Fact #20231

Giorgio Gomelsky (rock entrepreneur) : Until a few months before it had been the Picadilly Jazz Club... I took it over and started putting on R'n'B shows on Friday nights. One of them was the very first small-scale but very comprehensive London R'n'B Festival, which featured all the five or six exponents of the style, including, of course, Blues Incorporated and the Rollin' Stones. Harold hears about this and feels I'm trying to steal his thunder, which of course is not true, but to prove my point that R'n'B would find its audience no matter where, I decided to start another venue as far away from The Marquee and Central London as possible. Some young friends of mine, the Rustics, were running a venue at the back of the Station Hotel in Richmond, the very last stop on the District Subway line, 15 miles from the West End, so I go down there to have a peek.

I'm down there checking it out and I see they have this nice room in the back of the pub with phony palm trees, a stage with wooden, cutout music quavers on the back wall and a small white grand piano. The place held about 100, 150 people at most, but I thought the odd juxtaposition would be hilarious