Soho, centred as it is pretty much right in the middle of London has long been a place where people gathered to socialise, drink, plan, plot and sometimes plunder. Soho has also been at the heart of London’s sex industry for the last two centuries. Along with this, it has also catered for a clientele with a preference for, shall we say, more transgressive encounters. On its western edge Piccadilly Circus has long been a location that rent boys frequented (as in the expression ‘going down the Dilly’). Both the literary wit Oscar Wilde and the painter Francis Bacon used the area to (illegally, of course) meet ‘rough trade’ until online dating services in the mid 1990’s replaced the rent boys lined up on the Piccadilly railings, known as the ‘meat rack’. Much of this era was documented by Jeremy Reed in his 2014 book ‘The Dilly’.
In Judith Summers History of Soho (1989 pp190) the areas inherent tolerance has always offered the unconventional, the eccentric, the rebellious and the merely different the chance to be themselves. And yet, and yet, as Stephen Fry puts it so well in a forward to Berne Katz’s Soho Society (2008) ‘Soho’s public face of drugs, prostitution and seedy Bohemia.. has always hidden a private soul of family, neighbourhood, kindness and connection‘. Every so often it has a clean up, most notably recently before the 2012 Olympic Games in London and slowly small businesses have been forced out by the ever increasing rents charged on commercial properties in the area.
As a result of its reputation- and perhaps inspiration- people have been writing songs about it for decades now. For a period in the late sixties and early seventies the mod scene decamped to Soho as its central playground and for a dozen or so years after about 1965 David Jones (aka Bowie), had already been on the scene there, gathering inspiration and writing songs in tribute, such as his December 1966 release ‘London Boy’, and playing gigs in the area, such as at the infamous Marquee Club (69, Wardour St) with his band The Lower Third,
“London Boy,” documents a young guy, new to the city, who is trying to work his way into the scene: drink, pills, getting high. The song builds and he becomes part of the pack, dressing sharply (mod imagery) getting pilled up but he then finds that his triumph leaves him feeling more alone than ever he was before. There must have been quite a few who also identified with that:
Bright lights, Soho, Wardour street
You hope you make friends with the guys that you meet
Somebody shows you round
Now you’ve met the London boys
Things seem good again, someone cares about you
A London boy, oh a London boy
Your flashy clothes are your pride and joy
A London boy, a London boy
You’re crying out loud that you’re a London boy
You think you’ve had a lot of fun
But you ain’t got nothing, you’re on the run
It’s too late now, cause you’re out there boy
You’ve got it made with the rest of the toys
Now you wish you’d never left your home
You’ve got what you wanted but you’re on your own
With the London boys
Now you’ve met the London boys
[London Boy, Bowie; released December 1966, Deram Records]
The song has a surprisingly melancholy feel and perhaps echoes his disillusionment with the relatively rigid confines of the London mod scene as much as anything, for he would soon cast it all aside, make Bromley in SE London his centre and experiment with the burgeoning hippy scene. However, by the early seventies, reborn as David Bowie, he was back in west Soho (The Furriers ‘K West’ at 28, Heddon St to be precise) posing for that famous shot on the cover of the Ziggy Stardust album cover in 1972 (and fast gaining a legion of gay fans).
Bert Jansch & John Renbourn also wrote a song about Soho in 1966 inspired by the sixties folk scene in the area, as there used to be a folk club in Greek Street called Les Cousins. Long gone now of course.
The best Soho song though, in my opinion (although, somehow, Time Out, the recently deceased London listings magazine left it out completely of their Top 100 London tunes.. but hey, what do they know?), was penned by the writers for the sixties band Dave Dee, Dozy Mick & Titch, Ken Howard and Alan Blaikley, with something of a minor classic in 1968, when they wrote ‘Last Night in Soho”, recently recreated as a film directed by director Edgar Wright .
You came into my life like rain upon a barren desert
One smile and I was born again
I felt sure it wasn’t too late
I’d find strength to make me go straight
I had love and threw it away
Why did they lead me astray?
For last night in Soho I let my life go..
Last Night in Soho, Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Titch, June 1968 Fontana Records
Listen to it and for my money there’s nothing else around that sums up the feel of Soho in the late 60’s and 70’s. It reeks of smoke, dimly lit clubs, shady deals and letting yourself go: doing things you wouldn’t normally think of doing in the bright of daylight. It went to number 8 in the UK charts at the time and it still packs quite a punch listening to its grooves today. Nevertheless, it seems again to sum up Soho as a bad influence though, as its protagonist, a gang member, is led away to jail by the end. It was Dave Dee’s personal favourite of all their hits (and they had many) and in a later interview Ken Howard, noted that “I had grown up, living not far from Oxford Circus, so as I child I knew Soho quite well, wandering on weekends alone through its streets… in the fifties it was quite a rough place, full of pimps, prostitutes and petty criminals, porno cinemas and sex clubs. Not the ideal milieu for an impressionable kid’! It is certainly my favourite of all their hits.
Yet again in 1986, the Pogues were singing about ‘A rainy night in Soho’, (yes, yet another one..) which, let’s face it, you’re going to regularly experience if you’re a local there but again it portrays Soho in a rather negative way, although Shane Mac Gowan does meet the love of his life there, to be fair. Then a decade on, we get Pulp’s location specific (and classic) Bar Italia from 1995, about the infamous bar that all late night Soho kids of that time knew, gay and straight, as a cheap hang out joint after the clubs closed, in Frith St.
You might not realise it’s about Soho but you’ll know it: the classic, much loved, 1996 track Born Slippy by Underworld was all about Soho, as it was literally assembled from snatches of a conversation heard on a night out in Soho, according to writer Karl Hyde. He recalled: ‘In truth, the song was me -literally- asking for help. I was describing a progressively despairing state of mind. I was using alcohol to numb the senses and thus arrived at the point where “Born Slippy” was written. I was saying, “I’m going to describe a typical night; does anybody else think that this is no way to live, and could somebody throw me a lifeline?”
Of course, arguably, the Pet Shop Boys iconic first hit ‘West End Girls’ is more or less all about Soho. The watering ground for the West End girls (and boys) meeting those East End boys. Its writer Neil Tennant has noted:
When I first moved down to London, we used to get all dressed up in our David Bowie imitation clothes, and clatter down the staircase at Seven Sisters tube station on to the brand new Victoria Line, (blimey Neil, it opened in 1963, are you that old?!) and go down to Shadowramas on Neal Street. And that whole thing of being a northerner and coming down to London: I always had that feeling, and still do, of escaping into the West End. I don’t even know why really, but it’s the difference between day and night – people go mad at night, and they go mad in Soho. For me, Soho symbolizes that, although it’s a much tidier place these days. I love London and I’m inspired by it. It’s what we write songs about.’
Which is more or less where I come in to the conversation too. My own use of the area as a socialising centre goes back to around early 1977, when I would journey into the city from the south western suburbs to go to establishments such as Spats at 38, Oxford St, BANG in Tottenham Court Rd and pubs such as the Salisbury on St Martin’s Lane and sometime later in 1986, Comptons on Old Compton St. So by the time I reached Soho, I was travelling on a culturally pretty well worn path, albeit one that was at times rather bittersweet. Nevertheless I always regarded it as something of a wonderland in all the senses of the word; perhaps that is the clue to Soho’s success: it is often a bittersweet experience. It’s gives and it takes, pushes and pulls you. Excites and then dismays. It is, at least, almost never boring.
