950s John Stephen opened boutique after boutique selling sharp, affordable menswear to mods, and by 1966 (the year Time magazine declared London “the swinging city”) Carnaby Street was dressing the Who, the Small Faces and their fans, and being gently mocked in the Kinks’ “Dedicated Follower of Fashion”.
The UFO Club (1966–1967), 31 Tottenham Court Road, W1. London’s psychedelic underground in one basement. From 23 December 1966 Joe Boyd and John “Hoppy” Hopkins ran Friday all-nighters in the Blarney Club, an Irish dance hall beneath a cinema here, with liquid light shows, films, poetry and the house bands Pink Floyd and Soft Machine. After a News of the World exposé the landlord ended it in July 1967, and a final run at the Roundhouse folded that autumn, but it set the sound and look of British psychedelia.
The Polytechnic: Hendrix sits in with Cream (1 October 1966), 309 Regent Street, W1. On 1 October 1966, barely a week after arriving in London, Jimi Hendrix asked to sit in with Cream at a gig at the Polytechnic and tore through Howlin’ Wolf’s “Killing Floor”. Eric Clapton later said it was a song he’d never had the technique to play; witnesses describe him leaving the stage stunned. The Polytechnic, now the University of Westminster, is also where Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters, Nick Mason and Richard Wright met as architecture students.
The Scotch of St James (September 1966), 13 Mason’s Yard, SW1. A tartan-lined basement club where the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and the Who drank in the mid-1960s. Jimi Hendrix’s first London jam is usually placed here, on the night he arrived from New York in September 1966: a borrowed guitar, a stunned room, and a word-of-mouth buzz that swept the scene within days.
Indica Gallery: where John met Yoko (November 1966), 6 Mason’s Yard, SW1. A counterculture gallery and bookshop backed by Paul McCartney. The night before Yoko Ono’s exhibition Unfinished Paintings and Objects opened, John Lennon dropped in for a preview, climbed a ladder to read a tiny “YES” on the ceiling, and asked to hammer a nail into one of her pieces. Both later called it the moment they met.
De Lane Lea Studios (1964–1966), 129 Kingsway, WC2. A basement studio beneath Kingsway where the Animals recorded “House of the Rising Sun” in 1964, and where, in October 1966, the newly formed Jimi Hendrix Experience cut their first single, “Hey Joe”, which took Hendrix into the British Top 10 within weeks of its release.
The Roundhouse (From 1966), Chalk Farm Road, NW1. A Victorian railway engine shed that became a counterculture cathedral. On 15 October 1966 it hosted the all-night launch party for the underground paper International Times, with Pink Floyd and Soft Machine playing amid the light shows. The Doors played their only British shows here in September 1968, and on 4 July 1976 the Ramones’ first UK gig, watched (the legend goes) by future members of the Clash and the Sex Pistols, helped light punk’s fuse. It’s still one of London’s major venues.
Royal Albert Hall (1963–1970), Kensington Gore, SW7. Rock came in through the front door here. The Beatles and the Rolling Stones shared the bill at a Great Pop Prom in September 1963; Bob Dylan played two nights in May 1966; Cream said goodbye with farewell shows in November 1968; Jimi Hendrix played two concerts in February 1969; and Led Zeppelin filmed a celebrated show here in January 1970. John Lennon even gave the hall a line in “A Day in the Life”.
Chiswick House: “Paperback Writer” and “Rain” (May 1966), Burlington Lane, W4. In May 1966 the Beatles filmed promotional clips for “Paperback Writer” and “Rain” among the statues and conservatory of these 18th-century gardens, directed by Michael Lindsay-Hogg: early music videos, made so the band didn’t have to keep turning up at TV studios in person.
The Saville Theatre (1965–1970), 135 Shaftesbury Avenue, WC2. Brian Epstein, the Beatles’ manager, took over this theatre in 1965 and turned its Sunday nights into rock concerts with the Who, Cream and Jimi Hendrix. The most famous came on 4 June 1967: Hendrix opened with “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band”, released only days before, with Paul McCartney and George Harrison in the audience. The Beatles filmed their “Hello, Goodbye” promo on its stage on 10 November 1967. It’s now a listed building and a cinema.
The Apple Boutique (1967–1968), 94 Baker Street, W1. The Beatles’ short-lived psychedelic shop opened in December 1967 on the corner of Baker Street and Paddington Street, its whole façade covered in a vast mural by the Dutch design collective The Fool. After objections the mural was painted over; the shop lost money from the start and closed at the end of July 1968, when the band simply gave the remaining stock away.
Royal Courts of Justice: butterfly on a wheel (31 July 1967), Strand, WC2. In summer 1967 Mick Jagger and Keith Richards were jailed after a drugs trial in Chichester, and the sentences caused an outcry; even The Times ran a famous editorial asking “Who breaks a butterfly on a wheel?” On 31 July 1967 the Court of Appeal here quashed Richards’s conviction and gave Jagger a conditional discharge, a landmark in the establishment’s uneasy truce with rock.
Waterloo Bridge: “Waterloo Sunset” (1967), Waterloo Bridge, WC2. Ray Davies’s song about watching the sun go down over the Thames from here reached No. 2 in 1967 and has become London’s unofficial anthem; he sang it at the closing ceremony of the 2012 Olympics. He has said it began life as “Liverpool Sunset”. Stand on the bridge at dusk, look west, and you’ll hear why he moved it.
Queen Elizabeth Hall: Games for May (12 May 1967), Southbank Centre, SE1. On 12 May 1967 Pink Floyd took over the South Bank’s brand-new concert hall for Games for May, a show of light projections, bubbles and tape effects, with an early surround-sound rig that sent sounds whirling around the room. Syd Barrett wrote a song for the occasion that became “See Emily Play”.
The Rainbow (Finsbury Park Astoria) (1967–1982), 232 Seven Sisters Road, N4. As the Finsbury Park Astoria, this vast, ornate cinema is where Jimi Hendrix set fire to his guitar on stage for the first time, on 31 March 1967, on a package tour with the Walker Brothers, Cat Stevens and Engelbert Humperdinck. The Who opened it as the Rainbow on 4 November 1971. That December an audience member pushed Frank Zappa off its stage into the pit, breaking his leg; in January 1973 it hosted Eric Clapton’s comeback concert, and in 1977 Bob Marley’s shows and the Ramones’ live album It’s Alive. It’s now a church and a Grade II* listed building.
Alexandra Palace: the 14 Hour Technicolor Dream (29–30 April 1967), Alexandra Palace Way, N22. On 29–30 April 1967 thousands filled the Great Hall for the 14 Hour Technicolor Dream, a benefit for the underground paper International Times after a police raid. Dozens of bands and poets played on two stages, with light shows everywhere; Pink Floyd came on around dawn, and John Lennon was among the crowd. It’s remembered as the high point of London’s underground.
Maida Vale Studios (From the 1960s), Delaware Road, W9. A former roller-skating rink rebuilt as BBC studios in the 1930s, where generations of bands recorded live sessions for radio, above all for John Peel’s shows from the late 1960s on. For many acts, from the Fall to Nirvana, a Peel session was the first time the country heard them properly. The BBC Radiophonic Workshop was based here too. The BBC sold the building in 2023 to a group including Hans Zimmer, which plans to keep it as studios.
24 Chapel Street: Brian Epstein’s house (1967), 24 Chapel Street, SW1. The Beatles’ manager lived here. On 19 May 1967 he held the press launch for Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band in this house, the day the photographer Linda Eastman got her break with the band. Three months later, on 27 August 1967, Epstein died here of an accidental overdose, aged 32, while the Beatles were away in Wales.
Trident Studios (1968–1981), 17 St Anne’s Court, W1. This independent Soho studio had eight-track recording before Abbey Road did, which is why the Beatles came here on 31 July 1968 to record “Hey Jude”. It then became David Bowie’s workshop: “Space Oddity”, Hunky Dory and The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars were all made here, as were Lou Reed’s Transformer (produced by Bowie and Mick Ronson), early Elton John records including “Your Song”, and Queen’s first albums. The building still houses a sound studio.
Gerrard Street: Led Zeppelin’s first rehearsal (12 August 1968), Gerrard Street, W1. Jimmy Page, Robert Plant, John Paul Jones and John Bonham played together for the first time in a cramped basement rehearsal room on this street on 12 August 1968. They kicked off with “Train Kept A-Rollin’”, an old Yardbirds number, and as Jones remembered it, “the whole room just exploded.” Within weeks they were touring, and by October they were Led Zeppelin. Ronnie Scott had opened his first jazz club in a basement here in 1959.
23 Brook Street: Hendrix’s flat (1968–1969), 23 Brook Street, W1. Jimi Hendrix lived in the top-floor flat here with his girlfriend Kathy Etchingham in 1968–69, and was fascinated to discover that the composer George Frideric Handel had lived next door at No. 25 two centuries earlier. Hendrix’s rooms have been restored as part of the Handel Hendrix House museum, and an English Heritage blue plaque marks the building.
34 Montagu Square (1965–1969), 34 Montagu Square, W1. Ringo Starr leased this flat in the mid-1960s and lent it to friends. Jimi Hendrix and his manager Chas Chandler lived here at the end of 1966; John Lennon and Yoko Ono moved in during 1968 and shot the nude cover of their album Two Virgins here, and a police drugs raid that October made headlines. An English Heritage blue plaque to Lennon was unveiled in 2010.
Olympic Studios (1966–2009), 117 Church Road, SW13. South-west London’s answer to Abbey Road, in a former cinema. The Rolling Stones made a run of albums here including Beggars Banquet and Let It Bleed, with Jean-Luc Godard filming them building “Sympathy for the Devil” in 1968; the Beatles cut the backing track of “All You Need Is Love”; Jimi Hendrix recorded much of Are You Experienced; Led Zeppelin made their first album here in October 1968; and the Who recorded Who’s Next. The studios closed in 2009 and it reopened as the Olympic Cinema in 2013.
3 Savile Row: the rooftop concert (30 January 1969), 3 Savile Row, W1. Apple Corps, the Beatles’ company, moved into this Georgian townhouse in 1968. At lunchtime on 30 January 1969 the band carried their gear onto the roof and played their last live performance, around 40 minutes of new songs with Billy Preston on keyboards, as office workers climbed onto neighbouring roofs and the police arrived to turn it down. “I hope we’ve passed the audition,” Lennon quipped at the end.
The Abbey Road zebra crossing (8 August 1969), Abbey Road at Grove End Road, NW8. On the morning of 8 August 1969, photographer Iain Macmillan stood on a stepladder while a policeman held up the traffic and the Beatles walked back and forth across this crossing; one of the six frames became the cover of Abbey Road. The crossing was given listed status in 2010 and fans re-enact the walk all day long. It’s a real, busy road, so watch the traffic.
Hyde Park free concerts (From 1968), Hyde Park, W2. The first free rock concert here, on 29 June 1968, was headlined by Pink Floyd. Blind Faith made their debut to a vast crowd in June 1969, and on 5 July 1969 the Rolling Stones played just two days after Brian Jones’s death: Jagger read from Shelley, hundreds of butterflies were released, and Mick Taylor played his first show with the band. Queen drew a huge crowd for a free show in 1976, and in 2005 Pink Floyd reunited with Roger Waters here for Live 8.
Twickenham Film Studios: Get Back (January 1969), The Barons, St Margarets, TW1. In January 1969 the Beatles rehearsed on a chilly soundstage here for the film that became Let It Be. Tensions boiled over and George Harrison walked out on 10 January, briefly quitting the band; the sessions moved to the basement studio at Apple in Savile Row and ended with the rooftop concert. Peter Jackson’s Get Back (2021) restored the footage. The band had also filmed scenes for A Hard Day’s Night and Help! here.
The Three Tuns: Beckenham Arts Lab (1969), High Street, Beckenham, BR3. In 1969 David Bowie and his landlady Mary Finnigan started a Sunday-night folk club in the back room of this pub. It grew into the Beckenham Arts Lab, with music, poetry, puppets and light shows, and a proving ground for the songs that made Bowie a star. A plaque has marked the building since 2001; it’s now a restaurant.
The Bowie Bandstand (16 August 1969), Croydon Road Recreation Ground, BR3. On 16 August 1969, weeks after “Space Oddity” came out, Bowie and the Arts Lab ran a free one-day festival around this 1905 bandstand, the Growth Summer Festival, with Bowie organising, compèring and singing. He turned the day into the song “Memory of a Free Festival”. The bandstand was listed Grade II on the festival’s 50th anniversary in 2019.
Ronnie Scott’s (16 September 1970), 47 Frith Street, W1. London’s great jazz club has been here since 1965, after starting in a Gerrard Street basement in 1959. It earns its place on a rock map for one night: on 16 September 1970 Jimi Hendrix joined Eric Burdon and War on stage, the last time he ever played in public. He died two days later in Notting Hill, aged 27.
23 Heddon Street: the Ziggy Stardust cover (January 1972), 23 Heddon Street, W1. On a wet January night in 1972, photographer Brian Ward posed David Bowie on the pavement outside No. 23, under the sign of the furrier K. West, for the cover of The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. The furrier’s sign is long gone, but a plaque marks the doorway and fans still stand on the spot to recreate the pose.
BBC Television Centre: “Starman” (6 July 1972), Wood Lane, W12. On 6 July 1972 David Bowie, in a quilted jumpsuit, sang “Starman” on Top of the Pops and draped an arm around guitarist Mick Ronson’s shoulder. A generation of British teenagers have described it as the moment their lives changed. Top of the Pops was made here for decades; the building has since been redeveloped.
Hammersmith Odeon (3 July 1973), 45 Queen Caroline Street, W6. On 3 July 1973 David Bowie stunned a packed house by announcing that this was “the last show that we’ll ever do”: the retirement of Ziggy Stardust, filmed by D.A. Pennebaker. Bruce Springsteen made his British debut here in November 1975, and Kate Bush returned in 2014 for her 22-night residency Before the Dawn. It’s now the Eventim Apollo.
St Martin’s School of Art: the Pistols’ first gig (6 November 1975), 107–109 Charing Cross Road, WC2. On 6 November 1975 the Sex Pistols played their first ever gig in a common room here, supporting the art-school band Bazooka Joe; bassist Glen Matlock was a student at the college and got them the booking. They borrowed the headliners’ amps, got through a handful of songs, and the plug was pulled. Bazooka Joe’s own bass player, Stuart Goddard, was so struck that he soon reinvented himself as Adam Ant. The college moved to King’s Cross in 2011 and the building is now the Foyles bookshop.
The Lyceum (1969–1980s), 21 Wellington Street, WC2. Long before The Lion King moved in, the Lyceum’s ballroom was a rock venue. On 15 December 1969 John Lennon’s Plastic Ono Band played a UNICEF benefit here with George Harrison, Eric Clapton and Keith Moon in a sprawling line-up: Lennon’s last live concert in Britain, and the last time he and Harrison shared a stage. In July 1975 Bob Marley and the Wailers recorded their album Live! here; its version of “No Woman, No Cry” became Marley’s breakthrough hit in Britain.
430 King’s Road: SEX (From 1971), 430 King’s Road, SW10. Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood’s shop kept changing its name and look (Let It Rock, Too Fast to Live Too Young to Die, SEX, Seditionaries), and its rubberwear, bondage trousers and slogan T-shirts helped invent punk style. The Sex Pistols formed around the shop; in August 1975 John Lydon auditioned by miming to Alice Cooper’s “I’m Eighteen” on its jukebox. It’s still a Vivienne Westwood shop, Worlds End, with a clock that runs backwards.
The 100 Club (20–21 September 1976), 100 Oxford Street, W1. A basement jazz club since the 1940s that hosted punk’s coming-out party. Over two nights in September 1976 the 100 Club Punk Special put the Sex Pistols, the Clash, the Damned, Buzzcocks, Subway Sect and the Vibrators on one bill, and Siouxsie and the Banshees played their first ever set, an improvised noise with Sid Vicious on drums. On the second night a thrown glass shattered and injured a young woman’s eye, and punk was banned from the club for a time.
Thames Television: the Bill Grundy interview (1 December 1976), Euston Road, NW1. On 1 December 1976 the Sex Pistols, booked at short notice after Queen pulled out, went live on Thames TV’s teatime show Today. Goaded by presenter Bill Grundy, guitarist Steve Jones swore on air, with Siouxsie Sioux and other Bromley Contingent fans standing behind the band. The next morning’s Daily Mirror headline, “The Filth and the Fury!”, made punk a national scandal overnight. The Thames building beside Euston Tower was demolished in the 1990s.
Rehearsal Rehearsals: the Clash’s base (1976–1978), Camden Market, Chalk Farm Road, NW1. In 1976 the Clash’s manager Bernie Rhodes leased a scruffy former railway warehouse in the yard of what’s now Camden Market. The band rehearsed, wrote and sometimes slept here, and when a critic dismissed them as a garage band they answered with “Garageland”. The yard is now part of the busy Stables Market.
Screen on the Green (29 August 1976), 83 Upper Street, N1. At midnight on 29 August 1976 this Islington cinema hosted a punk triple bill: the Sex Pistols headlined, with the Clash and Buzzcocks in support. It was one of the Clash’s very first London shows and a sign that punk was becoming a scene, not just a band. It’s still a cinema.
Battersea Power Station: the flying pig (December 1976), Circus Road West, SW11. In December 1976 Pink Floyd tethered a giant inflatable pig between the chimneys to photograph the cover of Animals. On the second day of the shoot it broke free, drifted up into the flight paths around Heathrow and came down in a field in Kent. The finished cover combined photographs. The restored power station reopened in 2022.
Rough Trade: the first shop (From 1976), 202 Kensington Park Road, W11. Geoff Travis opened a record shop here in February 1976, stocking reggae, American imports and the first do-it-yourself punk singles. It grew into a distributor and the Rough Trade label, which put out records by the Smiths and became the heart of British independent music. The shop later moved round the corner to Talbot Road.
The Valley, Charlton: the loudest concert (31 May 1976), Floyd Road, SE7. On a rain-soaked bank holiday, 31 May 1976, the Who played Charlton Athletic’s football ground and went into the Guinness Book of Records for the loudest concert ever measured. Fans had camped in the streets overnight, gates were knocked down, and tens of thousands packed the open terraces.
The Roxy (1976–1978), 41–43 Neal Street, WC2. For a few months the Roxy was punk’s home club. Generation X played the first gig on 14 December 1976, and the Clash and the Heartbreakers headlined the official opening on New Year’s Day 1977; X-Ray Spex, the Adverts, Buzzcocks, the Slits and almost every punk band followed, except the Sex Pistols. Between sets DJ Don Letts played dub and reggae, sparking a crossover that shaped what came next. The founders were evicted in April 1977 but the club ran on until April 1978. A plaque went up in 2017.
The Jubilee boat trip (7 June 1977), River Thames, by Westminster. During the Queen’s Silver Jubilee, the Sex Pistols hired a riverboat called the Queen Elizabeth and played “Anarchy in the U.K.” and “God Save the Queen” as it cruised past the Houses of Parliament. When it docked, police were waiting and there were arrests, including manager Malcolm McLaren. That week “God Save the Queen”, banned by the BBC, stood at No. 2 in the official chart.
42 Oakley Street: Bob Marley (1977), 42 Oakley Street, SW3. Bob Marley lived here in 1977, after surviving an assassination attempt in Jamaica, while he worked in London on Exodus, the album Time magazine later named the best of the 20th century. An English Heritage blue plaque marks the house.
Hammersmith Palais (1919–2007), 242 Shepherd’s Bush Road, W6. A dance hall from 1919 that gave its name to one of the Clash’s greatest songs. In 1977 Joe Strummer went to a reggae all-nighter here expecting rebel music, and came away writing “(White Man) In Hammersmith Palais”, part reggae, part state-of-the-nation address. The building was demolished in 2012.
Marc Bolan’s Rock Shrine (16 September 1977), Queen’s Ride, SW13. In the early hours of 16 September 1977 the purple Mini carrying T. Rex’s Marc Bolan left the road on this bend and hit a tree. Bolan, a passenger, was killed two weeks before his 30th birthday. Fans have tended a shrine at the tree ever since; a bronze bust was added in 2002.
Electric Ballroom (From 1978), 184 Camden High Street, NW1. A former dance hall that turned into one of Camden’s essential rock rooms in 1978. That August, Sid Vicious played his farewell London show here, billed as “Sid Sods Off”, with Glen Matlock and the Damned’s Rat Scabies backing him, before leaving for New York. It has hosted punk, two-tone, goth, indie and metal nights ever since.
The Hope and Anchor (1970s), 207 Upper Street, N1. A tiny cellar beneath an Islington pub that was a key stage for pub rock and punk; the Stranglers, Ian Dury and the Damned all played here, and the 1977 Front Row Festival was recorded here for a live album. On 27 December 1978 Joy Division played their first London gig to a near-empty room; on the drive home Ian Curtis had his first recognised epileptic seizure.
Victoria Park: Rock Against Racism (30 April 1978), Victoria Park, E3. On 30 April 1978 tens of thousands marched from Trafalgar Square to Victoria Park for the Rock Against Racism Carnival, organised with the Anti-Nazi League. The Clash, Steel Pulse, X-Ray Spex and the Tom Robinson Band played, and the sight of punk and reggae fans standing together became one of the defining images of the decade.
Wessex Sound Studios (1969–1979), 106a Highbury New Park, N5. A Victorian church hall tucked behind St Augustine’s church hid one of Britain’s great studios. King Crimson recorded In the Court of the Crimson King here in 1969; the Sex Pistols cut “Anarchy in the U.K.” here in October 1976 and came back for Never Mind the Bollocks; Queen’s stomping “We Will Rock You” was made here; and between August and November 1979 the Clash recorded London Calling with producer Guy Stevens. The building is now flats.
Earls Court Exhibition Centre (1970s–1980s), Warwick Road, SW5. A vast exhibition hall that became London’s arena for rock spectacle. Led Zeppelin played five nights here in May 1975, and Pink Floyd built, and toppled, The Wall on its stage in 1980 and 1981. The centre was demolished in the 2010s.
Basing Street Studios: Band Aid (1969–1984), 8–10 Basing Street, W11. In 1969 Island Records turned a deconsecrated 19th-century church here into its studios. Led Zeppelin worked on their fourth album here and Bob Marley on Exodus; in 1982 Trevor Horn and Jill Sinclair bought it and renamed it SARM West, and on 25 November 1984 Bob Geldof and Midge Ure packed it with pop stars to record Band Aid’s “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” in a single day. The studios closed in 2013 and the building became flats.
Wembley Stadium: Live Aid (13 July 1985), Wembley, HA9. On 13 July 1985 Live Aid’s London concert filled the old Wembley Stadium while a sister show ran in Philadelphia, raising money for famine relief in Ethiopia. Queen’s tight, roaring 20-minute set, with the whole stadium clapping in time to “Radio Ga Ga”, is regularly voted the greatest live performance in rock history. The old stadium was demolished in 2003 and rebuilt.
Brixton Academy (From 1983), 211 Stockwell Road, SW9. A grand 1929 cinema that promoter Simon Parkes famously bought for £1 in 1983 and turned into one of London’s great rock venues, loved for a sloping floor that lets everyone see the stage. The Smiths played their last ever concert here on 12 December 1986. A fatal crush at its doors closed it in December 2022; it reopened in April 2024.
Garden Lodge: Freddie Mercury’s home (1980s–1991), 1 Logan Place, W8. Freddie Mercury bought this Edwardian house behind a high brick wall in the early 1980s and lived here until his death on 24 November 1991. For decades fans have left flowers and messages on the garden wall and door.
Berwick Street: the Morning Glory cover (1995), Berwick Street, W1. Soho’s market street, lined with record shops in the 1990s, is the long view on the cover of Oasis’s (What’s the Story) Morning Glory?: two figures passing each other in the early-morning light, shot by photographer Michael Spencer Jones. It became one of the defining images of Britpop, and fans still come to line up the angle.
The O2: Led Zeppelin’s reunion (10 December 2007), Peninsula Square, SE10. On 10 December 2007 Robert Plant, Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones, with John Bonham’s son Jason on drums, played a full two-hour Led Zeppelin set at the Ahmet Ertegun tribute concert here. Around 20 million requests were reportedly made for its 18,000 or so tickets.
The Bowie mural, Brixton (2013 and 2016), Tunstall Road, SW9. David Bowie was born a few streets away, at 40 Stansfield Road, on 8 January 1947. Street artist James Cochran painted this Aladdin Sane portrait in 2013; when Bowie died in January 2016 it became an instant shrine, covered in flowers and messages, and it’s still where Londoners come to remember him.
Dartford station: Mick meets Keith (17 October 1961), Dartford, Kent. Just over the Greater London line. On 17 October 1961 Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, who had known each other at primary school, met again on a platform here; Jagger was carrying records by Chuck Berry and Muddy Waters, and the conversation that followed led to the Rolling Stones.
Tittenhurst Park: Imagine (1969–1971), Sunninghill, Berkshire. John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s country house. The Beatles’ last photo session took place in its grounds on 22 August 1969, and Lennon recorded much of Imagine in his home studio here in 1971; the white room in the film was filmed here too.
Shepperton Studios: Keith Moon’s last show (25 May 1978), Shepperton, Surrey. On 25 May 1978 the Who played a private show here for the cameras for their documentary The Kids Are Alright. It turned out to be Keith Moon’s last performance with the band; he died that September.
Knebworth Park (1974–1996), Knebworth, Hertfordshire. A stately home whose park became Britain’s biggest rock stage. Led Zeppelin played their last UK shows here in August 1979, Queen played their final concert with Freddie Mercury on 9 August 1986, and Oasis drew around 250,000 people over two nights in August 1996.