Regent Sounds Studio, Denmark Street

September 5, 2024September 9, 2024Leave a comment

Another in the series of London drawings to hang on the wall. This is Regent Sounds Studios on Denmark Street, off Charing Cross Road. I’ve already posted about the state of Denmark Street in a recent post. So I won’t here again. I have drawn this before, a couple of years ago it was, in a panorama that included Wunjo next door. This was the actual place the Rolling Stones recorded their first album in 1964. This is what I love about London, you can just drop things like that. They recorded more music there, and so did many other famous acts. I like the guitars they have in stock, I never bought one from there though. If I had a big house, and a lot more money, I am sure I would be picking up guitars all over the place. My Instagram algorithm certainly things I should be, every other post is advertising this Fender Acoustasonic, that Danelectro 12-string, this Luna classical, that Meteora bass. They really want me to have loads of guitars. I probably need to get better at playing them, but I am ok, I like playing what I play. I can’t sing for Jaffa Cakes, but I don’t care, I grew up in a family where having a singalong in the back yard is totally normal. When we were back in London we took my Mum on one of them double-decker bus Afternoon Tea tours, it was nice, a lot of fun. They mostly played Abba while driving us around, but I had the idea (which I didn’t start doing by the way) that there should be a Cockney Singalong bus tour of London. That would be brilliant. Go round London for an hour or so, cup of tea and a few slices of cake, and everyone sings the old Cockney songs, “Let’s all go down the Straaaand, ‘ave a banana”. Interspersed with a bit of ‘istory of course, black cabbie knowledge really. I know a lot of people who drive the black cabs and they know a lot of the history. Seriously though it would be a good laugh and very popular. I don’t live there no more though, so someone else can have the idea. Even rig up a little piano, an ol’ Joanna. I’d have to play my guitar though, or my ukulele, I never learnt tinkling the ivories beyond what I taught myself on my keyboard as a teenager. Anyway. I wanted to draw this as another slice of London that meant something to me, and in fact I’ve put this one up for sale in the Pence Gallery’s Art Auction which will held be later this month if you are interested in bidding. Visit the Pence Gallery website for more information.

still alive on denmark street

July 20, 2024July 19, 2024Leave a comment

This is the acoustic guitar room upstairs at Hank’s on London’s famous Denmark Street. I love it in there, it feels like it hasn’t changed much since I would go in there as a teenager and early twenty-something in the 90s. The walls are covered with Denmark Street flavoured pages from old music mags, mostly Beatles ones, but the sheer number of guitars is incredible. Some of them aren’t that expensive, some of them cost a surprising amount of money for ones that are just displayed for anyone to pick up and strum on that old chair. I always watch my step. I was here with my son, who at 16 loves playing the guitar, and a guitar shop where he can just sit and quietly try things out is a little refuge in the busy city, and often a door into a new world of ideas. We weren’t in there too long, but I thought I may as well get my sketchbook out and start drawing anyway, so I drew the outlines of this scene until it was time to go (I drew all the smaller details while on the plane to France the next day, and coloured it in when I got home again). I would love to spend ages in there drawing every room, though I would also want to just sit and play guitars. I tried out a really nice Gibson acoustic. My son was trying out classical guitars and banjos. I wish I had space for many, many guitars. I am starting to think there is not such thing as too many guitars. Increasingly though there are fewer and fewer guitar shops on Denmark Street.

Why is Denmark Street famous? Historically this was London’s ‘Tin Pan Alley’, the busy hub of Britain’s songwriters and music publishers, musical instrument shops and recording studios. Famous names have been associated with here, the Beatles, Elton John, the Sex Pistols lived in a flat here, and the Rolling Stones recorded their first album here at Regent Sounds Studios, and music mags such as NME and Melody Maker were based here years ago. I always knew it as the place for guitars, and guitar shops would also line down Charing Cross Road as well, alongside all the bookshops making it my favourite part of London. It’s unquestionably the place with the biggest musical heritage in Britain, but slowly the tides of redevelopment have been pushing it all away.

Back in 2014, I went there to draw the row on the north side, and as you can see it’s still packed with guitar shops, music shops, and the 12 Bar Club is even still there. That was an interesting venue, so many greats have played in that tiny space. The last time I was in there was watching a friend of university play with his band, this is going back 20-something years. Macari’s in the middle there, I bought my beloved Hohner acoustic guitar not from that one but from their other branch on Charing Cross Road, around the corner, while I was on my break from Thorntons in Oxford Street on a dark December evening at the end of 1996, I still have that guitar with me in California. Both those Macari’s are gone now (but the company still exists, and they have a shop in Haywards Heath, which is a bit far for me; their website is macaris.co.uk, and, a side note here, looking at it I was surprised to discover that they used to be based on Burnt Oak Broadway back in 1958?! Right by where Iceland is now. That I did not know!). Below, the in-progress shot.

Ok, now look at that, from 2014, and look at the same scene now in 2024. Isn’t that heartbreaking? It is fitting that the black SUV in front resembles a hearse. Hanks is still there, down the street on the right (the photo curves even more than my panorama). Where is everything else, and what is in its place? About a decade ago it was announced that a lot of Denmark Street would be done away with completely, part of the redevelopment of the area for the new Crossrail (now the Elizabeth Line). Several older buildings nearby were demolished, such as the great London Astoria and the (even better) LA2, and it’s not all bad, the new Tottenham Court Road station is a lot more spacious than the old one. What price progress.

denmark st 2024

Below, this is what I drew a couple of years ago looking over to the south row of Denmark Street. Those places are all still there, though I was disappointed to find another couple I used to go into had now gone. It feels like Denmark Street is vanishing bit by bit, being eaten up by a world without character, and it’s not just Denmark Street. It feels like everything is going, old pubs, old shops, old ways of doing things, replaced by nothingness. It reminds me of the Never-Ending Story, where The Nothing comes and consumes all, replacing imagination with…nothing.

When I see a music shop, I see a place full of possibility. You might never be able to afford that guitar you really want, but you might find something you really love, as I did with my Hohner back in 1996, that cost me less than a hundred quid (on the wages of someone who packed boxes of chocolate on Oxford Street). You might not be able to play it that well, but every instrument is a gate into a more creative way of living. There they all are, waiting for you to unlock whatever is inside of them, or maybe it is the other way around. A kid who never gets to pick up a real guitar and try it out may never think to play one; we need independent guitar shops. The musician Yungblud (who I first saw in that series about Camden Town) wrote a song about Denmark Street called ‘Tin Pan Boy’ and said that it was the first place he picked up a guitar. I first took my son to Denmark Street two years ago, when he had never played a guitar before (and as I write, two years later, I can hear him upstairs with his electric guitar coming up with new chord progressions). The world keeps on changing, doesn’t it. But it won’t be as good as Denmark Street was.

the other side of Denmark Street

January 9, 20232 Comments

Back to London last July. After a day’s touristing with the family – we went to the Churchill War Rooms, then wandered about central London until my feet hurt – I stopped off at one of my favourite old streets, the centre of guitar shops and music people, Denmark Street. Just off Charing Cross Road, round the back of the recently redeveloped Tottenham Court Road station, this was the center of the British music industry for a long time. Tin Pan Alley. As London has been pricing anything good out of existence for a long while now, but of it have been falling away and I was worried to finally come back and find it all gone down the pan. There’s a few old places no longer there, but I was pleased to still find a lot of places to mooch about looking at instruments, the character still exists. So I drew the street looking southwards, across from Wunjo and Regent sounds, and stood drawing until my feet hurt. This was intended as a sister piece to a panorama I drew of Denmark Street back in 2014 (see below) looking northwards, before major redevelopment started in the area. The 12 Bar club was still there, and Macari’s; I was saddened to see Macari’s on Charing Cross Road had closed recently, that’s where I got my beloved acoustic guitar that I still have. After drawing that picture years ago I learned about “Save Tin Pan Alley” – http://savetpa.tk/– which is devoted to preserving this historic and culturally significant London lane. As a guitar-obsessed teen I was often too shy to go into these stores, fearing that I would suddenly be found out and laughed at. They soon became my favourite places, though I still won’t get down an electric guitar and plug it in unless I know nobody is there to listen. They have different guitars than you see in a lot of guitar shops in the States as well. This past year I have finally rekindled my love of the guitar, having abandoned it for well over a decade, and got myself a new guitar, the Lake Placid Blue Squier Telecaster, as well as a Fender electro-acoustic for my son who is learning. Just last month I finally got myself a bass, for the first time in my life, and I of course got the Hofner violin. I should have been playing bass all these years, I love it, and the Hofner is nice and light, especially with the Flatwound strings. I need to fix the fret buzz though. Apparently I should adjust the truss rod, but I’m a bit nervous about that. I also need to fix up my old electric guitar in London and bring it back out here, the one my brother got me when I was 14, the Westone Concord II. I re-strung it and cleaned it up, but the third fret is pretty worn down where the B string hits it, making it hard to play an open D. Teenage Pete played that chord so much it filed away the fret. Maybe on my next visit I’ll take it down to Denmark Street and see if someone there can fix it. I’m still pretty basic with my guitar playing, and I don’t mind that, but it is nice to be back messing about with guitars again.

in the state of denmark street

September 1, 201424 Comments

This is Denmark Street, just off of Charing Cross Road in Central London. I sketched it over a period of two and a half hours one Wednesday afternoon, having taken the morning off from sketching (I was up in the loft searching for my old collection of Fighting Fantasy books), and added the rest of the colour later on. Denmark Street is famous within British musical history as our very own ‘Tin Pan Alley’, home of music publishers and recording studios, and later of music stores. There are lots of guitar shops, as well as other instruments of course, and is also home to the famous 12 Bar Club. The Rolling Stones, David Bowie, the Sex Pistols, all are associated with this street in some way (the Pistols actually lived here for a bit). Not only music – the comic shop Forbidden Planet was founded at number 23, where that red awning is in the picture now. It’s around the corner on Shaftesbury Avenue now. This place is steeped with history and it’s a street I have always had a lot of love for, being a bit guitar-obsessed when I was younger (it took me years to actually pluck up the courage to enter one of those stores though, very intimidating to a shy teenager!). I actually bought my current acoustic guitar from Macari’s, though it was from their other branch, on Charing Cross Road, back in 1996.

So when I heard that Denmark Street was under threat of demolition, all part of the Crossrail redevelopment that has completely destroyed the junction of Oxford Street and Charing Cross Road, I knew I had to sketch it while it still looked like this. Many of these buildings are ‘listed’, historic buildings of importance. Whether they will be knocked down or just somehow modernised is not clear, what it will mean for the historic character of Tin Pan Alley is also unclear, will the music stores be forced out in favour of latte shops and corporate office space is also not clear, but let’s face it. If Denmark Street loses its character it will be yet another blow to London.

Here’s my sketchbook. I used the watercolour (“art-plus”) Moleskine, with a uni-ball signo um-151 brown-black pen. Oh, and here is a map showing where Denmark Street is.

And finally, I thought you might like this. As you may know, I like drawing fire hydrants, mainly because I find them exotic and foreign, for we don’t have them in the UK. Well, actually we do, but they are underground, with metal coverings on the pavement. Here is one I sketched on Denmark Street. So there you have it!