A Selfish Music Nerds Tour of London
Photos of buildings and tourists in the street by Josh Sabini
You are probably wondering why the title of this article is ‘A Selfish Music Nerds Tour of London’.
The reason is because it only feels right. These are the places I want to see, most of which aren’t really destinations of much significance, which is quite funny for an article getting published for other people to read, right? Yes. So, if at this point you are asking yourself why you should listen to me or join along for the journey, I don’t have an answer. I am not qualified by any means. I’m a freelance journalist who loves music and was on holiday in my favourite city, getting to visit these special pieces of musical history that made me feel like I was on a religious pilgrimage.
Heddon Street - The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars
This was the first place I went to and is probably the most legitimate tourist attraction on the list. This is the location where the photo was taken for the album cover of David Bowie’s 1972, The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and The Spiders from Mars. I stood there in awe with an enormous grin on my face listening to the album in full, taking photos and marvelling at the fact that this is where he stood. I listened to that album every single day for three months on my way to school in my final year. It was like my religious ritual to put it on every morning as soon as I got on the train to be late for school.
Walking around Heddon Street there are a bunch of Bowie references, there is a plaque that sits where the K. West sign sat in the cover photo commemorating the location as the location of the cover. Around the corner, there is another lightning bolt mural, which has a red telephone box in front of it that is chained to the wall and covered in messages from Bowie fans who have visited. I have no idea why it is chained to the wall though; I couldn’t imagine someone being able to steal the whole box.
There are two Bowie-themed establishments on the street – Ziggy Green, a Mexican restaurant and The Starman, a pub. There is also Heddon Street Kitchen, a restaurant owned by Gordon Ramsay. I wonder what he thinks about being a resident on the street of the cover of the album Rolling Stone rated the fortieth best album of all time.
EMI Rooftop – Mazzy Star
Mazzy Star’s live performances are some of my favourite videos on the internet, my favourite video on YouTube is their 1994 performance at the Shoreline Amphitheatre. This performance is a close second. Acoustic renditions of ‘Halah’ and ‘Bells Ring’, just David Roback on the guitar and Hope Sandoval on vocals and with a harmonica for ‘Bells Ring’, on the rooftop of the EMI Records office, in 1994 broadcast on TV for the show The Beat. The pair squashed on a “stage” which looks like a green screen sheet on the floor that is held down by the semi-circle of plants that surround Hope and David. Probably the most embarrassing excuse for a rooftop venue I’ve ever seen.
Hope’s vocals are harrowing but hopeful, complimented by the way she stands there as if she’s avidly trying to hide. It feels as if it should be impossible for someone as shy as she is to have as strong of a grip on the audience.
This building is the EMI Records head office, the video was recorded on the EMI Records rooftop. But to be honest I’m not even 100% certain if that is the same rooftop. I just wanted a reason to write about Mazzy Star.
The Duke of Richmond
That pub on the corner, The Duke of Richmond, is the second pub that Kate Bush ever played a show at, not as impressive as the first pub she played a show at. I misread the article that spoke about her first gigs, what a great nerd I am. The pub where she played her first show, the Rose on Lee [later named The Dirty South], closed down a few years ago. So, yeah, this is where Kate Bush played her second-ever gig on May 2nd, 1977, with the band formed by her brother Paddy, the KT Bush Band.
Less than a year later, in May 1978, at nineteen years old, Kate Bush released The Kick Inside, my favourite album of all time.
The Roxy [Banned from the Roxy – Crass]
Right there, underneath that blue plaque on the wall, The Roxy, London’s first dedicated punk club. It’s basically the city's answer to New York’s CBGB. Considered to be only open in its full form for a hundred nights from December 14th, 1976, to April 23rd, 1977. The venue left a heavy impact on the punk scene. In those mere hundred nights, The Roxy hosted bands such as The Clash, X-Ray Spex, Buzzcocks, The Slits, Crass and Siouxsie and the Banshees pre-releasing their first album, The Scream. After a Siouxsie and the Banshees and Violators gig on April 23rd, 1977 the club’s owners were ousted for not being able to pay the rent. The Roxy continued to be open until 1979 under new management, but many of the original clubgoers never went back.
Now where The Roxy was is a fucking Route One, the British equivalent of a Zumiez.
The legacy of the venue lives on in one of the most well-known songs by the incredible anarcho-punk band Crass, ‘Banned from the Roxy’. Steve Ignorant and the band wrote the song in response to being banned from the venue for being too drunk on stage.
Personally, I’m more of a fan of the Eve Libertine era of the band. The album she was the vocalist for the 1981 album, Penis Envy, is in my top five favourite albums of all time. Nothing else like that album really exists, its sound is so unique that not even the rest of the band's discography compares.
The album is bold, educated and politically motivated. Taking an anarcho-feminist stance, Eve Libertine’s lyrics discuss the state of society for women, with a focus on the oppression faced by women at the helm of the institutions of marriage and sexual repression. The album explored feminist issues in a way that hadn’t been seen in the genre at the time and really wasn’t seen again until a decade later during the Riot Grrrl era by bands like Bikini Kill and Heavens to Betsy.
I always loved that Eve Libertine just popped up for one album and then was never really featured again for the rest of Crass’ discography. You should probably listen to Penis Envy it is incredible.
Insanely random sidenote: EDM DJ Steve Aoki remixed the song in 2020. Even though it is strange, it is extremely cool because all proceeds from the remix went to Refuge, a U.K.-based organisation that aids women and children facing domestic violence.
Trafalgar Square - Another Sunny Day Album Cover
This is an actual tourist destination. For normal people, the destination is famous as Trafalgar Square and it’s on the monopoly board. But for me, a nerd, this is famous for being the location of the cover of the 1992 Another Sunny Day compilation record, London Weekend. Another Sunny Day was the indie-pop solo project by multi-instrumentalist Harvey Williams, who recorded around a half-dozen singles on the infamous record label Sarah Records. Sarah Records was the Bristol-based indie label that created a name for itself by releasing some of the best jangle-indie-pop records throughout the late 80s and early 90s. Bands such as Another Sunny Day, Heavenly, The Field Mice and The Orchids, were all on the label. NME rated Sarah Records as the second greatest indie label of all time, noting Another Sunny Day’s ‘I’m in Love with a Girl Who Doesn’t Know I Exist’ as one of the most notable releases from the label.
Fun fact: For the four brass lions on the sculpture, the sculptor, Edwin Landseer had asked for a lion that had died at the London Zoo to be brought to his studio for reference. He didn’t get his final sketches done before the corpse began to decompose, so he had to improvise on some parts. If you look closely at the statues, the paws resemble those of cats more than lions.
Mile End Station
This could quite possibly be the least legitimate sight on the tour. Mile End Underground Station. This is the station I got the tube from every day; I stayed in the area, but why is this a sight on my music tour? Well, it sits on Mile End Road, the road that Ian Dury croaks about in ‘Plaistow Patricia’ after he blasted out the infamous ‘assholes, bastards, fucking cunts and pricks’.
Mile End is also the name of the Pulp song that was on the soundtrack for the film Trainspotting. I feel like it wouldn’t have been a true tour of the English capital without a reference to the best British band of the 90s. The song tells the story of the band's lead singer Jarvis Cocker and bassist Steve Mackey’s unfortunate living arrangements at a squat in Mile End for nine months in 1989. Jarvis was quoted in the 1996 book Pulp: The Illustrated Biography, saying he was convinced a murder had been carried out in that apartment before they moved in.
BBC Radio 1 - John Peel’s Recording Studio
Pretty much everyone mentioned on this list walked through those doors to record three to five songs for a Peel Session with John Peel. Pulp performed four sessions and hold the prize for the biggest gap between sessions. They played their first session on the 18th of November 1981 after Jarvis Cocker handed John Peel a tape at the John Peel roadshow in Sheffield that year. Their second was before the release of His N Hers on the 5th of March 1993.
Kate Bush was one of the people who didn’t record a Peel Session. I found on a Kate Bush subreddit a thread titled, ‘What do y'all think of John Peel?’, where the poster poses the question due to a comment where John Peel said, ‘I just can’t take her seriously’ and chaos ensued from the avid Kate Bush fans. Anyway, I don’t have the context for the quote.
It isn’t just bands from this list, but almost every single band and musician between 1967 and 2004 recorded a session, everyone from P.P. Arnold to Tallulah Gosh. Many of the recordings of the songs happen to be arguably some of the best-recorded versions. If you search YouTube for your favourite band that existed during that period followed by ‘Peel Sessions’, you’ll be more than likely to find that band has performed on his show.
I rode a bike there in the pissing rain on one of my last mornings in the city and stood out the front listening to New Order’s 1981 version of Dreams Never End, the band recorded in the studio. My favourite song of all time. The song I want to be played at my funeral.
Here is a list of some of my favourites:
Siouxsie and the Banshees – November 29, 1977
The Cure – May 9, 1979 (Features rare diss track)
New Order – January 26, 1981 (The best version of Dreams Never End)
Tallulah Gosh – December 29, 1987
My Bloody Valentine – September 25, 1988
Curve – March 10, 1991
Heavenly – March 17, 1991
Pulp – March 5, 1993
Bratmobile – July 25, 1993
Stereolab – February 15, 1996
There’s way more but this list would end up being incredibly long.
Abbey Road
I ended up here. It’s great for people-watching. You should go there, be a tourist.