Our Johnny is the Only One Dancing in Time: Chapter 18
An occasional series of possibly true scenes from a perfectly normal life. Let's call it faction.
Chapter 18: The Hole in the Ground
(If you’re new to the book, you might want want to read the other chapters first. Links to each chapter are at the bottom)
From the door of our house in Stratford, East London, it’s just a short walk through the dilapidated shopping centre, running the gauntlet of the market traders trying to clear their stalls at the end of the day, take your life in your hands crossing the Great Eastern Road, into the ticket hall and down to the Central Line. Hop on for eight stops, hop off at Tottenham Court Road, weave in and out of the tourists clogging up Charing Cross Road, pause for a moment as you look right to check out what’s on at The Astoria tonight, then jump left into Phoenix Street and you’re there; Shuttleworth’s.
Opened in 1988 by John Mahoney, by the mid nineties Shuttleworth's, sometimes Shutties, sometimes Shuts, but almost never it’s official title of The Phoenix Artist’s Club, was the largely unheralded and almost entirely publicly unknown centre of the London music scene. Located in a basement beneath the Phoenix Theatre on the Charing Cross Road, which was originally used as a rehearsal room and dressing room for the theatre, it had originally been converted into a bar and restaurant sometime during the 1970s. In the early 1990s it had been acquired by the legendary Maurice Huggett, who set about refurbishing it to create a hub of late night drinking and debauchery for musicians, record label execs, managers, agents, artists, actors, comedians, producers, writers, journalists and photographers. Entry was ‘strictly controlled’ for members of the club plus their guests, but I never actually saw anyone take out a members card, and I certainly never heard of anyone applying to be a member. You went there with someone who would somehow wave you through, then Maurice might warm to you and a members card would mysteriously appear in your wallet even though you couldn’t remember asking for one. Or he didn’t find you entertaining enough to be a member, in which case you had to keep trying until he did.
Maurice’s approach to the fabulous hole in the ground he had created was to make it a part of the shows and events that surrounded it. Initially this meant that after 11pm the club would be flooded with young singers, dancers and actors from West End shows, prone to offering you up a rousing chorus of Come to the Cabaret Old Chum at the slightest tinkle of a note on the piano. Being less than 250 metres away from the entrance to The Astoria, at that time THE gig destination that any respected band had to play, it quickly began to serve a secondary early evening purpose, the place where literally everyone on the guest list for that night’s show would gather to make adequate preparations for doors opening.
The Internationally Famous Photographer, The Magician, The One and I virtually lived in Shuttleworth’s from 1997 to 2000, a period in which an average night there would potentially involve mingling with the following surnames; Cocker, Doyle, Banks, Senior, Mackaye, Gallagher, Gallagher, Arthurs, McGuigan, Archer, Bell, Albarn, Coxon, James, Rowntree, Dean, Gentry, White, Black, Everitt, Healey, Payne, Dunlop, Primrose, Weiner, Frischmann, Welch, Matthews, Chipperfield, Hannon, Shillingford, Georgeson, Weller, Starr, Hunt, Hawley, and at least 100 others who, though they may not have been household names, would certainly be troubling the front cover of one of the weekly music magazines on regular occasions.
The hierarchy of such an illustrious cohort of minor and major pop stars huddled together in a hole in the ground might seem immediately obvious, but it’s not that type of place. Maurice doesn’t care who you are, and neither does anyone else. Irrespective of how far up the charts your album went, or which magazine just did a double page spread interview with you in Tokyo claiming you have reinvented an art form, in Shuttleworth’s it’s what you’re actually like as a person that matters.
As a consequence, just about the most celebrated person in the whole joint for the early evening crowd is the Internationally Famous Photographer, a chap I have the advantage of knowing since he was about 13 and used to regularly perform Lou Reed covers in St Marks Hall back in Tunbridge Wells. Like us, he has escaped back into the big city, where his not insubstantial talents as a photographer are overwhelmed only by the fact that he is always the nicest person in any room. The result is that it is not unusual for the Internationally Famous Photographer’s ongoing, never ending, party to start with just the two of us and end up taking up more than half of the available space at the back of Shuttleworth’s, with every person descending down the steps greeting his presence with a loud and enthusiastic “Pat!” before receiving the exhortation to ‘pull up a chair!’ One night this goes on for three hours until eventually it is decided that someone should lean over and ask Jarvis whether he wants to come and join the rest of us as he’s been sitting in a corner on his own nursing a pint for over an hour without anyone paying any attention.
It’s a weird situation to be in if you’re only that odd bloke that’s opened a strange music venue in a toilet in Tunbridge Wells, but the Holy Toilet’s status as a stopping point for every tour by everybody has resulted in me not being a complete stranger to this crowd. Everyone has a story about the time they played there, usually involving asking how long that vegetarian lasagna has been stuck to the ceiling of the dressing room, who put it there, and whether we ever have any plans to remove it. Answers: Since 1996, Kelly Jones, No. It had developed its own fame and was now part of dressing room folklore.
The Internationally Famous Photographer calls up one day from his latest photo shoot to make the predictable call to be in Shutties at 6pm.
“Everyone is meeting there,” he announces as though it was an entirely unheard of meeting spot “then we are going on to The Astoria for Travis. I’ve said I’ll try to get a ticket for the client I’m with now, do you know anyone who can put her on the guest list?”
The guest list at The Astoria is a particular specialty of mine, as I like to appear on it for every event even if I’m not actually going. I do this mainly to wind up The Door Nazi, the chap who guards the list as his own private kingdom. The Door Nazi will frequently deny the ability to find my name on the list, and will refuse any knowledge of who I am in an attempt to provoke a reenactment of the Adam Clayton legend/myth/fable.
(U2 Bass Player to staff at the airport desk who are refusing to expedite his check in ahead of every other person in the queue he has just waltzed past: “Don’t you know who I am?” Airport Check in staff into public tannoy microphone: “If there is a doctor in the airport could they come to desk twenty one please? There’s a man here who doesn’t know who he is”)
To avoid this boringly prolonged interaction and the embarrassment of being forced through it while people behind me tut, I have taken to always having my name on every list. This serves the dual purpose of reducing the potential for the Door Nazi to pretend he can’t find my name, and of winding him up when I don’t turn up.
“It’s quite late, but let me phone the promoter and try” I respond. “What’s the name?”
“Natalie Imbruglia” says the Internationally Famous Photographer.
After she had spent two or three years setting teenage boys’, and girls’, hearts fluttering by wearing dungarees and brandishing a trowel on Neighbours, Ms Imbruglia had launched a pop career with the worldwide smash hit single Torn and the accompanying seven million selling album Left of the Middle. At this time she is probably one of the most famous faces in the world, let alone London. The thing is, Natalie does not need me, or the Internationally Famous Photographer, to put her on a guest list to see Travis. She can simply walk up to any gig, point at her own face and be granted entry. Even by the Door Nazi. I explain this to the Internationally Famous Photographer.
“Yeah, I thought that” he replies. “But she said she really wants to go with me to the show and I said I would see if I could sort it out for her”.
Now this is news. The Internationally Famous Photographer, as I have already mentioned, is genuinely one of the kindest, warmhearted, amiable and genial people in the Greater London area. However, and I don’t think he will mind me saying this, he is not quite in Natalie Imbruglia’s league when it comes to looks, a reality which is not his fault as she is currently gracing the front cover of Vogue to illustrate their article ‘The World’s Most Beautiful Women’.
“Natalie Imbruglia wants you” I’m saying this slowly “to take her to see Travis”.
“Oh, not like that. No. No, she just couldn’t get in so I said I would try to get her in. No. Not like that”. He doesn’t seem sure.
I phone the promoter and explain that Natalie Imbruglia would quite like to see Travis and she apparently can’t get in, so The Internationally Famous Photographer has said he will try to sort it out for her, so he’s asked me. The Promoter asks me to say it a few times. Then he puts the phone on speaker so the rest of the office can hear me say it. Then we all agree that if Natalie Imbruglia turns up to any show they are ever promoting anywhere she can come in. With or without our help.
I phone the Internationally Famous Photographer back and assure him that Ms Imbruglia will be fine to get in. He calls back about an hour later and says she’s going to meet us in there. This continues to seem tremendously unlikely, but let’s see. We toddle down the steps of Shutties and gather together a throng. I explain the plan for this evening’s entertainment to each of them in turn as they arrive, and every single one of them looks at The Internationally Famous Photographer with a look of astonishment.
His phone pings. It’s a text from the Vogue cover star announcing she’s arrived and would he please pop over. He’s halfway through a pint so decides to leave it for a bit. There are a few more pings to let him know they’ve given her a table so she’s left passes at the door for him, then that they’ve given her some drinks vouchers so she’s left some of those too, then that she’s still waiting for him to pop over. I walk him over the road and up to the Door Nazi.
“We are with Natalie Imbruglia” he says, “there should be a table pass?”
The Door Nazi looks at him. He looks at me. He looks at his list. He looks at the notes on the bottom of the list. Then he looks at us again. Then at the list again. The Internationally Famous Photographer leans over the desk and points.
“There” he says, “that’s me, with a note about the table pass. And about Natalie Imbruglia. Next to the note about the drinks vouchers.”
We make our way upstairs, grab our free drinks at the Keith Moon bar, then snake up the right hand side into the auditorium. The balcony is full to bursting, every seat occupied, and we cannot initially see his guest. This problem is quickly solved, however, when above the general kerfuffle, the rattle and hum of 1000 people in the seats discussing the potential setlist of the upcoming headline act, a loud, booming voice with a strong Australian accent is trying to attract attention.
“Pat! Pat! Pat! Over here! Pat, over here!”
Natalie Imbruglia is jumping up and down in her seat at the front of the balcony of the Astoria, waving her arms in the air. It’s the other side of the seating area from where we have emerged, so while she continues to shout and point and wave we slowly make our way across. The balcony has now fallen silent, as 1000 people look from the enthusiastic antipodean to us, then back again, then behind us to see if she is trying to attract the attention of someone else. But no, apparently those two disheveled looking idiots clutching four pints of lager each are who she means. The face of every man in the building is now pulling the sort of puzzled expression that you normally see on a monkey holding a Rubik’s Cube.
I’ve met a lot of fairly well known people, a few quite famous ones, at least five or six who are notorious, and one or two who would be recognised in the tiniest and most remote South American village. I’ve also been around a fair smattering of models, handsome men, graceful women, people who are pleasing to the eye. But I have only once spent any time in the sphere of the ludicrously, not quite real, try not to stare she’s a person just like the rest of us, other-worldly beautiful. She was a genuinely charming person, but quite unnerving to look at. That sort of dazzling perfection is quite difficult to get your eyes to adjust to if it’s in the real life setting of somewhere as gritty and grimy as the upstairs balcony of the Astoria. I once saw Boris Yeltsin casually stood drinking at the bar of a pub in Reading, taking at least five attempts at looking directly at him to confirm that yes, that was the former president of Russia and he was holding a pint of Boddingtons. Sitting in the balcony of the Astoria with Natalie Imbruglia was an equally incongruous experience. It was definitely her even though your perception of reality would suggest it plainly couldn’t be.
The Internationally Famous Photographer plainly got along with her like a house on fire, but for some reason never followed up on what was, as far as everyone around him was concerned, quite obviously a potential dating opportunity. Ms Imbruglia started seeing someone else shortly afterwards.
A photographer.
That she’d met on a shoot.
And invited out for an evening.
My regular haunting of Shuttleworth’s would come to an end shortly afterwards, when the arrival of children would greatly reduce the attraction of hanging about in dark corners of dark bars at dark times of the day. Maurice would continue to act as the master of ceremonies for a few more years in my absence, once famously refusing to allow the Arctic Monkeys in as he thought they were ‘too scruffy’. Lady Gaga and Tony Bennett got a bit luckier having made the effort to dress up.
After his passing the venue acquired new, quite brilliant, operators, Ken, Colin, and Peter, who finally shook off the reputation of Shuttleworth’s and transformed it into the thriving space for artists and creatives that is today’s Phoenix Artist’s Club. With our children having flown the nest, I recently started to make more regular appearances there again, reveling in the late night crowd of West End talent that will still grab a microphone at midnight and treat you to a show tune. You can change the name of a hole in the ground but you can’t change the atmosphere that seeps out of its walls. The early evening gathering that was a staple of my first few years back in London is only a distant memory however. As is the Astoria over the road that provoked it to gather, before London lost it’s sodding mind and knocked it down in an act of cultural vandalism that would ultimately contribute to the decision to take my life in a yet another direction some 14 years later.
The magnificent Hole in the Ground. Sometimes, if you tune out the hubbub and just sit quietly at the back, perhaps in the seat where Jarvis used to nurse a solitary pint, the walls will whisper their secrets to you.
Read the previous chapters of Our Johnny is the Only One Dancing in Time here:
Loved reading this. Pat's a dark horse! Thank you, I will read more chapters!