This is just a scrapbook of entries from other pages just brought together plus a few other bits
When I got to London in 63 I’d started to move away from electric stuff. I was flitting back and forth to Tyneside and the folk clubs there: the Beacon in Shields – later at the Marsden Inn , the Bridge in Newcastle , the Turf in Felling, Roys in Hebburn, the Viking / Ben Lomond in Jarrow, Sunderland, and of course the Birtley club. The Beacon in Shields was where I first sang . And Imperial College had a folk club so I continued there.
Then I started doing the rounds of the London clubs , even in due course the Singers Club (to the distaste of the chap who ran it – who he ?) and many others (where the reception was better) like the Troubadour and the Fox (subsequently the Kings Head) at Islington (my biggest influence) . I was frequenting the Hammersmith club, the Peelers in Bishopsgate, the Catford club, the Holy Ground in Bayswater, the Greyhound in Fulham Palace Road, the Scots Hoose at Cambridge Circus, the Fighting Cocks in Kingston – there were umpteen clubs every night of the week all over London then.
I had started to run folk clubs in London under the name the Collier’s Rant (first night guests were Bob Davenport and the Rakes – of course) and we ran at the Lord Nelson in King’s Road Chelsea , then at the Roebuck in Tottenham Court Road.
When we moved house a few years ago I found an old box of clips and ads from the Melody Maker from 68/69. Here’s a few of them.
The Fox in Islington with the wonderful Fred McKay. John Connolly from The Peelers asked me to book his cousin Billy since he and Tam Harvey were coming to London
And now some from Stagfolk in 70 and 71
