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The ‘wild’ venue that forged Bowie and the Stones – and locked Lemmy inside

Bill Wyman, Ronnie Wood, Mick Jagger and Charlie Watts outside the Marquee Club in 1977 - Paul Popper/Popperfoto/Getty
Bill Wyman, Ronnie Wood, Mick Jagger and Charlie Watts outside the Marquee Club in 1977 - Paul Popper/Popperfoto/Getty

Halfway down Wardour Street is a blue plaque dedicated to Keith Moon, the wild-eyed drummer for The Who. It marks the former site of the Marquee, a ground-floor club that for three decades was the sweaty centre of live music in London – where The Who, Jimi Hendrix, David Bowie, Sex Pistols and countless more played legendary shows.

The club, which opened in 1958 and closed (on that site) in 1987, was founded by Barbara and the late Harold Pendleton. Barbara worked for years in offices above the venue before heading downstairs at showtime to witness magic and mayhem. “There wasn’t anybody who didn’t know the Marquee,” she tells me. “You didn’t have to be into music. What’s not to like? You’re listening to great music, boys are picking up girls and vice versa, everybody’s having a drink and a good time.”

The full story is told in an authoritative new book, Marquee: The Story of the World’s Greatest Venue by Robert Sellers and Nick Pendleton (son of Harold and Barbara). It describes early shows by the Rolling Stones; heaving crowds packed with rock stars worshipping at the altar of Hendrix; acid-fried hippies mesmerised by Pink Floyd’s hallucinatory soundscapes. David Bowie performed here as a nobody and came back as a star, while queues stretched to Oxford Street to watch AC/DC’s strutting teenage guitarist dressed like a schoolboy.

Add to that list thousands more – Led Zeppelin, Elton John, Genesis, Guns N’ Roses, Fleetwood Mac, The Jam, The Cure, Black Sabbath and The Police. The Marquee is surely the only venue in the world that has hosted jazz trumpeter Humphrey Lyttelton, heavy-metal legends Metallica and artists Gilbert & George (albeit, unfortunately, not on the same bill).

Barbara Pendleton still recalls Lyttelton with affection, unsurprisingly as she and her husband came to the business through jazz. In 1958, they took over a failing jazz night in the basement of the Academy Cinema on Oxford Street. The venue was named the Marquee, and had a distinctive red-and-white awning designed by surrealist photographer Angus McBean. They turned it around by holding trad and modern jazz night, plus the occasional bit of RnB with a young Deptford band called The Rollin’ Stones. But eventually, the Marquee had to move, and while walking through Soho with his estate agent, Harold chanced upon a building vacated by Burberry.

Jimi Hendrix performing at the Marquee Club in 1967 - Bob Baker/Redferns
Jimi Hendrix performing at the Marquee Club in 1967 - Bob Baker/Redferns

“One of the reasons the Marquee worked was that it had the perfect location, right in the middle of Soho,” says Sellers. “And the Pendletons were open to giving people a break. A lot of bands played their first gigs there. They were open seven days, so there was always space to fill. That’s how The Who got their Tuesday night residency in 1964. It was a dead night – but after The Who it became the night to play.”

Barbara Pendleton remembers The Who as “very exciting and very noisy”, and she struck up an unlikely friendship with Keith Moon. “I got on with Keith. Most drummers are easy to get along with. I think they take all their aggression out on the drums.” Another favourite was Eric Burdon and The Animals, and then there was young Davy Jones, later Bowie. “Nice chap,” Pendleton recalls. “We got on very well. He was very attractive, very pleasant and intelligent.”

Bowie played the Marquee regularly in the 1960s, and signed to the Pendletons’ booking agency, Marquee Agents, one of several parallel companies run from Wardour Street. There was artist management, promotion and a ground-breaking outdoor festival in Richmond that morphed into the Reading Festival. The Marquee even had a recording studio that produced a string of hits, from The Moody Blues’s Go Now! in 1965 to Dead or Alive’s You Spin Me Round three decades later, launching the career of 1980s hitmakers Stock, Aitken and Waterman.

But the gigs were the thing. You could see double bills such as Queen supporting Sparks, or Joy Division followed by The Cure. When Barbara Pendleton saw Hendrix in January 1967, there were so many people in the club she almost fainted. “We were chucking them out the back so we could let more in the front,” she says.

Harold and Barbara Pendleton in the Marquee Club in 1983 - United News/Popperfoto via Getty
Harold and Barbara Pendleton in the Marquee Club in 1983 - United News/Popperfoto via Getty

Unlike most clubs the Marquee was eclectic, never attached to a single band or genre, a welcoming home from jazz through RnB, psychedelia, prog, heavy rock, new wave, goth, metal, indie and even punk (which Pendleton says she detested). The Sex Pistols won their first review at the Marquee, and the Soho location meant that on most nights the crowd contained a smattering of publishers, managers, journalists and musicians. Sellers describes the time Motörhead bassist Lemmy, a Marquee regular, was accidentally locked in overnight. “U2 were playing the following day and when the roadies opened up, Lemmy crawled out and helped them set up,” he says. It seems indicative of the Marquee spirit.

Part of its success was down to the Pendletons themselves (as much as Barbara protests). “There were a lot of shysters in the music business, but you always got paid at the Marquee, and punters always got counted, so they didn’t pretend there were 50 through the door when bands could see 200 in the audience,” Sellers says. “When you played the Marquee, you knew you were working with decent people.”

That’s why so many stars held such affection for the Marquee. Bowie, Led Zeppelin and The Who returned for one-off shows long after they had outgrown the room. Even the Stones returned in 1971, despite Keith Richards having once taken a swing at Harold with his guitar at the Marquee – something Barbara maintains was accidental. There were secret shows by Tom Petty, The Police and Genesis, while Guns N’ Roses and REM were just two of the US bands that launched their UK careers at the Marquee. Even towards the end, people wanted to play there. Wham! filmed a video at the Marquee in 1985 purely because, they told Barbara, it would be their one chance to play the famous club.

AC/DC backstage after a performance at the Marquee Club in 1976 - Michael Putland/Getty
AC/DC backstage after a performance at the Marquee Club in 1976 - Michael Putland/Getty

The party ended in 1987 when the building was condemned and demolished. A new Marquee ran on Charing Cross Road until 1995, but further attempts at reviving the venue ended in failure. The licence is currently owned by Nathan Lowry, who is planning a Marquee documentary and hasn’t given up on his dream of bringing the Marquee back to Soho.

“The economics of having a basement with a £6-10 entry fee is very difficult,” he tells me. “We are waiting for one of the big landlords to put something back for the culture and heritage of Soho. If I had the right partner and the right venue, I’d love to do it again.”

Until then, all that remains are the memories, Keith Moon’s blue plaque and the new book. While Barbara Pendleton is phlegmatic about the apartments that replaced her office on Wardour Street – “I’d love to have lived there in the middle of Soho” – others are less forgiving.

“When Adam Ant was asked to name his least favourite building in London, he said it was the one that replaced the Marquee,” says Sellers. “It was a benchmark. If you got to play the Marquee, you knew you were on your way.”


Marquee: The Story of the World’s Greatest Music Venue by Robert Sellers and Nick Pendleton is published on December 6 by Paradise Road at £22