Jimmy Page bought his much-loved Les Paul Custom at one of Denmark Street’s guitar shops. The Rolling Stones recorded their first album of blues covers on the block at Regent Sound, around the same time David Bowie recorded a demo at Central Sound before becoming a regular at Gioconda, the café hangout for musicians. This short run of Victorian buildings on the edge of London’s Soho neighborhood, now refurbished and ready for a new life, is where the city’s popular-music community has long gathered to record songs, buy instruments, and exchange gossip.
If Carnaby Street, at the other end of Oxford Street, was where bands in the 1960s bought clothes and built their image, Denmark Street was about business. The publishers Mills Music rejected Paul Simon’s Sounds of Silence, compelling him to record it himself rather than offering it to another performer, and later employed Elton John as an office boy. The Sex Pistols lived and rehearsed on the street. Countless young bands cut their teeth at the 12 Bar, the street’s main performance venue.
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