Denmark Street, London’s Street Of Sounds by Peter Watts

Denmark Street, London’s Street Of Sounds by Peter Watts

Out Now 

Paradise Road Publishers: UK

Buy Here

Forget the Rock’n’Roll tour for music tourists that begins at No. 9 under the Blue Plaque with its own QR code, where the infamous cafe La Gioconda once stood (and which gets a whole chapter here). The plaque boasts: This street was Tin Pan Alley 1911-1992, Home of the British Publishers and Songwriters and their meeting place The Giaconda.

Well-known and respected music journalist Peter Watts gives us the real lowdown on Denmark Street, London’s Street Of Sound, with photos by Rob Telford.  

“Nobody called it Tin Pan Alley at the time to my knowledge. They simply called it the Street, as if it was the only street in the world.” (Jean Hendy-Harris who worked at publishers Francis, Day & Hunter, the first on Denmark Street.) 

“You won’t find a Blue Plaque at No. 6, “ says Watts, but here is where graphic artists Thorgersen and Aubrey ‘Po’ Powell cover designers of the second Pink Floyd album, A Saucer Of Secrets (and later Dark Side Of The Moon) set up base as Hipgnosis; where Hank Marvin was the first to piss in the sink because the communal toilet on the stairs was so disgusting; where Sex Pistols Steve Jones and Glen Matlock moved into the workshop behind it for the price of £5 a week, and where the Pistols rehearsed for six months. Did you even know they rehearsed? I’d give my teeth (too late) to have seen the boys stride passed Storm and ‘Po’ wearing a T-shirt that said: I Hate Pink Floyd.  

Generally, book reviewers can be forgiven for not hanging onto every word, in every chapter, producing a deduced and informed written comprehension with a shiny apple and a sense of self-worth. And yet in the case of Denmark Street, London’s Street Of Sound here’s my apple, buffed on my bobble-free jumper. 

For readers invested in the music industry, as fans, students, employers or head honcho types Denmark Street is a chronicle of the shifting roles and practices within the industry and its different sectors, and how they interact and impact one another, never mind a record of the Street itself. The only thing that remained consistent was the rats, the grime, and the criminality which comes into its own in the final chapters, with a fatal fire and when gangster Ronnie Knight, husband of actress Barbara Windsor, takes over the Tin Pan Alley Club; an analogy for the industry itself. Watts is careful not to make judgments but reports, spinning imagery and anecdotes to soften the reality. 

Every chapter charts a chronological record of the names of faces and places via the numbers on the street. “There are 21 properties on Denmark Street, numbered 1 to 11 and 17 to 28. Nos. 13 to 16 were probably demolished when Crown Street was redeveloped as the much wider Charring Cross Road in 1887.” 

Watts captures the beautiful contradictions and irony of the music business within each chapter.  First, we hear of the publishers of sheet music at No. 7 Box and Cox, an eccentric pair and a force, back when Denmark Street was full of the sound of “hammered pianos and sung melodies and choruses”. Back then songwriters “wrote on the fly, rushing to Denmark Street to sell them to pay for the next round of drinks.” 

“What do you think Mr Cox?” 

“I don’t know Mr Box?” 

Later, Watts reveals a rambling transcript from Rolling Stones manager Andre Loog Oldham, on this publication’s front cover, saying of his song Boomerang Rock, which he was punting on the street in those early years: 

“I got it into a lowly or past it company called Box and Cox. They also rejected it.” 

That early band photo of the Rolling Stones in Denmark Street “A study of long-haired loucheness and surly attitude” was outside Box & Cox. 

Where once the publishers befriended theatre (musical hall) owners and investors and popular performers to sell their sheet music in the absence of gramophones or radios, now bands recorded in Denmark Street playing the demos live that evening in the burgeoning Soho bohemia of drinking bars and coffee houses. Next came the instrument shops, The Musical Exchange, opened by former employers of Selmar, in Charring Cross Road, who were the first UK agents for the Hofner bass, (Paul McCartney) and Fender guitars and amps and Gibson guitars and likely where Jim Hendrix could be heard from the street (at the second Selmar between Denmark Street and Denmark Place). Musical Exchange was a first stop for Jeff Beck, Jimmy Page and Pete Townsend. They found room for a former Vox technician Gary Hurst who produced the fuzzbox, named the tone bender. Later the shop was renamed Marcari’s Musical Exchange (until 2020).

Recognisable names for current musicians will be the popular Top Gear and Andy’s Music Workshop. 

“Andy’s was like an Aladdins cave because we had so much great secondhand stuff, all over the walls, upstairs and downstairs.” (Employee Dave Wilkonson). 

There are so many stories and endless name-dropping here –  referred to by Watts as Andy’s Alumni.  Even the employees became famous. And myths are broken. Bob Dylan didn’t visit the Street until the 1980s yet the documentary by DA Pennebaker films Dylan “Roaming Tin Pan Alley pushing against doors and pressing a nose against windows looking for a route to fame and fortune.”

“But the shop isn’t even in London. The shop is called Jeavons and was on Pudding Chare in Newcastle,” explains Watts. 

Black Sabbath never played here (probably in a basement in Archer Street according to this reviewer’s subject knowledge – don’t ask). 

Yes, David Bowie lived in an old ambulance in the Street when called Davie Jones, but Watts digs deeper for your pleasure: did you know that Mark Feld (Marc Bolan) and Davy Jones were instructed to paint their mutual manager’s office? They both hung around the street basing themselves at La Gioconada, smiling and mysterious at all times, ready for an opportunity. Davy Jones, aka Bowie, was even interviewed by the BBC on the scene at that time. 

Later came the music venues, 12-Bar Club, once a blacksmith forge, the Tin Pan Alley Club, and the unmarked A & R Club the place of dangerous liaisons between the Big Boys of gangster London (only Primary Scream have been brave enough to hang out there). 

The knowing that will come from the reading, each phase delightful and detailed, will enable those dormant soothsayer skills that will support negotiating the future of this creative sector in which we all huddle under one umbrella (publishing, recording, live).  

Only recently music business news has reported on a new active role of publishers since lockdown, but this is the origins of music publishing (you had to find someone to perform it to sell the sheet music).  Indeed it’s the root of the Melody Maker, a trade journal launched by Lawrence Wright, primarily to sell his songs which he wrote under two pseudonyms, in the basement of No. 19 Denmark Street and which evolved as a reputable jazz newspaper. Its classified section survived all its incarnations. NME, (New Musical Express) launched by visionary Maurice Kinn, moved into the Street 20 years later, recognising that the money would soon come from record sales rather than sheet music. He ushered in (originally as a novelty) the concept of the Charts (be it from the results of a meer 20 shops), poaching willing writers off the Melody Maker to build a different kind of publication that was more tabloid and focused on the new audience, teenagers. 

Unknown names like Dick James, a publisher, are embedded in the shift in the role of the publisher Watts reminds us. Described as the man “who put his wig on for singing, and took his wig off for plugging”. James protected the copyright of The Beatles compositions to prevent anyone and everyone from reproducing their popular hits, an accepted common practice at the time. (1961) 

KPM at No. 21 may not have been as trendy as Regent Sounds at No. 4 with its “stains on stains” and egg boxes on the walls” or Southern Studios at No. 27, but it can easily be compared to modern databases and music-making programs such as Ableton because they “cut, edited or produced music from their large library archives… sounds, jingles, and theme tunes produced by its in-house library writers.”  

Peter Watt’s archive quotes from the broadsheets show that coping with change has long been a bugbear of those in charge, that is, those making all the money:

“You are in music publishing all your life and yet you have to grin and bear it when some kid of 19 talks to you as if he’s the boss of ICI and you’re applying for a job. You can’t tell him that he knows nothing because he might be a star tomorrow and help to sell your music.” (anonymous quote, The Guardian).

They echo the words of Ray Davies in Kinks song Denmark Street. 

You go to a publisher and you play him your song/He says I hate your music and your hair is too long/But I’ll sign you up because I hate to be wrong

Watts gives credit to his resources. To name a few: Clinton Heydon, It’s One For The Money, Mark Lewisohn, Beatles biographer, Elton John’s autobiography Me, and Simon Napier-Bell’s considerable collection of music books about the industry, as well as Steve Jones’ autobiography, Lonely Boy: Tales From A Sex Pistol, and the film by Danny Boyle for his 2022 TV miniseries Pistol. 

The final chapter, titled The Outernet cuts like a scalpel in its introduction –  “The wrecking ball … takes a swing at Denmark Street” – and includes a long quote by Pete Townshend who asks for Camden Council to make it a Heritage Zone.

If you don’t know all about it already Watts has the facts: 24,300 square feet of floor-to-ceiling high-resolution LED screens, “there’s a link to Denmark Street which was once the ground floor of No. 21 … Restaurants can be visited, pop-up shops, clubs and venues hired.” There’s even a rock’n’roll hotel. 

I recently went to a gig in one of its smallest underground venues and the short walk from Tottenham Court Tube Exit 4 with its constant demand on all five senses made me nauseous. After that, it was necessary to ruin everyone’s evening by pining for the 12-Bar Club where I saw 90s stars perform semi-acoustic sets, which were recounted during the singing of someone I won’t be seeing again. But then, I’ve never wanted to go to Las Vegas. 

Words by Ngaire Ruth. You can follow her on Instagram. Check out her personal website. Find a sample extract of her book as a work in progress: Taking Control: Manifesto of a Girl Journalist in the 90s on Substack