Bloodstains on the Cobbles of Soho (Original Version)

Bloodstains on the Cobbles of Soho 

(SA/2025)

  

Where the streets are paved with blood / And American DNA - PW/SA

 

 

Although, technically, there isn't an upper and lower Wardour Street, nevertheless this famous half-mile thorough fare is cut in two by Shaftesbury Avenue; the lower half, heading south, will take you into Leicester Square via Chinatown; whilst the upper half, heading north, will take you into Oxford Street. 

 

The lower section, however, never meant much to me during the years I spent in Soho (1984-85), when Wardour Street was still home to the British film and popular music industries. 

 

As far as I was concerned, the Marquee Club, at number 90, was the epicentre not just of Soho but of all London and I still get excited when I'm on that stretch of Wardour Street between Old Compton Street and Broadwick Street, passing familiar establishments such as Bar Bruno and the Ship. 

 

Sadly, the Marquee - like the Vortex, at 203 Wardour Street - has long vanished. And many of the people who lived and worked and made Soho what it was in the 1980s have also passed away. 

 

Some continue to haunt the area; the so-called ghosts of Wardour Street. Others have left DNA evidence of their presence in the form of bloodstains on the cobblestones of Soho (although even this will degrade and disappear with time). 

 

 

To read the second (and I think superior, rather more poetic) version of this post published on 24 September 2025: click here. Usually, I delete first drafts and variants, but thought I'd make an exception in this case. 

 

 

In Memory of Jock Scot

Jock Scot (Photo credit: Times Newspapers, 2014)

Once upon a time in a Soho that has now almost vanished, there was a small record company called Charisma. It was home to a few old hippies, such as Genesis, and to a peculiar array of highly individual recording artists. 

This queer little label, established by a big fat geezer called Tony Stratton-Smith, not only employed the kind of eccentric characters unlikely to find work elsewhere, but, nestled away above the Marquee Club, it provided a kind of meeting place for all manner of misfits and troublemakers to hang about; including the punk, poet, and bon vivant Jock Scot who, sadly, died a few days ago, aged 63.

Although our paths crossed only very briefly in the mid-1980s and, unfortunately, I have no great anecdotes to share, I always remembered Jock with a pinch of fondness and so was genuinely sorry to hear of his passing. 

Soon, they'll be no one left alive ...