In the bag: Beanos record shop is long gone and much-missed
It seems that not a week goes by without another talented and successful artist revealed to have some connection in or around Croydon.
The latest is filmmaker Andrew Haigh, whose much-praised movie All Of Us Strangers is set in Sanderstead where he grew up and in the centre of Croydon itself (the “unloved south London borough”, as The Guardian described it in its film review).
The artistic production line has been particularly fruitful in pop music, with Stormzy, Adele and multi-BRIT award nominee Raye among many stars with links to Croydon.
The excellent exhibition Rewind, which has just opened in the Museum of Croydon, doesn’t directly answer the question of why or how Croydon manages to produce so many stars, but it does illustrate what a long and varied musical pedigree Croydon has.
‘King of SKA’: after his chart successes in the late 1960s with The Israelites and 007, Desmond Dekker settled in Croydon. 1995 photo from the National Portrait Gallery
It features musicians like Jamaica’s Desmond Dekker, who settled here for many years, and Ralph McTell, who grew up in Croydon. Dekker’s stage outfits and the acoustic guitar on which McTell recorded Streets of London are among the eye-catching exhibits at Rewind, which also traces the history of music hot spots from the Fairfield Halls down to the theatres, cinemas, pubs and clubs where some of the biggest stars of jazz, blues and rock and roll played in the 1950s, ’60s and into the ’70s.
Exhibition piece: Ralph McTell’s guitar at the Museum of Croydon
Bob Stanley, a founder member of St Etienne, the indy trio formed in 1990 and one of the bands mentioned in the exhibition, does venture a suggestion about the source of Croydon’s musical vibe. “The architecture of Croydon definitely influenced our music,” he said. “The concrete and scale of it went with electronic music.”
A more obvious link is the presence in the borough for the past 33 years of the BRIT School for Performing and Creative Arts, on the site of the old Selhurst Grammar School for Girls. As well as Adele and Raye, the school’s musician graduates since it opened in 1991 have included Amy Winehouse, hip hop rapper Loyle Carner, and singer-songwriters Jessie J and Katie Melua.
Stuart Worden, the school’s principal, says Croydon’s diverse communities fuel musical creativity. “You can walk down one street and hear some really cool Indian hip hop and then you go down another street and there’s someone playing rock,” Worden said.
“It’s almost like the whole of London distilled into one borough. Like the great port and canal cities of Liverpool and Manchester, places where everyone is welcome tend to create great music scenes.”
The Star’s star: Hendrix played a Croydon pub in February 1967
I spent part of last year gathering musical memories from fellow former pupils of the two Selhurst grammar schools, for boys and girls, both of which disappeared in the comprehensive revolution of the 1970s.
My contemporaries remembered Matthew Fisher, a member of Glenn Athens and the Trojans and later of Procol Harum, who would become involved in the legal row over the composition of that band’s monster hit Whiter Shade of Pale.
Old Croydonians, as ex-Selhurst pupils are known, have crystal clear recollections of great nights out at the musical venues celebrated in the Rewind exhibition. Jimi Hendrix playing a floor-shaking gig at The Star pub in Broad Green, where you often only had to pay for a drink to get in.
Earlier in the 1960s there was the Beatles at the Fairfield Halls, where you couldn’t hear a note because of the screaming fans.
McTell playing his signature Streets of London at a coffee bar called Under the Olive Tree on the Brighton Road in South Croydon.
Joe Cocker was booked to play at Croydon Technical College in 1968 long before With a Little Help from My Friends hit No1 in the charts. He honoured the booking and for the original fee!
Rough diamond: Penge’s Bill Wyman (second left, on bass) with The Cliftons in 1961. Ahhh, the glamour
The highlight of my research among Old Croydonians came from Ken Baker, who was at Selhurst from 1953 to 1960. He played bass guitar, which he made himself, in a group called The Incidentals, formed of fellow sixth formers. When they disbanded, Ken sold his amplifier to a bass player from Penge. His name was Bill Perks, and he played in a group called The Cliftons, before changing his name to Bill Wyman and joining the Rolling Stones. A member of The Incidentals and The Cliftons was Brian Cade, another Selhurst boy, who formed a lifelong friendship with Wyman.
Record shops figure prominently both in the Rewind exhibition and the memories of Selhurst old boys and girls. As well as the specialists like L and H Cloake, Potters and Beanos, all Croydon’s department stores (there were three at the time: Allders, Grants and Kennards) in the 1960s had record departments fitted out with individual booths where you could listen to that week’s latest hits without even having to buy.
Memorabilia, even the most mundane, is highly prized. One of our Old Croydonian friends preserved a paper bag from the record shop near Thornton Heath station where she bought her 78s (for our younger readers, “78s” were vinyl platters used on record machines that rotated at 78rpms – before the days, even of 45s…).
“Interesting to see how many major acts, Genesis and David Bowie among them, worked their way up via all three. From the Blues boom of the late Sixties, to the punk revolution at the end of the ’70s and right through to today’s dubstep and grime scenes, Croydon has provided a launch pad for every genre.
“Little wonder that the good people of the borough love their live music…”
How to ensure that the beat goes on? As The Who put it in 1971 on their album Who’s Next: “Let’s see action, let’s see people, let’s see freedom, let’s see who cares.”
Read more: Under The Flyover listens in as Billy Bragg goes to The BRIT
Read more: It’s hard to find signs of the borough’s musical heritage trail
Read more: Glimmers of hope around Thornton Heath’s lost cricket club
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