Denmark Street – The Kinks
Down the way from the Tottenham Court Road
Just round the corner from old Soho
There’s a place where the publishers go
If you dont know which way to go
Just open your ears and follow your nose
Cos the street is shakin from the tapping of toes
You can hear that music play anytime on any day
Every rhythm, every way
You got to a publisher and play him your song
He says i hate your music and you hair is too long
But I’ll sign you up because I’d hate to be wrong
Mick Jagger in the cramped recording studio December 1963
In February they started recording their future single ‘Not Fade Away’ a cover of Buddy Holly’s original. They were in the middle of a gruelling tour and the group were tired, fractious and hardly speaking to each other – they’d almost given up working out how to record the song. Their manager Andrew Oldham phoned his friend Gene Pitney – the American music star, who was currently in London, for inspiration. Gene Pitney had written He’s A Rebel for the Crystals, Rubber Ball for Bobby Vee and was currently having a huge hit in the UK and the US with 24 Hours From Tulsa.
Gene Pitney in London February 1963
Andrew Loog Oldham in Denmark Street 1964
Sound studios when he made an unknown number of soundalike recordings for Woolworth’s own label Embassy Records. These included very reasonable covers of tracks such as Mungo Jerry’s In The Summertime and Stevie Wonder’s Signed, Sealed, Delivered, I’m Yours. In 1965, hopefully given a cup of coffee by the shy bespectacled office gopher, the American folk-singer Paul Simon walked into Mills Music one day proudly presenting two new songs he had recently written, The Sound of Silence and Homeward Bound. Unfortunately homeward bound was exactly where the man responsible for listening to new music sent him when he rejected the songs for being uncommercial and complicated. We can only hope that occasionally he and the man at Decca records who first auditioned The Beatles would meet up at their local pub, shake their heads sadly and wonder what might have been. Simon, after the rejection, decided to start his own publishing company called Charing Cross Music and has subsequently, and sensibly, kept the rights to all his music ever since.
met his first backing band – the Lower Third, and it was where he met Vince Taylor, the failed ‘leather rocker’. Vince’s real name was Brian Holden and he is known mostly these days for recording, as Vince Taylor and his Playboys, Brand New Cadillac, a song later of course covered by The Clash on London Calling. He had moved to France earlier in the decade and had become a leather-clad rocker and Elvis-like hero to French audiences. Taylor eventually became the inspiration for Bowie’s famous alter ego – “I met (Vince Taylor) a few times in the mid-Sixties and I went to a few parties with him. He was out of his gourd. Totally flipped. The guy was not playing with a full deck at all. He used to carry maps of Europe around with him, and I remember him opening a map outside Charing Cross tube station, putting it on the pavement and kneeling down with a magnifying glass. He pointed out all the sites where UFOs were going to land. He was the inspiration for Ziggy. Vince Taylor was a rock n roll star from the Sixties who was slowly going crazy. Finally, he fired his band and went on-stage one night in a white sheet. He told the audience to rejoice, that he was Jesus. They put him away.” By June 1972, the month that Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust album was released, Vince Taylor had managed to almost rebuild his career in France and brought out an album called “Vince is Alive, Well and Rocking in Paris” sadly not many people noticed he was still alive, let alone well and rocking, and after spending much of his life in prisons, psychiatric institutions and pretty much continually ‘out of his gourd’ he died in 1991 in Switzerland at the age of 52.I’m not sure if Denis Nilson, the infamous serial killer who murdered at least fifteen men in his flat
in North London, had a musical note in his body but for some time in the late 1970s and early 80s he worked at the Job Centre at 1 Denmark Street. In 1980, which would have been right in the middle of his killing spree, he offered to help with the food for the office Christmas party and brought along a huge saucepan. Former colleagues only realised during the trial that this was the same saucepan that had been used to boil the heads of several of his victims.
Tags: Bowie, Giaconda Cafe, murder, Nilson, Rolling Stones
Great story on the Stones, Pitney and Spector! I think Pitney played piano on the “b” side – “Little by Little” also. What a heady moment!
Dan H.
Allegedly Nilson was playing O Superman by Laurie Anderson during one of his attempted murders. Witness recollection. This may answer the question about his musical taste.
raymond a.
Great pics of Denmark St.
I remember Regent Sound with its grey sign, it was still there (as a recording studio) up until the early 80′s at least.
Next door was the Tin Pan Alley club that was frequented (due to a late bar) by a gangster type clientelle.Chris and Andys guitar repair workshop was there too.
The pic of Andrew Loog Oldham shows him walking down the other side of the road just about opposite from Regent Sound.
Dennis Neilsen also worked at the Job centre down Kentish Town Rd and my girlfrien of the time used to kick me out of bed to try and find a job from there.
I remember once I took one of the cards off the board and handed it to Neilsen and he tried to ring the job for me but couldn’t get through and almost smashed the phone in temper on putting it down.He always used to stink to high heaven of the worst B.O. you could ever imagine.
I walked out.
One morning I went to the jobshop and it was closed as they had had a flood in there.
This flood is actually mentioned in Brian Master’s ‘Killing For Company’.
A chill went down my spine when I first saw his picture in the newpapers, here he was – the bad tempered horribly stinking guy.
Hi. Dennis does have a musical bone. While I was editor of Big Breakfast News in the 1990s I had a regular Friday meeting with Charlie Parsons who ran Planet 24. They also produced The Word. Charlie played me a cassette tape he had been sent in the post. Lots of songs knocked out on a sort of Bontempi organ by Dennis in prison. Sort of Ivor Cutler meets John Shuttleworth stuff. It wasn’t broadcast on the Word. I wonder whatever happened to it… maybe Charlie still has it?
I say it! Just delightful! Your authorship manner is charming and the way you handled the topic with grace is applaudable. I am intrigued, I make bold you are an expert on this subject. I am subscribing to your incoming updates from now on.
My father Graham Archibald Allen was Nilsens 14th victim (you can read about that on my site: http://memoiresofaheroinhead.blogspot.com) and yes Nilsen does have a musical bone in his body…in fact he has a deep knowledge of 70′s 80′s Rock and Pop. In the few letters we exchanged in the late 1990′s he ogten referred to songs or quoted lyrics. The most bizarre of which was the opening verse to The Pet Shop Boys ‘West End Girls’ which ends: “…In a restaurant, in a West End town, call the police there’s a madman around…”
Best Wishes & I love the site,
Shane.
Fantastic job, I’ve just discovered your postings today. I could comment on some others but I’ll restrict it to this one for now. I worked in Denmark St when the Giaconda was still Ledenois, hairdressers suppliers. I worked there during the day and was part of the house band at the Two Eyes in Old Compton St in the evenings. I recorded a whole album in about two hours at Regent Sound in 1961, we cut three acetates, one for the vocalist, one for me and one for Jimmy Page who was a fan of my playing at the time. Keep up the good work.
I agree with Albert, there. (saw you in Hyde Park with Heads, Hands and Feet Summer 71′..I must have been all of 18) Great stuff. I’m researching a bit about the street for my own memoir at the moment. I practically lived at 22 Denmark Street between Sept ’86 and April ’88. I was there with my own band Cleaners From Venus. I was also helping out Captain Sensible with his album. I slept under the mixing desk. He slept under the grand piano during those weeks when we were working around the clock. It was in a fine tradition. Oddly enough, in 1986, before Steve Hoyland the maintenance engineer converted the place from ( I think) an 8 track to a 24 track, the last person to do a session down there was Ian Stewart from the Stones. He died of a heart attack very shortly afterwards
The history of the street is even stranger. It was generally thought to be the place where the 1665 plague took grip. Also, go and look at one of Hogarth’s engravings. It’s one of a set of four called The Four Times of Day.
In the Noon engraving is pretty much a sketch of the immediate area. St Giles in the close background, and Hog Lane (later Charing Cross Road). I’ll let you know when I post all this stuff up on my site.
nice post brother…..
Elton John is a very good musician and has been my idol ever since.;”
Wow! A comment by the great Albert Lee – good on you Albert! I saw you playing with Clapton in Galway in 1979.
Hello! I’ve been reading your site for a long time now and finally got the bravery to go ahead and give you a shout out from Porter Texas! Just wanted to mention keep up the great job!