As a teenager I trawled the not so glamorous streets of Soho. Here was genuine excitement. Ever flashing neon lights, clip joints, nightclubs, proper grown up women in make-up and fishnet stockings, and men who looked like gangsters in a Humphrey Bogart movie at every junction. No one would molest you. If you were a lad, you could stroll home late at night without fear of being mugged. Not that I had a penny on me – hence no bus fare – or a mobile phone. Nor was I ever mistaken for a rent boy…
There were jewels in the streets and back alleyways of Soho in those days. In Old Compton Street you had the 2 I’s Coffee Bar next door to the menacing Heaven & Hell, where you entered at your peril, and just around the corner in Meard Street we drank our frothy coffee by the gallon at the Macabre Coffee Bar. We sipped the trendy new brew of the era off coffin shaped tables and stuck our fags into miniature skull sized ash trays, grinning child-like as the smoke poured out through the cavernous eyes.
But if you were really hip and hopped, you were to be found at the 2 I’s where many legendary musicians kicked off their careers in the dark basement of the café at 59 Old Compton Street. One night it might be Tommy Steele rockin’ (or not) with a caveman, followed by Cliff Richard in the spell before he had a livin’ doll. Adam Faith and Marty Wilde? They were all there. We saw them all first before they drove our mums mad. The café became an integral part of the early history of British rock’n’roll. While the intelligentsia – and the artists – puffed on their Gitanes in Notting Hill garrets, the rockers and the Elvis fans were crushed into a corner of this gloomy basement mesmerised by the young princes of rock’n’roll. It was hilarious. The joint made the soon to be established Marquee Club nearby in Wardour Street look like the Ritz. There was no air conditioning. The only access to oxygen was a small fan in the corner of the cellar. Everyone was sweating and smoking and, somehow, staying conscious. Amazingly, nobody was asphyxiated.
Before Cliff & co there was skiffle. Most of it was dreadful. Lads armed with their washboards and thimbles made ghastly noises into the early hours. The very unpleasant Lonnie Donegan among them. Nobody liked Lonnie, even then. And he appeared to hate everyone. Unless they worshipped him. Skiffle came and went but rock, as the song suggested, was here to stay. You’d never catch your folks at the 2 I’s. They’d be at the local dance hall. Nobody in Chesterfield or Norwich had heard of the place. Going to London, back then, was like emigrating.
Yet, strangely, Soho possessed an innocence in the 1950s. The place might have been full of creepy Sammy Lees dreaming of that big killing but there remained a wonderful naivety under the grimy wrapping. Pubic hair did not exist. It was “whited out” on boards outside the sex joints. The coppers didn’t bother anyone while the fixers paid protection money and looked after the law. Coffee bars were to the ’50s what wine bars and gastro pubs are today. The basement at the 2 I’s was only the size of a large bedroom, lit by a couple of dodgy flickering bulbs. At one end were milk crates with planks on top which everybody assumed was the stage. And there was a kind of microphone system, apparently left over from the Boer War. The nearest toilets were probably at Piccadilly Circus station.
Andrew Ings, a bon viveur and adviser to the Mountview Academy of Theatrical Arts, paints the 2 I’s a multitude of dreamy colours through the eyes and ears of those who came, saw, played and crashed out there. And an excellent read it is, too, especially if this den of iniquity was a joyous part of your misspent youth. Today, all that remains above the door is a blue plaque claiming grandly: “Site of the 2 I’s Coffee Bar (1956-1970), birthplace of British rock’n’roll and the popular music industry.” Ho, ho. But when that plaque was unveiled in 2006 they were all there, from Sir Cliff and the Shads to Wee Willie Harris to toast – in frothy coffee, of course – the nights when it was all about ’avin’ a laugh. It was all show, then. The business came later.
