As a teenager, Carnaby Street and the West End clubs became really important to us. In the spring of ‘64, The Marquee had just moved from Oxford Street to 90 Wardour Street and I got a job working there for Harold Pendleton who owned the club with his wife Barbara and jazz musician Chris Barber. They’d formed something called the National Jazz Federation and they’d opened this jazz club which had jazz at the weekends and rock during the week.
The typical programme would be Manfred Mann on the Monday night, and New Band Night was on the Tuesday night when you’d have The Who, The Moody Blues or The Spencer Davis Group. Wednesday was Long John Baldry’s Invitational Evening, which was a kind of blues night, when John Mayall would turn up, and Rod Stewart was always there singing with him. I think the resident band on Thursday nights was Gary Farr and the T-Bones, and Friday was the Yardbirds with Eric Clapton.
We were growing up and by the time we were 17 and 18, we were all taking handfuls of pills and staying up all weekend. I would work in the Marquee on the Friday until 11 o’clock at night and then we’d go to the Flamingo or to The Scene. People like Georgie Fame, John Mayall and Eric Burden would hang out at the Flamingo, it was a great blues club, and The Scene was a mod club. And then at one or two o’clock in the morning, you could go to The Roaring Twenties in Carnaby Street, which was a black club owned by Count Suckle, who also owned the Q Club in Praed Street. Both clubs were very cool and a bit edgy, although there was never any trouble there. The music was amazing - ‘Louie Louie’ by The Kingsmen, ska and reggae and brilliant Jamaican music.
It was also at that time that the different ‘palais’ became very big, places like Hammersmith Palais on Friday nights, and you could also go dancing on Sunday afternoons. The Lyceum in The Strand started opening at lunchtimes, so if you worked in the city, you could go down and listen to some great music for an hour. There was loads of stuff going on all of the time as people started to realise, if they played the right music, they’d get a good crowd in, so the whole evolution through that period was very exciting for everybody.
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