What was happening in London in the mid to late seventies, is that spaces and places were becoming more identifiably marked out as gay and, to some extent, lesbian spaces.
In particular, parts of Chelsea, Earls Courts and Soho. Of course books have now been written about the history of queer sexuality in specific cities, for example ‘Queer City‘ (with book preview) by the prolific Peter Ackroyd about London, ‘Queer London’ (with book preview) by Matt Houlbrook, and ‘Gay Berlin‘ (with book preview) by Robert Beachy (covering in particular the period of the late 20’s and early 30’s and popularised in the mid to late 20th century by books such as Mr Norris Changes Trains & Goodbye to Berlin by Christopher Isherwood and its film adaptation Cabaret). In the USA too, the book ‘Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890-1940′ (with book preview) written by George Chauncey documents the period of a half century of gay life & lifestyles.
The psychologist, David Higgs, wrote an interesting book in 1999 entitled Queer sites: Gay Urban Histories since 1600 (with book preview) and in it he documents something of the history of ‘gay space’ in seven of the world’s major cities from the early modern period to the present. He describes a ‘gay space’ as an area with a significant gay/lesbian population, and writes about the changing nature of queer experience in London, Amsterdam, Rio de Janeiro, San Francisco, Paris, Lisbon and Moscow. He looks at the importance of each city and its varied meeting places for gay men & lesbians, such as parks, river walks, bathing places, the street, bars and even churches, exploring the extent to which gay space existed, and the degree of social collectiveness felt by those who used these spaces. What is immediately clear on reading the book is that such spaces have existed for hundreds of years in major cities around the world, and to some extent there is an overlap between the term ghetto and meeting space.
Although it was and to some extent remains, a derogatory term, the word ghetto originally referred to those places in European cities where Jews were required to live according to local law. However in the 20th century, it came to be used to describe the areas inhabited by a variety of groups that mainstream society deemed outside its ‘norms’, and included not only Jews but poor people, LGBT people, ethnic minorities, hobos, prostitutes and bohemians.
It is perhaps worthwhile spending a little time looking in more detail at the importance that ghettos have had for LGBT people in the past, (and focusing in particular on Soho in central London), although their influence is somewhat less pervasive now. Westernised ghettos are usually situated in crowded inner city districts often within areas where the property is old and in a poor state of preservation (although they can go upmarket in time, as more affluent residents move in). Financially disadvantaged people of gender and sexual minorities may congregate in them as a place of refuge, benefitting from the concentration of safe, non discriminatory resources and services (just as other minorities do).
The neighbourhood of Schoneberg in Berlin was (arguably) the first gay ghetto (or more politely gay village) in recent hisory, developing in the 1920’s and peaking in the early 1930s before the moral and literal devastation of the Third Reich. However, in London (and other cities) for example, there were establishments known as Molly Houses as far back as the early 18th century. A ‘molly house’ was a coffeehouse, inn, or tavern at which men would meet (in secret) to socialise and have sex. ‘Molly’ or ‘moll’ was a slang term for a gay man, although at this time in England sex between men was punishable by death; nevertheless such molly houses were part of a thriving gay subculture.
Legal records document investigations into about thirty molly houses during the course of the 18th century and in some respects, the eighteenth-century molly subculture was as extensive as any modern gay subculture. The records suggest even then there were certain areas that were ghettos for meeting gay men. For example, one of the main ‘molly districts’ then was on the east of the City, around Moorfields in Shoreditch. What is now the south side of Finsbury Square was a cruising area known as ‘Sodomites’ Walk’. In the late 20th century of course, just to the east of this area (towards Hoxton Square) was host to the infamous ‘London Apprentice’ pub amongst others for some decades, of which more later.
In the book Queer London (link above, Chato & Windus, 2017) Peter Ackroyd tells us about the history of Soho, which although it only occupies about a square mile of inner London, emphasising as he does that even in Roman times there were likely places (lupinaria or ‘wolf dens’) where men met for sexual pleasure, sometimes with each other.
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 1990s replaced the rent boys lined up on the Piccadilly railings, known as the ‘meat rack’. Much of this era was well documented by Jeremy Reed in his 2014 book ‘The Dilly’ (Amazon link).
Soho has 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 more transgressive encounters. In Judith Summers History of Soho (Amazon link) (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 (Amazon link) (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.
Whilst Soho was not in fact especially thought of as a particularly gay meeting place in the 50’s and 60’s (it catered for a heterosexual sex industry more) it started to see gay bars opening there from the late 1970’s onwards. Even as late as 1976, Gay News listed only two gay bars: the A&B-originally called the ‘Arts and Battledress club’ -you can see where they were going with that, (and it was a real trooper, getting going in 1941 and only closing in the late seventies) and the Golden Lion at 51, Dean Street, in the whole of Soho.
Nevertheless, 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 since 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 Boys’, and playing gigs in the area, such as at the infamous Marquee Club (69, Wardour St) with his band The Lower Third (link to image selection) “The London Boys,” (see clip below) 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
The London Boys, 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 23, Heddon St to be precise) posing for that famous shot next to his studio, on the cover of the Ziggy Stardust album cover in 1972 and fast gaining a legion of gay fans.
The best Soho song though, in my opinion (although, somehow, Time Out, the 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, (link to image set) Ken Howard and Alan Blaikley, with something of a minor classic in 1968, when they wrote ‘Last Night in Soho’ (clip below).
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 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, sadly now departed, 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.
And then, whilst you might not realise it’s about Soho but you’ll know it: the classic, much loved, 1996 track Born Slippy (slang, meaning quick and alert) 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’ (videos elsewhere) is more or less all about Soho. The watering ground for the West End girls (and boys) meeting those East end boys. 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 (which went on in infamy to be the birthplace of UK Hip Hop) 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 rather bittersweet. 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, never boring. Early on in the years I frequented those bars and clubs, there was still a grittiness to the place, some of the pubs were still spit and sawdust dives, and the clubs could get quite heavy.
The long life of the Salisbury (opened 1852; the Marquess of Salisbury to award it full marks) on St Martins Lane was still in full swing, in the mid seventies with its reputation as a theatrical ‘ahem.. gay’ bar intact. You never quite knew who you might see in the thick blue haze, that often obscured the vista on the other side of the bar. Google it: the luvvies have all been there at one time or another, if they’ve been performing on the London stage. One day I met an old muse, the writer Philip Hoare there .. ´David?´, he came over and said. It’s Philip from school? Ah, yes. I always wondered.. I had lost touch with most of my school friends but he had news of some of them at least. Sadly, no great surprises though. I never bumped into anyone else I knew in London, from those old school days; quite remarkable really. We exchanged some gossip about who we had seen at various times the pub in our visits. As it was ‘theatrical’ venue people could simply say they were to honour a great English tradition, if asked or it was questioned.
There wasn’t a huge amount more in the West End then, in the late 70’s. There was the Kings Head Dive Bar in Gerrard Street (pretty rough. A dive bar was a church for down-and-outers and those who romanticise them, a rare place where the high and low rub elbows—bums and poets, thieves and slumming celebrities – but a place that wears its history proudly, then the Golden Lion in Dean Street (quite rough) the Dog & Trumpet in Great Marlborough Street (evidently- I never went there) and that was it. There were some private members clubs like the Apollo but they were -wink wink- members only: a member could sign you in. No, no Comptons: it didn’t come along until 1986. Of course all bars then came with that thick fug of warm beer, blue smoke, BRUT cologne and old carpet; it was somehow quite reassuring, comfortable. I even convince myself I miss it, occasionally.
The bars would be packed then, especially in the late evenings and really could be quite hard to handle, especially for young guys, who would often get a lot of unwanted attention, along with a modicum of wanted attention, if you were lucky. You had to be able to give as good as you got, if you went out alone in the evening. One of the key things which the bars above had though, was, (like the dive bar suggests) a mix of all types and classes of people and I think that has been lost now, in what LGBTQ pub culture remains. Bankers and workmen, lawyers and sailors, city gents and tailors, you never knew who you might meet. In some ways it was quite reassuring but equally you had to be ready to adjust to the conversational milieu. To some extent the Pet Shops’ West End Girls is really all about the attraction west end queens had, for east end lads. ‘Got myself a bit of rough last night’ they used to say, winking. Rough boys were always sexy. Except when they were beating the shit out of you, of course. Tennant later said that some listeners had assumed the song referred to prostitutes, but was actually, “about rough boys getting a bit of posh. Yep, we knew it, Neil.
I used to joke that in the eighties and early nineties I practically lived my life in Soho and in fact there is some truth in that observation. I actually lived in Somerstown, for years, just east of Euston & it was just a 15 minute walk into the centre of Soho, through Russell Square, so there were many (oh so many) nights I was there meeting friends, imbibing alcohol and enjoying the general melee. As those from the 60’s who knew it then must have felt in the 90’s, I go there today and it seems a different place, much cleaner as Neil Tennant says (literally and metaphorically) and pretty sanitised, even before the anti-covid gel struck out.
But back in the seventies things were down and dirty. This was the era of the black, boarded gay pub. ‘Going in’ was always an experience, and going in for the first time was an right old eye opener.
Scene: 1977 – dark, a cold grubby grey winters night in central London. A small group of young men are coming out of Earls Court tube, hands in pockets.
You ready for this?
Ready as I’ll ever be. Can’t be that bad can it? I heard you get thrown out if they don’t like you.
I just heard it’s so dark you can’t see anyone else in there.
Yeh? Maybe that’s a good thing..?
Yeh! (chuckles). C’mon then, we going in or what?
The Coleherne had a reputation that preceded it. Of all the options open to you in London in those days, it was surely the most notorious. Until you entered you had no idea what it was like inside, as the windows were boarded up, blacked out. You had to in those days, in case they were bricked. Or worse. And you didn’t really want people peering in anyway. Just about every gay pub then, had those black boards up, blocking out the light, blocking out the real world.
I was ‘going in’ with the Befriending group (still avaliable as a service via MIND OUT nowadays). This was a group led by Martin Jones and several others that met every Wednesday night at a leaders house, first for a warm up and then went on to a local pub en masse. A good way to introduce young naive guys like me to the big new closed world of the mean old gay scene in late seventies London. Get to know everyone a little first, have a coffee and a pep talk and then attack en masse! In retrospect – given its reputation- it seems odd that we even went to the Coleherne but it must be remembered that our choice was pretty limited back then. In fact the choice of completely gay venues in west London was always- and indeed still is -very limited.
We arrived outside, after the short walk from Earls Court tube. There was no more time for deliberating:, we were through the door, Martin confidently leading the way. It was as terrifying as I’d expected. To get in you ran the gauntlet of a long procession of men on either side of you, dressed predominantly in tight black leather, the place thick with the blue haze of smoke, stinging the eyes for a moment. You felt dozens of pairs of eyes running over each and every person who walked in, weighing you up, ticking you off , metaphorically rating their chances- or crossing you off their list of possibles.
To be fair this happened at many gay venues then (and probably still does at some) but the set up at the Coleherne was particularly brutal in terms of initiation.. the shape of the bar down the front of the pub meant that there was a long narrow passageway to traverse before you reached the main larger square shaped area of the pub, with its spit ‘n sawdust floor. I can still remember that first time quite vividly, even forty years on. Of course, I went back many times after. I even took my place in that line, playing an act, engaging in this piece of theatre, my own black leather jacket wrapped tightly around me, taking some delight in watching those fresh young new faces come in, nervously asking for their first half pint of beer or Carling Black at the bar.
It was a rite of passage that many or most of us on the scene went through; an initiation into a ‘counter culture’; some grew to love it, to rely on it even, others never went back after a first visit. I suppose I grew to accept it and to use it when I needed too. I certainly grew to love later versions of the same kind of places through the 80’s and 90’s. But by then they were not so much bolt holes, they were places of specialised engagement and entertainment, places of spectacle & theatre. Even then in 1978, we youngsters felt that the Coleherne was something that had ´had its time´.We were coming from a younger generation, that already realised it wanted to be out of the smoky back rooms and onto the streets.We were ready to be eyed up, seen and reckoned with out on those streets – and we were pretty certain it was our right.
Sex, love and life (The Rituals) 2.10 1979: Rise of the body politic & political activism
