Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Denmark Street
This seemingly nondescript little street is a musician's mecca. In the 1920s, it was known
as “Britain's Tin Pan Alley”—the center of the UK's music-publishing industry, when
songwriters here cranked out popular tunes printed as sheet music.
Later, in the 1960s, Denmark Street was ground zero for rock and roll's British Inva-
sion, which brought so much great pop music to the US. Regent Sounds Studio (at #4, on
the right, now a guitar store with a similar name) was a low-budget recording studio. It
was here in 1964 that the Rolling Stones recorded the song that raised them from obscur-
ity, “Not Fade Away” (“I'm gonna tell you how it's gonna be...”). Other acts that recorded
on Denmark Street include The Who (“Happy Jack”), The Kinks (who wrote a song called
“Denmark Street”), the Beatles (“Fixing a Hole”), David Bowie, and Black Sabbath (who
made their first two records here—including the track “Iron Man”). Today, Regent is a
music store, and the former studio's walls are lined with a wonderland of guitars.
