Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
5
SOHO ON RECORD
Soho has been a popular meeting point for the capital's up-and-coming pop stars since the
late 1950s, when the likes of Cliff Richard, Tommy Steele and Adam Faith used to hang out at
the
2 i's coffee bar
, 59 Old Compton St, and perform at the rock'n'roll club in the basement.
Marc Bolan, whose parents ran a market stall on Berwick Street, also worked at the café in the
early 1960s. The Rolling Stones first met in a pub on Broadwick Street in early 1962 and, by the
mid-1960s, were playing Soho's premier rock venue, the
Marquee
, originally at 90 Wardour St.
David Bowie performed there (as David Jones) in 1965, Pink Floyd played their “Spontaneous
Underground” sessions the following year, Led Zeppelin had their first London gig there in
1968 and Phil Collins worked for some time as a cloakroom attendant.
In November 1975, The Sex Pistols played their first gig at
St Martin's School of Art
(now
Foyles) on Charing Cross Road, during which Sid Vicious (in the audience, and not the band, at
the time) made his contribution to dance history when he began to “pogo”. The classic punk
venue, however, was the
100 Club
on Oxford Street, where the Pistols, The Clash, Siouxsie, The
Damned and The Vibrators all played. The Pistols used to rehearse in the studios on
Denmark
Street
, London's own version of New York's Tin Pan Alley, off Charing Cross Road (still lined
with music shops). The Rolling Stones, The Kinks and Genesis all recorded songs there, and
Elton John got his first job at one of the street's music publishers in 1963. There's a whiff of
Soho's pop music past still in
Berwick Street
, where a cluster of independent and
secondhand record shops survive on either side of the market.
Frith Street
Frith Street
is home to
Ronnie Scott's
, London's longest-running jazz club, founded in
1958 and still pulling in the big names. Opposite is
Bar Italia
, a tiny, quintessentially
Italian café established in 1949, whose late-night hours make it a clubbers' favourite.
It was in this building, appropriately enough for such a media-saturated area, that
John Logie Baird
made the world's first public television transmission in 1926. Next
door, a plaque recalls that the 7-year-old Mozart stayed here in 1763, having wowed
George III and London society.
Soho Square
Soho Square
is one of the few patches of green amid the neighbourhood's labyrinth
of streets and alleys. It began life as a smart address, surrounded by the houses of
the nobility and centred on an elaborate fountain topped by a statue of Charles II.
Charles survives, if a little worse for wear, on one of the pathways, but the fountain is
now an octagonal, mock-Tudor garden shed. As for the buildings around the square,
they are a typical Soho mix: 20th Century-Fox; the Victorian Hospital for Sick
Women (now a walk-in health centre); Paul McCartney's discreet corporate
headquarters, MPL; and the British Board of Film Classification (the national
guardians of film censorship).
There are also two square red-brick churches. The most prominent is the Italianate
St Patrick's
, on the east side of the square, first consecrated in 1792 and thus the first
Catholic church built in England after the Reformation; the current building dates
from the 1890s and serves the Irish, Italian and Chinese communities. Concealed on
the north side of the square, the
Église Protestante
, also from the 1890s, is the sole
survivor of London's once numerous Huguenot churches; the 1950 tympanum relief
depicts the French refugees crossing the Channel and being granted asylum by
Edward VI.
Dean Street
One block west of Frith Street runs
Dean Street
, once home to
he
Colony Room
, a
private drinking club that was at the heart of Soho's postwar bohemian scene, and
still home to the members-only
Groucho Club
, at no. 45, where today's literati and
media types preen themselves. Nearby, at no. 49,
he French House
is an open-to-all
