Tuneful Walking: How Soho Made the Modern Cultural World

It’s not every day you’re on a walk with the Londonist, waiting for them to heckle the tour guide over some historical inaccuracy. They didn’t…. Though billed as a musical tour, this was really about how Soho made culture — music, culture and all. It was a tough gig, ‘cos the Gentle Author also had a city tour on the same day. How to choose?!

As Pulp once said, she came from Hampshire with a thirst for knowledge, to see where Pulp studied art at the Central St Martin’s College {of Art and Design} and also that infamous girl from Greece and Common People…and I did. But I also got to start at Soho Square where you can see both Kirsty McColl’s memorial bench..(never knew it was there) and the office building where Sir Paul McCartney’s many gold discs will dazzle your eyes on a sunny day. As well as lots and lots of glorious architecture.

Thankfully, the rain mostly held off as we buzzed around, in and out of Soho. I was thrilled to see Denmark Street ‘the Tin Pan Alley of its day’ where musicians, record companies, songwriters and copyrighters came together in serendipity. I adored seeing the Rough Trade logo from a distance and a shop full of guitars.

Other highlights were the street where Quo Vardis is, which meant that Karl Marx (who used to live above the restaurant back in the day) missed out on Italian food offered in French menus. Pity him! Then there was the Wedgewood show room (originator of the BOGOF bargain buy), further down was the location where Wham met (!) now a pub bedecked with flags. Also the strangely named and grand looking Royalty House…which was a former theatre. This explains why it’s front doors cry to be thrown open dramatically. Dickens and his friends acted here! We also saw in passing the black doors of a former Goth club where Nick Cave played, the site of the former Comedy Club which launched Ben Elton and all, and a building where Amy Winehouse used to gig. Equally thrilling was considering Ignatius Sancho’s musicality and compositions, and how many fashionable feet, probably including his, had capered through Soho Square, formal palatial pad of Charles II and Henry VIII’s bucolic hunting ground.

Now a fish and chip shop/restaurant, we imagined the Beatles screeching up to collect their German interpreter from their local coffee bar and beetling off to Berlin for fame. The tour also ended with the Beatles as we ‘recreated’ their last roof top gig (albeit on the top of a prestigious looking 18th century house). They owned this house and it doubled up as an office for them, even after they separated.

And it wasn’t just the music, but the cinema. Topped by the home of the original Roundhouse and blues venue, we could consider the mini-Hollywood that the street was, alongside the pub where a Rolling Stone set off fireworks ‘inside’ and got barred. Not the fireworks they were expecting!

Blink and you’ll miss John Snow’s pump, probably the one he removed the handle from to prove that polluted water was spreading Cholera, as well as the room where the NHS was birthed. I cannot get over the tiny booth now selling mind boggling ice cream flavours a la Anya Hindmarch — McDonald’s fries gelato anyone? For this same booth was once the location of a basement coffee shop where 50 students squashed with coffee and a juke box. Cardboard boxes mark the length of the miniscule former basement coffee bar. The only dance they could do was… the hand jive! Less jiving and more stumbling, was the sad loss of Under Milk Wood by Dylan Thomas — he blundered and left the manuscript under a bar stool. Thankfully the proprietors tidied it up and kept it safely behind the bar, ready for him to collect.

And there was the tough London life of Jimmy Somerville, who I learnt doesn’t speak like he sings. He was buoyed up by the support and community of a local pub, where there were free lockers and help. Contrastingly was the now very concretey former home of William Blake, who we reflected, could be the creator of an alternative national anthem ‘Jerusalem’. Standing by a wonderful 3D mural on the cusp of Carnaby Street, we thought about black owned businesses fighting the law, and the rise of Ska, 2-tone, Lovers Rock and reggae. Almost replicating again, we got to view the blue zig zags on the wall where Bowie posed for an album cover, shivering in the rain, whilst his Spiders from Mars mutinously looked on, warm and dry from an office above.

It was all such stuff as dreams are made of. Fittingly, as a group, we shared some dream gigs, including the one about hearing the Stone Roses perform ‘Fool’s Gold’ for the first time. Or learning Mandarin by listening to older style songs, whilst enjoying bursts of Cantonese pop music. Or spilling a drink on Phil Collin’s shoes….And pondered the dreams of the bored and boring static Windmill girls, which were probably thicker coats to have to hand when they covered up for a quick outside smoke opposite the local primary school. Or the charitable dreams of the private but beneficent company with a secure charitable funds collecting tube fitted behind a slot above iron railings, which slid the cash straight down into the basement coffers of the building or the hopeful dreams of those accessing the first affordable hospitals for the economically disadvantaged, such as the 1842 Women’s Hospital.

“ If we shadows have offended,
Think but this, and all is mended —
That you have but slumbered here
While these visions did appear.
And this weak and idle theme,
No more yielding but a dream,
Gentles, do not reprehend.
If you pardon, we will mend.
And, as I am an honest Puck,
If we have unearnèd luck
Now to ’scape the serpent’s tongue,
We will make amends ere long.
Else the Puck a liar call.
So good night unto you all.
Give me your hands if we be friends,
And Robin shall restore amends.”

For my biggest take away was that creativity needs proximity — it doesn’t need to be the same kind of creatives together, just being near to each other. Such as the development of ‘Yiddisher Jazz’ or the musicians who’d cover for each other — leading to emergency Hammond Organ lessons for a pianist! (Nor did we mention Ronnie Scott’s once (which was positively shocking!)

Mike Press’s and Jackie Hopfinger’s tour was a bit like this — Exploring Soho’s musical history. A project by Jackie Hopfinger and Mike… | by Mike Press | Walk on the Wild Side | Medium

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