A venue that changed a city & the history of music.
My first Substack post - and I'm going to A Go Go
I was in Newcastle the other month, for an event at the Biscuit Factory talking about my short format book ‘Adventure Everywhere: Pablo Picasso’s Paris Nightlife’. I had all day beforehand to wander. If I’m doing an event someplace I always get out and about, find an art gallery, or a secondhand bookshop, or make a pilgrimage to a site of interest to me. That day I was on the trail of a key site in Newcastle’s history; Club A Go Go.
In the 1950s the big Mecca-style ballrooms dominated nightlife but exciting smaller scenes and activity away from the major dance halls developed in cities all over Britain, playing jazz, skiffle, rhythm & blues.
Mike Jeffery and Malcolm Cecil opened the Downbeat in Newcastle upon Tyne in 1959 presenting live jazz; both trad and modern. Jeffery was primarily an entrepreneur, but Malcolm Cecil was a jazz musician (a double bass player who later became an early adopter of Moog synthesizers). Other talented jazz musicians in the area included drummer Johnnie Butts, and brothers Ian Carr and Mike Carr.
Bryan Ferry’s visits to the Downbeat made an impact on the teenager, and it wasn’t just the music, it was the whole experience. Later he recalled being inspired by the otherworldly atmosphere of such places. You’d leave the leaden Newcastle streets and enter rooms full of music, and cool customers; it was “like being in a movie set” he said.
Eric Burdon was another local lad, four years old than Bryan Ferry. In one interview Burdon recalled his crowd hanging out in the cooler clubs in Newcastle, describing his bunch of friends as ‘like a motorcycle gang without the motorcycles. They were tough, hard-drinking and listened to American music.’
Burdon had met John Steel at Newcastle College of Art and Industrial Design. In early 1957 they were in a band together, the Pagan Jazzmen. Burdon guested with other bands, including with a group founded by drummer Johnie Butts (in the photo at the top of the post). The drummer played in some prestigious line-ups, including a quartet who backed Roland Kirk on tour in 1963 (the line-up also included Malcolm Cecil, Ronnie Scott, and Stan Tracey).
The jazz generation had been calling the shots, but the Downbeat witnessed the shift in the culture as younger musicians became bewitched by hard-driving Black American rhythm & blues. Eric Burdon was devoted to this new wave, as were other musicians in Newcastle, like Alan Price.
Mike Jeffery opened the Club A Go Go in July 1962, situated up the stairs to the second (top) floor of a building on Percy Street in the Haymarket area of Newcastle city centre, above a café used by Newcastle Corporation bus crews. Although it was originally conceived as part casino, part live jazz venue, it soon began featuring live rhythm & blues.
Bryan Ferry graduated to the Club A Go Go. The Club A Go Go was an intriguing mix of sophistication and edginess, attracting trendy students, music fans, and gangsters in mohair suits. “It was really exciting – it felt really ‘it’”, Bryan Ferry recalled.
Blues artists like John Lee Hooker and young British groups including the Graham Bond Organisation played. Eric Burdon and Alan Price were founding members of a five piece group calling themselves the Animals. In 1963, the Animals were Club A Go Go’s resident attraction, playing sets in both rooms often three or four times a week.
The Rolling Stones appeared on 8th November 1963. Bryan Ferry performed with his pre-Roxy Music band the Gas Board. When reminded of his show at the Club A Go Go, John Lee Hooker - who undoubtedly experienced dozens of dodgy venues in his time - exclaimed “Oh boy, it was rough”, recalling lads with knives and fighting inside and outside. It’s an exaggeration, as far as I can tell, but among Club A Go Go regulars it was certainly a thing to use a knife to carve your initials on the wooden tables.
By the beginning of 1964, the Animals had a growing reputation in London, and went into the studio to make a record. The band recorded most of their debut LP, including ‘The House of the Rising Sun’, in about an hour and a half. Their next set of songs included ‘Club A Go Go’, in homage to their favourite Newcastle nightspot (and released on the B-side of ‘Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood’). ‘Club A Go Go’ is addressed to a girl-about-town whom the singer is dating, knowing she’s also in love with the goings-on at the Club A Go Go, where there’s a big shot she’s carrying on with. He doesn’t blame her for hanging out there: it’s a place ‘full of soul, heart and soul’.
My future Substack posts will no doubt return to celebrating the way some venues make their mark on cities, change lives, launch careers, change culture. Talent attracted to and nurtured at the Club A Go Go moved through the 1960s and onwards. The Animals were huge, whilst Burdon’s later work with War was some of his best. Malcolm Cecil guested on Stevie Wonder’s album Innervisions. Ian Carr played in a quintet with Don Rendell on one of my favourite British jazz albums Dusk Fire, and also wrote a brilliant book about Miles Davis. Mike Jeffery later managed The Animals and Jimi Hendrix (he died in an air crash fuelling all kinds of rumours about him, including that he was a high-raking officer in the British Secret Service). We all know about Bryan Ferry’s triumphant career. And all this is before I mention Sting, who started going to Club A Go Go in 1967, aged fifteen.
In July 1968 Club A Go Go closed. The row of buildings that had housed arcade, the bus driver’s café and the Club A Go Go was demolished in 1987 to make way for the Eldon Garden Shopping Centre. The Eldon Garden Shopping Centre is a soulless acheron, as you might imagine, although on my pilgrimage there I discovered on its side there is a plaque marking the approximate site of Club A Go Go.
Picasso in his early days in Paris frequented glorious dives full of noisy late-night craziness and in the company of inspiring mavericks like Alfred Jarry and Guillaume Apollinaire, sitting amongst drunks, dancers, poets and bandits. I loved the research for the book; that whole era in Paris is captivating.
Newcastle isn’t quite Paris, but I wouldn’t say “no” to a night out at Club A Go Go. I imagine arriving at the door, the energy and the promise cascading down the stairs. I’d have loved to have been there the night the Animals played with Sonny Boy Williamson in December 1963 amongst the dressed-up hardmen, the coolest art college girls, and the blues boom boys; the air thick with heavy music, cigarettes, and perfume. Sixty years ago go.
Weird to think of Eric Burdon being four years old than Bryan Ferry. They seem to inhabit different musical worlds.
I love your writing and your thoughts and all the research. Looking forward to more Substack posts.