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Burning Up Times Issue 3 London Landmarks part one – NW to SE The studio The Stranglers lay down Rattus and Heroes is just one location Gary Kent sets out to track down for The Burning Up Times’ landmarks odyssey. En route, he ends up having a pint in the Nashville Rooms and another in the Coleherne – the gay pick-up joint name-checked in Hanging Around – and gets some unrequited male attention for his trouble! William Ellis School, Highgate Road, NW5 ‘Rather of use than fame’ is Hugh’s grammar school motto, until he typically rewords it; ‘rather u than me’. Nevertheless, 90% of pupils achieve university places in his fi nal term. Fellow alumni include Sex Pistols’ fi lm maker Julian Temple, Madness producer Clive Langer, Madness bass player Mark Bedford and Fairport Convention’s Richard Thompson who teaches Hugh bass in the combo they call Emil & The Detectives. Hugh’s 5th solo album, Beyond Elysian Fields, derives from the location of the US recording studio rather than Old Elysians, the collective noun for the school’s former pupils. 32
Burning Up Times Issue 3 Hampstead Heath, on the grass, NW3 A summer’s evening on Hampstead Heath – and no sign of George Michael. But wait! This is 1977 – and there’s the mock-up of Trotsky’s tomb with JJ atop in a pose for a Stranglers shoot. The solitary member image is rejected for the Heroes sleeve. Instead, the simple red carnation wreath design is chosen, which writer Jon Savage describes as ‘chintzy chocolate box’. The Red Cow incident is just around the corner, so to speak. Dingwalls, Middle Yard, Camden Lock, NW1 One-time Dingwalls timber yard on the Regents Canal, it’s here the infamous courtyard face-off between The Stranglers and The Clash/Pistols takes place. It’s perhaps, pivotal in ostracising the band from Punk’s young pups. Or was it all a publicity stunt? You decide. London Lady contains several lines of vitriol aimed at, it is thought, a music scribe of the day. Nevertheless, futile rebranding as Lock 17 in the 90s is confusing and short-lived, and fails to erase or match the venue’s R&B heyday of the 60s and 70s. Thankfully, this is now a cool music venue following a refurb. Roundhouse Theatre, Chalk Farm, NW1 This former choo-choo turnaround was once the avant-garde and existential performance hip place-to-be in the 60s and 70s. But on US Independence Day in 1976, The Stranglers perform, backed by the Ramones and Flaming Groovies. It’s a poor show, but promoter John Curd is unaware, and rebooks them to support Patti Smith. The crowd are hostile, until The Stranglers play that old favourite, Tits. In November ‘77 they do fi ve consecutive nights here, breaking the record set by The Who and the Rolling Stones. By the 80s, it becomes Gilbey’s store for their mother’s ruin until it gets left for – err, ruin. 2007 saw The Stranglers return triumphant to a refurbed Roundhouse to celebrate their old record-breaker with a Heroes set list from three decades before. Just weeks before, I’m outside quietly snapping Chalk Farm’s iconic arena when a clued-up mystery passer-by says: “November the fourth.” Odd. The locale is referenced in Down In The Sewer: ‘I should have stayed home on the Farm…’– Incidentally, the same line in Elton’s Goodbye Yellow Brick Road. 33
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