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Mick Jagger and Charlie Watts played there together as innocent
bluesmen before roaring back with the Rolling Stones. Jimmy Page, later of Led Zeppelin, mesmerised his audience as an unknown guitar prodigy.
On The Who’s debut, Keith Moon stood on his dnims swinging at them with an axe while Pete Townshend thrashed his guitar into the speakers.
Bob Geldof collapsed from the stifling heat and The Sex Pistols were barred after destroying another band’s equipment. The Marquee Club
in London’s Soho may have been a scruffy, uncomfortable space with a sticky floor, but no one can deny it was the most famous and influentialrock venue Britain has ever seen.
Musicians didn’t just play there, they went as regular punters.
Clapton went to watch how Mick Jagger picked up the girls. Marianne Faithfull complained that men appeared too intimidated to approach her, but schoolboy
Phil Collins was too busy putting out the chairs for that kind of thing. On the day Jimi Hendrix performed, Collins had to get home to Hounslow and missed
him.
For more than three decades, the Marquee dominated the music scene and became the ultimate platform for even the most established acts. When it
closed its doors in 1996, a victim of the new vogue for dance acts, it was mourned by the pop world — but now it is back, brought to life again by one
of its original champions, Dave Stewart from the Eurythmics. This week it will reopen in lslington, north London. aiming to recapture a spirit which once
saw it packed with world-famous musicians both on stage and in the crowd. If its to be anything like the original, it has a lot to live up to.
More than 40 years ago, jazz band leader Chris Barber and his business partner Harold Pendleton founded the original Marquee in a basement in Oxford Street to
showcase jazz. He hired two musicians to play a rhythm and blues set in the middle
of his show, and one of the musicians, guitarist Alexis Korner, brought in a drummer
he knew named Charlie Watts. One evening Charlie’s mate Mick Jagger was invited
on stage to sing. Soon a fledgling band was performing at the Marquee, billed simply
as the Rollin’ Stones.
But it wasn’t until 1964, six years after its launch, that the Marquee found its real
home. Given notice to leave the Oxford Street premises, Pendleton found a disused
Burberry warehouse in nearby Wardour Street. It was an odd shape, with a long corridor leading to an oblong room, but it would do. He brought along the striped
awning that covered the stage in Oxford Street and gave the club its name, and within a week of closing, the old club was in business again.
New faces were emerging: Rod Stewart playing with Long John Baldry, Manfred Mann,
The Yardbirds, Cream and Joe Cocker — followed, over the years, by a host of other
struggling up-and-coming acts including Pink Floyd, The Moody Blues, David Bowie,
Yes, Genesis, Elton John, Queen, The Police and The Pretenders.
The Marquee was a mythical place for a lad like Dave Stewart, brought up in far-off
Sunderland. He was a I 6-year-old guitar fanatic when he made his way to London in 1968 and, in 1973, Stewart finally performed at the Marquee with his band,
Longdancer. ‘I was like a sponge, absorbing and taking in all these amazing performances.
It was almost like going to school,’ he says of his many nights at the club. Brian May
of Queen was inspired by Jeff Beck, and hung around for advice from his hem, guitarist
Rory Gallagher. And, as David Bowie noted, ‘It was the place where you met other
musicians. It was tremendously important. It was really a heartbeat in terms ofwhat was happening.’ Bowie went there to see Syd Barrett of Pink Floyd, his mate
Marc Bolan — and the glamorous girls it attracted, many of whom were Scandinavian
tourists.
Marianne Faithfull recalls. ‘It was a fun place to go late at night, you’d see all your
friends. I could go and there would be Paul (McCartney), and their would be Jimi Hendrix. I would go with Mick (Jagger) and it would be fun.’ In 1973, David Bowie
resurrected his Ziggy Stardust character for a film shot at the Marquee and invited
Faithfull on stage to perform the Sonny and Cher hit I Got You Babe. She was dressed
in a nuns habit which only covered her front — she was totally naked at the back.
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| Different generations. Guns N Roses,
left, and The Who |
Another person who liked to perform naked was Twink, the drummer with a band
called The Pink Fairies. Dave Stewart got talking to him after one gig. ‘The next day,
Twink came round to my bedsit and brought this stuff he said me and my two friends
should try. it was elephant tranquilliser. We blacked out for about half an hour. l woke
with my face still on the mirror. Then Twink said George Harrison was having a big
concert in his back garden and Eric Clapton was going to play.’ It turned out to be a
Hare Krishna temple with no stars present, but Twink entered into the spirit and drummed
naked on stage. ‘I stood amongst the Hare Krishnas staring at the stage in disbelief.
This all happened within 24 hours — it was a classic Marquee experience,’ says Stewart.
One of the oddest gigs Stewart witnessed at the Marquee was The Crazy World Of Arthur Brown. ‘At this particular gig he’d cut his hair really short and shaved his face
on one side of his head. On the other side he had a fill beard and moustache and really
long hair, and spent the whole performance turning one way and then the other so he
looked like two people. It was great fun back then because people used to have ideas
and do them. They hardly had any money for props, but they would just make them in
a garage. It was really mad, like a home-made Spinal Tap.’
Dave Stewart was still a Marquee regular when the punk scene started in 1976,
and he appeared there again In 1978 with his then girlfriend Annie Lennox in The Tourists.
‘From 1968 to 1980 I went there all the time. When you turned the corner on Wardour Street you knew by the people hanging around outside what scene was
happening at the time. You realised, “Oh its all glam now.’ Then you saw it had gone
all punk. I loved all that. The gigs at the Marquee were a barometer of what was
happening that year.’
The Wardour Street Marquee closed down in 1988 — it is now the site of Sir Terence Conran’s Mezzo restaurant. The name was
bought by Rod Stewart’s former manager Billy Gaff, who moved it round the corner to Chafing Cross Road,
but with the demise of the live music scene, the Marquee finally closed.
Now Stewart is reopening it in partnership with restaurateur Mark Fuller, and a
swankier Marquee will rise again with all the state-of-the-art facilities so notably lacking
in the old club, where the dressing room was the size, and some say state, of a toilet
cubicle. He believes the relaxed way in which artists cross-pollinated at the Marquee
was a crucial factor in the development of British rock music as a world force, and hopes
the flew Marquee will generate a much-needed renaissance in British rock.
‘When you go to places like the Marquee, which are much closer and rawer, it’s really
inspiring because you think you could possibly have a go at it. These days, when the
gig is finished, they want you out. But you need places where audiences and musicians can congregate.
Stewart is not short of mates to rope in to make the Marquee historic again.
He’s been talking to Mick Jagger, Bono and Liam Gallagher, all of whom have expressed interest in
the club, and he’s hoping that as well as hanging around in the audience, they might
even put on the odd secret gig. ‘When I was with Longdancer my manager phoned me
and told me to go down to the Speakeasy club with my band. He said Neil Young wanted to
borrow my amps and PA. He’d just played a big gig and wanted to play down there. It
was full of musicians, people getting up and playing. It was an amazing experience and just
the sort of thing I’d like to happen at the new Marquee.’
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