What a wonderful evening of entertainment from Paul Wright. Paul started looking at local musicians when he found that Tom McGuinness of McGuinness Flint fame lived in his house in Dacre Park in the 1970s.
Paul is a great storyteller, the funniest story was perhaps the one about Martin Taylor, who became a famous British jazz guitarist and composer and having a Val Doonican poster on his bedroom wall in Lewisham. His mother noticed so for Christmas she knitted him the same jumper but sadly it was the guitar that Martin Taylor was mooning over and not the jumper! Many years later Martin met Val Doonican and told him the story of the disappointing Christmas present and Val Doonican gave him the guitar he had desperately wanted.
Paul made lots of local connections for us and included people like Marty Wilde and Sandie Shaw who married Jeff Banks and ended up living on Shooters Hill Road and opening the Clobber boutique (where the Age Exchange is now). He told us about The Blues in Southbrook Road where Manfred Mann, John Mayall, Max Wall and Eric Clapton all lived for a while. We also heard about some of the venues including the Odeon in Lewisham, the Lewisham Hippodrome in Rushey Green (now the site of Eros House) and of course the Lewisham theatre in Catford.
Paul played us tasters of the music, and we were soon tapping our toes. As one of our members commented it could have easily turned into a karaoke session. We learnt that Kate Bush and the Bush Band played at the Rose of Lee pub in Lee High Road, Ginger Baker and Billy Wyman were born in Lewisham Hospital, Boy George grew up in Eltham, and that Desmond Decker and Squeeze were all locals who used recording studios on Blackheath Hill. We also heard that Malcom McLaren and Sid Vicious of the Sex Pistols were from our area and that Dire Straits were a Deptford Band. David Bowie of course was mentioned but he was known as David Jones until he was eighteen.
It was an interesting and informative presentation – a’ triumph’- to use one of our member’s description. Fab!
A leaflet covering some of the information covered by Paul and recordings of his interviews with Marty Wilde and Albert Lee are available on the Blackheath Society website.
” A great evening! Loved the music, great sound system, almost felt like a potential karaoke session!”
“A fun evening with lots of tunes from memory lane!